I read a heartfelt piece this morning by the mother of an autistic son. Said mother, author Barbara Fischkin, was lamenting an inane, if not insane, diatribe by conservative talk show host, Michael Savage, in which the jackass said on his nationally syndicated radio show: "Autism is a fraud, a racket. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is."
What's sad about this is that both Ms. Fischkin and Mr. Savage, as two opposite sides of the same coin, facilitate our continuing to miss the point, which is that parents are always one of the sources for every disorder that our children have. Period. Ms. Fischkin wrings her hands, "wishing" it could be her fault (Not!), and Savage, like most so-called "conservatives," is so primitive that he thinks most problems in life can be solved by slapping somebody up.
But the truth is this, and it needs to be said and received with compassion: Parents are always part of the problem.
Parents are always part of the problem.
That's not meant as a judgment on parents. It's an assessment, one that I can make after thirty years of study and practice as a sociologist, psychotherapist and clinical social worker, and as a parent three times over.
Barbara Fischkin decries the late, great Bruno Bettelheim's statements about autism being caused by "coldness" in the mother, saying that such ideas have been "discredited," just like the concept of "schizophrenogenic mothers" (as a causal factor in schizophrenia in children) has supposedly been discredited, but discredited by whom? Medical practitioners who want every disorder to ultimately have a medical cause and therefore, a pharmaceutical cure? Parents who strive to be seen as blameless in their children's problems? This is as tragic as homosexuals in the early 1980's refusing to accept that a lifestyle that included excessive recreational drug use, along with massive doses of antibiotics, coupled with enormous societal pressure and stress was the primary cause of their immune system breakdowns. Hello?!
This is a great shame. Life is hard in many ways for many people right now, right here, on planet Earth. No one is perfect, and yet, parents are asked to raise children perfectly under the most impossible of circumstances, and at that, while there still is not even the slightest priority given to mental and emotional well-being in this society.
The fact is, in the field research will easily validate Bettelheim's theories. Any therapist who actually works with his patients and their families, and studies their histories thoroughly, will tell you the same thing, even though it has somehow become politically incorrect. Children are not born complete blank slates, true. There are genetic predispositions and seed plans in the soul, but parents are always part of the plan, and part of the trigger for those genetic switches turning on. It's not a crime to acknowledge that. It's a crime to deny it.
The woman I love and live with is a mother of two beautiful children that I am privileged to be raising with her. What makes her an amazing mother is not that she is perfect, but that she is fearless in seeing herself reflected in the strengths AND weaknesses in her kids. She has been willing to face the gut-wrenching truths that her children's "issues" have roots in her issues - even the ones doctors would let her off the hook for - and so she is able to help her children with their problems as she works through her own.
Eating disorders, addictions, attention problems, and yes, autism, in children, are issues that can be addressed through the self-work of the parents. Sorry. It's just true. Ask anybody who's actually operated from that premise - for real - and done the work without turning to the illusory magic bullets of medical treatment. Go ahead. Ask.
Life works. You can heal yourself, and in so doing, help your children heal themselves.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query always parents. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query always parents. Sort by date Show all posts
PSYCHOPATHIC KIDS THAT KILL DON'T HAVE "DECENT" PARENTS!
I wrote the piece below 3 1/2 years ago. Thought it would be a relevant addition to our understanding of the events in Sandy Hook this past week. Some have asked me to post something about the 3D nature/nurture connection in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. This link also has several FPL posts on the subject of parents and their connection to their children's disturbances. At the 3D level, there is always a cause and effect relationship between parents' unactualized disorders and the disturbances found in their children.
We do come into each lifetime with certain predispositions, yes, including genes, to move us in the direction of a particular life task/seed plan that at the soul level, we have chosen to enact. This is so, and would seem, in a sense, to exonerate parents from the heinous things they do to switch on the genes, to bring forth the predispositions in children who do heinous things.
Indeed. At the levels of consciousness higher than 3D, there is no blame to go around, no guilt, no punishment, but... there also are no psychological disturbances, no crimes, no suppressed, distorted emotions, no erroneous beliefs or paranoid fears. But to arrive to that place, that vibration, we need to clear up all denial at the lower levels. So, here's something on that:
PSYCHOPATHIC KIDS THAT KILL DON'T HAVE "DECENT" PARENTS!
This is a very important story, by Jesse Kornbluth, about a very important book, COLUMBINE, by Dave Cullen.
Kornbluth, in his article asks the question, "Do you know who your children are?" Spinning off the conclusions in the book about the two boys who went on the infamous killing spree in a Colorado school in 1999, finally, after ten years, it is coming into some level of mainstream consciousness that these two murderous boys were not ever "normal" kids. They were deeply disturbed psychopaths, overlooked by an educational system and a society that places little value on regularly keeping tabs on the mental and emotional health of its children.
