Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce our first-ever TCB guest post! Here, without further ado, is Isaac's dad Craig:
Having a child makes people want to set a good example. Dad might start going to church again (I did). Ben Affleck agreed to pay a fine every time he swore in front of little Violet. Parents realize that what they do has a chance to affect what kind of person this child will be. The opportunity of the child’s unformed life brings out the life-philosopher in other people, too. This urge is the source of the most irritating sort of advice you can get as a parent, the kind that starts, “Don’t (let him) do ...,” and ends with “you’ll make him into a ...” It grates not just because of the implied criticism of your child (isn’t that enough?) but because the horrible fate predicted for the child often matches a little too well with how you turned out. And I guess it should, as we learned our parenting styles from our own parents.
I was thinking about all this the other day, and I considered what I want for Isaac and how these characteristics are not uniformly appreciated, shall we say. I want Isaac to have a rich intellectual life. I want my son not to return abuse but to treat even annoying people with kindness and respect. I want him to value fairness more than his own profit. So I am brought again to examine my own performance in that regard, and made more mindful of making my life follow my philosophy. That way, if someone says “You have to make Isaac blahblahblah, or he’ll turn out to be an egg-headed milquetoast,” (why, yes, I am writing this at breakfast time) I can proudly get right into his or her face and say, “What, you mean like me?”
-- Craig
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