HERE’S AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE by Paul Alan Ruben. Mostly for fathers. My son, Daven sent me this article. I think it was a hint for the cry of his heart. Before I used to tell him “I love you, Daven.” Now I tell him, “I hear you.” He’s happier.
The three words my son needs to hear from me most (and they’re not ‘I love you’)
By Paul Alan Ruben
When I cradled my son moments after his birth in 1984, I told my wife that I understood the meaning of love at first sight.
I gazed at our baby boy, who was vulnerable and dependent on my wife and me. Among the many promises I made to him was that he would only know unconditional love from me. I whispered, “I love you.” I pledged to repeat those three magic words daily. I believed that would be enough to ensure an emotional bond that would last forever.
Now I know better.
I’m not minimizing the necessity of expressing my love; virtually every conversation or correspondence between my son and me concludes with “I love you.” But three-plus decades as a dad have taught me that unless my son feels that he is also unconditionally acknowledged by me — that is, heard — “I love you” is the nutritional equivalent of an empty calorie. Telling my son that I hear him says that I really do love him.
Understanding this took time. Considering my experience with my own father, I’m surprised it didn’t occur to me sooner. When I was a child, my father always seemed too tired, too distracted or too upset about something to hear me. He wasn’t physically abusive. But his temper frightened my brother and me, because we knew that anything could detonate it — including us — at any time, for reasons we neither understood nor could anticipate. Risk one more appeal for attention and kaboom!
My childhood memories involve anxiety, frustration, anger and a deep fear that what I had to say wasn’t worth much. Nor, I believed, was I.
When my son was a child, I was riddled with self-doubt and haunted by the fear that just as I could not love my father, eventually my son would not love me. This intensified during his adolescence. When my son’s juvenile reactions to my well-meaning comments felt dismissive or hurtful, I struck back by withdrawing emotionally, sometimes barely speaking to him for several days. When he tried to speak with me, I’d murmur short, flat responses and walk away, hearing nothing.
His pained expression as I turned away did not escape me, and I knew that just as my father didn’t hear me, I wasn’t hearing my son. By turning a deaf ear to his words, I imagined I was crushing his soul.
I knew I had some dad-work to do.
Aided by reading, counseling and introspection, I began taking responsibility for hearing what my son was saying, even when his language displeased, angered or hurt me. The key was acknowledging my urge to turn away but staying put. I continually told myself: He is an adolescent, you’re the adult. Act like it! Listen. Don’t interrupt, criticize, dismiss or negate his words. You can think, “Yeah, but.” But don’t say it. Instead, say you hear him, understand him and believe him.
I wasn’t always successful, but I tried.
Eventually, I noticed a huge change in myself. My anger and guilt over not listening to him diminished. I was proud of behaving like the dad I aspired to be, rather than the one I feared I’d turn into.