I wrote about this issue respectively in 1998 and 1999, in letters that were published in the New York Times. Those letters landed me on Barry Farber's nationally syndicated radio program. Mr. Farber featured me on the show because he seemed to think that it was a radical idea that these killer kids were not normal, but discernibly ill. Farber suggested I should be on a presidential commission for my unique insight!
How sad, I thought, that recognizing severe emotional and psychological problems in our kids would be considered so uniquely brilliant. But of course, that goes hand in hand with the narcissism I write about all the time (just do a search for the word on the FPL blog).
Parents, teacher, doctors, society at large, all want to see in their kids what they want to see, and when they don't, they want biology or nature to be the problem not parenting. (Take a look at the flack I got on this blog for suggesting any parenting connection to autism.)
Here's Kornbluth:
"No writer has scored an interview with either set of parents, so we cannot really know how they were unaware of their kids sneaking out at night and buying guns and writing about killing in their journals. The opening line of Eric's? 'I hate the fucking world.' It wasn't as if there was any murkiness about his feelings. Dylan? He just 'craved death.' Getting him to go along with the massacre plan wasn't a career effort for Eric."
Parents are always part of the problem, folks.
Always!
We do come into each lifetime with certain predispositions, yes, including genes, to move us in the direction of a particular life task/seed plan that at the soul level, we have chosen to enact. This is so, and would seem, in a sense, to exonerate parents from the heinous things they do to switch on the genes, to bring forth the predispositions in children who do heinous things.
Indeed. At the levels of consciousness higher than 3D, there is no blame to go around, no guilt, no punishment, but... there also are no psychological disturbances, no crimes, no suppressed, distorted emotions, no erroneous beliefs or paranoid fears. But to arrive to that place, that vibration, we need to clear up all denial at the lower levels. So, here's something on that:
PSYCHOPATHIC KIDS THAT KILL DON'T HAVE "DECENT" PARENTS!
This is a very important story, by Jesse Kornbluth, about a very important book, COLUMBINE, by Dave Cullen.
Kornbluth, in his article asks the question, "Do you know who your children are?" Spinning off the conclusions in the book about the two boys who went on the infamous killing spree in a Colorado school in 1999, finally, after ten years, it is coming into some level of mainstream consciousness that these two murderous boys were not ever "normal" kids. They were deeply disturbed psychopaths, overlooked by an educational system and a society that places little value on regularly keeping tabs on the mental and emotional health of its children.
I wrote about this issue respectively in 1998 and 1999, in letters that were published in the New York Times. Those letters landed me on Barry Farber's nationally syndicated radio program. Mr. Farber featured me on the show because he seemed to think that it was a radical idea that these killer kids were not normal, but discernibly ill. Farber suggested I should be on a presidential commission for my unique insight!
How sad, I thought, that recognizing severe emotional and psychological problems in our kids would be considered so uniquely brilliant. But of course, that goes hand in hand with the narcissism I write about all the time (just do a search for the word on the FPL blog).
Parents, teacher, doctors, society at large, all want to see in their kids what they want to see, and when they don't, they want biology or nature to be the problem not parenting. (Take a look at the flack I got on this blog for suggesting any parenting connection to autism.)
Here's Kornbluth:
"No writer has scored an interview with either set of parents, so we cannot really know how they were unaware of their kids sneaking out at night and buying guns and writing about killing in their journals. The opening line of Eric's? 'I hate the fucking world.' It wasn't as if there was any murkiness about his feelings. Dylan? He just 'craved death.' Getting him to go along with the massacre plan wasn't a career effort for Eric."
Parents are always part of the problem, folks.
Always!
Trusting the Acorn
I came across some notes on James Hillman's "Acorn Theory," from his best-selling book, "The Soul's Code," some of which I used for a class I taught on childhood development. It's good stuff.
Even though much time in therapy is spent on the effects parents have on a person's ultimate state of emotional health, I've always been aware that there is an X-factor, something that exists beyond, or more accurately "before," childhood experiences, and also beyond genetics. In that quest, I came across the concept of "soul ages," which I've written about a lot, but yet there is still something else that seems to drive the uniqueness of an individual, something that seems to imply that a unique, formed soul is within us from birth, shaping us as much as it is shaped. While this is not a new idea, it is generally rejected by our culture, the possibility that we are fated, that each person comes into the world with something to do and to be, or is called into life with a uniqueness that asks to be lived.
Here's Hillman:
"Our culture has no theory of this at all. Our culture has the genetics and the nature theory. You come into the world loaded with genes and are influenced by nature, or you come into the world, are influenced by the environment, and are the result of parents, family, social class and education. These theories don’t speak to the individuality or uniqueness that you feel is you. The story of the acorn is that you have your own destiny, and that your parents’ tasks are to provide a place in the world where you can grow down into life and to help make it easier for you to carry the destiny you have, which as a child is hard to carry."
