Listen

I  had a good experience yesterday with my oldest son. On the way home from church him and his little brother were playing on the backseat of the van. As we pulled into our garage we heard a scream from the back seat emminating from our second son. Then he rather loudly accused the oldest of choking him. immediately I was pretty upset at my oldest oldest son. Why would he think it was ok to hurt his brother like that? When we got inside I sent him to his room and told him he was not allowed to come out until dinner. Being that it was after church and we hadn't eaten lunch yet I made him a sandwich and took it in to him.  In the few minutes between sending him to his room and going in to see him I was thinking about the best way to discuss what had happened with him. I wanted this to be a learning experience. At least this could be a teaching moment if nothing else. The thought came to me to ask him to tell me what happened and to hear what he had to say. At first he wasn't sure what to tell me. I could tell he was  telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I got a lot of pretty standard answers like "be nice" and "don't choke my brother". I really had to work to get hom to open up to me. Eventually he could see that I wanted him to tell me what really happened so he told me that he was playing and was trying to tickle him on his neck. He thought it would be fun and we do it to him all the time. What really happened was his brother had overreacted and I hadn't taken the time to figure out what the real problem was. After I realized what was going on I let him leave the room and join the family for lunch. Imagine the amount of trust I would have destroyed in my son if I hadn't taken the time to understand the issue. I would have sent him to his room for no legitimate reason, and in essence told him, I don't care what the truth is I only care about what I think the truth us. I am glad I did listen, but then I also know that there are times when I don't take the proper time to understand what the problem is. I shudder to think of the unintended consequences of no listening to my boys, and flying off the handle. I am grateful for the inspiration to take the time to here what he. In reality it turned out to be a great experience.