Sure, you become a parent when you have a kid. It’s a biological thing. It’s a legal status. It’s codified on a piece of paper. But we all know that being a good parent is something much more than that.
There is no one moment, one benchmark, one thing that makes you a parent–just as there is no single moment that one becomes a writer or an entrepreneur or a wise elder. Even ‘turning pro’ as the great Steven Pressfield has written, is not something that happens with the signing of a contract or being drafted by a team.
No, parenting–like all these other forms of greatness or achievement–is a process. It’s something you work at. It’s something you work on. Not something you’ve done but something you are doing. Not once, not when your kids are young, but every day, all days. For all of your days.
You don’t just read What To Expect When You’re Expecting and then you got it. Nor is parenting just something that one picks up by experience and trial and error (or if you do, that’s a painful thing to do at your kid’s expensive). Parenting is a process that millions, billions of people have been through before you–some doing well, some ignoring it and not doing well.
To be great at this process–or at least to just not screw it up–you have to study. You have to ask questions. You have to commit yourself to it daily, focusing on incremental improvement, on accountability, on a growth mindset. If you don’t give your best to this, what could possibly deserve your best?