I could have been a detective because I can ask question after question after question. It doesn’t help that I am an overanalzyer. One of the good things about doing family therapy is that allows you to really understand your part to play in a family conflict. My kids said that I make them feel as though they are being interrogated because I ask tons of questions. At first, I thought “Who me?” But then I thought about the fact that I used to be a Business Analyst, and now I am a Program Manager. All I do is ask questions to understand what clients wants and how to convert that into a technical design. I also had a couple of people say that I ask great questions, but then it might be a politically correct way to say, “Damn girl, you ask a lot of questions.”
I explained to my kids that one of the reasons that I ask so many questions is because I want to make sure they are fully thinking about a situation instead of the high-level. However, you can’t think for another person. It is good to think about every angle of a scenario, but I will be the first to admit that I go a bit overboard.
We decided that I will limit the number of questions that I ask to two. It has helped because I have to think about what I really want to know about a conversation with my teens. I no longer ask tons of random questions. It is helping me ask targeted and direct questions that gets to the point of a situation. I’m not perfect so there are times that I forget and the teens will say, “Mom, two questions…”
Since I have stopped being the little angel on my kids’ shoulders, they have started thinking more for themselves. I have also noticed that they are becoming more thoughtful about their lives because I am no longer there to think for them.
The great thing is that when they start hounding me about something (Yes, they do it too). I can remind them that they also can only ask two questions.
