I Lied To My Son

My son (7) had come to visit me at my workplace. My wife brought him to see me after several days of late homecoming. She was fed up with my son asking where I was. I was up and gone before he woke up in the morning and he was fast asleep by the time I return at night.

It was indeed a delight to see him after so many days and the feeling of delight was mutual. He hugged me and asked me if I was coming home early and I sadly told him I was. I was too embarrassed to tell him I wasn’t. In the end, I had to admit to him that he may not see me as I will be home after his bedtime. My wife had complained about his changing attitude over the past few days, especially with regard to his assignments. He will take longer to complete his homework and must be spoon-fed to get his maths, English, and science homework completed and she attributed it to my absence. “River-Esteban took less time to complete his work when you came home early” she will tell me. “Perhaps because by completing his work, he was able to spend more time with you”, she continued. She was at the end of her tether and I could see the frustration brewing. I promised her better days were ahead but on this fateful day, as much as I wanted to go home early to see my kids, it was practically impossible and this experience reminded me that I was losing my influence on my family and ignited my desire to become more available and become an “influential father”.

However, I was continuously reminded that to become more available I needed to be financially independent. Sadly, the journey to financial independence only just began and I needed to take the journey more seriously. In the interim though, I had to strike a balance. I have straddled for too long and the cost was becoming more than I could afford. I genuinely thought I could play the role of a good dad and be a tenacious workaholic too. Sadly, my wife was beginning to struggle emotionally as I allowed the boundary of work to edge insidiously into the family territory. The damage to my kids, I couldn’t yet quantify.

Many months on, the situation is different, but what happened? I read the concept of deliberate trade-offs in George Mckeown’s “Essentialism”- A book I will highly recommend- and I knew something had to change. It was a simple question of which problem do I want? I knew the choices before me and needed to be proactive and decisive about them. After all, all choices come with a corresponding consequence. Thus, I went to my boss to discuss the possibility of finishing early at work. It did mean I was going to earn less money, but it was a trade-off I was prepared to make. It was a choice between more money and the sanity of my family. Interestingly, my coming home early became an incentive for my son to behave. Initially, we adopted the token for good behaviour approach and although this worked at first, it became apparent that reducing my working hours and working very closely with my wife to raise our kids were crucial. More crucial than I realized. My relationship with my kids has improved and the big lesson here is the need to recognize that straddling only works to an extent. It is a logic that ignores the reality of trade-offs and I found this insightful. I am continuously learning to make deliberate trade-offs as it appears I could either do this by design or allow my boundaries to slip away and allow the hard choices to be made on my behalf. I choose to make these choices myself and long may this continue.

All choices come with a corresponding consequence