Leading on the Forward Edge – At Home · Character Creates Opportunity® · Reflection: “The Volume of Our Home”

Every home has a volume level.

Not the setting on the television. The overall level: the running total of screens, schedules, notifications, group texts, the game on in a room nobody is sitting in, and our own hurry moving down the hallway.

Most of us have never once sat down and decided what ours should be. It simply got set for us, a little louder each year, by whatever happened to be going on at the time.

That is worth stopping on for a minute. We make decisions about our homes all the time. We decide where the furniture goes and what is for dinner and which activities are worth the drive on a Wednesday night. The volume is the one setting almost nobody chooses on purpose, and it may be the setting that determines the most.

Because noise is not really about sound.

Noise is the absence of any margin in which a hard thing could get said.

Here is what I mean. The important things in a family almost never arrive on schedule and almost never arrive head-on. Nobody sits down at the kitchen table and announces that they are struggling. It comes out sideways like a comment from the back seat with fourteen minutes left in the drive, a half-sentence at the sink while the pan is being scrubbed, a text at 11:40 at night that says "you up?"

Every one of those requires a gap. A stretch of unfilled time in which somebody works up the nerve.

If there is no gap, the thing does not get said. It does not get resolved somewhere else, either. It just stays in.

We know this instinctively in other parts of life. The best conversations in the workplace happen in the ten minutes after the meeting ends, not during it. The most honest thing anyone says at a community gathering gets said in the parking lot. But at home, where it matters most, we run the volume high all evening and then wonder why nobody tells us anything.

I have been the loudest thing in my own house on plenty of ordinary evenings. I learned over the years that a few simple adjustments can help manage the volume in a more effective way:

1. One hour (ok maybe just 30 minutes), one basket. Pick a single recurring hour, dinner most nights, or the drive, or the last hour before bed and make it a screen-free zone for everyone, adults very much included. Put a basket on the counter and let the phones live there for that hour. The rule only works if we go first and if we do not narrate how well we are doing at it. Expect the first several nights to feel strained and a little boring. That boredom is not a malfunction. That boredom is the gap.
2. Turn off the noise nobody chose. Somewhere in most houses there is a television playing to an empty room, a speaker running a playlist nobody selected, a radio filling the car out of pure habit. None of it was decided; it accumulated. Walk through this week and shut off one source of background noise that no one is actually using, then leave it off. The silence in a car with the radio off is where a teenager finally says the thing. It is where a spouse finally says the thing too.
3. Slow our own tempo. This is the hardest one, and it is the one I get wrong most. The volume of a home is set less by devices than by the pace of the adult who just walked in the door; the keys hitting the counter, the half-listening "uh huh," the body language that says we are already on to the next task. Before going inside tonight, sit in the car for sixty seconds and let the day end. Then walk in slowly and ask nothing of anyone before the coats are even off. Our family reads our tempo before they hear a word we say.

None of this requires a family meeting or a new set of house rules that nobody follows past the second week. It requires one hour, one switch, and sixty seconds in the driveway.

The quiet will feel uncomfortable at first, for us more than for them. Sit in it anyway. What we are building is not silence for its own sake. We are building the space in which somebody we love can finally say a hard thing.

As we turn down the volume in our homes, we will build and strengthen our character, and Character Creates Opportunity to hear what those we care about most have been trying to tell us.

If I were to ask you, "What is holding you back today from being your best for those you care about most?" what would you say?

Please reach out if I can help you today. My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

This reflection builds on two earlier Character Creates Opportunity® posts: The Need to Get Quiet and A Risk in Our Virtual World.

Questions this reflection answers

How do I create more quiet time at home with my family?

Choose one recurring hour, such as dinner or the drive, and make it screen-free for everyone, with phones in a basket and adults going first. Turn off background noise nobody chose. Then slow your own pace when you get home. Expect the first nights to feel awkward. That boredom is the gap where real talk happens.

Why won't my teenager talk to me?

The important things in a family rarely come head-on. They come sideways, like a comment from the back seat or a late-night text. Each one needs a gap of unfilled time for someone to work up the nerve. If the house is loud all evening, the thing does not get said. It just stays in.