The Day My Son Blocked Me on Facebook

And What It Took Me Years to Understand

I don’t remember the exact date. I remember the blow.

J. G. Varela opened Facebook one ordinary morning to send his oldest son something trivial — a greeting, a bit of news, nothing important. But when he waited for a reply, something felt off: he couldn’t see the profile photo anymore. Just a gray silhouette.

He assumed it was a connection problem — this was Venezuela, in years when the internet failed constantly. He tried again. Nothing. He tried calling. No answer.

Then reality found its way in: his son had blocked him.

It wasn’t sadness at first. It was disbelief — and then anger. He grabbed his car keys and drove straight to the school, heart in his throat. He found his son laughing with friends, as if nothing had happened.

“What happened?” he asked.

His son looked at him — not with fear, but something worse: exhaustion.

“Nothing, dad.”

And he kept walking.

That “nothing” weighed more than any defeat. It was the starting point of twenty years spent accompanying — first one son, then the other — through the world of competitive chess, learning through trial and error what no perfect manual can teach: the difference between accompanying and controlling.

The Other Board: The One Parents Play Outside the Room

Competitive chess is really two games happening at once. Kids play theirs sitting at the board. Parents play theirs standing or sitting outside the room, unable to move a single piece, feeling every move as if it were their own.

That second game is what I’m Not Your Friend, I’m Your Dad puts into words. It isn’t a chess book. It’s the honest confession of a father who, raising two sons eighteen years apart, repeated variations of the same mistakes with the second — and, with some luck, found a few new things to get right.

Some of what it took him two decades to learn:

• The first question after a game shouldn’t be “did you win?” — asked enough times, it’s the question that ends up blocking a child, literally or otherwise.
• You don’t need to be a chess coach to show up well. You need to know when to speak and when to stay quiet.
• A child doesn’t need their problems solved for them. They need to be trusted to solve them.
• A boundary a child sets — even one as painful as a social media block — isn’t always punishment. Sometimes it’s exactly what they need to exist outside their parents’ gaze.

A Free Gift from Editorial VARCAR for Parents of “Mental Athletes”

Because this book was born from the same question so many parents ask themselves while waiting outside a tournament room — what do I do with what I’m feeling right now? — Editorial VARCAR decided to give away the complete manual, free of charge:

👉 Download the free Survival Manual for Parents of Mental Athletes

It’s a practical, no-nonsense guide to supporting a young competitor without pressuring them, correcting without breaking them, and growing together through wins and losses.

The Circle Closes

Today, the son who once blocked him on Facebook lives abroad, speaks three languages, and writes his own books. The younger son is still at home, moving pieces, starting his own journey. And the same boy who trained alongside the older son at the club now — grown up — trains the younger one.

The author sums it up simply: he’s no longer the anxious father who wanted to control every result. He’s the father who understood his job was never to win the games.

Did any of this sound familiar — the “nothing, dad,” the waiting outside the tournament room, the question we shouldn’t ask? Download the complete manual for free here, courtesy of Editorial VARCAR.