The Power of Writing
This past May, I received an email from my 15-year-old son, Jacob, with the subject "Decision." It was the first email I recall receiving from him, so I was taken off guard by seeing it in my inbox.
When I clicked on it to open it, I was met with a six-paragraph letter. The letter began with a proper salutation and a sincerely friendly opening sentence. The following two sentences stated, "After much consideration, I have decided that I am going to partake in the summer program at Mitty for football. If I enjoy it, then I will play [football] in the fall."
I was shocked, to say the least, by what I was reading. I had told him countless times that he did not have my permission to play tackle football for various reasons, all of which I thought were good, but he didn't. Who was he at 15 to override my wishes as his parent and tell me what he would be doing?
Reluctant yet curious to find out what else he had to tell me in his email, I read on. The next four paragraphs contained concrete reasons, some of which were researched, to support his statements in his first paragraph, and the last paragraph was a concluding paragraph, followed by a formal closing.
Upon finishing reading the email, I called my mom so that I could read it to her and have her console me—after all, when I was 15, I never told her what I was going to do without first getting her permission. As soon as I had finished reading it to her, without a pause, she said to me, "Well, you taught him how to write." "What?" I thought to myself. I was taken aback by her unexpected words; they weren't the ones I was searching for.
After discussing the situation with my mom for a while, I forwarded the email to my sister who, in turn, texted me and commented on how Jacob had done research, clearly explained his thoughts, and did a good job of getting his point across using statistics to back it up. Again, it was not the response I was looking for.
Unable to fully process or reread the "Decision" email, I just let it sit in my inbox and tried to ignore its presence there, hoping it would quickly get buried by other emails.
A week later, I shared Jacob's email with one of my friends whose son was 16 years old at the time. I thought for sure she would empathize with my situation. I sat patiently as she started reading the letter. As she neared the end of the second paragraph, she looked up at me and said, "He's a good writer." Then she commented on his transition, "To add to that," at the beginning of the last sentence of that paragraph. Why wasn't anyone seeing what I saw in the email?
After searching for empathy from three people and receiving responses pertaining to writing from all of them, I decided to bring myself to reread the email, but with an open mind. When I reached the bottom of it that time, I felt ready to have a conversation with Jacob about his "decision."
I learned through our discussion that he didn't let anyone's input influence what he said in the letter; instead, he followed his own intuition and trusted his own writing skills. He shared with me that he had spent approximately two hours after completing his homework on a school night drafting, revising, and editing his letter to me, choosing every word very carefully, knowing how vital everyone was to getting me to support his decision.
At the end our discussion, I communicated to Jacob, though not directly, that the time that he had spent writing the letter was time well spent, he had chosen the right words . . . and he had my permission to play tackle football.
Although it is still hard for me, six months later, to reread the "Decision" email, because it is a heartbreaking reminder that my child is going to be an adult in a couple of years and making decisions independent of me, I can now view it is as a powerfully written email. It opened my mind to Jacob's wishes for himself and his future and showed me that he is preparing himself to enter the "real world," where he will need to independently stand up for himself. Knowing that he can rely on writing to help him do that and be true to himself and open people's minds at the same time makes me feel confident that he is ready to "fly."
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