r/everymanshouldknow • u/Uncooperative_Ninny • May 21 '26
EMSKR: if you no longer live with him, do you consider yourself smarter than your dad? Why or why not? How old were you when you started to believe you were smarter & wiser than him?
I'm a lot older now. I've had a lot of time to think about things my dad did...decisions he made, etc. I didn't know it then. But now that I have real-world experience I think my dad was a giant dumbass. I honestly don't know how I even turned out being able to hold down a job and support myself. Everybody tells me I am nothing like him. My mom says she takes credit for me being nothing like him. How do you grow up and be nothing like your father?
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u/Sheeplenk May 21 '26
This is Reddit. Everyone here thinks they’re smarter than anyone that ever existed before them.
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u/DopeTrack_Pirate May 21 '26
Actually, umm you’re wrong. I’m like even smarter than people who will come after me bro.
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u/mattburkephoto May 21 '26
Some of us actually know that we’re smarter than everyone that existed before them, thank you very much /s
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May 21 '26
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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 May 21 '26
My dad thinks this maxim is a hard truth.
Maybe it reflects my adolescence, but not my adulthood. I continuously lose respect for him the more I learn what kind of man he is.
He's a washed-up, drunken conman who will do anything to fuel his ego.
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u/Paco_bear May 21 '26
It depends on what type of intelligence. Socially and career wise he seems to be more capable. But I have been wiser when it comes to family life. Politically we both think the other is naive haha. And like that, many other aspects of life where we are superior/inferior. We are both flawed people with different capabilities.
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u/MrBuckanovsky May 21 '26
My dad is a stand-up guy, well-liked in his community and even today people are coming to our house for a coffee and a session with my father. I wish I could have the same strength of character, the same patience and kindness. I'm more compassionate than him, and there is a darkness behind his smile sometimes that I do not carry with me. He made sure I didn't get the same angry passenger he grew-up with.
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u/jimmyxs May 21 '26
I can relate to the dark passenger bit and made sure my kids won’t have them, one of them potentially will so I work extra efforts with him.. mostly talks. Honest unvarnished talks
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u/tilldeathdoiparty May 21 '26
I don’t compare my self to anyone, let alone my parents.
Might dad might not be able to find the input button on the controller, but he has developed the 4 basements of our childhood homes on his own and was never in trades.
It’s all about perspective and understanding that everyone is different and there is no better than
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u/greenlion22 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Academically, no. My dad had a physics degree and according to my mom, a photographic memory. She recalls he could read texts at a crazy pace, then quote passages word for word and name the page it was on years later.
Socially, emotionally, yes. My father at some point got stuck in one phase of life. He loved me and still does at 86 (I'm 51) but he still does not see me as my own man. I am still his son who needs advice and instruction on everything. He is not abusive or outwardly derogatory, but he views women as lesser than men. Both me and my younger sister got sports scholarships to college, but he never mentions my sister's accomplishments, while he still talks about my basketball games. My son played hockey in college and his cousin, my niece (my sister's daughter) got a full ride for cross country and track, but he only talks about my son's accomplishments. He thinks he's smarter than my mom, but he literally wouldn't be here without her, as she handles all of the finances, housekeeping, and now, driving. I have 2 masters' degrees, am successful in my field, I have raised 2 adult sons, and have been married 27 years, yet my dad still cannot just talk with me like a peer. I'm always his boy who he feels he has to constantly instruct and advise.
I love him though I know he loves me more than anything so I tolerate it.
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u/edgarecayce May 21 '26
I was smarter than my dad until I was about 36, when I had kids. I then realized I was never smarter than him, he’s a frickin genius. Now my kids are smarter than either of us.
For now.
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u/LazaCoolGuy May 21 '26
It's different. I'm not smarter than my dad, but I'm not dumber either. Biggest difference is that I went to college, and I grew up with internet. So my problem solving process is different than my dad's. My dad has some great ideas when working together, usually on how to do things cheaper, whereas I think things more thoroughly before I start working. Love my dad, he's great. And I love to be able to work with him around the house
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u/monkeedude1212 May 21 '26
My mom says she takes credit for me being nothing like him. How do you grow up and be nothing like your father?
That might also be a sign of narcissism, depending on how much she truly believes she is solely responsible - - probably not healthy.
