Imagine that every time your child comes home from school, you ask them a series of questions, trying to show that you genuinely care.
“How was your day?”
“What did you learn?”
Or “Do you have homework?”
Do you know what they experience? Do you expect them to respond? What if these feel like just another series of demands on them? Do you know what they experience at school?
Now imagine this shift. Your child walks in; you have been thinking about them. You have prepped a small snack for them. You hand them their snack, saying,
“Hey, I am so glad you are home!”
Or “There he/she is. Life is so quiet around here without you. I missed you today”.
Or, depending on the child, give them a hug: “You’re home. I love you”.
I know what you are thinking, “But Peter, they have homework to get done, and they never get it done without my hounding them, and we have activities to get to, and I need help setting the table cause I have been working all day too.”
And to that I say, Yes, you are right. How has that approach been working for you?
There is a way to achieve all the goals of the day and pause long enough to make space to make your child actually feel like they are at home, safe, cared for, and valued.
Questions are not greetings
Expectations are everywhere. From Teachers, family, phones, social media, peers, billboards, and culture. Children are carrying a lot. So are you. Have you ever had someone approach you with questions? “Is the project done yet?” at work, or your teen comes in, “Is supper ready?”. Or the famous, “How are you?” but you can’t actually answer because you don’t feel safe enough to be real with this person cause they aren’t a part of your life enough to let them really know you.
One of the reasons so many people give one-word answers like “Fine” is because of cognitive load and the speed at which they feel the next thing needs to happen. They don’t feel like they have time to answer or that you care enough to answer.
Our world trains us to flutter by questions. To not care at speeds we can’t even comprehend. You are asking someone to give something of themselves to you when you ask questions. They just get added to the stack of questions in the to-do list that we never intend to actually respond to.
But when you ask your child or family member, you genuinely want to know. You want them to open a door to themselves so you can see how they are doing. To see who they are.
Questions place an expectation on them to validate themselves by answering.
Greetings make spaces
But Greetings validate the person without an answer, and they can slow down the pace long enough for questions to be shared and met. Greetings make room for the person; questions make room for their production.
Greetings make space to feel valued, and feeling valued comes from feeling safe and a sense of belonging. Without those two things, you’ll never get the genuine answer you are hoping for to know your child more, to understand them, to be there for them, and to love them.
Ultimately, greetings open the door for questions to explore.
Walking into your child's room as they are building LEGO or making something, “Oh wow, that looks very cool,” and then the question, “What are you making?” Instead of, “Hey, you know you need to clean that up after you are done with it?”
Or in the morning, waking them up, walking into the room, sitting down next to them on the bed, placing your hand on their back and saying, “Hey, Buddy, I love you,” and just rub their back for a moment, then the question, “I’d really like to get everyone to school on time today; could you help me by getting ready in the next 15 minutes?”
Spaces train their nervous systems
The goal is to have your child get up and ready on their own. To take ownership of their lives. But most of them don’t, and some might not ever. But most have never actually explored what they want their life to be. The conversation you, as the parent, need to have with them is impossible if they feel like you are just adding to their pile of expectations. Do they know you love them, not just in words but in actions? And not just actions you think tell them, but actions where they actually experience your love. Do they feel safe with you? Or do they feel judged? Or worse, belittled?
When you walk into the room, do they expect you to demand something? Are most interactions questions? Or do most interactions start with a validation through a greeting? Just like in media, you have 3-6 seconds to catch their attention. And the way in which you catch their attention will define how they feel about the entire interaction.
Their nervous system will remember how you made them feel in those first 3-6 seconds the last time you interacted. They will experience you even before you speak. Do they tense up, feel anxiety, and wish you weren’t there, or do they feel known, safe, and glad you are there?
So when you need to have a serious heart-to-heart conversation, your questions can actually become a part of validating them.
“What do you think about this?”
“Who do you want to be (not what) as an adult?”
“To reach that goal, what does taking responsibility for yourself look like?”
And don’t forget to acknowledge them in their answers.
But then maybe, getting up in the morning isn’t just about getting up for school; it is getting up to become the person they want to become. I have seen it flip the script for teens when they know the why and own it.
And you can offer, “In what way would you like me to help you get up in the morning so you can become that person?”
Now you are really parenting. Walking alongside them from child to adult. Not as a boss, and not as a friend, but rather as an intentional mentorship process of deeply rooted love.
That is the Courageous Side of Parenting.
How you meet them matters
Questions create expectations; greetings create spaces to feel, to be known, and to be validated. Creating experiences of safety, belonging, and love.
Spaces allow for questions to be heard and responded to because you have given them that experience. Being intentional with your greeting and slowing down long enough to validate someone transforms the relationship.
Choosing to change the first part of any interaction from questions to greetings, even when there are needs that need to be addressed, can transform the way your relationships unfold and how others experience you.
This truly works in any relationship. You get the rich relationship you so desire, and they get an experience from someone who genuinely cares.
This is a tribute to my mom, who could never get me to talk about my day until she learned to make a space for me to feel her heart by giving back scratches and leg rubs. Thank you, Mom, for helping me process life by first making a space for me and secondly caring enough to ask me how I was doing and listening without the need to fix it.
