OPINION:
Your family’s ability to have or not have loving, caring and authentic conversations reveals a lot about the overall health of your home life.
When I was a boy and my mom was dying of cancer, everybody around me was afraid to bring up the subject. At the time, I was 9 years old. The subject was so taboo. In fact, nobody even told me my mother was in her last days. I knew she was sick, but assumed she would recover.
As she deteriorated, they wouldn’t even let me see her.
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Given the way I was shut out of my mother’s illness, her death came as a complete shock to me. My mom was there one minute and gone the next. I never even had a moment to tell her how much I loved her. That remains one of the greatest regrets of my life.
As a result of this profound experience, my wife and I have worked hard to cultivate an atmosphere of healthy dialogue in the Daly home. During the COVID lockdown, one of our sons came to me and said something that I’ve never forgotten.
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“Dad,” he said, “I really appreciate the fact that you tell me like it is – even with subjects like this one.”
I had shared with him how painful it’s been to lose friends to death, and he shared with me how much that point of connection meant to him. “Dad, I’m able to connect with you emotionally,” he said. “You set the tone for me to begin to grieve.”
I had never thought about it in those terms – but that’s a good example of how even our seemingly passing comments to our children can set the tone for deeper and more meaningful conversations.
Listen to the ReFOCUS with Jim Daly podcast, where Jim digs deep and asks the hard questions to help you share Christ’s grace, truth and love.
As a parent, don’t hesitate to share some of your challenges and difficulties with your children. Again, on an age-appropriate basis, of course, but it’s good they realize you struggle, too.
Connecting emotionally with our loved ones is something of an art form – and it’s also a wonderful gift of our Creator.
It was the late Leo Buscaglia – otherwise known as the “Doctor of Love” – who once observed, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which has the potential to turn a life around.”
Good conversation is more art than science. If it’s all one way, it becomes an interrogation. It’s like having a catch. But if I throw you the ball and you don’t throw it back, the catch is over. Conversely, if I hold onto the ball and refuse to even throw it, it’s not a catch at all.
This all sounds silly, but one-way “catches” happen all the time in conversation, even in families. There’s the blowhard parent who gives their daily monologues, droning on and on, maybe in love with the sound of his or her own voice. Then there’s the child who gives monosyllabic answers, but usually because the mom or dad aren’t asking good, open-ended questions centered around subjects and topics the child enjoys.
As a mother or father, you must become a student of your child. When you know what they love, or what motivates them – or frustrates them, conversation becomes natural. But it’s also necessary for you to share some of yourself, your hopes and dreams – and challenges, too.
“Conversation,” wrote Shakespeare, “should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.”
I hope you’re taking this extra time to invest in the lives of the people you love and who mean the most to you by asking questions – and listening to their answers.
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Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family and host of its daily radio broadcast, heard by more than 6 million listeners a week on nearly 2,000 radio stations across the U.S. He also hosts the podcast ReFocus with Jim Daly.
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