WHO THIS IS FOR

This lesson is for parents — especially fathers — whose children shut down, give one-word answers, or leave the room when approached with even the most innocuous questions. If "How was your day?" gets you silence, if "What did you learn?" gets you "Nothing," if you feel like every attempt at conversation is met with a wall — this is for you. It's particularly relevant for parents whose relationship with their child has deteriorated to the point where just being in the same room feels tense, and for parents who've been told to "spend more time with your kid" but have no idea how to do that when the kid clearly doesn't want to be around them. If you've tried buying games, suggesting outings, or asking questions and gotten rejected every time, this lesson offers a radically simpler starting point.

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

• When a relationship is strained, even kind questions (“How was your day?”) register as interrogation to the child.

• The more you push for direct engagement, the more a resistant child pulls away.

• “Triangulated objects” — pets, household items, environmental observations — can serve as low-stakes conversational bridges.

• The goal is to build tolerance for being in each other’s presence before attempting meaningful conversation.

• Parents should stop asking questions entirely and start making neutral observations about shared surroundings.

• This is not about tricking your child into talking. It’s about reducing the interpersonal pressure so connection can happen naturally.

• The relationship can only handle weight proportional to its current strength — you have to match your approach to what the relationship can actually tolerate.

• Micro-moments of neutral interaction rebuild the foundation for deeper connection over time.

ARTICLE

I want to introduce a concept that I've been using in my coaching work that sounds absurd when you first hear it but is actually one of the most practical tools I can offer certain families. I call it "triangulating the cat."

Here's the situation that inspired the phrase. I was working with a couple — mom and dad — and dad was really struggling to connect with his sons. He'd ask about their day: silence. He'd ask what they learned at school: "Nothing." He'd try to engage them in an activity: "Maybe later." He'd bought a board game he thought one of his sons would enjoy and had been asking every day, "Want to play?" The answer was always some version of a smirky "no."

Meanwhile, mom was having a completely different experience. She'd hear one of the boys come into the kitchen, and she'd casually wander in — maybe pretending she needed a glass of water — and just be around. No agenda, no questions. And conversations would happen. Not always. But enough.

The difference wasn't that mom was a better person or more lovable. The difference was that dad's attempts at connection, however well-intentioned, were registering as pressure. And when a relationship is already strained, pressure is the last thing it can tolerate.

Think of it this way. In a healthy relationship, you can say, "Hey, how was your day? What's going on? Tell me about that thing you mentioned." That's normal. That's how people connect. But when the relationship is damaged — when there's a pattern of tension, criticism, withdrawal, or just accumulated distance — those same questions don't land the same way. They feel like being put under a spotlight. The child's internal alarm goes off: What does he want? Why is he asking? Is he going to criticize whatever I say?

And it's not just that the child is being difficult. It's that the nervous system remembers. If there's been a pattern where interactions with dad lead to corrections, lectures, or conflict, then the child's body has learned to brace for that. Every question feels like the opening move in a chess game they don't want to play.

So here's what I suggested to this dad: Stop asking questions entirely. I know — it sounds counterintuitive. You're trying to connect, and I'm telling you to stop trying. But what I'm really saying is: stop trying in the way that isn't working.

Instead, do what your wife is already doing instinctively. Get a glass of water. Wander into the room. And instead of directing your attention at your child, direct it at the environment. The cat. The fridge magnet. The weird thing on TV.

"What is Garfield doing? Have you ever seen him do that before?"

That's it. That's the whole intervention. You're talking about the cat. Nobody's being evaluated. Nobody's doing anything wrong. But you're in the room together, and you're talking.

The reason I call this "triangulation" is because in family systems therapy, triangulation refers to the way tension between two people often gets channeled through a third party or object. Usually we think of triangulation as a problem — like when a child plays mom against dad, or when a parent complains about their spouse to their kid. But the same dynamic can be used constructively. When the direct line between two people is too hot to touch, you route the connection through something neutral.

The cat. A fridge magnet. A funny commercial. The sunset. Whatever is in the shared environment that you can comment on without anyone feeling scrutinized.

"I never noticed that fridge magnet before. Where did we get it?"

"Is there a story behind that thing on the shelf?"

"That's a weird cloud."

These are not deep conversations. They're not supposed to be. They are micro-moments of shared attention that rebuild the child's tolerance for being in your presence without bracing for impact.

Now, I want to be honest with you about what this requires from the parent. It requires accepting that the relationship is operating at a very low capacity right now. That's painful. Especially for a dad who wants to have real conversations, who wants to take his kid skiing, who wants to have the kind of father-son heart-to-hearts that actually matter. I get it. And we're going to get there. But we have to earn our way back.

Think about it like physical therapy after an injury. You don't walk into PT and say, "Let's skip the stretches, I want to run a marathon." The physical therapist is going to start you with something embarrassingly small — flex this muscle, hold for five seconds. And you're going to think, This is pointless. I want to run. But the small thing is what rebuilds the capacity for the big thing.

Triangulating the cat is your five-second flex. It's rebuilding the muscle of just being together without tension. And once that muscle is stronger, you can add a little more weight. Maybe eventually the cat leads to a real conversation. Maybe one day your kid actually tells you something about their life, and they don't even realize they've done it, because you weren't asking. You were just there, being easy to be around.

A few practical notes:

First, this works best when paired with a conscious decision to stop correcting, critiquing, or redirecting your child's behavior during the rebuilding phase. I worked with this same dad on the realization that his attention to detail — the table manners, the posture, the items strewn about — was coming across as a steady drip of negative feedback. Not because any single comment was harsh, but because the ratio was off. Research on healthy relationships shows you need roughly a four-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions to maintain a feeling of warmth. If most of your interactions are corrections, even gentle ones, the child's overall feeling about being around you is negative.

Second, "Do you want to...?" questions almost never work with teenagers. They're wired to say no. Don't give them a question to reject. Just do the thing. Set up the board game on the table and start playing with someone else. Start watching something interesting. Be doing something in their vicinity that's mildly engaging. Let them come to it — or don't. The point is that you're not chasing them.

Third, this is not a permanent strategy. This is triage. You're stabilizing the relationship so that it can eventually bear the weight of real conversation — including the really important conversations about pornography, about values, about their future. But those conversations require trust. And trust requires a foundation of: I feel okay being around this person. That's what we're building, one glass of water and one comment about the cat at a time.

I'll leave you with this image. Think of the relationship as a bridge. Right now, some of you have a bridge that can barely support a person walking across it. And you're trying to drive a truck over it. The truck is the important conversation, the bonding activity, the heart-to-heart. The bridge isn't ready. So let's start by walking across it — gently, without cargo — and see if it holds. Triangulate the cat. It's a bizarre phrase, but it might be the most important thing you do this month.

© ROGD Repair with Stephanie Winn

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