What it means to be a father - thoughts of founder Luke Sherriff

 Kirstie and I had a very enlightening conversation the other day about whether you are a thinker or a doer. For all my drive to be healthy and active it turns out I am more of the thinker in this parenting duo and have been my whole life from when I was 7 and contemplated where the universe ended!

I now have a total of 13 years parenting experience under my belt and much of this time has been spent thinking about what sort of parent I want to be, fully appreciating and understanding just how amazing my own father was and dealing with the things I get wrong on a daily basis hoping to do better the next day. There is no perfect way to parent, just as there are no perfect human beings.

As such I try not to have many life long rules when it comes to the children. We are learning and growing every day and what is the best strategy one year can quickly be outdated as society moves on at a rapid pace.

For that reason I only have one rule and that is I never lie to the children, not even about the small things. Why? Well I want our relationship to built on trust so that whatever comes our way they know there is somewhere they can go to talk about their problems and get a fair and honest answer, even if sometimes it is not that easy to deliver..

As far as how I measure my success as a parent, despite the myriad of challenges that it throws your way and the complexity managing business, relationships and their needs, I think it is pretty simple.

My job as a parent is to help our children become a better human being than me in every way possible and to learn how to manage their own happiness so that they can be part of a generation that makes the most of the incredible opportunity that is life. And if they can pass that on to the next generation then that is the icing on the parenting cake!

#makingbetterhumans #parentinglessons #dontovercomplicateit