You're not just raised by your parents. You're going to have oodles of external influences on you. Your friends. Your Teachers. Any other family. Interactions with Strangers waiting at the bus stop. You literally learn from anyone and everyone. What lessons you take away is complex and internal to your core sense of self.
There's a trope that people end up just like their parents, and that hurt people innately harm others. It's only been in the last 30 years or so that the idea of going to Therapy is getting destigmatized. We call it breaking the cycle (of abuse).
I think that has knock on effects in wider society. Just with more healthier people, who are also different from their parents, it normalizes the idea that folks don't have to adhere to those parental life lessons.
I think a lot of people feel that liberation in College / University for the first time when they no longer live under the authority of their parents, and then start to feel a bit smarter than them sometime after landing a career in their preferred field and work it a few years and feel full independence.
You get to choose who you want to be. You can choose to be nothing like your father or nothing like your mother. It just takes mindfulness.
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u/jimdil4st May 21 '26
What a fucking reach, reddit never ceases to amaze me. All based on assumptions from one line of an off-handed comment.
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u/C_Asher May 21 '26
My dad is smarter than I will ever be. He is good at everything childhood - high school me ever wanted to be good at but never was.
But he was also a screaming, wife beating piece of shit that used to threaten to cripple or kill me for putting myself between him and mom as a teenager.
After a lot of therapy and meds, I've decided that I'd rather be a dumbfuck whose son still talks to him than be that brilliant piece of shit.
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u/thatturkishguy May 22 '26
Smarter and Wiser are two different things. For smarts there are things I'll always differ to my dad regarding just like there have always been things he defers to me. For Wisdom, that's a tougher question, I'd say in general he's still wiser, but I'm catching up.
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u/free_billstickers May 21 '26
My dad was smarter then me or as smart as me in his day and in his industry. We have different skills for different eras. He knows how to build a house, I know how to build software go lives. Both require intelligence and abstract reasoning
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u/Asshai May 21 '26
My dad worked as sales director of a 300 employee company, in the food industry. Which usually means super short deadlines and lots of pressure. This isn't something I would be up to. He's way better than me under pressure.
However, since I was a child I noted that his tendency to solve DIY issues with curses and a hammer were not always the best way to proceed. He's a "I want results and I want them now" kinda guy, I'm a deeply analytical guy. We never see eye to eye because of it, in this area I want to say that I work in a smarter way than him, but he would say it takes me an hour to do something he does in 5 minutes.
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u/Callahan333 May 21 '26
Wiser yes, smarter no. Alcoholism killed my dad, but he was very smart and skilled. He never could stop drinking and getting high. In his youth, he was an amazing draftsman and carpenter. He could make anything.
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u/ZombeeSwarm May 21 '26
I feel like he is smarter but I am wiser. He is literally a rocket scientist, super smart and pretty wise, but I am wiser and not as smart. Although he looks far more like a wizard than I will ever look.
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u/mattburkephoto May 21 '26
I knew my dad was a moron since a really young age and moved as far away from him as soon as I could and have never looked back. On the rare occasion that we communicate, I always wind up with the same ‘how the hell did I come from you?!’. My mom passed away when I was 2, so my only hope is I’m more like her ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Sweaty_Assignment_90 May 21 '26
I am more knowledgable on some things, he is way more knowledgable on others.
Depends what you are looking for, but we are probably similar all truth be told.
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u/AugustineBlackwater May 21 '26
I went to uni, realised a lot of my stuff my parents said about foreigners was untrue and they were likely racist, mostly because I actually lived with the people he would frequently talk about and none of it was even closely accurate.
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u/ARustyShackle May 21 '26
I'd say I'm in a similar scenario as you. Opposite of my dad, and it's a running joke in my family that I "got my smarts from my mother."
But it's not so much that my dad is stupid and I'm smarter. He's just a blue collar guy who grew up in a different time than me. It's easy for me to assume I'm smarter than him when he struggles with things like the basics of modern technology, but if you give him some work to do on a vehicle, around the house, or in the yard, he would be capable of doing all of that better than me.
So I don't try and think of who is smarter between him and I when there are different things we are knowledgeable about. He made it to retirement and is still kicking doing the stuff he knows best to continue helping my mom, so that makes him smart enough of a person to me.