Yes. So few parents take into consideration the reality that each child has its own destiny, what others might call a "seed plan," and that the parents' main job is to provide safey and security, to make it easier for the child to become themselves.
Hillman continues on the importance of adults in a child's life other than parents:
"In addition to your parents, you need fantasy figures. You need strange people who excite your imagination, who may release an image of your calling. You also need mentors or teachers. The mentor/teacher is the person who sees who you are, sees your beauty, falls in love with it, helps and inspires it, giving it a chance to bloom in the world. The mentor is not concerned with your well-being, making sure that you have food, shoes and a roof over your head. That’s what parents do. Parents keep food on the table and make sure that you have protection, but they may never see who you are. Many people complain that their parents never saw them. They may have looked in the wrong place for recognition. It’s not necessarily parents who can see you. They have other destinies and eyes for other things. They may see other children and not you. In extended families, adults often see things in another’s children. Just because your parents don’t truly see you doesn’t mean they don’t love you. Their form of loving is taking care of you, making sure that you sleep and have clothes. It doesn’t relieve them of responsibility, but it unburdens them of carrying the child’s destiny. Their responsibility is to make the world a receiving place so children can grow up and follow their destinies."
I have tried so hard to get good parents to see this, that their job is not to control their childrens' destinies or influence their values or decide for them what arts or sciences or sports they should pursue. No. Be good, consistent, loving providers, establish necessary boundaries for health and well-being, then stay out of the way. Let their souls, their "acorns," take over.
Likewise, I have tried to help individuals realize that their parents not seeing them, while painful and demoralizing in childhood, does not have to be devastating. It can even be liberating. It's why James Lipton on the Actor's Studio takes note of the fact that so many enormously successful people come from childhoods in which a parent was lost to death or divorce. In other words, in terms of allowing the acorn to turn into the oak tree it is destined to become, less parenting can be more.
There is much more to say about this subject. It's a powerful one, and a worthy one to have. To read more of an interview with James Hillman, you can go to: http://www.personaltransformation.com/Hillman.html
Even though much time in therapy is spent on the effects parents have on a person's ultimate state of emotional health, I've always been aware that there is an X-factor, something that exists beyond, or more accurately "before," childhood experiences, and also beyond genetics. In that quest, I came across the concept of "soul ages," which I've written about a lot, but yet there is still something else that seems to drive the uniqueness of an individual, something that seems to imply that a unique, formed soul is within us from birth, shaping us as much as it is shaped. While this is not a new idea, it is generally rejected by our culture, the possibility that we are fated, that each person comes into the world with something to do and to be, or is called into life with a uniqueness that asks to be lived.
Here's Hillman:
"Our culture has no theory of this at all. Our culture has the genetics and the nature theory. You come into the world loaded with genes and are influenced by nature, or you come into the world, are influenced by the environment, and are the result of parents, family, social class and education. These theories don’t speak to the individuality or uniqueness that you feel is you. The story of the acorn is that you have your own destiny, and that your parents’ tasks are to provide a place in the world where you can grow down into life and to help make it easier for you to carry the destiny you have, which as a child is hard to carry."
Yes. So few parents take into consideration the reality that each child has its own destiny, what others might call a "seed plan," and that the parents' main job is to provide safey and security, to make it easier for the child to become themselves.
Hillman continues on the importance of adults in a child's life other than parents:
"In addition to your parents, you need fantasy figures. You need strange people who excite your imagination, who may release an image of your calling. You also need mentors or teachers. The mentor/teacher is the person who sees who you are, sees your beauty, falls in love with it, helps and inspires it, giving it a chance to bloom in the world. The mentor is not concerned with your well-being, making sure that you have food, shoes and a roof over your head. That’s what parents do. Parents keep food on the table and make sure that you have protection, but they may never see who you are. Many people complain that their parents never saw them. They may have looked in the wrong place for recognition. It’s not necessarily parents who can see you. They have other destinies and eyes for other things. They may see other children and not you. In extended families, adults often see things in another’s children. Just because your parents don’t truly see you doesn’t mean they don’t love you. Their form of loving is taking care of you, making sure that you sleep and have clothes. It doesn’t relieve them of responsibility, but it unburdens them of carrying the child’s destiny. Their responsibility is to make the world a receiving place so children can grow up and follow their destinies."
I have tried so hard to get good parents to see this, that their job is not to control their childrens' destinies or influence their values or decide for them what arts or sciences or sports they should pursue. No. Be good, consistent, loving providers, establish necessary boundaries for health and well-being, then stay out of the way. Let their souls, their "acorns," take over.
