Here’s a test of your own childhood: Imagine you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. You’re in the kitchen making a snack. You and a friend are hanging out upstairs. And then you hear the garage door going up. Or you hear keys in the front door. The car pulling into the driveway.
As you take yourself back to that moment, what’s the immediate sensory reaction you have? What’s the energy or the feeling that comes through your body?
The comedian Jim Gaffigan told a sad story on Marc Maron’s podcast about this kind of scene. “My dad would come home and I’d be like, ‘who is that guy?,’” he explained. “And you’re like, ‘ahh, hi!’ Like that’s some of my initial acting was acting excited to see this stranger.”
How do you think your kids feel when you come home? Is it a feeling of relief, excitement, safety? Or is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it obligation–oh, now I have to pretend to be a certain way, or now I have to take care of the person who is supposed to be taking care of me? It’s a vibe test. Are you passing?
We’ve talked before about how to evaluate our success as parents. Perhaps instead of judging ourselves on their grades or how well they’re doing in sports or what college they’re on track to get into, we evaluate ourselves based on what kind of presence we have in our own homes, what they think and feel, and how they change when we walk into the room.
