Say Yes More Often

One night after work while sitting on the couch watching television one of my sons came to me with a simple request, as they often are, and I caught myself saying No to him, and it made me wonder: Was I really doing something so important that I could not attend to a simple request from my son? Why did I say no, and could I have said yes? And the answer was almost immediately Yes, I definitely could’ve gone along with his request. And that was when I realized how much better a father I could be if I made the conscious decision to be a true participant in the developing life of my children. As I mentioned in a previous post, I believe that a fundamental part of our job as parents is to ensure that our children get up to speed as quickly as possible in a world already moving at full throttle, and one of the methods to achieve this must absolutely be by showing our children that they can ask anything they want at any time.

There are many reasons we say No to our children, and some are legitimate, but many more have to do with us being a little selfish with our time. Often we succumb to a bit of laziness and don’t understand the negative impact that our decision to say No can have on our children. And this is especially true with working parents that haven’t seen their children all day and now finally have the opportunity to participate in their children’s lives but choose not to. As working adults it is quite obvious to us how disproportionate the time spent at work is from the time spent with our loved ones at home, and so to say yes to a simple request from our children has got to be one of the best decisions made that day.

If we stop to look around us it certainly seems that the society surrounding us is primarily of a No culture, where we as individuals are discouraged from asking others for anything we may need for fear of being rejected. It seems that few others actually want to help or participate in our needs, even in the case of the customer and vendor relationship. And although we may have this strong feeling of disappointment towards those we believe should’ve said Yes to our request, we still fail to behave differently towards those who are the most important people in our lives, our children.

So at that exact moment when my oldest son asked me if I could do “X” with him, I made it not only a point to say yes, but I also thought that a great way to monitor myself would be to ask him to participate in this change I wanted to create in me, by asking him to reply with “Are you sure?” if I ever did say No to a request from him again. This of course might have been a tall order for a 4 year old, but by me voicing my desire to better my attitude, the idea was etched in my mind and I’ve said yes every time since.