Likewise, I have tried to help individuals realize that their parents not seeing them, while painful and demoralizing in childhood, does not have to be devastating. It can even be liberating. It's why James Lipton on the Actor's Studio takes note of the fact that so many enormously successful people come from childhoods in which a parent was lost to death or divorce. In other words, in terms of allowing the acorn to turn into the oak tree it is destined to become, less parenting can be more.
There is much more to say about this subject. It's a powerful one, and a worthy one to have. To read more of an interview with James Hillman, you can go to: http://www.personaltransformation.com/Hillman.html
IF YOUR PARENT WAS A HOARDER, YOU DID NOT HAVE A "NORMAL" CHILDHOOD!
I'm sorry to do this, but here's the truth: whenever a new patient arrives to my office and begins the session by saying that they had a "normal" childhood, or that a parent was their "best friend," or some such idealization, I know it's going to be a bit of a row to hoe. It's not that the purpose of therapy is to trash your parents, or to blame them for all of your dysfunctions, but I've been waiting for over 30 years to meet someone, in or out of therapy, who had a "normal" childhood. What most people mean by "normal," is "typical." But the fact that the majority of families are riddled with disorder, does not mean it's normal.
There's a new memoir out called, "COMING CLEAN," written by Kimberly Rae Miller, about growing up in a "hoarder household." I have a great deal of compassion for Kimberly, and appreciate her courage in revealing the details of her childhood trauma, but as a practitioner who has worked with adult children of OCD parents, I have to set the record straight because denial is one of the main defenses that slows down the healing process in therapy. Again, while it's not useful to denigrate or slander our parents, it is necessary to one's self-actualization to acknowledge the wounds suffered at the hands of our primary caretakers, and to release the rage and sorrow those injuries caused us to suppress and stockpile in our emotional and physical bodies.
Here's an excerpt from Kimberly's book:
"In many ways, I had a really normal childhood. I had parents who were there for everything—every soccer game, every dance recital. My parents wanted me, and I always felt that."
And then:
"The hard thing was in knowing my normal was really, really abnormal for the rest of the world. I always felt this compulsive need to hide who I really was from the rest of the world. So no one would ever see my house or see our car because there were things in our car. I was incredibly shy as a child because I just didn’t want to be noticed. I didn’t want to bring attention to me or the way we lived."
I am not just nitpicking semantics here, folks. How we talk to ourselves about our our experiences, and the words we use in our inner lives, act as hypnotic suggestions that then create the reality we live out. In order to say "I had a normal childhood," while simultaneously saying "I wanted to be invisible to the world" because of a parent's disorder, requires the offspring in this situation to split themselves internally in order to hold the contradiction in their consciousness.
"Splitting," a compartmentalization of opposite and conflicting affect states, is a defense mechanism in which a person, when faced with emotional stress or conflict, views himself or others as all good or all bad, or alternates between idealizing and devaluing the self or another; positive and negative qualities in the self or others are unable to be integrated into cohesive images. This splitting causes many difficulties in every area of life.
Folks, if you face the genuine slings and arrows of your childhoods, you will not end up hating your parents... or yourself. You will arrive to a natural compassion for them and an organic forgiveness. But if you cover up and confuse yourself, it will be for no one's sake. It will be to the detriment of your health and well-being, and equally, it won't benefit your parents or anyone else either.
The truth will always set you free.
There's a new memoir out called, "COMING CLEAN," written by Kimberly Rae Miller, about growing up in a "hoarder household." I have a great deal of compassion for Kimberly, and appreciate her courage in revealing the details of her childhood trauma, but as a practitioner who has worked with adult children of OCD parents, I have to set the record straight because denial is one of the main defenses that slows down the healing process in therapy. Again, while it's not useful to denigrate or slander our parents, it is necessary to one's self-actualization to acknowledge the wounds suffered at the hands of our primary caretakers, and to release the rage and sorrow those injuries caused us to suppress and stockpile in our emotional and physical bodies.
Here's an excerpt from Kimberly's book:
"In many ways, I had a really normal childhood. I had parents who were there for everything—every soccer game, every dance recital. My parents wanted me, and I always felt that."
And then:
"The hard thing was in knowing my normal was really, really abnormal for the rest of the world. I always felt this compulsive need to hide who I really was from the rest of the world. So no one would ever see my house or see our car because there were things in our car. I was incredibly shy as a child because I just didn’t want to be noticed. I didn’t want to bring attention to me or the way we lived."
I am not just nitpicking semantics here, folks. How we talk to ourselves about our our experiences, and the words we use in our inner lives, act as hypnotic suggestions that then create the reality we live out. In order to say "I had a normal childhood," while simultaneously saying "I wanted to be invisible to the world" because of a parent's disorder, requires the offspring in this situation to split themselves internally in order to hold the contradiction in their consciousness.
