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Honest communication and confrontation are not the same thing—one attacks, the other reveals.

Your needs don't disappear just because you're the parent. They've just gone unspoken.

A parent who never pushes back isn't modeling peace. They're modeling disappearance.

One of my favorite songs, by the Foo Fighters, begins with the line, "I've got another confession to make." Well, to all you parents reading this, I have a confession: years ago, I used to passively watch moms and dads sit on their hands in my office or in virtual sessions, sharing stories of mistaking silence for maturity. They'd tell me, "I don't want to rock the boat," as if honesty and confrontation were the same thing.

By the way, they are not the same thing. The moment a parent imagines speaking their truth, their brain jumps to a Thanksgiving screaming match. At least those are the types of inner fears that parents reveal to me. So they say nothing instead, year after year, and call it keeping the peace—when really it's keeping themselves out of the relationship........

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