The answer is "yes" not "What"

I just became fully aware of a bad habit that needs to be corrected. It is a habit that is the residue of generations. When my daughter says “hey dad” I respond with “what” instead of “yes”. I noticed this a few weeks back, I had just sat down after an evening of running around, warm supper in my hand, movie just started and out of the bedroom comes “hey dad” to which I replied “WHAT”, I was informed that I didn’t need to respond in that manner!! I did apologize and justified the response by saying I just wanted to relax and that she could come out to the living room to ask the question instead of yelling at me from the bedroom, like I said justification. Today at lunch Mich asked me a couple of questions and my response was “what”, driving back to work I realized how this was an inappropriate response.

There are certain things that my parents did in raising me that I consider inappropriate. Some of these I have either not repeated at all or corrected as soon as I caught myself doing them. My dad was a hard working, law abiding man, who could get along with most people; he was fair in his dealing with others and showed a strong since of social etiquette in public. In private he was angry, physically and mentally abusive; he was a racist and intellectually ignorant. It is easy to weed out the ugly parts of my up bring and make sure they don’t mature with my parenting ways. Some how I ended up being the opposite of my dad, non-violent, open minded, intellectually curious and worldly. Oh I do have a nasty temper, I am the picture of my old man when I lose control, I yell, I swear a blue streak, slam tools or what ever is hand, I even have his evil eye thing. I don’t like this side of me and over the years it has surfaced less and less. But yet there are still the more subtle things like the response to “hey dad” than remind me I am still genetically tried to my parents and some of my actions are mirror images of theirs, mom was passive aggressive and I can go there too.

I guess by being aware of negative actions and reactions I can slowly correct some of the ignorance and wrong doings from the ancestors. Maybe my daughter won’t repeat some of my shortcomings and I will interact with my granddaughter better than I did with her mother. There are still a lot of small habits that I am not fully aware of yet or have a hard time catching myself doing. I work really hard at not using shame and guilt related words when I am giving my daughter constructive criticism, for the most part I can keep my voice clam and even also.

One of the biggest difference between how my parents brought me up and how I have brought up my daughter is the showing of love and respect, respecting her and her input in discussions, hell my parents didn’t allow discussion let alone input. My daughter has been raised open, which has been both good and bad, she probably experienced some things at a young age that was better left until she could fully comprehend things, so maybe this is an area where she can take my parenting errors and correct them with her daughter. So the thread of generations continues, my grandparent’s ways where modified a bit by my parents, my parent’s ways where modified by me, my ways are modified by my daughter and her daughter will probably continue the pattern. Maybe at the end the thread parenting Nirvana will be achieved.
I think I am slow gasping “non self”. I am ever changing, so the self I was at noon is different than the self I am at 4:15pm and when I go to sleep tonight there may be another change take place, yeah slowly I am getting it. Sweet!!!!