"Splitting," a compartmentalization of opposite and conflicting affect states, is a defense mechanism in which a person, when faced with emotional stress or conflict, views himself or others as all good or all bad, or alternates between idealizing and devaluing the self or another; positive and negative qualities in the self or others are unable to be integrated into cohesive images. This splitting causes many difficulties in every area of life.
Folks, if you face the genuine slings and arrows of your childhoods, you will not end up hating your parents... or yourself. You will arrive to a natural compassion for them and an organic forgiveness. But if you cover up and confuse yourself, it will be for no one's sake. It will be to the detriment of your health and well-being, and equally, it won't benefit your parents or anyone else either.
The truth will always set you free.
TERROR VERSUS HORROR: THE ABUSED CHILD IN YOU AND ME, PART 2!
I have always been fascinated by Alexander Lowen's incredibly insightful thoughts on the subject of "terror versus horror," which he writes about in his landmark book: NARCISSISM: DENIAL OF THE TRUE SELF.
This seemed an appropriate follow-up to the matter of the "abused child" that Lowen claimed lives in 99% of us, a claim that I anecdotally agreed with in my recent post. (Not surprising, after I wrote that post, I received a number of disgruntled comments from people who claimed to be in that one-percent who experienced no abuse of any kind at the hands of their - presumably - completely self-actualized parents!)
As Lowen describes it, "terror" is our body's reaction to some kind of assault or direct threat to our personal well-being, and it evokes powerful emotions. "Horror," on the other hand, is our mind's reaction to witnessing something that presents a direct challenge to our perception of reality, something that doesn't compute, an event or series of events that at best cause confusion and at worst cause a mental dissociation in the observer.
As an example, a parent verbally or physically attacking a child will cause terror in that child, who in that moment is fearing for his or her life and limb. Yet, for that same child, witnessing a parent assaulting his or her sibling, or the other parent, or even a pet, will cause horror in the observing child.
Why?
Children innately presume that parents are not only all-knowing and all-powerful, but that they are also all-loving, especially to their children and to each other. When a child is being assaulted by a parent, the intenseness and direct terror of the experience engages the body's fight or flight mechanisms, followed by a release of emotions, so the analytic thought process is not immediately engaged. Afterwards, once the terror has subsided, the child, so willing to believe in its own badness as the cause of the parents' fury, feels able to "make sense" of the assault. It was their fault. One of the things I hear several times a day at least from patients is how they don't believe in their own deservedness of good treatment from others.
Sadly, the same child so willing to believe in their own badness, can't conceive of another loved one deserving abusive treatment. I have seen the horror in patients when describing the abuse inflicted on a sibling by a parent, even if it is just verbal. Likewise, when a child witnesses its parents hurling rageful, vitriolic assaults at each other, the reaction is one of utter horror and confusion. That is why so many children will literally attempt to draw the rage of their fighting parents onto themselves, and why they will subsequently blame themselves. Anything is better than witnessing the horror of supposed loved ones hating each other, even momentarily. It destroys the safety of their environment in their dependent state.
I have often mentioned in my writing that I can count on one hand the number of adult patients who report wishing that their divorced parents had stayed together, while I can't even count how many have said they wished their unhappy parents who stayed together had gotten divorced. To a child, witnessing their parents forcing themselves to live in a situation that is not vibrant with love, Eros and sex does not compute. It turns reality upside down. It is saying to the child, who intuitively knows better, that love and happiness are not actually the most important things in life. This causes horror and despair in the child, who is looking to its parents for examples of how to live and how to sustain love and happiness.
So, to all of you supposed "one-percenters" with parents who were self-actualized, in-love and happy, I say congratulations! To the rest of us, who were abused to varying degrees by our less-than-self-actualized parents, I say, keep focused on your healing process. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
This seemed an appropriate follow-up to the matter of the "abused child" that Lowen claimed lives in 99% of us, a claim that I anecdotally agreed with in my recent post. (Not surprising, after I wrote that post, I received a number of disgruntled comments from people who claimed to be in that one-percent who experienced no abuse of any kind at the hands of their - presumably - completely self-actualized parents!)
As Lowen describes it, "terror" is our body's reaction to some kind of assault or direct threat to our personal well-being, and it evokes powerful emotions. "Horror," on the other hand, is our mind's reaction to witnessing something that presents a direct challenge to our perception of reality, something that doesn't compute, an event or series of events that at best cause confusion and at worst cause a mental dissociation in the observer.
As an example, a parent verbally or physically attacking a child will cause terror in that child, who in that moment is fearing for his or her life and limb. Yet, for that same child, witnessing a parent assaulting his or her sibling, or the other parent, or even a pet, will cause horror in the observing child.
