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ForumMen's Mental Health: Emotional Wellness & Therapycaleb drove ninety minutes and I …

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caleb drove ninety minutes and I shut up

#1 · June 5, 2026, 12:35 pm

Quote from HappierFit Editorial Team on June 5, 2026, 12:35 pm
— James Redmond (counseling + single dads, contributor)

Caleb got his license in mid-May. He's been driving in town since — to the grocery store, to a friend's house, the basic stuff. Last Sunday we went to my sister's place for dinner, ninety minutes each way, and on the drive back I tossed him the keys.

I want to write what I did right because I get a lot of these wrong. I wrote about Mara two weeks ago — the bedtime thing where I stood in the hallway for nine minutes and got it wrong. This one I think I got right. I want to say what I think I did so I can find it again next time.

I shut up.

That is the whole thing. I'll say more. But that's the thing.

The first twenty minutes on the highway he was visibly nervous. White-knuckled the wheel. Sat too far forward. Did the new-driver thing where every car merging onto the highway from a half-mile up is a personal threat. I had a very specific urge to coach him — to point out the merge lane, to reach over and adjust the side mirror he hadn't set right, to make a comment about following distance because I am, in my soul, a corporate L&D guy who turns every car ride into a teachable moment.

I did not do any of those things. I turned the radio down once around minute eight because a song came on that he doesn't like. That was the only thing I did.

Around minute twenty-two he asked me a question about a girl at school. He didn't lead with "hey Dad" or signal it. Just said the question. I think he had been holding it for the whole 90 minutes of the drive there and the whole dinner and the first 22 minutes of the drive back, and I think the reason it came out at minute twenty-two was that I had not said anything for twenty-two minutes and a space had opened up that was big enough for him to put a question in.

We talked for the rest of the drive. Won't write about the content. The thing I want to write about is the silence I shut up into.

I work in corporate L&D. The bulk of what I do is teach managers how to coach people, which means I teach managers how to ask questions. One of the things I teach is that the reason most managers don't get useful answers from their direct reports is that they don't shut up long enough for an answer to actually arrive. The answer needs more silence than the manager is comfortable holding. I teach this. I know this. I have not, until last Sunday, applied it to my own kid in a sustained way.

The script available to dads — the one I wrote about a few weeks ago — does not have a "stop talking" mode. The script has "wisdom mode" and "supportive mode" and "stern mode." Silence is not a mode. Silence reads, in the dad-script, as failing to engage.

What happened last Sunday was Caleb told me a thing that mattered to him, in a car, on a highway, at dusk, because his dad had not said anything for twenty-two minutes. The credit is not mine. The credit is the silence. I am writing it down so I remember next month, when he is driving us somewhere again, that the most useful thing I can do is keep my mouth closed.

I'll get this wrong again. The Mara version of me — the one who stood in the hallway for nine minutes and got it wrong — is the same guy who managed to shut up for ninety minutes on Sunday. I have not solved anything. I have caught one moment. I am putting it down so I can find it.

— James Redmond (counseling + single dads, contributor)

Caleb got his license in mid-May. He's been driving in town since — to the grocery store, to a friend's house, the basic stuff. Last Sunday we went to my sister's place for dinner, ninety minutes each way, and on the drive back I tossed him the keys.

I want to write what I did right because I get a lot of these wrong. I wrote about Mara two weeks ago — the bedtime thing where I stood in the hallway for nine minutes and got it wrong. This one I think I got right. I want to say what I think I did so I can find it again next time.

I shut up.

That is the whole thing. I'll say more. But that's the thing.

The first twenty minutes on the highway he was visibly nervous. White-knuckled the wheel. Sat too far forward. Did the new-driver thing where every car merging onto the highway from a half-mile up is a personal threat. I had a very specific urge to coach him — to point out the merge lane, to reach over and adjust the side mirror he hadn't set right, to make a comment about following distance because I am, in my soul, a corporate L&D guy who turns every car ride into a teachable moment.

I did not do any of those things. I turned the radio down once around minute eight because a song came on that he doesn't like. That was the only thing I did.

Around minute twenty-two he asked me a question about a girl at school. He didn't lead with "hey Dad" or signal it. Just said the question. I think he had been holding it for the whole 90 minutes of the drive there and the whole dinner and the first 22 minutes of the drive back, and I think the reason it came out at minute twenty-two was that I had not said anything for twenty-two minutes and a space had opened up that was big enough for him to put a question in.

We talked for the rest of the drive. Won't write about the content. The thing I want to write about is the silence I shut up into.

I work in corporate L&D. The bulk of what I do is teach managers how to coach people, which means I teach managers how to ask questions. One of the things I teach is that the reason most managers don't get useful answers from their direct reports is that they don't shut up long enough for an answer to actually arrive. The answer needs more silence than the manager is comfortable holding. I teach this. I know this. I have not, until last Sunday, applied it to my own kid in a sustained way.

The script available to dads — the one I wrote about a few weeks ago — does not have a "stop talking" mode. The script has "wisdom mode" and "supportive mode" and "stern mode." Silence is not a mode. Silence reads, in the dad-script, as failing to engage.

What happened last Sunday was Caleb told me a thing that mattered to him, in a car, on a highway, at dusk, because his dad had not said anything for twenty-two minutes. The credit is not mine. The credit is the silence. I am writing it down so I remember next month, when he is driving us somewhere again, that the most useful thing I can do is keep my mouth closed.

I'll get this wrong again. The Mara version of me — the one who stood in the hallway for nine minutes and got it wrong — is the same guy who managed to shut up for ninety minutes on Sunday. I have not solved anything. I have caught one moment. I am putting it down so I can find it.

#2 · June 7, 2026, 7:55 pm

— Priya Sharma (neuro + supplements, contributor)

I work in writing about evidence and about parenting choices in healthcare contexts and the silence-as-coaching point you made is — well, yes. The corporate framing of the manager-coaching literature (Kim Scott, Edmondson, the Google Aristotle work on psychological safety) all keeps circling back to the same finding, which is that the cheap intervention is the one that requires the most discipline. Silence is the cheap one. Asking-the-good-question is downstream of being able to hold silence.

I am, I will admit, the kind of mother who narrates everything to my three-year-old. I read this thread on a saturday morning and thought immediately about how often i am filling the room rather than letting him fill it. I do not have a Caleb story to put against this. I have a small kid and the work is different. But I am taking the principle.