Uncomfortable Honesty Redux

Just as I was congratulating myself for helping to usher my daughter through a relational challenge with sensitivity and grace, basking in a sublime parenting moment as it were, my son knocked the wind right out of my sails. Seems that he is not as impressed with my interpersonal skills as I am.

He returned home from an overnight at a friend’s house a little clipped, something I chalked up to his newfound conversational minimalism. But being the tuned-in, empathetic parent that I am I decided to ask if everything was okay. I waited for the affirmative grunt, but instead I got a “not really”. And then he launched into the why behind it. From sublime to humbled in about a minute and a half.

He started talking about his friend’s mom who is “so cool”. “I wish that we got along the way that they do.” He said. “She really gets him…” And then he trailed off. What? My son does not think I “get” him? No one tries harder to get their kids than me. My defensiveness mounted as swiftly as the sense of inadequacy welling up inside of me.

It didn’t surprise me that this newly touchy kid was irritated by somebody’s behavior around here, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be mine. Me? The tuned in, sensitive-to-your-every-mood mother? I resisted the urge to obsess about the unfairness of this and instead asked him to go on. And he did.

His friend’s mom knows that he’s a regular kid. His friend is allowed to have a Facebook page. He’s able to text, and his mom thinks it is just fine that he likes to go to parties. “Sometimes I don’t think you get that I’m not perfect. And I’m not just like her.” my son said, casting a glance at his sister, the one who wrote the manual on being a dutiful and high achieving firstborn. “I think that you expect me to be just like her.” He finished, offering me a window into his reality that both surprised and saddened me. It is not true that I expect him to be like his sister. I don’t expect him to be like anybody. I have no problem with his more social nature. He’s a great kid. He has nice friends. He makes good choices. Why was he railing against concerns I didn’t even have.

He wants a Facebook page? He wants expanded texting privileges? He knows where we stand on those issues, but I’m willing to hear what he has to say. I always reserve the parental right to change my mind if the situation warrants it. But the problem did not seem to be as much one of substance as it was of perception. What we had here, to paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, was a failure to communicate. I wanted to blame my son, but in my heart I know that it takes two to tango. If only one of us thinks that we are communicating effectively then that one of us is wrong.

But at least we were talking. Talking about perceptions and misperceptions. Signals that I had been sending and signals that my son thought I was sending, though they bore no resemblance to anything I felt.

I reassured him that his father and I only want him to be himself, the best version of himself to be sure, but not some watered down facsimile of anybody else, not even his super achieving sister. Our family can barely handle one of her anyway. And while my son and I will never be just like his friend and his mother (great kid and great parent, respectively), or like any other two people for that matter, we could carve out our own best relationship. One based on honestly and trust and the willingness to really see and seek to understand each other.

I was rewarded at the end of the night with a big gruff hug and a whispered, “Love you, Mom”. So in the end I decided that while my bubble was burst along with any illusion of being a nearly perfect mom, the mere fact that we were able to have that discussion, and use it as a springboard to move us to a better place, told me that things were probably not so bad around here.

My hope is that the way we handled this uncomfortable honestly has set the stage for more uncomfortable conversations down the line. Conversations that will bless us both when we need to share or hear things that may be challenging, or maybe when we just need a reminder that sombody "gets" us.