Whenever someone I know gets to a fight (or a disagreement) with their parents and confide with me how annoyed they are about how their parents are "immature about it," that is, the parents don't take the apology that their child gives too quickly, I tell them one of my most favorite canned responses: You have to understand, they never got the "How to be a Good Parent" handbook.Silly sounding, yes, but think about it. It makes total sense.
Last week, a good friend of mine was, in his words, bummed out over a disagreement he had with his father. According to him, they haven't talked for two days and he's a little more than pissed off that his dad's giving him the cold shoulder (or silent treatment, forgot which is the correct one). I came up to him and told him the whole HTBAGP deal, and that this is compounded by the fact that you're talking about your father, another man.
You see, it's a very unfortunate fact that our fathers were raised in a society where showing any kind of emotion—or in the case of my friend, humility to forgive and acknowledge pride—makes them less of a man. When my grandfather died, my dad only cried for a good 30 seconds—no kidding—before he basically pulled himself together and said "I'm okay." I think me and my brothers' eyes weren't even welling up at this point. We were just absorbing the shock of the news, and already my dad's all composed. I didn't get it at first, but it made more sense to me once I've put some more thought into the whole thing. He probably didn't want to be seen as weak in front of his kids—and just break down and cry—because I would think that if he did that back in those days, he would've gotten a slap in the face, with whoever doing the slapping yelling at him "Real men don't cry!"
Long story short, I told my friend that things would be okay. Just let his dad's pride mellow out a bit, and it'll be better.
(there's more I wanna talk about the HTBAGP, but for another post. Happy Father's day)
