They say hindsight is 20/20, and nowhere is that more painfully true than in parenting. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after a recent conversation with my youngest son.
He mentioned something about his childhood that caught me off guard—a small moment I’d forgotten but that had clearly stuck with him. It got me reflecting on how differently I parented each of my three kids, not by design, but because I was evolving (and stumbling) along the way.
The truth is, I was three different fathers to my three children. Not because I loved them differently, but because I was at different stages of figuring out this whole parenting thing. My oldest got the anxious, overthinking version of me.
My middle child got the overcorrecting, swinging-too-far-the-other-way version. And my youngest? Well, they got closer to the parent I wish I could have been from the start.
The firstborn experiment
My oldest son bore the brunt of my inexperience and anxiety. Everything felt monumental. Was he hitting his milestones? Was that cough serious? Should he be reading by now? I remember lying awake at night worrying about whether I was doing enough, being enough, teaching enough.
I hovered. Oh, how I hovered. I was at every practice, every game, every parent-teacher conference with a notebook full of questions. When he struggled with math, I hired tutors before even giving him a chance to work through it himself. When friendships got complicated, I was ready to call other parents and sort things out.
But here’s what I didn’t see then: my anxiety became his anxiety. My constant checking in taught him that maybe there was always something to worry about. My swooping in to fix problems taught him that maybe he couldn’t handle them himself.
I also made the mistake of pushing him toward a career path that made perfect sense on paper. Good salary, job security, respectable profession. It took me years to accept I’d been wrong, and even longer to apologize for it.
When I finally did, something shifted between us. That apology opened a door that my defensiveness had kept locked for too long.
The overcorrection years
By the time my second child came along, I’d recognized some of my mistakes. The problem? I overcorrected so hard I created entirely new ones.
Where I’d been anxious with my first, I forced myself to be laid-back with my second. Missed homework? “It’s fine, you’ll figure it out.” Failed test? “Not the end of the world.” Friend drama? “Work it out yourself.”
I thought I was giving him space to grow, but looking back, I think he sometimes interpreted my hands-off approach as not caring. Where his older brother got too much of my anxious energy, he got too little of my engaged presence. I was so afraid of hovering that I floated too far away.
The teenage years made this worse. Work got more demanding right when he probably needed me most. I pulled back when I should have leaned in, telling myself I was respecting his independence. Really, I was just tired and overwhelmed and taking the easier path.
Finding the middle ground
Then came my youngest. By this point, I’d had enough practice to know that parenting wasn’t about extremes. It wasn’t about being either a helicopter or completely hands-off. It was about reading the situation, reading the kid, and adjusting accordingly.
With my third child, I learned to sit with discomfort without immediately trying to fix it. When they came home upset about something at school, I’d listen first instead of launching into problem-solving mode. When they struggled with a project, I’d ask, “Do you want help, or do you want to try it on your own first?”
I learned the power of saying, “I don’t know, what do you think?” instead of always having the answer. I learned that being present didn’t mean hovering, and giving space didn’t mean disappearing.
Most importantly, I learned to apologize in real-time. Not years later, but right then. “Hey, I think I handled that wrong. Can we try again?” Those words became surprisingly powerful.
The weight of unequal experiences
What keeps me up some nights now is thinking about how unfair it all was. Three kids, same parents, completely different childhood experiences. My oldest jokes (sort of) about being the “practice kid.” My middle child has mentioned feeling like he raised himself sometimes. My youngest probably doesn’t realize how much smoother their path was because I’d finally figured out a thing or two.
I see it playing out in their adult lives now. My oldest, in his thirties with his own family, still checks in constantly, seeking reassurance in ways that echo the anxiety I modeled. My middle child texts occasionally, maintains a friendly distance that mirrors the space I gave him.
My youngest calls when they need to, shares what they want to, with a balance I wish I could have given all three.
The relationships are different with each of them, and I’ve learned to accept that. One calls weekly, one texts occasionally, and one drops by unexpectedly. Each relationship reflects not just their personality, but the parent they got during their formative years.
What I wish I’d known
Looking back, I wish someone had told me that consistency didn’t mean rigidity. That it was okay to admit I didn’t have all the answers. That my kids needed to see me as a human being who was learning, not an authority figure who had it all figured out.
I wish I’d known that apologizing to my children wouldn’t undermine my authority but would actually strengthen our relationship. That showing vulnerability wasn’t weakness but courage. That the goal wasn’t to be a perfect parent but to be a present, evolving one.
If you’re reading this as a parent of multiple children, you might recognize some of your own evolution in my story. Maybe your first child got your perfectionism, your second got your exhaustion, and your third got your acceptance. Or maybe your pattern is completely different.
The thing is, we’re all doing the best we can with what we know at the time. The tragedy isn’t that we parent each child differently; it’s when we’re too proud or too afraid to acknowledge it and make amends where we can.
Closing thoughts
Recently, I had all three of my kids over for dinner. Watching them interact, seeing their different personalities and approaches to life, I was struck by how resilient they all are despite my inconsistent parenting. They’ve each found their own way, developed their own strengths, worked through their own challenges.
Would I do things differently if I could go back? Absolutely. But since that’s not an option, I do the next best thing: I stay open to conversations about the past, I apologize when those conversations reveal hurt I caused, and I try to be the parent and grandparent now that I wished I’d been then.
So here’s my question for you: If you have multiple children, which version of you did each of them get? And perhaps more importantly, is there still time to give them the version you wish they’d known all along?
