Photo by Robert Eklund on Unsplash

How the Socratic Method Helped Me Accidentally Give the Best Parenting Advice of my Daughter’s Life.

I don’t remember doing this, but I’m told I did it.

Danica — my 10 year old twin daughter — came home from school one day with a very unfortunate opinion she’d absorbed from her classmates that day.

“Gay people are bad!” she said.

This was a very new thing to hear from my ten-year old. It certainly didn’t reflect our household, and I didn’t think it was anything she’d picked up from my ex-wife.

I don’t remember what I actually thought then, but there were a lot of potential parental responses I could imagine my brain going through, like the Terminator zeroing in on a target:

• “You’re grounded!”
• “Here’s a copy of ‘Valencia’. Read it.”
• “We don’t say things like that in my house!”
• “No, they’re awesome, and here’s why…” (followed by a long patriarchal monologue)

Apparently I didn’t do any of those things. According to her,

I just asked her one question: “Why?”

She didn’t expect that — or the further simple, non-confrontational questions I asked. She…