Rachel Kiley
Parenting can be one of life’s greatest challenges if you find yourself in a situation where you are responsible for shaping and guiding young children as they gradually figure out how to be, hopefully, reasonably well-adjusted adults.
There’s no one size fits all solution when it comes to kids, but there’s still plenty of advice that all parents should heed. But as mothers have long been considered the predominant child-rearing parent in patriarchal society, a lot of that advice tends to be aimed towards them.
One Twitter user decided to throw out some helpful suggestions for dads of the social media sphere as well, using her own father as an example of how to do things right.
“My father was an excellent parent to me and I want to share some of the outstanding parenting choices he made,” wrote @tashakaminsky.
To start with, her father made a point not to fall into sexist stereotypes when it comes to parenting girls.
He also modeled love and acceptance of all people, something imperative for kids growing up and figuring out who they are.
Rather than try to mold his daughter into the person he thought she should be, Tasha says he always made sure to meet her where she was in terms of skills and interests.
And he didn’t “buy into toxic masculinity.”
Perhaps most importantly, Tasha writes that her father “set time aside for me every single day… he made sure I knew he liked spending time with me.”
The thread resonated with folks who have struggled with parenting on either side of the table.
No parenting book in the world has all the answers, but listening to Tasha reflect on the way her father treated her is a great place for future and current dads to start.
