I spent most of Father's Day weekend getting scorched in the mid-June sun watching my 10-year-old daughter's soccer team win three out of five games in their season-ending tournament.

I also took my almost-8-year-old daughter to a birthday party late Saturday afternoon.

In between soccer games on Sunday, I spent an hour figuring out why our family's computers couldn't get online access. (Turns out, the provider had server problems, which was actually a relief because if it had been a problem at my end there's almost no chance I could've fixed it.)

My 12-year-old son gave us a break from shuttle duty, since he spent most of the weekend camping with his Boy Scout troop. But we'll make up for it this week with three karate lessons.

I don't say all this to complain. I actually enjoy the kid stuff as much as anything else I do. I love watching Meredith play soccer, even though in terms of ability she's not even close to the top players on her own team, who in some cases aren't close to the top players on rival teams. I love watching my youngest, Annie, in her dance recitals. (Watching her play soccer wasn't fun, but that's just because she stopped enjoying it this season, which will be her last.) And I enjoy the rare chances I get to watch Harrison do something he enjoys, like playing violin in the middle-school orchestra.

I also don't say any of this to give myself a pat on the back. I'm just doing the same things I see other parents doing, and I don't feel like I'm doing anything particularly noble or even interesting. (Sorry about the not-interesting part, by the way.) I get excited when I can do things for my kids that my parents couldn't do for my siblings and me.

My friend Kevin Mitchell once joked that the only standard we were obligated to reach was to do a better job than our own parents. Since every kid believes his parents sucked at child rearing, it's really not a particularly high hurdle. My parents sucked in both cruel and comical ways, but from what I know about their upbringing, they improved upon their own parents by a wide margin. And at the same time they did me a favor by giving me so much room to improve on their standard. I, in turn, am giving my kids ample opportunity to do even better.

It may take us 20 generations, but eventually we'll get a Ward Cleaver or Cliff Huxtable in our family line.

Which brings me to something I read in this morning's New York Times:

Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city’s largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to African-American men, saying, “We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception.”

He went on to echo a famous Chris Rock routine: Don't get too excited about graduating from eighth grade -- you're supposed to graduate from eighth grade. There's a difference between accomplishments and baselines. Graduating from high school is a baseline. Graduating from college is an accomplishment.

More to the point of this post-Father's Day post, spawning children is a biological baseline. Raising children better than your own parents raised you is an accomplishment.

How? Some lessons I got from my own parents:

Laughing at yourself is okay; being a laughingstock isn't.

Since I write about exercise and nutrition, I have a perfectly fine reason to stay in shape. But my interest in fitness goes back to my childhood, and growing up with an obese father when hardly anyone we knew was that size.

If my dad had acknowledged his size and been comfortable with it, it wouldn't have had the same impact. But, to tell you the truth, I don't think he looked in the mirror and saw a fat guy. He just didn't see what others saw. I, on the other hand, saw the looks he got from friends and strangers, and I heard the giggles and wisecracks.

My wife thinks I'm too vain, but when you grow up knowing people were laughing at your father behind his back, the last thing you want is to be the dad that your kids' friends make fun of.

It's also why I try to be the first to make jokes about the things that set me apart, like my age, hairline, or lack of athletic skill. I don't mind being bad at something -- I hope it sends a message to my kids that it's okay to have fun at something even though you aren't any good -- but I make sure people know I'm in on the joke. If what I'm doing is laughable, I want to be the first to laugh.

There's a difference between lies and bullshit.

My dad sold insurance, and had a gift for bullshit. He could also lie without hesitation or remorse. Unfortunately, he wasn't a particularly good liar, and I don't think he could tell when people stopped believing him.

We all need some bullshit to get through the day, and to help others do the same. You can't go through life being brutally honest about everything. If you don't drive yourself to suicide, you might have that effect on someone else.

But a lie is a lie. Lies help the liar with reckless disregard for the impact the untruths have on others. 

You can bullshit your kids about their looks or their performance, and you can allow them to have their own bullshit if it helps them get through the day with their pride intact. But you can't lie. You can't tell them they're good at something if they suck, or that your selfish actions are somehow their fault. The harder it is to tell the truth, the more important it is to sack up and say it.

Under no circumstances can you tell your kids how they compare to someone else's.

Here's one of the worst stories I can tell about my dad:

When my younger brother was a good but not great player on his high school football team, my dad started hanging out at a local bar with other football dads. One night he came home and announced that another kid's dad had gotten a standing ovation when he walked into the bar because of the way his son had played in the most recent game.

He looked at my brother and said something along the lines of, "When do I get my standing ovation?"

I don't know what kind of sickness pervaded that group of local drunks, inspiring them to celebrate a guy because his kid was a gifted athlete. Whatever it is, I hope I never catch it. I'll high-five or fist-bump a parent when his or her daughter scores a goal, but I'd go into therapy before I succumbed to the notion that I was cheated as a parent because I don't get as many boo-yas as someone else's dad. I was so far below average as a player that the fact one of my kids is actually above average at sports feels like a cosmic bonus.

On the other hand, I see a few dads who were accomplished athletes but have to sit and watch their kids struggle to keep up on the field. That, I think, would be a lot harder than it is for me to watch my kids' ups and downs.

But most of the time, the parents who were the best athletes have the most athletic kids, which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. My wife and I were good students and mediocre athletes, and if we expected anything substantially different from our kids we'd be delusional.

I resented the shit out of my parents' frequent use of "why can't you be like ..." I had nightmares about not measuring up to other people's kids that I still remember. Even as a child I knew I'd never say something like that to my own children.

So those are my three standards for being a better parent. What are yours?