I Said No You Are Not, Too Fast

It was out before he had finished.

He said the thing about himself and you said no you are not, in about a fifth of a second, with total conviction, because it is obviously not true and because hearing your own child say it is unbearable.

And then he said nothing, and you both moved on, and the whole exchange took about four seconds.

And he has not said it since. Which sounds like a result and is not, because the thing has not gone anywhere. It has simply stopped being brought to you.

That is what I want to look at, because the speed of your answer was not the failure of a technique. It was love arriving at the wrong velocity, and there is a fix for it and it takes five seconds.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it

There is a line in Proverbs that is almost rude about this, and the rudeness is useful.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. (Proverbs 18:13, King James Version)

Before he heareth it. Not before he has thought about it, and not before he has the right answer. Before he has heard.

Which means hearing is being described as something that takes time, and that can be got in front of.

And it names the cost in two words. Folly, which is a failure of method. And shame, which is what the person is left holding afterward.

You have been handed the exact diagnosis, and no answer given before a thing was heard has ever once done what the person giving it intended. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a wrong method from a wrong heart, and Proverbs 18:13 puts the fault in the sequence rather than in the content.

And it is worth saying that the verse does not accuse anybody of not caring. It accuses them of arriving early. Those are different failures, and only one of them is yours.

You were never wrong about the content of your answer, and no denial has ever once been more true than the one you gave in that kitchen. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a correction about speed from being heard as a correction about love, and the written word convicts the timing and leaves the substance alone.

What he heard instead

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth the two minutes because it explains the silence since.

A fast denial does not land as reassurance. It lands as a lid.

From the inside, what a child experiences is: I said a thing, and it was immediately made to go away. Which tells him something about the thing itself, which is that it is not sayable in this house.

And it tells him something about you, which is that this particular subject makes you move quickly.

You have been teaching a subject to be avoided rather than a belief to be dropped, and speed has never once been read as anything other than discomfort. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent what actually arrived, and Proverbs 18:13 names the early answer as folly rather than as unkindness.

And here is the part that stings a little, so let me say it carefully.

The reason you answered that fast is that you could not bear the sentence. Not that you did not want to hear it: that you could not hold it for even a second without doing something about it.

That is love with no tolerance in it. And a child can tell the difference between a parent who disagrees with a sentence and a parent who cannot be in the room with it.

You were never failing to love him, and a reflex that fast has never once come from indifference. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a person needs in order to stay still for a moment, and the written word locates the whole problem in the hearing rather than in the caring.

Five seconds, then a question

So here is the thing to do, and it is short and it is difficult.

The next time it comes, say nothing for five seconds.

Count them if you have to. Five is long. It will feel like the room has stopped.

Then ask one question instead of answering. What made you think that today. Or: which bit made you say that. Or simply: say a bit more.

You have five seconds available that cost nothing and change everything, and nobody has ever once been asked for more than that at a kitchen table. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the tolerance for the count, and Proverbs 18:13 requires only that the hearing comes before the answer.

Do not add your denial afterward. That is the hard part. Most of us can manage the pause and then attach the old answer on the end of the question, which puts the lid back on four seconds later than before.

If he says nothing, say: all right. And then leave it, and let the evening carry on.

You are not trying to solve it tonight. You are trying to make it sayable, and sayable is a thing built over weeks by nothing happening when it gets said.

Proverbs 18:13 puts the folly in the answer that arrives before the hearing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody counting to five.

You are permitted to hold a sentence without doing anything about it, and holding has never once been the same thing as agreeing. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the tolerance for five whole seconds, and the written word convicts the speed and leaves the substance untouched.

You have a question available where an answer used to be, and it has never once required you to know what is going on. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a question into a door where a denial was a lid, and Proverbs 18:13 asks only that the hearing comes first.