If I Could Speak to the Father I Was in 2015

I know exactly where to find him.

It's a weekday evening, early in the year. He's in the driveway, car still ticking as it cools, sitting there an extra minute to finish an email on his phone before walking in. Work is demanding. He's tired in the way every parent of teenagers is tired, which is to say he doesn't even register it as tired anymore. That's just the speed of life.

Inside the house there's a fourteen-year-old girl. He loves her completely. He would tell you, and he'd mean it, that he knows her better than anyone on earth.

He has about three months left of the life he thinks he's living.

I've spent eleven years becoming the man who could walk up that driveway and talk to him. Here's what I would say.

What I would tell him

I would not open with a warning. I've thought about this more than I've thought about almost anything, and a warning is not where I'd start, because he wouldn't be able to hear it yet. He'd argue. I know him.

I would start here: put the phone in the glove box and go inside.

Then I would tell him this. The answer "fine" is not information. It's a door, and doors can be closed politely. You keep accepting "fine" because pushing past it feels like an accusation, and because some part of you is relieved to hear it. Stop being relieved. Stay one question longer than feels comfortable. Not an interrogation. Just one more question, asked slower.

I would tell him that quiet is not the same as okay. That a kid who stops causing any friction at all isn't necessarily maturing. Sometimes she's going somewhere you can't follow, and the smoothness is the sign.

And I would tell him to say the big things out loud. He assumes she knows. She probably does know. Say them anyway. You will want every single one of those sentences later, and you will not be able to add to the pile.

What he got right

I need to say this part too, and not for his sake. For the parent reading this who is already halfway to hating themselves.

He showed up. He was in the stands and at the table and in the driveway of her life, every day, imperfectly and completely. She never once had to wonder whether her dad loved her. Whatever else is true, that is also true, and it stays true.

He wasn't lazy. He wasn't cold. He wasn't looking away out of selfishness. He was doing what nearly every parent of his generation was doing: loving hard, working hard, and assuming that love would be enough of an alarm system.

He was wrong about the alarm system. He was not wrong to love the way he did. I refuse to let those two things get blended together, in his story or in yours.

What he couldn't know

This is the part that took me the longest, and it's the part I'd need him to hear even if he heard nothing else.

Nobody ever taught him what to look for. Not once. He had training for his job, his mortgage, his driver's licence. He had a manual for the barbecue. Nobody, at any point in his life, sat him down and taught him the difference between a teenager pulling away and a teenager going under. We don't teach it. We still mostly don't.

He couldn't know that the signs he was seeing even had a category. You can't recognize a pattern you've never been shown. He wasn't failing a test. He was never given the course.

And he couldn't know how good a struggling kid can be at protecting the people she loves from her own pain. That's the cruellest part, and the part I'd say most gently: some of what he missed, she was working hard to make sure he'd miss. Not out of distance. Out of love. It was aimed away from him on purpose, by a fourteen-year-old trying to spare her dad.

You cannot lose a game you didn't know you were playing. It took me the better part of a decade to believe that sentence. I'd hand it to him early.

What I've learned

That awareness is a skill, and skills can be taught. Everything I've built since exists because of that one conviction. Parents don't need to become therapists. They need what he never got: to be shown what to look for and what to say when they see it.

That guilt and love come from the same place, and guilt will impersonate love for as long as you let it. Guilt says: keep punishing yourself, it's what she deserves. Love says something different. Love says: make it count for the next kid, and let your other people still have their father.

That grief doesn't shrink. Your life grows around it. Eleven years on, it still arrives in aisle seven, unscheduled, and I've stopped being surprised.

And I've learned that he and I are not two different men. I don't get to condescend to him. Everything I know, I know because of what it cost him. He paid the tuition. I just carry the education.

For the parent reading this

You're likely one of two people.

You're the parent whose kid is fourteen right now, and something in this made your chest tight. Then do the things I'd tell him. Stay one question longer. Treat quiet as information. Say the big things out loud tonight, at the door of a bedroom, badly if you have to. You don't need certainty to pay closer attention. Attention is free and it is never wasted.

Or you're the parent standing where I stand, on the far side of the worst thing, replaying your own driveway. This section is yours: the man I've described was not negligent. He was untrained and unlucky in a world that teaches parents nothing, and if I can extend that truth to him, you can extend it to yourself. You were not given the course either.

Give yourself grace

If I could truly stand in that driveway, here's the strange thing. I don't think I'd spend all my time warning him.

I think I'd tell him that the love he has for that girl inside the house is real and it counts, that it will survive everything coming, and that eleven years from now it will still be the engine of his whole life. It will just be pulling something heavier.

Then I'd tell him what I'm telling you.

Grace isn't something you feel. It's something you grant. You'll never feel like you've earned it. Grant it anyway. To the parent you were, who did not know. So that the parent you are now can keep going, and keep looking, and be there, fully, for the people who are still inside the house.

Go on in. She's home.

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You May Also Like

I Thought I Would Know if My Child Was Hurting. I Was Wrong. — https://www.thementorwell.com/blog/i-thought-i-would-know-if-my-child-was-hurting The four-hour drive home that proved him wrong in ways he wouldn't understand for years. Confirmation bias, "fine," and the signs that get explained away. ‍

Experience Teaches. Learning Follows. Everything Else Becomes Regret. — https://www.thementorwell.com/blog/what-i-would-do-differently-as-a-parent Seven honest lessons drawn from hindsight, for parents who still have time to listen longer, fix less, and say what matters. ‍

The Scariest Words a Parent Can Hear Are "I'm Fine" — https://www.thementorwell.com/blog/scariest-words-parent-can-hear-im-fine Why teenagers use "fine" as protection, why parents accept it, and what one extra question can do when you stay in the conversation past comfortable.

FAQ Section ‍

Could I have known my teenager was struggling? Maybe not, and that's the honest answer. Most parents were never taught the difference between a teenager pulling away and a teenager going under. You can't recognize a pattern you've never been shown. Awareness is a skill, and it can be learned, but not knowing it before anyone taught you is not negligence. ‍

Why do parents miss the early warning signs of teen depression? Partly because nobody teaches parents what to look for, and partly because struggling kids often work hard to protect their parents from their own pain. The signs can be quiet ones: less friction, more time alone, "fine" as the answer to everything. Smoothness can be a sign, which is the opposite of what most parents expect. ‍

How do I get more than "fine" from my teenager? Stay one question longer than feels comfortable. Not an interrogation, just one more question, asked slower, at a low-pressure moment. "Fine" is a door that can be closed politely; a second question, asked with genuine interest, is how you find out whether the door is locked. ‍

How do parents deal with guilt after losing a child? Guilt impersonates love: it tells you that punishing yourself is what your child deserves. Separating the two takes time and usually support. One distinction that helps: being untrained is not the same as being negligent. Grace isn't something you feel and then grant. You grant it first, to the parent you were, who did not know. ‍

What does it mean to give yourself grace as a parent? It means extending to yourself the same truth you'd extend to any other parent in your position: you did the best you could with what you'd been shown. Grace isn't forgetting or excusing. It's what lets the parent you are now keep going and stay present for the people who still need you.