What do your kids think of you?” It’s a big question for a parent to be asked and answer.

It was posed to me recently by a close friend’s wife while we were flying out to California for a couples’ retreat at Pebble Beach.

On the same flight, I offered to join another buddy on a father-and-son trip to Cape Canaveral— a boys’ trip!—and he asked, “Guy, are you good with kids?”

WTF! Guy Shepherd is a 21st-century parental role model, people!

Some context is required. In most groups of guy friends, there is “that guy” who makes the other husbands look like they have a modicum of maturity by comparison. I am that guy.

On these trips, it doesn’t take long for someone from either sex to say that Mrs. Shepherd is a saint-of-sorts for putting up with me.

You would think, when I’m talking to women, that I’m a keynote speaker at a Parkinson’s convention, with all the heads shaking.

Based on what I habitually do, say, and get away with, there is much truth in it. I married well.

Generally, I do my best to play a flavor of hard-to-like that is hard-to-dislike. I like causing joyous mischief. I am a boy at heart. I’m stuck somewhere in between immature and infantile on the developmental scale.

What type of father is such a man?

You would think, when I’m talking to women, that I’m a keynote speaker at a Parkinson’s convention, with all the heads shaking.

A good one, I think. My wife and kids would concur, I believe. (If this makes it to publication, that’s confirmed).

As fathers go, I’m an original. A mix of old school and new school, farce and seriousness.

I’m very American in my parenting, which takes its starting cue from the Declaration of Independence’s anthropology of humanity.

Our kids know what human equality is and what it requires. They walk the talk of equality properly understood and constitutionally pursued. Privately, at work, and in the public square they deliver good and needed American expressions. They were raised consciously for public and private self-government and the pursuit and possession of happiness, American-style.

We gave our kids clear expectations and provided them with made-to-measure, functional plans for success, as well as distinct social and sexual development. It was a shared plan capable of complementary expressions. What “Barbie”—the movie—lacked, the Shepherd kids got.

When they entered the sandbox as wee people—life’s first sorting test—they knew the how and the why behind sandbox etiquette and success. The same went for school, sports, friendship, dating, and work. They never went in blind and without a functional plan.

The dinner table was our family’s schoolhouse. As were hundreds of to-and-fro commutes and bedside chats.

Unlike most men, I am not the silent type.I shared my reasons, my mind and heart—the Why—with them on every aspect of life, more than they would have liked, I’m sure. (Wife included).

Occasionally, one of our kids will retell a parenting story from dinners past, and it’s my habit to open my wallet and give them a few bucks for therapy when they tell a doozie. Parenting is not a perfect art or science.

The best verdict on parents is their handiwork.How did their kids turn out?

We gave our kids clear expectations and provided them with made-to-measure, functional plans for success, as well as distinct social and sexual development.

Well, we have a son and daughter that we can say we “like” as well as love.

We like who they are and who they are becoming. Members of our species have long lives for a reason. There is always room for growth and finding our individual, level-best expressions.

They are both in their mid-twenties, out of college, gainfully employed—and most importantly, out of the house, living independent lives.

Our son is 26 and daughter 25—Irish twins. We gave little thought to paying for college, but somehow, we made it. And we just “gave away” our daughter’s hand in marriage. “Gave away” also refers to any hope for early or any retirement.

We are honored in how they have carried our family’s name out into the world.They were raised to know how to act in public. I would regularly test my son and daughter’s handshakes, eye contact, and first six seconds of their first impressions.

They also know how to act when no one is looking. They have good characters that are the product of a functional, ethical upbringing and their own continued effort.

They are not goodie-goodies. They understand the justice of the Golden Rule as well as the necessity of giving it at least a bronze-level performance, at worst, and striving for better.

We gave them a memorable ethic that starts with recognition that failure and shitty behavior is built into the human condition—a lesson easier to remember and adapt to than either the Sermon on the Mount or Aristotle’s Ethics.

The Shepherds are a “4-Fs” family.

The first F: to “Fuck Up” is to be human. Perfection is beyond us. You can and even ought to strive for it, but don’t delude yourself for a Pharisaical moment that you are capable of it.

Second, when you F up, you need to “Fess up”—admit and take ownership of your failure.

Third is “Figure Out.”If you made a mess, clean it up. Do the work to make it right.

And, finally, comes the allusive, divine F that everyone wants immediately but doesn’t want to do the internal introspection and external, real-world, leg work to facilitate: Forgiveness. (Here are a few more words on this subject).

As a result of this parental mix, my wife and I have raised solid human beings and Americans.

There is a depth to both of them. They can be counted on. You want them in life’s foxhole challenges. You want them on your team at work and in play, and in holy matrimony.

It’s worth mentioning: they’re also happy and fun to be around. Both can take and deliver a joke.

They say that a mother—and by extension, a family—is only as happy as her saddest kid.Our kids see the world and their place within it with eyes-wide-open clarity and smiles on their faces. They know how to turn a frown upside down.

When faced with adversity, they know how to process it; and they know, even in their most prodigal moments, that they have a father and mother who love them and will help them rebuild.

I think that my wife and I were, and remain, good parents because we know what the “Parent” job description entails.

A functional human being has a mind and character that succeeds—that functions—in the world that lies outside the home.

We would tell our kids in a shared voice that it was our responsibility, our duty as parents to make them each into functional, good, and needed human beings.

A functional human being has a mind and character that succeeds—that functions—in the world that lies outside the home. It was our responsibility to prepare them to do this, and their responsibility to get themselves prepared, not only to feed and care for themselves, but to do it for others someday, as their mother and father were doing for them.

And we told them that doing so would NOT be easy for any of us. We would all have to work hard at it as long as we lived. But doing it and doing it well would be one of life’s greatest, deepest joys.

While I think I’m an above-the-fold father, I could not have done it without my much saintlier partner. Without my wife, I could not answer the question posed to me—“Are you good with kids?”—affirmatively. It takes two.

Our kids are blessed to have both of us as parents. And we are blessed to have them. Our family holds one other in a shared high regard.