Why?
Children innately presume that parents are not only all-knowing and all-powerful, but that they are also all-loving, especially to their children and to each other. When a child is being assaulted by a parent, the intenseness and direct terror of the experience engages the body's fight or flight mechanisms, followed by a release of emotions, so the analytic thought process is not immediately engaged. Afterwards, once the terror has subsided, the child, so willing to believe in its own badness as the cause of the parents' fury, feels able to "make sense" of the assault. It was their fault. One of the things I hear several times a day at least from patients is how they don't believe in their own deservedness of good treatment from others.
Sadly, the same child so willing to believe in their own badness, can't conceive of another loved one deserving abusive treatment. I have seen the horror in patients when describing the abuse inflicted on a sibling by a parent, even if it is just verbal. Likewise, when a child witnesses its parents hurling rageful, vitriolic assaults at each other, the reaction is one of utter horror and confusion. That is why so many children will literally attempt to draw the rage of their fighting parents onto themselves, and why they will subsequently blame themselves. Anything is better than witnessing the horror of supposed loved ones hating each other, even momentarily. It destroys the safety of their environment in their dependent state.
I have often mentioned in my writing that I can count on one hand the number of adult patients who report wishing that their divorced parents had stayed together, while I can't even count how many have said they wished their unhappy parents who stayed together had gotten divorced. To a child, witnessing their parents forcing themselves to live in a situation that is not vibrant with love, Eros and sex does not compute. It turns reality upside down. It is saying to the child, who intuitively knows better, that love and happiness are not actually the most important things in life. This causes horror and despair in the child, who is looking to its parents for examples of how to live and how to sustain love and happiness.
So, to all of you supposed "one-percenters" with parents who were self-actualized, in-love and happy, I say congratulations! To the rest of us, who were abused to varying degrees by our less-than-self-actualized parents, I say, keep focused on your healing process. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
RICK IS BACK & HE'S TAKING PL'S CHALLENGE TO PARENTS!
RICK WRITES:
"I had a snow day Wed, sorry for the verbosity!
PL writes, "Come on, parents! Challenge me. Come back with something. Because I'm coming after you!"
Challenge you? Well, I could get my Italian up, but, as I tell my students, if you want to argue, I bat 1000 and win every time. However, if you want to discuss something, both of us will win. Regardless, before I respond as a parent, I can't help notice that although we have entered a New Year, your attacking and belittling of others continues. Mr. Therapy of over 30 yrs, what is it about your own character that manifests itself in these putdowns? You wrote earlier that punching a pillow or screaming out loud might pacify one a bit, but it doesn't resolve the real issues. If your take on displaced aggression has any merit, what are your real problems? I would recommend punching a pillow and screaming for 5 minutes, before you begin writing. Maybe then, the value of all of those years of experience can be shared with us all as opposed to just slapping us around.
Back to PL’s “parents’ challenge”
Unfortunately, PL you have brought a knife to a gun fight. I hope other parents/patients do not sit back and just drink the Kool-Aid you’re mixing.
There are licensed teachers, plumbers, lawyers and doctors who have taken the necessary courses, have all the required certifications and still are horrible and immoral. There are parents who have taken the necessary courses, gone to therapy for, or have abundantly read on such topics as health, home safety, how to raise a child, be a good spouse/lover/parent etc. Unless we always try to be diligent in our responsibilities, and try to give of ourselves to others and try to do the right thing, you will see a leak in your pipes, a gauze left in your body after surgery and children who hate you. To be good at anything, it takes constant evaluation of what we do and a willingness to accept responsibility for our actions and admit we are wrong.
If you looked at my resume, one might think I am a more than well-qualified high school teacher. The problem is that I could just show up and play DVD’s or just be an ogre and keep the kids in line(I must admit, many an administrator judge a teacher’s worth on how well the students behave instead of what they actually learn). Is this good teaching? I have taught with some poor teachers who had much better “qualifications” than me. I have also taught with some better teachers than me, who have never taken an education course.
My brother is not a licensed plumber or mechanic but he has done excellent work in both fields. Look at all the licensed drivers out there? What makes one good or bad? They all have the same “qualifications”. The analogy loses credibility as soon as it is generally applied.
If the stork arrived on our door step, then I might agree that, “All you have to do to become a parent is get laid”. However, there is an education to be had and the lessons keep coming every day. If the father lives with the mother, there is a learning that takes place during the gestational period. There is more info than I care to think of on how to nurture the unborn and how to help the mother carry your child. If you want it, there is a preliminary license to be had during this phase.
