No, I Will Not Continue This Difficult Conversation via Text
By: Greg Frankson
Tags: Society, Family, Parenting, Self, Life

I’m terrified she will never learn how to deal with her feelings in the presence of another human being. My concern is that she will be confronted with a situation in which it’s imperative for her to speak up (i.e. a risky behaviour or experience is on offer, a person is trying to coerce her into something physical she doesn’t want, etc.) and she fails to express herself because she never learned how. As I’ve told her, I have three roles as a parent: keep her safe, support her, and prepare her for adulthood. This conversation fell firmly under #3, and she was not thrilled about it.

At all.

First she tried to physically contort herself into greater comfort while laying on her side. When that didn’t work, she tried sitting up, except then she was face-to-face with me (which made her even more uncomfortable). Then she tried to punt (“I don’t want to talk about this now, or any other time the rest of this week — let’s talk about it on our next visit instead”). I told her that refusing to deal with a person’s feelings when they have been respectfully presented to you is kind of a dick move (in 11-year-old-appropriate language, of course).

Photo by Wladislaw Peljuchno on Unsplash

Finally, I let her off the hook only if she would agree to a follow-up time (all those years working in sales taught me something useful about parenting — who knew?). She needed to go away and think about what I told her, because she couldn’t respond right away. Fine, I told her, but you can’t say that and then refuse to be specific about when a better time might be. Some undefined “I’ll deal with it later” isn’t going to cut it. She sighed, and said fine — I’ll let you know in the morning when I’d like to talk about it again.

I’m terrified she will never learn how to deal with her feelings in the presence of another human being

I want her to be accountable for how her actions make other people feel. It’s such a difficult task in an age where a kid can bully another kid through their phone, access porn as easily as a pirated movie, or create a dummy social media account to do lord knows what from behind an anonymous profile name. There are so many ways for youth to be less than a person to others, and not enough insistence that they learn to treat others with full humanity.

The person on the other end of the text message is not a smartphone. They are flesh and blood with their own ideas, feelings, desires and dreams, and you have to learn how to honour that, I told her. She ended up going to bed upset that I’d made her uncomfortable, and angry that I wouldn’t let her keep her phone in bed. No distractions — it’s bedtime now. If you don’t want to sleep, that’s fine, but I’ve sent you to bed and therefore the time for tech has ended. When I checked the room ten minutes after she’d sulkily shut the door, I found her buried in the covers with the comforter pulled up over her head.

I guess she managed to find comfort after all.

I want her to be accountable for how her actions make other people feel

If this sounds like a struggle you’ve had with your own kid, know that you’re not alone. I do my best as a part-time access parent to take those moments we have together to teach her something (in order to prepare her for adulthood). But sometimes she just doesn’t want to listen.

But I press on anyway, continue the conversation, and deal with her discomfort. As I said to her, I’d rather be uncomfortable for a little while to make something better in the long run, than to avoid the tough conversation and lose something amazing because we didn’t do the work to keep it.

If I can teach her that lesson, then hopefully she will see later how that was meant to support her, and to keep her safe. When she needs it the most, the lesson will kick in and it will all make sense. Fingers crossed.

One final note — I took away her cellphone before she went to bed. She protested, but she didn’t win the argument. YouTube won’t help her think about the conversation and come to grips with her feelings.

Preparing a kid for adulthood is hard work. I can only hope I’m getting it right.