agonyaunt | (no subject)

I am the father to three teenagers. When I was growing up, my father was not very involved in my life, and I never felt like I really knew him. As a result, I want my own children to be able to understand and relate to their father. I have dedicated my life and career to my greatest passion. I love my job and the fact that my work allows me to explore my area of interest. You cannot separate my identity from my work. I like to teach my kids about what I do: the ins and outs of my field, details of projects I’m involved with, my colleagues, my career history, the history of my field and people who are “famous” within my line of work, and the nitty-gritty on how my work is done. The problem is that my kids act bored when I talk about my career and have asked for a ban on “work chat.” To be honest, it’s a bit insulting that my kids don’t seem interested in my life. I wish that my own father had told me about his life, but I never had that opportunity. My kids are animated, insightful, and funny when they talk to their mother or amongst themselves, but when I talk to them they sit there with blank looks on their faces and quietly nod or say “okay” and “mmhmm” in monotone voices. How am I even supposed to relate to them if I can’t discuss my work? I have put my heart and soul into my career and you cannot separate who I am from what I do. This is what I enjoy discussing and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do to have meaningful conversations with my children. How can I get my kids to be more interested in our conversations?

—Kid Talk

We have in common that we’re both dads, and we both have careers that we’re extremely passionate about. But I don’t take it at all personally that my kids don’t have the same level of interest in my work that I do. I’m self-aware enough to know they would be bored out of their minds if all I talked about was my work. It’s simply not that interesting to them.

You mentioned that your career is what you enjoy discussing, but have you given any thought as to what your kids want to talk about? I don’t have any interest in tween YouTube personalities, Pokémon, and fidget toys, but I’m happy to sit with my daughters and learn more about this stuff because it’s important to them. If you’re truly interested in bonding with your kids, don’t make connecting with your kids about you. Make it about your kids.

I also think if you finally take a break from talking about or thinking about your work, it might benefit you, too.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/02/curbing-social-media-use.html

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Yup. And he still hasn't realized that it's not their job to protect his feelings.

Right? If he does want a closer relationship with them he's got a lot of work to do/damage to undo. And no guarantee that especially the oldest kid(s) are going to be on board.

I think that's the really critical thing. It's almost inevitable to bore your kids sometimes - telling the same jokes over and over, or talking about people they never met and don't care about, or just having regular adult interests that kids don't share. But this guy's resentful because he thinks his kids owe it to him to put more of an effort into keeping him happy in their relationship.