As parents, we watch our kids go through many stages… Infancy to toddler, toddler to preschool, preschool to grade school and during the latter, bam, there’s a pre-teen on our hands. The Bold and the Beautiful’s Scott Clifton (Liam) currently has one in his household and on his son’s ninth birthday, he introduced, “Ford Robert Clifton, the preteen.”
The CBS soap star recalled a conversation with his son last year when Ford stated, “Hey Dad, did you know I’ll technically be considered a ‘preteen’ on my next birthday?” Clifton had “incredulously” Googled because, “at the time, nine seemed like such an arbitrary age” to be told that the actor would have to start seeing Ford as, “the official prototype of a hormonal, smelly, rebellious, girl-curious, independence-hungry young man who’d rather suffer a thousand geometry textbook paper cuts than be caught telling his lame dad ‘I love you too’ in public.”
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However, that wasn’t the case, as Ford tells his dad that he loves him too “often, openly and without solicitation or self-consciousness.” Clifton thought back to the night before, and how they were the last words that his son said before falling asleep on his lap.
He then brought up his divorce to Ford’s mom, Nicole, and stated, “No child should have to carry the divorce of his parents on his shoulders and you’ve had to manage your loyalties far earlier in life than anyone deserves. It could have broken you, and if it had, it would have been your mother’s and my greatest sin. But my god, you made a canvas out of Kevlar.”
As one can imagine, Clifton is so proud to be Ford’s dad, so glad that he gets to watch him learn, experience his “humor, honesty, creativity, security, introspection and vulnerability” as he sets out on his “journey of individuation.” In closing out the post, the actor wished for one thing — something that many us likely have wished for ourselves before — to go back… “I wish I could tell myself from one year ago that it’s okay to exhale, because you will always be everything at once to me: my child, my teen, my man, my hero. My Ford,” he expressed. “I love you. Happy ninth birthday.”
That had to have been the sweetest message we’ve seen as of late from a father to his cherished “preteen” boy.
