I spend a week at home with my son. We had an amazing time and a lot of fun doing simple things. Yesterday, while driving back from Skyzone with Liam, we were in the car listening to music and i suggested: Let’s talk?
My son answer’s : why?
That is the train of life that hits you in unexpected moments…
I realize that i am a typical father : I do a lot of stuff with my son but we don’t talk much.
It hurts for real when my son question the value of having a conversation with his father.
So how to a deal with this situation? Well, simple enough.
Right at that moment, i gave my son a totally honest answer.
You know Liam, i feel that we don’t talk enough together.
Talking is important.
We do a lot of stuff, we have a lot of fun but we don’t talk.
I am your father and, from now on, i want us to take the time to talk every day. We’ll start with 15 min and it starts now. I’ll stop the music and we’ll talk. You can ask me any question and i’ll answer it. ( silence ) OK then if you won’t talk, i’ll ask you question and you can answer them. It took about 5 minutes and he warmed up to our conversation. We talked about video games and sports. I learned that he loves basketball more than any other team sport.
Today, we were at the grocery store and Liam suggested we buy a loto 6-49 ticket. I said why? To win lots of money. In the car, coming home, i suggested: Hey, you know, let’s use our 15 min of conversation today to talk about money.
What would you do with 5 million dollars? Typically, my 8 year old son answered: Tesla, PS4 pro, 4K TV and virtual reality headset.
I answered that i simply would work less to spend more time with him and the people i love. We continued talking about money and it’s significance in modern life, what it could do and what it could not.
This second conversation turned out to be fun and i realized that it is very interesting to talk to my son…. LOOOOL. I prefer to laugh at this than to cry about the fact that we spent 8 years not talking much…
In the end, i feel that it is not the talking that is the most important, it is the listening……
Listening to my son… Wow, what an interesting concept.
Thank you.
Original post Facebook, july 2017
Martin Pham Dinh 