You’re Alright

Picture it: Sicily, 1912, a young Sophia skips in sepia tones along a narrow street toward her Nona. Suddenly, she snags her toe on a loose cobblestone, sending her tumbling. Sophia looks up from the dusty ground, momentarily stunned and searching for some kind of feedback upon which to anchor her reaction. Nona, her face virtually expressionless, says “Get up. You’re alright.”

They don’t make ‘em like The Golden Girls anymore.

Sophia knows not to expect much doting from her otherwise stoic (lower case “s”) grandmother. Her skinned knee stings like a sonofabitch, but she supposes, in the grand scheme of things, her Nona is correct; she is alright. Nothing left to do but get up, dust herself off and move on with the day.

The emotional barometer of an early 20th Century Italian Grandmother is actually a pretty solid comparison to that of a 21st Century American father. “You’re alright” has remained a well-used tool in the parenting tool box for generations. In past generations, this phrase usually represented the beginning and ending of dad’s involvement in his child’s discomfort. My four boys have heard some version of this response more times than they can likely recall. It is my father’s method, along with my father’s father. But I, along with more than a few dads out there, have been rethinking the technique.

Our fictitious Sophia did not grow up as a young American boy in the 70’s, but I did. For so many boys of that generation, “Get up, you’re alright” was not just a canned response to a trip and fall. It was a message of living. One that I still happen to agree with, at least in principle.

Could Be Worse Let It Go GIF

The unspoken sentiment is that nothing is as bad as you think and even if it is, don’t make a sandwich out of it. The idea was spelled out to me, repeated and modeled by all of my peers, most of the adults, and every male who ever walked or crawled into my ecosystem. In my reconstructed memories, I recall carrying this knowledge around as an internal warning. There were rules. The most important being “don’t cry.”

Not only did so many of the boys of my generation learn to withstand pain (emotional and physical), we also learned not to cry. Well, Sesame Street and Mister Rogers told me it was alright to cry, but I wasn’t buying it. There were obvious, often immediate and seemingly permanent social and physical consequences for crying in public, even among friends.

Crying is an act of honesty which allows others to see into our hearts and minds in a way that we might otherwise choose to keep private -or at least apply a filter. Like laughter, crying almost always has an effect on those around us. Most difficult of all, it occurs just beyond the fringes of our control. Like a prolonged sneeze. Well into young adulthood, I knew without any doubt; crying was vulnerability. Vulnerability was bad. Don’t be vulnerable.

But the same vulnerability we learned to avoid is actually a requirement in understanding our own emotions along with those of our children, our partner and everyone around us. Unfortunately, the past lives of boys become a father’s prologue. A lifetime of avoiding emotion makes it extremely difficult to teach a balanced approach to our children. So the simplest method is the only choice, which is why many of us just continue to respond the same way in the face of our child’s discomfort. “You’re alright” is better than nothing…or is it?

Right out of the gate, the grammar is all wrong. Parents should enter into a child’s moment of struggle with more questions than directives. “You’re alright” has never been said by a parent expecting an answer. When we say it to a child, just figuring out how to express his emotions, we are telling him how to feel. Even if we are right, this is not a parent’s job.

In today’s cultural narrative, a man’s difficulty in validating and supporting his child’s emotions is usually labeled as toxic masculinity in the form of emotional immaturity. I hold a bit of an agnostic view of the ever-inflating idea of toxic masculinity, but I admit there may be a kernel of truth in this case. For example, our hard-earned male perspectives may erroneously convince dads that if we stop the child’s crying, we can stop them from being sad. Our history also motivates us to spare others the discomfort of encountering our own vulnerability, a practice we are likely to pass along to our children. Obviously, this can lead to real relationship issues down the road.

Emotions are tricky for almost everyone. Unless that’s something my therapist told me once to make me feel better. But if he’s right, then it has always been thus. 2000 years ago, the Stoics used the Greek word “pathos” which means “passions.” Indeed, humans are so often led astray by our passions, mastering our command of them is key to a balanced life. But unlike emotions, our passions are a question of preference and choice. During the last 5 minutes of the movie “About Time” the tears streaming down my face are not a matter of choice. I dare any dad to make it through that movie without a little dust in the eyes.

But it is our job to help children define a personal range for their pain and discomfort. Judging by the rampant overreactions I have observed in children today, more work needs to be done. In this pursuit, the “you’re alright” response is not completely devoid of value. The simplicity of a skinned knee creates an opportune use for “You’re alright” because the severity of the situation, or lack thereof, is self-evident. A father’s intervention can therefore be aimed at teaching a central Stoic practice of pain tolerance. But don’t go all Rambo on your kid just yet. Tolerating pain may not be as simple as you think.

Rambo 3 (1988) - Gunpowder Cauterization Scene (1080p) FULL HD on Make a GIF

Cauterization with gunpowder. That’s just great writing.

Stoic philosophy reminds us that, while undesirable, pain is not inherently bad. Still, the instinct to avoid it is perfectly reasonable. However, when we experience pain, our negative value judgement places us on a downhill slope between our initial response and how we choose to act upon it. Telling an injured child “you’re alright” may create the chance for a pause along that slope.

However, if saying “You’re alright” is an attempt to ignore your child’s pain or teach her to ignore it, you are apt to do more harm than good. Casually, it might appear that being able to ignore pain is a helpful technique to master. But if we stop to consider our own tolerance, we may realize that we do not ignore pain. We accept it. Doing so requires us to experience, however fleetingly, the vulnerability of our own emotion, rather than to disregard it completely.

We should also remember Seneca’s words about “first movements.” Our most immediate responses are unavoidable. Whack your thumb with a hammer and tell me if hearing “you’re alright” changes your reaction. If we enter into the child’s moment of injury or discomfort knowing that the initial response is beyond anyone’s control, we stand a better chance of supporting that which is within the child’s control. Again, that does not mean we should never say “You’re alright.” But whatever our instinctive fatherly response may be, we should take the step often forgotten in my generation and think about supporting what comes next.

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