A Father’s Day Reflection
9 lessons I am still learning
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - What Fatherhood Has Given Me
- One Action - Say the Important Thing
- Recommended - Simple Man
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
What Fatherhood Has Given Me
Before I became a father, I thought I understood love.
I thought I understood responsibility. I was less certain about patience, but I assumed I would figure that out too.
Then Tyler was born.
I still remember the nurse bringing him over to me and his tiny hand wrapping around my pinky. In that moment, something I had heard other parents describe, but never fully understood, became real.
The capacity to love someone can expand instantly.
Learning how to carry the responsibility that comes with that is ongoing.
Fatherhood did not suddenly make me wiser, calmer, or more selfless. It did make the consequences of how I show up much harder to ignore.
It has given me immense gratitude, joy, and purpose. It has also held up a mirror. It has shown me where I need to keep becoming better.
These are 9 lessons I am still learning.
1. Love reveals a capacity you did not know you had
The love I feel for my son is different from anything I understood before becoming a father.
I had Tyler later than many of my friends had their children. They tried to explain the feeling to me, but there are some things you cannot fully understand from the outside.
Then he was born, and it became instantly clear.
It was not simply more love. It was a different kind of love, one that seemed to open a part of me I didn't know existed.
That love also came with an immediate sense of responsibility.
Before becoming a parent, I struggled to understand how someone could feel so strongly about protecting another person that they would put themselves in harm’s way without hesitation. To be willing to die for something or someone.
Then I became a father.
Love was no longer only a feeling. It became a duty to protect, provide, guide, and be there when I was needed.
Your decisions no longer affect only you.
For me, that responsibility became a source of purpose. It gave me someone to keep becoming better for.
2. You are always setting an example
Children listen to what we say, but they also absorb what we repeatedly do. What we model for them.
They see how we respond when we are frustrated. They notice how we speak to strangers, how we treat a cashier, and how we behave in traffic.
They see how we speak to and about their other parent or our partner. Those interactions help shape what they come to view as normal, respectful, and acceptable in a relationship.
Being a father is a constant reminder that my behaviour is teaching something, even when I am not intentionally trying to teach.
You cannot expect your child to consistently demonstrate qualities you refuse to model yourself.
I have referred to myself before as striving to be an “exampler.” Parenting is where that matters most.
Your advice may be forgotten. Your example is much harder to ignore.
3. How you respond matters, and so does what you do after
Parenting requires firmness. It requires boundaries, consequences, and sometimes an urgent response.
But anger and volume are not the same as authourity.
When you are yelling, your child may hear your intensity without understanding the lesson you were trying to communicate. The message gets lost inside the reaction.
A calm response does not mean being passive or permissive. It means creating a better chance that your child can actually hear you.
The question I try to ask myself before responding is:
Is my response helping teach the lesson, or am I simply releasing my frustration?
Knowing that does not mean I always get it right.
Parents lose patience. We will say things we wish we hadn’t said. We will model behaviour we don’t want our children to repeat.
The answer is not to pretend it didn't happen or defend it because we are the parent.
Repair it.
Admit when you were wrong. Take responsibility without adding an excuse. Apologize and make amends.
The mistake can still become a lesson, but sometimes the lesson is yours.
Your child does not need to believe that you are perfect. They need to see what a responsible person does after falling short.
4. Stop rushing what you will one day miss
When children are young, it can feel like you are constantly trying to make them move faster.
Pick up the toys faster.
Get dressed faster.
Get ready for bed faster.
Fall asleep faster.
There are stages of parenting that can feel endless while you are living through them. The tantrums. The bedtime routines. The request for one more story. The weekends built around their schedule.
It is natural to feel tired sometimes. Every parent needs space and rest.
But needing a break is different from wishing an entire season of your child’s life would hurry up and end.
It will end.
One day, the direction reverses.
They will leave the table before you want the conversation to finish. They will go to their room when you wish they would stay. Eventually, they will be the one standing at the door waiting for you.
That is already happening in my house.
Tyler is ready, the car is packed, and he is waiting for me to get out the door for sports.
The moments you once tried to rush through may become the moments you miss most.
Tempus Fugit, time flies, is tattooed on my arm as a reminder.
I often tell newer parents to appreciate all of it, the good and the difficult, because it goes so quickly.
That advice can sound like a cliché until you have watched the years pass yourself.
5. The little moments are not little
The work will always be there. The emails will keep arriving. The chores will always exist.
The opportunities to be with your child are not as permanent.
You will probably never look back and wish you had responded to more emails instead of watching a show with them. You're unlikely to be grateful for the meeting you attended that meant missing their game.
Being in the same room is not the same as being present.
Children notice when your attention is somewhere else. They can tell when you are staring at your phone and only half listening.
Put it down.
Watch the show with them. Go to the game. Listen to the story you have already heard. Give them your full attention while they still want it.
Even the time spent driving them around can become something worth appreciating.
For years, it can feel like you are their chauffeur, taking them to school, practices, games, and friends’ houses.
