Dads2Dads: to all the ‘foxhole’ fathers

By TOM TOZER and BILL BLACK
Tom’s younger daughter, now 25—the daughter who was oil to his water for several years during the teenage tempest—recently sent Tom and his wife a lovely and very touching message on Facebook to recognize their 30th wedding anniversary. What! That mouthy teenager! No way. What was especially wonderful was that the gist of the message expressed gratitude for being good role models and “amazing parents.” Just a few years ago you couldn’t have pried that phrase from her lips with a crowbar.
The invisible man
“I never felt like an ‘amazing’ anything,” Tom says, “when the daughters were in junior high and high school. “I felt more like a guy in a maze.” As far as being a role model, Tom defers to his wife, who continues to fulfill that role in broad and amazing ways.
“When the girls lived at home, I sometimes felt like a ghost,” Tom notes. “Invisible.” A lot of dads feel that way when they have teenagers in the house. Ignored. Dismissed. Not there. Tom recalls, “I didn’t think my younger daughter and I were even friends back then. I couldn’t explain it.”
Battle lines
Tom has asked his daughter about those turbulent years. She can’t explain it either. It was as if, back then, someone got up in the middle of the night and arbitrarily drew a battle line between father and daughter, then ran for cover. The few years that followed were fraught with volleys of  verbal assaults punctuated by silent and tense retreats. The cease-fires were just long enough to reload. To this day, neither one can make much sense of it. And today, they couldn’t be closer.
Stay on message, dad
To dads out there who are hunkered down in a family foxhole, take heart. What you are unable to iron out in face-to-face negotiations will gradually work itself out. Time is a great healer. Take a moment to identify those qualities that make your child special – the talents and behaviors you appreciate. Crawl out of that foxhole and say “I love you” as often as you can. You’ll be surprised at how much that message gets through, even when it seems to fall on deaf ears. It all computes and is filed in memory.
Fodder for the ‘foxhole’ father
Tom has learned a few things from that parenting experience:
• Over time, you discover that the conflict was never between just the two of you. Other things were at work—out of your reach.
• Dad can’t fix everything. Sometimes all you can do is stand back and let life happen.
• Your teenager may not look at you, but he or she never stops looking up to you.
• What you say, whether in love or anger, sticks.
• You might say something in haste that you’ll spend a lifetime wishing you could take back.
• Your kids grow up. They learn what love and forgiveness are. Just like the ol’ man did.

Published in The WCP 2.14.13

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