Given that your parents are worthy of respect and follow elementary human decency values, you should respect them at the very least as fellow human beings. Further respect them for all the love, effort, time, money and support they’ve invested in you. Respect their unconditional love towards you and return the favour.

Parents are not perfect human beings. Each has their own strengths and faults. They may have made bad choices that they regret. They may have committed unforgivable acts that reduce your respect for them. It is all up to you to make your own judgement of their character. At least owe them the respect to imagine yourself in their shoes and having to make the decisions they were faced with with the resources they had available.

As a father, I’m not your friend. I’m your guardian and support. Many parents want to be liked by their children, where they should actually be respected. Being liked is a by-product of being respected. Focus on respect-building behaviour as a parent and likeableness comes with it as an addendum.

Of course there is friend-like behaviour in a parent-child relationship, but the main defining relationship between us cannot be that of friendship. Our primary relationship is that of father and child. Seek true friendships elsewhere, preferably without a genetic link. This will teach you the difference between relying on and being relied upon until as long as reasonable purely on the basis of genealogy and nurturing love, and consciously chosen connections.

Wear your name with pride and add to its worth. Doing so is a form of respect to the family members that came before you. Your family name is a result of your parents and grandparents before you, who all laid the foundation for bits of your future. Be grateful for the opportunities and wisdom that comes from wearing your name. Be aware that you will be a link in this chain yourself eventually. You will add to the name and your potential future children will prolong your story.

Must-reads

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg

Nonviolent communication is a useful framework for clearly expressing what you want. It promotes establishing contact and mutual understanding. In nonviolent communication there are four subsequent steps: observations, feelings, needs and requests.

An observation is a description of what happened or what someone told you. It is explicitly not an interpretation or judgement. “You always criticise my ideas,” is a judgement, while “I suggested going bowling, to which you said you didn’t feel like it,” is an observation.

A feeling is about what I feel and what the other person feels. Feelings differ from interpretations or false feelings in that they are actually feelings and not thoughts. “I feel you don’t care about me,” is not a feeling. “I feel lonely,” is.

The next step is identifying which needs are currently met or unmet. Needs can be confused with strategies to meet that need. Strategies are more specific and answer the who-where-what questions, while needs are universal underlying sources of feelings. A need can be “I need to belong to a group”, for which the strategy can be “I’m joining a soccer team.”

The final stop is that of requests. With a request you ask for a specific way to meet your needs. You’re explicitly asking instead of making the other do the guesswork. Requests are not demands. “No” is not a valid answer to a demand, while for requests the receiver can respond with a rejection. Requests should be expressed clearly and concretely. A request is doable and a description of what you actually want, rather than a statement of what you don’t want. A request such as “Can you take care of me?” is too vague. “Can you always bring the children to school?” is an impossible request. “Can you stop complaining about work?” is a negated description of the underlying request. You can raise the tension with a demand such as “Clean your room now or you won’t have dinner!” A solid request takes on a form like “Could you summarise your understanding of what I’ve just told you?” or “Can you clean your room before dinner, or else come up with a plan on how to clean it later?”

All steps need your empathy and understanding for a fruitful conversation. Your first job is to have empathy and understanding for yourself. During the observation phase, ask yourself what happened. What were I feeling then, and what am I feeling now? Which needs are unfulfilled? What do I want to do right now?

Listening to the other and making them feel heard is key here. Start by asking “When you see/hear/remember…” type of questions. Follow up with a feelings check-in: “Are you feeling…?” Next check their needs with “Is that because you need/value…?” Clarify their request with “Would you like me to…?” Be careful to not fill in their answers, but only summarise what they’ve been expressing.

When you’re being asked these types of questions, you can respond as follows. For an observation, reply with “When I see/hear/remember…”. Feelings are shown with “I feel…”. Needs are expressed with “Because I need/value…”. The final request can be constructed with “Would you be willing to do/tell/…?”

In nonviolent communication there is always a conscious choice for the speaker and listener. As a speaker, you can choose to express certain steps or withhold them. As a listener you have the choice to not emphatically listen when you’re not in the headspace to do so. Both have an active choice in maintaining the connection or refusing it and accepting the consequences.

Not all steps have to be followed strictly during a normal conversation. Sometimes it’s enough to acknowledge feelings and let the problem simmer. Other times you can directly request something without prior sharing of observations, feelings and needs. It is mostly the difficult and controversial topics that require a walk through all steps.

The trick here is to learn to use the framework authentically and naturally. It comes across as robotic or alien when you follow the steps to the letter. People don’t like when you’re being patronising and pedantic. While good requests don’t describe the negative, I’ve yet to come across a person who gets annoyed by “Don’t drop the baby on its head” and only understands “Hold the baby upright and tight”. Use the framework to reflect on why situations did or didn’t work out as expected.