| Home | My Story | Opportunities for Connection | Research and Articles |
Here are seven suggestions for sons who want to reach out to their fathers.
- Take the initiative. Sons are in a better position to do this than fathers. If sons don’t begin talking to their dads, the conversation may never take place.
- Don’t being a conversation with grievances, no matter how justified. Ease into a discussion of your feelings about your father with more general conversation about his childhood and yours.
- Listen to what your father has to say. Don’t interrupt, argue, or mentally compose a response as he is talking. Look for dimensions of your father that you didn’t know existed
- Search for common ground. Are you experiencing some of the same things he went through?
- Keep in mind that your father is a son too.
- Remember, it’s as important for your father to hear that you care for him as it is for you to hear this from your dad.
- Tell him. Soon. Next year may be too late – or next week, or even tomorrow. The best day to tell your father that you love him may be today.
Source: Ralph Keyes, If Only I Could Say ‘I Love You, Dad’.