The Question I Ask In Every First Session

There's a question I ask almost every parent in our very first session together, before we've talked about bedtime, or siblings fighting, or the thing that made them finally reach out.

Most people can't answer it right away.

Not because it's complicated. It's actually a short question, six words, maybe seven. But it tends to land somewhere people haven't been asked to look in a long time, and I watch it happen almost every time: a pause, a little laugh that isn't really a laugh, sometimes "wow, I don't know," sometimes just quiet.

I'm not going to tell you what the question is here.

I know how that sounds, like I'm holding something back just to be coy. That's not it. It's that the question doesn't do anything on its own. It's not a trick, not a hack, not something you can sit with for thirty seconds on your phone and walk away changed. It only works in the room, in real time, with someone who's going to notice what happens in the pause after you hear it, the flicker before the "I don't know," the thing your face does, the direction your eyes go.

That's the part I can't put in a blog post. That's the actual work.

What I can tell you is what tends to be underneath the pause, because I've sat with enough parents now to see the pattern. Almost everyone who can't answer right away is carrying some version of the same quiet belief, something about not being allowed to need anything, or not being allowed to not have it figured out, or having spent so long being the one who holds everything together that they've lost track of a much simpler question underneath it.

You might already have a guess at what that belief is, for you. Or you might not, and that's exactly the point. Most of us are so busy managing the day-to-day that we haven't stopped long enough to ask.

If you're curious what the question is, and what happens in the pause after you hear it, that's what a first session is for. It's a short conversation, no pressure, and you'll leave with more than you came in with, even if that "more" is just finally hearing the question out loud.

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