The role of a father You can deeply mark the life of a child. However, it is often reduced to the role of supplier or head of the family, and rarely is given the opportunity to be known beyond that image, to discover a person full of illusions, memories and fears.
Ximena Fuentes, clinical psychologist and couple therapist, emphasizes that, beyond paternal role, there is a man who deserves to be understood and valued. He points out that, like the children, the father is an integral person who, at the time, was a child and lived experiences that molded the wisdom that he transmits today.
Those moments were also loaded with anhelos, many of whom left aside to carry out his family, the specialist emphasizes.
With the arrival of Father’s Day, This may be a conducive moment to establish a sincere conversation, capable not only of strengthening the affective bond, but also to create memories that last, even when he is no longer, sources reflect.
A significant way of knowing him is to explore the background of his life story. Therefore, asking emotional and reflective questions can open the way to that man behind the father.
These questions, according to psychology, allow to know their personality, character and ways of expressing affection. In addition, they help discover the dreams he managed to achieve and the desires he still keeps.
Father’s childhood and youth questions
- How was your childhood? What did he play? What role did he have inside his family?
- Who comforted him when he felt sadness or fear?
- What dream of being when I was a child? What changed along the way?
- Who was his first best friend? What did you learn from that friendship?
- What stage of your youth remember with more nostalgia?
Questions about your desires and dreams
- What was his biggest dream when he was the age of his son?
- Do you keep any dream that you have never shared?
- If I could go back, what decision would make different?
- What things did not stop fear or please others?
- What dreams encouraged him to move forward in the most difficult moments?
Questions about your identity as a man
- What does it mean to you “to be a good man”?
- When did you feel that it really became an adult?
- What did it strong … And what did it vulnerable?
- What mistakes of his life left the best lessons?
- What things would have liked to express as a man and never did it?
Questions about love, relationships and emotions
- What has you learned about love throughout your life?
- Do you remember your first love? What did you feel?
- What emotional wounds have had to heal?
- How did you learn to express – or hide – your emotions?
- What advice would give yourself in your youth about love?
Questions about his role as a father, from his humanity
- Was he afraid of becoming a father? How did that moment live?
- What did he expect from himself as a dad?
- What things wanted to teach his children and he didn’t know how?
- What did you discover about yourself through paternity?
- When did you feel more proud … and when more insecure as dad?
Questions about his present and his vision of the future
- How do you feel with the life you have lived?
- What things are still excited or inspired to dream?
- What legacy do you want to leave?
- What do you yet fear?
- What would you like your children to know about you, but you have never told you?
The psychologist highlights that these questions can open spaces for intimate dialogue, where father and son share without distractions and can reflect on her life, turning that moment into something significant.
“The most important thing is to listen to it without judgment, with love and openness. Your desire to know him is, in itself, an act of deep love,” says Fuentes.
Why is it important to meet Dad as a man?
There are many stories saved and little knowledge of the man who held the home. Behind laughter, hug, scolding or even absence – when he had to sacrifice unique moments with his children to fulfill their role – they also inhabit emotions.
Sources reflects that many children fail to understand their parents until they become adults, or parents. It is then that they see them “from you to you”, and not only as figures of authority or heroes.
“We stop seeing them as Almighty heroes and we understand them as human beings who have made mistakes and have learned with and from us in that process of growing together,” says the specialist.
By understanding their life story, the birth of the children, the emotions they lived by becoming parents and the obstacles they faced to raise them, a more human vision of that dad that also feels fear, joy and sacrifices is obtained.
Through these questions, you learn to see that man from a broader perspective and with updated criteria. We learn not to judge it as strictly and to recognize it as what it is: a human being, ”concludes Fuentes.