Your feelings speak louder than what you say or do

Just as surely as a horseback rider communicates uncertainty to his horse no matter how much he tries to hide it, so do we communicate our feelings to the youngsters whom we guide.

One night Tom's father listened to a lecturer say that it was unwise to put too much emphasis on school grades. "Some children do better in one field than another. Some do better manually; some mechanically. Some are working up to capacity at a B level; some at a C level. Not everybody can get all A's. Nor are all A's important for everybody. A child doesn't need all A's to be successful in life. What he does need is to feel that his parents--and his teachers--are with him, all A's or not."

Tom's father had nodded and had said to himself: "Yes, that sounds right."

Next day Tom brought home his report card. As usual, he'd been strong in shop and "manual skills" and weak in what he called "that highbrow stuff."

His father, however, remained obedient to the precept he was trying to follow. He looked the card over and handed it back with a casual air.

Neither spoke.

Tom's father went on drawing at his pipe. Tom sat ganglylegged, shoving his feet on the carpet, back and forth, until he finally blurted out, "I didn't do such a good job."

"Weell," from his father calmly but with a speeded up puffing in and out. "It's a good enough card, Tom."' But underneath he didn't feel it was. He did care despite his effort to hide this from himself and from Tom.

Tom sensed it. The discrepancy between what his father felt and what his father said bothered him. As he put it to his counselor later, "I knew he wanted to say, 'If you don't do better, you'll never be a success.' He tries not to push but he pushes too much . . ."

And then Tom came out with a profound truth: "You can push with silence as much as with noise." His father's feelings had spoken louder than his words.

Tom was angry. "If he pushes, I'll push back. He's dishonest, that's what he is. I'll be damned if I'll work from now on. I'll be damned if I'll do anything to please him!"

Rodney's father, in contrast, was more honest. He had heard the same lecture. He too had said, "That's a good idea."

Like Tom, Rodney was strong in mechanical abilities. He was also good in sports. As usual the rest of his card was only fair.

Rodney's father started off by saying, "It doesn't really matter." But then he changed his tune. "Yes, Rod, it does . . .

"That guy who lectured said you shouldn't care too much about your kid's grades as long as he's working. And you work plenty hard. I know I shouldn't want you to get all A's but I do . . . Why, I wonder? There are things in life besides grades."

"Football, for instance," Rodney ventured.

"That's what I counted on when I was your age," Rodney's father answered.

"You were team captain . . ."

"Uh-huh, but what did it net me?"

"You talk about it enough."

"I know."

Rodney's father seemed puzzled but he went on thinking out loud. "It was no use hitching my wagon to a football. It let me down plenty. I counted on it, but the profs got my number as a numskull and I flunked out of college . . . I guess when I said grades weren't important I was trying to fool you, just like I was trying to fool myself. I still wish I'd done better . . ."

"Okay, Dad, okay!" Rodney countered a little impatiently. "I see your point. Only don't push me to make up for not pushing yourself when you were young. I've told you I want to go to work and not to college, so let me be."

Rodney's father nodded and smiled a broad, quiet smile.

"The grades don't matter. You're okay, kid." It had the right sound now, clear as a bell when he said it. He felt it, that was why. His feeling and words were one.

As Rodney went out he smiled an answering smile shyly back at his father, and suddenly his father knew profoundly there was one thing that did matter more than grades. He and his boy were friends.

At times our feelings are such that we cannot share them. We don't always have to. But neither need we dissemble. We can always admit, "I'm bothered by something inside me; not by you." This proves immeasurably relieving for the teen-ager who is so prone to blame himself.

On the other hand, it's quite possible to use our feelings to make our children go our way more than is helpful or fair to them. Like a girl who sheds tears to get a lover to do her bidding. We then play on a child's heartstrings and get him to be a yes man too often for his own good.

It is also quite possible to give in to our own wishes too often. Then the load of demands grows so big our children rebel at everything. Then, if we want them to do something really important, they still will renege.

By giving more thought to our own wishes, we can often prevent such an impasse. By giving ourselves due attention, we often become able to forgo some of our wishes more peacefully than we anticipate and without as much sense of sacrificing what we believe is right.

"You know," said one father, "I used to say, 'What's right is right and under no circumstances am I going to let my children by-pass it.' But since I've taken my own wishes into the picture more honestly, I see that I often call things right simply because they are right-er for me."

It doesn't make us lose caste to change our minds. It doesn't hurt, for instance, to say, "Skip it, Jane. It isn't necessary after all to stop at the store for me. I forgot you had a club meeting this afternoon. I was thoughtless to ask."

Another thing that can help immeasurably is to bring our own adolescence to bear on the wishes we have for our children. The thinking-back process can make for "less pressurizing," to use one youngster's phrase.

We know we can't handle our teen-agers precisely as we were handled. Times have changed. The world has changed. Children are different. We are different. But in many "feeling" respects still the same.

Most of us see our adolescent children with bewilderment carried over from our own adolescence. Because of our own puzzled feelings about ourselves as we were then, we often feel puzzled about our children now. Remembering what our feelings were then can help clarify our feelings now. And this in turn helps us act more wisely. Just as Rodney's father benefited by recapturing how he felt when he was young, so can we in many instances.