My Greatest Wish
This article appeared on the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, June 10, 2001.

By Jim Paredes

If the word "father" was never invented, then married males who have children would have to be called many things- provider, man of the house, authority, the last word (or the second to the last word if mom is around), driver, teacher, protector, captain of the ship, friend, disciplinarian, someone's old man etc.

I hardly remember my own dad who died in a plane crash when I was six. Because of that, I had to imagine a father that I could emulate when I became one. My concept of what a dad should be was a combination of role models I had assembled together-a sort of composite dad. There were my older brothers, some male teachers and Jesuit priests in high school, my stepdad, a smattering of father roles I saw in movies and TV, my macho mom and my dad's towering reputation which formed a rough guide for me to follow. Regardless, one of the things I learned right away was that role models could only take you about 5 percent of the way. The other 95% demanded you think on your toes and,..oh yes, be present as much as you can.

One of the things I had decided very early on as a father was to be an active one. Which means that aside from the job description written above, I had to take on new tasks. I take credit for teaching my kids their 123s, ABCs and their love for poetry and everything about the written word. I also have spent countless hours helping them with their homework and projects in school and reviewing them for their tests. One of the things I noticed about being an active dad is this: I get to go through school as many times as the children I have PLUS my own schooling.Thus, I think I have become an expert in grade school with the higher levels to follow soon.

Parenting these days is hardly what it was like when I was a kid. As children then, we were often seen and sometimes heard. And that was already an improvement from the generation that came before mine. But we earned the right to be heard when we turned into hippies and radicals, tried drugs, espoused making love and not war while seeking to destroy the established political and social order. And because we pushed the envelope, we naturally gave our children the rights we had won from our parents. At least I did.

But being a child of the 70s then, and now a contemporary father can be exasperating. While I took pride growing up and "breaking the rules" in terms of taste in clothes, fashion, music, etc., I shudder that my kids and their friends follow slavishly the dictates of fashion houses and name brands when it comes to what they should wear and how they should smell. I point out to my kids often enough that their parents' generation was actually more hip than they are, and they shake their heads and mutter how "unhip" I am for even talking about being hip.

One of my issues with them and this generation is MTV. During my time, we listened to music and personalized it with our imagination. These days, I feel the kids are reduced to mere consumers of music since they get everything already "processed". I find insidious the fact that so much music is made with sales reports in mind and "interpreted" with video. The natural expression of teenage rebellion has been "franchised" and exploited by big business. There seems to be no room for greatness like the Beatles. Only boy bands and bimbos.Not only has video killed the radio star as the song goes, but imagination as well.

On occasion, I make it a point to watch TV with them. Like most parents I worry about the kind of world they live in. I have a problem leaving the kids alone with the TV because of all the casual sex, drugs and soul-killing commercialism that is being peddled as entertainment aimed at them. So I occasionally sit and watch with them and open to discussion what's on when I feel the need to. This way, I pass on the important value of questioning and not just accepting whatever they see as being "OK". It is, I hope, a step in the right direction in teaching discernment.

When my eldest Erica started to show interest in boys and parties, my wife Lydia and I jointly gave her THE talk about the "birds and bees". Instead of the usual don't-do-this-and-that approach, we took what we felt was a more realistic tact. After all, we as young people then never REALLY went for a lot of the scare tactics like suffering hellfire and all that.

We compared the attraction and power of sex to owning a horse. If the horse is trained, it will take you to where you want to go. If it is not, then it can run loose and wild and will take you where you may not want to be in the first place. Which means that when it comes to situations with the opposite sex, (especially for girls) if one is not in control, one is potentially a victim. And so, restraint and mature behavior is important.

Impressing upon young people who seem innocently childish one moment but can become raging hormonal teens the next, that certain activities can get them compromised for the rest of their lives (such as getting raped, pregnant, HIV, etc.) is crucial. There are such things as consequences.

