Sometimes Love Looks Like The Bad Guy
"I hate you, Dad," and"You're the worst dad ever" were two things said to me on an almost daily basis six months ago by my youngest son.
I don't think he meant it, at least not in a definitive way.
It hurt, but I did a fairly decent job of not taking it on fully.
His comments were in response to me finally choosing hard and uncomfortable over keeping the peace.
I was on the heels of a rough six-month stretch, and during it I got lax about monitoring his screen time. It had gotten out of hand.
There were several times I considered letting it slide. Again. Like I had done so often over the prior six months.
It's no fun adding "argue with my kid" to the list of everything else going on in my life. I didn't have the energy to fight him in that season.
But I no longer had a good excuse for letting it continue.
If I took away his phone, he would go to the PS5.
If I took that away, he would rekindle his interest in computer games.
When I took that away, he would put YouTube on the TV.
The quick-dopamine loop had taken him over.
He stopped being interested in soccer, which he's loved his whole life. He didn't want to work out. He was irritable and short with us.
As much as it made me sad, I knew he probably felt much worse.
I had to do something.
It wasn't his fault he got hooked.
I let him have too much access, and then I expected him to do the one thing I hadn't been able to do for him: stop on his own. He can't.
His brain isn't built for that yet. That is not a knock on him. It is the entire reason he has parents.
Our kids are not equipped to make some of the calls we're letting them make, and my job in those moments is not to win his approval this week.
It's to be the guardrail while he can't be his own.
I don't know what I'm doing as a parent most days, and I give myself grace for that.
There are plenty of nights when I'm fried from work and I haven't worked out and I opt for keeping the peace, because arguing with my kid is the last thing I have energy for.
But the longer I let a bad pattern run, the harder it gets to break. This one had run long enough.
So I dug in.
I took away all the remotes. I dropped his screen time to 30 minutes as a starting point and gave him ways to earn more: working out, practicing soccer, hitting golf balls, reading. I picked things I knew would quietly pull him away from screens on their own.
Once he started exercising, going out with friends, and leaning into the slow work of building a skill, he remembered that those feelings beat the ones you get cheaply from a screen. (This applies to us adults too.)
A few weeks ago he said to me, "Dad, you were right. When I work out every day, I feel so much better."
Then he wrote this in my Father's Day card:
"You are the person I can count on the most to guide me through my life and teach me how to be a better person.
I love you so much, and you're the best dad ever to walk on earth."
I earned that.
And the effort it took to get here is what makes it mean something.
I didn't do it for me, though. I did it for him. I took it on the chin for a while so he could get back to feeling like himself again.
The hours I poured into this were hours I could have been working. I don't count them as lost.
It's hard to show up as your best anywhere when your kid is slipping, and you're looking away. Getting right with him is what lets me show up better everywhere else – especially at work.
I'm under no illusion that he's done making bad calls when left to his own devices. I won't be shocked if a few more "I hate you"s show up down the road.
So when the next one comes, and it will, I'll take it. By now I know what it usually means.
