I Don't Know How To Be A Dad

Just now, my six-year-old son slammed a door in my face, screaming that he didn’t want to talk to me. The reason? He didn’t want to make a decision about what food I was going to make him for breakfast. This coming as yet another issue in the school morning rigmarole.

I am working tonight and I won’t be seeing him for the rest of the day. Chances are he will be asleep when I come home. So, with some sadness, I told him that through the door, and walked into my office to take some calming breaths and settle into my day.

I was angry.

Not at my son, but at the hopelessness that sinks into my gut when I face yet another challenge of parenting but have no guidance or positive role model to assist the process. Simply put, I do not know how to be a father.

Oh, I know what not to do: I know not to lose myself to drugs and untreated mental illness. I know not to expose my children to dangerous and volatile addicts. I know not to ignore my children for hours on end. I know not to act in a way that makes them doubt whether I can look after myself, let alone them.

But I don’t really know what to do. How to act in an encouraging way. When to push and when to watch. How much to help and how much to guide. I don’t know how to love them – or rather how to express that love to them.

It feels like there is a pit of neglect and abuse opening behind me, that I am desperately attempting to sprint away from. I’ve got my children slung over my shoulders and my wife running beside me as we flee somewhere, anywhere, that is safer than where we came from.

I take a breath and realize that this is my life. That I am safe, that I am here, that I am me.

I hear a small voice from outside my room.

‘Daddy? I am sorry Daddy’.

Tears form as I begin to respond. Tears for my boy’s sadness, and tears for myself. Once again I do not know how to respond. I have no positive guidelines on how to act in this situation. The only principles I have to go by are the ones I have read about in parenting books and the intuitions that I have developed over the years. Part of me knows I should trust myself and what I have learnt. The other part of me knows that the person doing that reading and learning and introspection, was doing so from the base of being raised by a neglectful father in a traumatic environment. That part of me questions if I can make the ‘right’ decision. It is like I see the world through colored glass, everything is a unique shade of yellow and I am perpetually worried that my world will shatter at the slightest push. How can I navigate a world of vibrant colors when everything looks the same?

I take another breath and open the door. My boy is sitting on the ground, tears running down his little face. I pull him close. I tell him that I love him and that I want to understand what’s going on in his mind when he becomes fixated so I can do better next time.

He quickly bounces back and starts yet another task that is not at all related to getting ready for school; an art project he is working on. And again, I find myself not knowing what to do. I value art. I value expression. I value creativity. But time is real and school is about to start. He is late again.

And I am angry once more. Angry at myself and at my father and at the world. Angry because I don’t know what I am doing and every day I am confronted by that fact again and again and again. And I know that it will keep happening until I move past this block.

This is why I write. I write to understand myself, to deconstruct the craziness of my brain and to lay it down on the page. In this way I can better understand and process the trauma that threatens to overwhelm me entirely.

Writing this just now has revealed the unsettling truth that I will never have the answers – at least not in the way I wished I did. There is no father figure that I can turn to for advice. There is no one who I grew up inherently trusting that they have my best interests at heart. There isn’t anyone I can turn to for advice.

That isn’t entirely true of course. I do have other relatives. I do have a mother. I do have friends with children. They are all great in their own way, but they cannot fill that gaping void that was left by the absence of my father.

As my boy went off to school, I told him that I loved him again. That I was proud of him and that he is a good person. I tell him that daily because I know what such words from a father can do for his son.

I never received such encouragement, at least not while my father was alive. He died at his desk with a diary open in front of him. His last entries chronical his thoughts and feelings as he passed due to complications from years of drug use and smoking.

I read that diary. Multiple times. In it, I was granted access to the inner workings of a man that was previously unavailable to me. I clung to those incoherent scraps of thought like they were a lifeline out of the abyss. I wanted to know who he was, to have some semblance of an inkling of an insight into the man that was my father. I wanted to know if he ever even saw me.

It was in that diary that I found the one instant that I can remember him telling me he was proud:

"The memory of seeing you in action on Sunday will rate as one of the top memories that I will cherish forever. I felt very proud of watching you fight with the heart of a warrior. Your teacher said that you are strong and I agree, body and mind. Zac, I also thought that you were very brave. Congratulations on your ascension to black level. Well done. With love and respect. Dad."

I was shocked that he came that day, I rarely invited him and when I did, he would rarely would turn up. He wasn’t busy with any obligations or work; other than whatever demons he was facing in his mind.

But that day he came.

He never spoke those words to me. I never heard him say them out loud. Until he died and I found that entry, I didn’t know that he was moved at all by my accomplishment.

I am angry.

Angry that those few words, written on a scrap of paper, that I read after my father’s death, can move me so much. I am angry that I still care. That I am still a little boy desperate for his father’s love and approval and acknowledgement of his existence.

I am still angry that my father didn’t leave me more to go on. Because I know well what I am not to do and I know that a boy needs to feel seen, heard, and acknowledged from his father. That he needs to both feel and hear that he is loved and that his father is proud of him.

I don’t know if that is enough, but it is all I have to work with.

~ Zachary Phillips

If you resonated with this piece, I encourage you to read my story in the book ‘Under The Influence, Reclaiming My Childhood’, there I share the raw, honest, and vulnerable reality that was my childhood.

I use writing to heal and guide others to do the same. If you are interested in working with me, click here.