Next opportunity for licensure? The birth. Those of us who have been intimately involved with or have even gone through the labor and delivery process, get an education in humility, irrational rage, intense love + emotion and complete dedication and sacrifice to something else (i.e. ego control). Some people are blessed with easy and supportive deliveries. For others, it can be lonely, terrifying and demoralizing. In either case, lessons about who we are and how to be a good parents are all around us. (I admit this needs to be flushed out more but I hope you can understand my point)
Next phase of licensing? It is the choice of the parents to be lifelong learners and continue to hone their skills as solid caregivers, nurturers and parents.
Look no further than our children’s faces, bodies and attitudes for learning opportunities. It is up to us to determine when our methods are helpful or hurtful. Sure they may get mad when we say no to staying out late, not get their way or make them eat Brussel sprouts. But at the end of the day, if we are reasonable, they realize we are parenting and not abusing/controlling/neglecting. There is support and lessons for us parents, we just have to find it and admit that we can make mistakes. Learning from those very mistakes us better parents + people, and garners us the elusive respect of our children (I guess they have to love us as PL declares). Ignoring our mistakes or trying to justify them or excuse them keeps us shackled.
PL wrote, “So, we raise kids - lots and lots of kids - with less skill and training than a plumber or a truck driver. Think about it. Really.”
Well, I have thought about it, really, and have come to the conclusion that very little in life is black + white and just because someone has the experience or the license, it isn’t a necessary indicator to one’s effectiveness in that field.
For those parents PL hates and wants to eliminate, lessons are all around. I thought the New Year would bring some of those lessons to this blog. If the writer can figure out why he feels compelled to write with such rage and anger, maybe all of those years as a therapist might mean something. If this tone is representative of his approach to therapy, it appears the license he has is just as bogus as the label he claims we parents have.
Buon Anno!
"I had a snow day Wed, sorry for the verbosity!
PL writes, "Come on, parents! Challenge me. Come back with something. Because I'm coming after you!"
Challenge you? Well, I could get my Italian up, but, as I tell my students, if you want to argue, I bat 1000 and win every time. However, if you want to discuss something, both of us will win. Regardless, before I respond as a parent, I can't help notice that although we have entered a New Year, your attacking and belittling of others continues. Mr. Therapy of over 30 yrs, what is it about your own character that manifests itself in these putdowns? You wrote earlier that punching a pillow or screaming out loud might pacify one a bit, but it doesn't resolve the real issues. If your take on displaced aggression has any merit, what are your real problems? I would recommend punching a pillow and screaming for 5 minutes, before you begin writing. Maybe then, the value of all of those years of experience can be shared with us all as opposed to just slapping us around.
Back to PL’s “parents’ challenge”
Unfortunately, PL you have brought a knife to a gun fight. I hope other parents/patients do not sit back and just drink the Kool-Aid you’re mixing.
There are licensed teachers, plumbers, lawyers and doctors who have taken the necessary courses, have all the required certifications and still are horrible and immoral. There are parents who have taken the necessary courses, gone to therapy for, or have abundantly read on such topics as health, home safety, how to raise a child, be a good spouse/lover/parent etc. Unless we always try to be diligent in our responsibilities, and try to give of ourselves to others and try to do the right thing, you will see a leak in your pipes, a gauze left in your body after surgery and children who hate you. To be good at anything, it takes constant evaluation of what we do and a willingness to accept responsibility for our actions and admit we are wrong.
If you looked at my resume, one might think I am a more than well-qualified high school teacher. The problem is that I could just show up and play DVD’s or just be an ogre and keep the kids in line(I must admit, many an administrator judge a teacher’s worth on how well the students behave instead of what they actually learn). Is this good teaching? I have taught with some poor teachers who had much better “qualifications” than me. I have also taught with some better teachers than me, who have never taken an education course.
My brother is not a licensed plumber or mechanic but he has done excellent work in both fields. Look at all the licensed drivers out there? What makes one good or bad? They all have the same “qualifications”. The analogy loses credibility as soon as it is generally applied.
If the stork arrived on our door step, then I might agree that, “All you have to do to become a parent is get laid”. However, there is an education to be had and the lessons keep coming every day. If the father lives with the mother, there is a learning that takes place during the gestational period. There is more info than I care to think of on how to nurture the unborn and how to help the mother carry your child. If you want it, there is a preliminary license to be had during this phase.
Next opportunity for licensure? The birth. Those of us who have been intimately involved with or have even gone through the labor and delivery process, get an education in humility, irrational rage, intense love + emotion and complete dedication and sacrifice to something else (i.e. ego control). Some people are blessed with easy and supportive deliveries. For others, it can be lonely, terrifying and demoralizing. In either case, lessons about who we are and how to be a good parents are all around us. (I admit this needs to be flushed out more but I hope you can understand my point)
Next phase of licensing? It is the choice of the parents to be lifelong learners and continue to hone their skills as solid caregivers, nurturers and parents.
