Fictional Fathers - Eric Taylor: Keep the Door Open
Am I winning the argument... or protecting the relationship?
The Question
One of the hardest transitions in fatherhood isn’t changing diapers (although it is arguably the most disgusting AND somehow always happens right before you’re supposed to leave the house).
It’s changing roles.
There comes a day when your kids stop needing you to solve every problem. They start solving problems themselves. Sometimes differently than you would. Sometimes poorly. Sometimes in ways that make you stare at the ceiling at 2 a.m. wondering where you went wrong...
or if you should have just bought them a flip phone and called it a day.
And if you’re anything like me, your instinct is to jump back in. Explain. Correct. Protect. Repeat. Maybe throw in a lecture that starts with,
“When I was your age...”
...even though you swore you’d never become that guy.
Because that’s what we’ve spent their whole childhood doing. But the older my boys get, the more I realize something uncomfortable.
The hardest part of fatherhood isn’t our kids making mistakes.
It’s watching them make choices...
that we wouldn’t make ourselves.
In those moments, the greatest challenge is learning how to stay connected while they make their own decisions...
without turning every conversation into a TED Talk they didn’t ask for.
The Character
When most people think of Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights, they think of football.
The speeches.
“Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.”
The way he could challenge young men to become more than they believed they could be. The coach’s stare that could quiet an entire locker room. The halftime speeches that would make me get off the couch and run through a wall for him The one-liners. The quiet confidence.
Many dads have borrowed something from Eric Taylor when coaching a team.
I know I have.
Then I watched the series again after becoming a dad and I realized the greatest coaching challenge Eric Taylor ever faced wasn’t on a football field. It was at home.
Julie.
As a coach, Eric usually knew exactly what to do.
As a dad...
not so much.
Julie wanted independence long before he was ready to give it. She dated people he didn’t approve of. She made decisions he couldn’t understand. They argued. They disappointed each other. They sat in long, uncomfortable silences.
The very qualities that made Eric an exceptional coach sometimes made fatherhood harder. On the football field, authority solved problems.
At home...
it often created them.
And then there was Tami.
More than once, she gently reminded Eric that Julie didn’t need another coach. She needed her dad.
Tami became the bridge.
She challenged Eric when his instinct was to win the argument instead of protect the relationship. She reminded him that being right wasn’t always the same as being helpful. Eric didn’t always listen immediately.
But when he did...
he usually found his way back to Julie.
That’s what stays with me. Not the speeches. The returning.
Eric Taylor wasn’t a perfect father.
He was a returning father.
He never let one disagreement become the final conversation.
In My House
A few weeks ago I was pretty fed up with one of my sons picking on the others. We were about four weeks into summer break. Brotherly relationships were strained. Fuses were short. Yours truly had the shortest one of all.
I had stayed relatively calm as the picking became more frequent. Meaner. Sneakier.
Quick stop: conversations without consequences usually lead to this.
So my radar was on high alert. Any sly remark. Any not-so-nice sound. Any evil laugh. Any one of those earned an extra chore.
It had been a long day.
My wife had finally gotten home.
And I was hiding in the only place my family refuses to interrupt me...
the bathroom.
That’s when I heard it. The laugh. The exact evil laugh we’d talked about. My sacred pooping peace had been violated. I flung the door open, assigned the chore from halfway down the hallway, finished my business, and marched toward him with far more frustration than the situation probably deserved.
Like I said...
my fuse was short.
I rounded the corner already preparing my speech.
That’s when I caught my wife’s eyes. She was trying to tell me something. Honestly, I wanted to ignore her. She couldn’t possibly know what I’d dealt with all day. But there was something about the second look that made me slow down.
Instead of launching into my lecture, I asked one simple question.
“What happened?”
He explained that he and Hunter were actually joking with each other. He even reminded me of one of our own family rules:
“Dad, you always say a joke is only a joke if everyone’s laughing.”
I wasn’t completely convinced. But for once...
I resisted the urge to prove my point. Mainly because my wife gave me the subtle nod that she agreed with what my son was saying.
Later that evening, my wife told me what she’d seen. She had been watching the whole interaction. Hunter was laughing too. She wasn’t trying to keep me from parenting. She was trying to help me see something I hadn’t.
In that moment, she became a little like Tami Taylor.
Not taking sides. Protecting the relationship. Helping me remember that my biggest job wasn’t winning the conversation. It was making sure my boys always wanted to have another one
The Dad Move
Maybe that’s what Eric Taylor understood.
Being right has its place.
Being reachable matters more.
Our kids probably won’t remember every lecture.
They definitely won’t remember every rule.
But they’ll remember whether home felt like a place they could return to.
Whether Dad was someone they could still call.
Whether the door stayed open.
Connection isn’t built by winning every disagreement.
It’s built by protecting the relationship through every disagreement.
And that’s a move worth stealing.
The Reset
The older my boys get, the more convinced I am that influence doesn’t come from saying more.
It comes from staying close enough to be heard.
So this week, I’m taking one question with me:
Am I winning the argument...
or protecting the relationship?
Maybe the reset is simple.
Pause before correcting.
Listen before explaining.
Apologize first if you need to.
Protect the relationship.
Keep the conversation going.
Because one day your kids won’t need you to solve every problem.
But they’ll always need to know they can come home.
This is a longer comment than I typically leave, but Coach Taylor is one of my all-time favorites, and I’m currently watching Friday Night Lights for the third time.
I respect him as a father figure to so many of the players he coached, and maybe even more as Julie’s father, since she gave him some of his toughest challenges.
He had his flaws and made mistakes, but he was willing to take ownership of them and do the hard work of repair. In season one, he kicked a quarterback off the team for defying him and for his attitude. At home, Julie often defied him with that same kind of attitude, but he couldn’t kick his own daughter off the team. He had to figure out how to stay connected and keep the relationship intact even when he strongly disagreed with her.
I also think he evolved in his understanding that different players needed different forms of support and learned to adapt his methods. Having a partner he trusted and respected as much as Tami was essential to that growth. She often helped him realize that protecting the relationship mattered more than winning the argument.
This is good stuff. Now that I am way into my 70s and my dad is about 6 years passed I remember some of the things I thought at the time didn't make sense when I was so young, but the clarity became apparent as we aged. We even got chances to talk and laugh about it. 'I did what?" I'd say he'd say " Yeah, I always wondered what the heck you were thinking". :) take care.