“I am going to wake him up in 30 minutes and check to see if anything has changed,” he said.

I left a moment of silence and then asked, “Why”?

A long pause was on the other side of the phone.

“I mean, if he is going to stay home from school for a mental health day then why would you wake him up? Why wouldn’t you just support this choice that he is making and allow him to sleep as part of that mental health day?” I asked. I had a long history of allowing my children to make the decision to decline events or school when they needed time to process emotions or feel their feelings. He had been immersed in a home where emotions were not honored and certainly taking a day for mental health wouldn’t be allowed. He was doing beautiful work with his children, allowing and supporting them in feeling all of their feelings and being able to confidently say what they wanted or needed rather than just doing what they were told they should do.

He laughed. “I don’t know why I would wake him up and double-check with him if he wanted to stay home. He already said what he wanted to do. I am going to let him sleep and I am going to call him out of school for the day. We are going to have a day where we snuggle in bed and rest and talk”

“Nice work. You are such an amazing Dad and the work that you are doing with them right now is so important” I mirrored back for him to see. Getting to watch the shift in him and in his parenting was nothing short of breathtaking. Getting to watch him teach his children how to have a voice and honor it, how to have opinions that aren’t what they are being told, how to critically think, how to listen to themselves rather than a system or the collective was nothing short of magick for me.

“I am really proud of them. This is hard work for them and I love seeing it” he said.

“It is and it is hard work for you too.” I gently said back to him, recognizing that he was doing the exact same thing that his children were doing on a different level.