But the car creates time to talk, listen, teach, joke, and understand what is happening in their world.
Do not dismiss those drives as an inconvenience.
Soon enough, they will be driving themselves.
6. Say the important words out loud
You cannot say “I love you” too often.
You cannot tell your child that you are proud of them too many times.
They should not have to infer those things from what you provide or what you do for them. Say the words clearly, and say them repeatedly.
I tell my son that I love him every day. I am sure I have missed days, but the goal is consistency, not perfection.
Maybe those words were not said as often in the homes some of us grew up in.
Being a parent gives us the opportunity to do something different.
I want love and appreciation to feel natural in my son’s life. I want him to carry that experience into his own relationships and, perhaps one day, into his own family.
What we repeatedly say and show can become part of the way our children learn to love others.
7. Prepare them for life, not for a life without difficulty
The instinct to protect your child is powerful.
It can also become too powerful.
If you try to shield them from every mistake, disappointment, difficult conversation, or uncomfortable experience, you may protect them from some temporary pain.
You may also prevent them from developing confidence in their own ability to handle life.
Resilience is not something we can simply explain to a child. It often develops through facing manageable difficulty, receiving support, and discovering that they can recover.
That doesn't mean intentionally allowing them to enter situations that are genuinely dangerous. It means recognizing the difference between danger and discomfort and letting them work through it.
Our job is not to ensure that our children never make mistakes.
We can share what we have learned from our own. We can offer guidance and help them recognize risks. They will still make choices we would not have made.
What matters is teaching them what comes next.
Own the mistake.
Understand what caused it.
Repair what can be repaired.
Learn what it has to teach you.
Then move forward.
The goal is not a life without failure. Failure is necessary. The goal is to develop the ability to respond without allowing failure to define you.
We will worry about them. That anxiety belongs to us. We should not make them carry it.
8. Let them become who they are
Children are not unfinished versions of their parents.
They are not here to follow the career path we choose, play the sport we prefer, study the subjects we value, or pursue the interests we wish we had pursued ourselves.
They are their own people.
Our role is to guide them, expose them to possibilities, and help them develop the discipline to follow through.
It is not to write their entire script.
I have told my son for years that whatever he chooses to do with his life, I will support him and help him pursue it in every way I can.
There will still be nudges. There will be moments when he needs encouragement, structure, or a reminder of the commitment he made.
But the desire ultimately has to belong to him.
Support can help someone move forward.
It cannot manufacture genuine ambition on their behalf.
One of the hardest parts of being a parent may be accepting that you are raising someone to become increasingly independent of you.
That is not a loss.
That is your job.
9. Becoming a parent can change how you see your own parents
Fatherhood has also changed how I think about the way I was raised.
Parents are imperfect people trying to do an important job without complete information. They carry their own histories, limitations, fears, and examples from the generation before them.
Understanding that doesn’t require pretending that every decision was right.
Context doesn’t excuse every harm, and forgiveness does not mean denying what happened.
It does, however, create an opportunity to respond differently.
You can take what was good, learn from what was missing, and choose what you want to carry forward.
Becoming a father has helped me replace some misplaced blame with understanding and some regret with gratitude.
It has helped me see that parenting is not about getting everything right.
It’s about remaining willing to learn, repair, and do better with what you now understand.
Love is only the beginning
Fatherhood is not a credential.
It doesn’t guarantee wisdom, patience, or emotional maturity.
It gives you a relationship that keeps asking more of you.
It asks you to love deeply while remaining willing to let go. To protect someone without controlling them. To teach while continuing to learn. To model accountability rather than demand perfection.
I recently borrowed a question from Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and founder of the parenting platform Good Inside and asked my son:
“What is one thing I could do differently to be a better parent to you?”
He didn’t have an answer.
I asked him to think about it. A few days later, I asked again.
Still nothing.
Maybe the list was simply too long to narrow down. Or maybe he is afraid of hurting my feelings.
Either way, I will keep asking.
The point is not to receive praise or reassurance. It is to remain open to the possibility that I can do better.
The love may arrive in an instant.
The work is what you do with it.
To all the fathers and father figures doing that work: Happy Father’s Day.
To my father: I love you, and I forgive you.
To my son, Tyler: I am so proud of you. I love you more than you know. I am grateful to be your dad.
One Action
Say the Important Thing
Think of one specific thing you appreciate about a father or father figure in your life.
Tell them today.
In person, on the phone, write a letter, send an email or text.
The things that mean the most are often the things we leave unspoken.
It is never too late to say them, but do not wait.
Tell them you love them.
Like you mean it.
Recommended - Listen
Simple Man
My favourite cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic: “Simple Man” by Shinedown
The song is framed as a son remembering the guidance his mother gave him, but its message has always felt like one I would want to pass on to my son. It stops me in my tracks every time I hear it.
Stay grounded. Know what matters. Be something you love and understand.
Inspirational Quote
“You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.”
– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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Until next week,
Kevin
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