uncle-ateral decisions

so i just got off the phone with one of my closer thought partners, abraham and we had a hilarious and juicy conversation. hereā€™s a quick run down:

abraham: i have been really struggling as a single parent with all of the decisions i have to make on behalf of my two kids. in general, itā€™s been a part of my parenting approach to bring my kids in to as many decisions as possible. and there are so many decisions where i canā€™t. and iā€™ve been really stuck in the spot of how to involve them as much as possible knowing that icanā€™t actually involve them in everything. itā€™s actually exhausting, depressing even, to be holding so many decsions on their behalf without them seeing the labor iā€™m doing. plus, i really feel it from them when i donā€™t involve them in a decision because they let me know in no uncertain terms.

recently, i had a breakthrough with this. i started naming decisions that i make unilaterally ā€˜dad decisionsā€™ and giving my kids the opportunity to reflect with me in the future about how dad decisions go.

some examples:

iā€™ve found a huge amount of relief in this framing for two primary reasons:

i think thereā€™s a potentially interesting extension of this thinking/experiment: i think it could extend into the realm of man decisions or really, uncle decisions!

thoughts created in dialogue between lawrence & abraham:

abraham: and you know, whether or not this is helpful to anyone else isnā€™t the most important thing to me right now. for now, the FRAMING of dad decisions has created so much relief in my parenting that i just feel grateful to have stumbled onto it. i love sharing it with you, lawrence, and i am curious and excited to see if/how it could be influential for the leagueā€¦ but weā€™ll see!


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