Parents · call recap
I got this wrong and I would like it written down
19 August 202512 attendedHeld by Wren
I handled a member badly on this call. She raised something about her teenage daughter and I answered as though she had asked for reassurance when she had asked for something much more difficult. She corrected me, in the room, and was right to. Writing it up because I would rather this circle saw a facilitator get it wrong in public than believe we do not.
What she asked
Her daughter, who is fifteen, had asked whether she could take it too. Not idly. She had looked it up, she had a view, and she had asked her mother directly.
I said something about how common that question is and how it usually passes. That was reassurance and it was not what she wanted. She said, fairly bluntly, that she was not asking whether it was common, she was asking what she should say on Thursday when her daughter asked again.
What I should have done
Stayed with the actual question and let the room have it, because the room had a great deal more to offer than I did. I had reached for the general because the specific was uncomfortable — a fifteen-year-old asking is uncomfortable, and I smoothed it.
When I did hand it over, four parents in the room had faced some version of it. The most useful contribution came from Idris, a teacher, who said the thing he says to his own children about any medicine: this is a conversation for a doctor who knows your body, and I am not going to pretend I can have it with you. He said it makes him feel like a coward and it is nonetheless true.
Where we left it
With three specific things she could say, none of which came from me. And with an agreement that I would say at the start of every call from now on that if I answer the wrong question, the room should say so, out loud, at the time. It has happened twice since and both times the call was better for it.