Adapting as a Father: Embracing Change Through Play & Growth

When I recall moments of enjoyable memories as a father, I remember activities like playing with Tinker Toys and Legos, reading bedtime stories, playing organized sports, wrestling, and being beaten with a sock by my youngest child. I've always enjoyed roughhousing with my kids, so in a way, being physically humbled was inevitable. But let me back up.

Early Fatherhood: Fun and Injury Prevention

When my three kids were very small, fun times like wrestling and indoor football involved lots of injury prevention. They would launch themselves at me, and I would catch them in all sorts of ways before they could crash into something painful. With only one child as a toddler, this was hardly a challenge. In later years, taking on a kindergartener and a toddler simultaneously was still manageable. However, things reached a notable turning point one day during an especially intense session. I lay on the floor with a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old on my back, and a 5-year-old whipping me about the head with one of my own socks that she had stuffed inside the other sock. As the noise of uncontrollable laughter and yelling calmed down, I began to realize I might need a new plan.

The Need to Adapt to Change as a Father

There are many moments in life when we recognize that something has changed and new approaches might be needed. For parents, this includes classic transitional phases of our children, such as the shift from child to teen or from teenager at home to young adult moving out. For many fathers, these shifts tend to stir up paternalistic or masculine responses such as protection from a distance and ‘tough love.’ However, if we don’t adapt along with the older people our kids are developing into, doubling down on tough love can cause us to lose some of the connection we had with them in their more innocent younger days.

A developing child needs much more than protection from harm or to display ‘grit.’ We also need to feel connected to people we care about, to feel we belong. We need to develop higher-level social skills, emotional awareness, psychological flexibility, and the ability to resolve conflicts on our own. While free play is a good starting point, these higher-level skills and capacities obviously require more than play to develop fully. Depending on developmental progress, a person needs some degree of safety, trust, belonging, appreciation from others, and enough freedom to explore, experience life, and make their own mistakes. From the perspective of a father adapting to growing children, this looks like less padding on sharp corners and more talking through complex emotional challenges.

What Change Can Look Like

After recapturing my socks, I eventually began to consider the shifts happening at that time (note that years later, I still continue to ponder this in new ways—I’m making it sound like I was very thoughtful and intentional back then, but that certainly wasn’t always the case). The most obvious change was that these three kids were becoming more than I could protect or control at any given time.

As I reconciled with losing control and the common parent lament of “my babies growing up,” I could have turned away from the games and play or become even more physical in our play as a last bid to keep control. Instead, I followed the natural shift of our interactions away from simple physical play and towards emotional and intellectual development. We talked about friend drama and joys, exciting or challenging things developing at school. We worked through big feelings at home in sibling and family relationships. I explored using music intentionally to support or shift moods in the home. For example, upbeat songs playing softly in the morning when there was a short time to get ready for the day, and expansive moody music when there was more time to work through big preteen feelings.

In hindsight, the sock incident was a turning point in this long journey. It marked the beginning of a long process with plenty of trial, error, and growth.

Recognizing Our Own Need to Change

It seems like there is endless research and opinion on the experiences of new or first-time parents. But what about making changes later in our kids’ lives, when we have forged our own comfortable grooves to adapt to the massive needs of parenting in the first place. Adapting as a parent to preteens and young adults can be complex and difficult, just like adapting to the birth of a child. How can a father support the changing needs of their maturing child(ren)? 

Some ways that most growing children and young adults would benefit from changes in support from their fathers:

  • Becoming more comfortable in ourselves with increasingly independent kids. Parents typically witness dramatic changes in their kids. From total dependence at birth, to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.

  • Moving from direct control and shaping their daily life toward a general guiding, supporting and informing role.

  • Setting boundaries that gradually incorporate more of the child’s input and preferences.

  • Making more room for big feelings, and taking time to learn how our kids are handling the big feelings of their peers. 

  • Understanding our own values on more mature topics and thoughtfully incorporating them into parenting. This can include timeless subjects like how to discuss death, sex, divorce, race and culture with kids at different ages. But increasingly this also includes new challenges like screen time, social media, and massive culture shifts in school following the pandemic - things most current fathers didn’t have to navigate with their own parents.

A theme in all of the above is being open to the new experiences of thought, identity and values that kids will inevitably influence us with as they grow. This can require a strong sense of who WE are as parents in order to take in the challenges and influences they represent to us without either becoming unsettled ourselves or pushing back too hard or trying to control the lives of others too much. Working through these issues of parenthood is one of the many complex processes that therapists can work with their clients on. But outside of therapy, we have chances every day to adapt to changing needs.

I wish that all of our milestone moments and challenges to adapt could be as playful and hilarious as a five-year-old whipping you with a sock. For changes both small and monumental, there are many ways to use resources and relationships to support our family. From written and recorded materials, to trusted friends and family, to coaches, therapists, teachers, doctors and other professionals, we can all use a little self-examination sometimes.

Written by: Mark Naftzger, AMFT.

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