Don't Wait To Be Proud

<p>It’s a story as old as fatherhood itself. The son or daughter kills themselves to win the approval of their dad, which never seems to come. There is pain, resentment, bewilderment. <em>I have worked so hard to make you proud, am I just not enough?</em> Only at the end, or after the parent’s death, is it revealed: The child had the thing they wanted all along. They just never knew.</p><p>This was Claudia Williams’, <a href='https://dailydad.com/you-are-capable-of-change/?utm_source=sendfox&amp;utm_medium=sendfox&amp;utm_campaign=to-be-proud'>the daughter of Ted Williams</a>, story. Only buried in a pile of memorabilia did she find a note left by her impossible-to-please father. “To my beautiful daughter,” it said, “I love you. Dad.’” In <a href='https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sonny-mehta-ward-just.html'>a recent obituary of the brilliant publisher Sonny Mehta</a>, Roger Cohen writes:</p><p><em>“When Mehta’s father, a diplomat, died in Vienna, Mehta found in his desk a folder with every article ever published about him. The pride of his father, who had never complimented his son, was evident.”</em></p><p>It breaks your heart. Why couldn’t they have expressed some of this when they were alive? Was it a generational thing? Did they think it was helping to make their kids better, tougher? We wonder this about our own parents sometimes: Did they lack the words, did they just not know any better? Why couldn’t they have been more like Jim Valvano’s father and <a href='https://dailydad.com/the-greatest-gift-you-can-give-your-child/?utm_source=sendfox&amp;utm_medium=sendfox&amp;utm_campaign=to-be-proud'>given us the gift of <em>being a fan?</em></a></p><p>In the end, these questions don’t get answered. We’ll never know. What we do know, what does matter, is what we do with our kids right now. We have been given a second chance. We have been given our own opportunity. We can’t wait to be proud. We can’t keep our feelings for them hidden under piles of paper or in a drawer in our desk. We have to tell