I am proud of how we handled this sex talk with Erica. We did the same with Ala. We made them feel important by treating them as young adults. And they have returned the compliment by behaving as such.

As a dad, I have always encouraged my children to have opinions and to express them with gusto. And dinner time has, through the years become the opportunity for this. This is the time and place where we enjoy endless, unrestrained, magical moments discussing everything--- sex, dating, relatives, jokes, school, books, hobbies, politics; you name it.

This simple act of allowing them to say anything with nary a judgment or admonition from parents, I believe, has done more to keep them off drugs and crime than any overtly preventive rules I have put up. After all, if they can say what they want (raising voices included), then there's no need for them to resort to other attention-getting devices just so we listen.

And just as I accord them patience and respect when I listen attentively, they reciprocate the gesture when I need to be heard.. And this is truly precious. I am thrilled no end when my kids bring home friends to talk to Lydia and me because they need to be taken seriously by adults they can trust.

We pray occasionally, and go to mass most Sundays. But we are by no means unquestioning Catholics. Erica and Ala, many times have asked us questions of faith they would not dare voice out when they were studying under nuns. I try to answer them as best I can and do not enforce blind acceptance when there seems to be no explanation. I even grant the possibility that the church could be wrong in many issues of the day as it was many times in its history.

I see all this questioning as healthy. After all, Jesus was a politically incorrect guy who was not exactly a friend of the status quo. And contrary to how most religions see it, I do not see any good in encouraging guilt. I feel that people in general get more than enough of it on their own to deal with for a great part of their lives. They don't need their parents to add more.

Instead, a generous dose of understanding, compassion, being present and role modeling will hopefully guide them to right actions that would make Christ and Buddha proud. Tolerance, if not openness to other faiths and creeds is a virtue that I try to instill in them.

Maybe, it helps that they see me doing something esoteric like Zen meditations. Erica, Ala and Mio do us proud when they point out on their own what they perceive as excesses of fundamentalist thinking.

While a father's role, I believe is all about the support, care and nurturing of his children, the act of doing these can bring him face to face with aspects of himself. As a nervous first-time dad, I spent the most time with Erica teaching, guiding, disciplining in accordance with what I felt then was the way to raise "good children." But by the sheer strength of her personality, I had become her student as she, in turn, taught me patience, understanding and letting go of so much misplaced rigidity.

Though Ala is the sensitive, artistic one who does not seem to demand as much attention, she can draw from me attentiveness to her emotional depth, profound wisdom and her delightful openness and absurdity.

Mio is the boy. More than the two siblings, he seems the most vulnerable, probably because he is the youngest and as of now, the smallest. And so I am his protector against his bullying elders, his tutor and cheerleader and his guide through his male rights of passage. He draws out my boyish playfulness, my frisky "boy" energy that makes me play and laugh with glee.

I have impressed upon my family, that money may not constantly be available in the amounts that we may wish for. Thus, I always encourage them to be thrifty and wise with money. I have also taken pains to impress upon them that, especially with money, one must be totally trustworthy and accountable, whatever the amounts involved. While my children's financial habits have different levels of maintenance, Lydia and I encourage them to live within their allowance, though often with little success.

I remember one of the last conversations I had with my mother before she slipped into a coma, where I told her that I now wished to relate to her as an adult--not as the dutiful, parent-pleasing child I had always been. And that I also wished she would stop playing "mother" to her now grown-up son.

I treasure that moment when we engaged in open, casual conversation as two loving people do without the restrictive role-playing that a mother-son destiny had imposed on us all our lives. It was truly liberating and magical as we exchanged feelings, wishes, dreams, stories, green jokes even. I will never forget that moment when we transcended our traditional relationship and became two independent, loving souls.

Khalil Gibran once wrote that our children are not ours. They merely pass through us. I honor my mother for allowing me to outgrow her and come into my own.

And THAT is my greatest wish for Erica, Ala and Mio.