My family makes fun of me for a sentence I've just now started to cultivate saying to my sons: I love you, no matter what.
I probably deserve the ribbing for attempting to adopt a dad tag line well into their teenage years, but it comes form a good place. They should know that they areunconditionally loved by me and their mom, and this is the simplest, most straightforward way I can think of to express it.
Do our kids know the things we hope they will know if we don't make them explicit? The rule in marketing is that a consumer has to hear a message seven times before they'll act on it. As the African or Chinese (depending on your Google result) proverb says "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is now." I've decided not to let my wish that I'd thought to say this to them from when they were tiny enough to accept it more easily stop me from saying it now in the rich complexity of our father/adolescent relationships.
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