Look no further than our children’s faces, bodies and attitudes for learning opportunities. It is up to us to determine when our methods are helpful or hurtful. Sure they may get mad when we say no to staying out late, not get their way or make them eat Brussel sprouts. But at the end of the day, if we are reasonable, they realize we are parenting and not abusing/controlling/neglecting. There is support and lessons for us parents, we just have to find it and admit that we can make mistakes. Learning from those very mistakes us better parents + people, and garners us the elusive respect of our children (I guess they have to love us as PL declares). Ignoring our mistakes or trying to justify them or excuse them keeps us shackled.
PL wrote, “So, we raise kids - lots and lots of kids - with less skill and training than a plumber or a truck driver. Think about it. Really.”
Well, I have thought about it, really, and have come to the conclusion that very little in life is black + white and just because someone has the experience or the license, it isn’t a necessary indicator to one’s effectiveness in that field.
For those parents PL hates and wants to eliminate, lessons are all around. I thought the New Year would bring some of those lessons to this blog. If the writer can figure out why he feels compelled to write with such rage and anger, maybe all of those years as a therapist might mean something. If this tone is representative of his approach to therapy, it appears the license he has is just as bogus as the label he claims we parents have.
Buon Anno!
HAVING CHILDREN? GET A DIVORCE!
Beautiful! Lovely! How great to hear someone else revealing this: the best parents are the ones who aren't together!
In a blog piece entitled "DIVORCE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET," Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LCSW, says this:
"As a therapist with over fifteen years experience, I hear a lot about divorce, particularly divorces where children are involved. I have noticed a surprising sentiment among many divorcees: people secretly like their time off from parenting."
Well, thank you, Elisabeth. Nothing more refreshing than speaking and hearing the truth. I have frequently pointed out to people, and written about on this blog and others, that in my 30+ years of practicing psychotherapy, I could count on one hand the number of people who told me that they wished their parents hadn't gotten divorced when they were kids. Conversely, I can't even count how many have told me that they were glad that their parents got divorced, that it was absolutely the best thing for all involved, etc.
Here's more from LaMotte's piece:
"A newly divorced client in her forties puts it this way:
"I feel terrible admitting this, but I cherish my down-time each week. It rejuvenates me and leads to a great amount of patience and positivity when I am with my kids. I totally lacked this in the past. I sometimes wonder if what my ex and I really needed was more help with the kids, more down time, and more romance.'
"A divorced dad in his thirties echoes this sentiment, admitting:
"It wasn't until we separated that I truly invested in quality time with my kids. When we were married it was as if we were stuck on this gruesome, endless treadmill of chores, meals and obligations. I was just trying to get through the day. I'd read books to my kids and have no idea of the plot, because I was thinking about what I would say in the emails I needed to send when I finished. Now, my time with the kids is limited and precious and I make the most of it. I listen to them and I'm totally in the moment."
Yes! Yes!! YES!!!
Parenting, as we know it, folks, is not only dysfunctional, it is impossible!
In the soon-to be-extinct nuclear family model (just follow the statistical trends), 2 people (usually young) are expected to undertake the most incredibly taxing job on earth, 24-7, for two decades, with no qualifications!
That's right. Parents, of all available adults, are usually the least qualified to raise children. You need to pass two tests to get a license to drive a car or sell real estate. It's required to have a college degree or some period of focused training for most careers. Yet, to have children, one of the most important and difficult occupations in our society, all you have to do is (excuse me) fuck somebody!
Children need love to thrive, yes, but let me say two radical things here that might upset some parents or prospective parents: 1. Love is not enough; and 2. Love is not a function of biology.
In other words, in addition to love, children need guidance and training and protection, and for that, the guides in question need to be self-actualized to a significant degree, which means they need to have some amount of serious self-work under their emotional belts. And to provide the genuine love necessary for children to thrive, the caretakers in question need to be capable of giving that kind of love, not the co-dependent, over-identified, symbiotic substitute that so often is mistaken for love. And once again, to be able to channel that kind of love to another human being, the person in question has to be fairly self-actualized and... well, we're back to the self-work, aren't we?
So, what about LaMotte's piece? Well, we're obviously not at a place yet in our society where people will commit themselves to the needed self-work before they become parents (The ones that do, more and more often don't become parents.), and we're not yet at a place in our development collectively in which we will allow the wisest of the "village" to raise our children, so...
Divorce is the next best interim step!
Here's LaMotte again:
"If you dig past the pain and disappointment that devastates those who divorce, many will admit that they recharge during their time away from their children and become--albeit in time-limited doses--the parent they always wanted to be."
Hey... You're human. I understand. You may really want to express your generativity by having a child (Please don't even think about having more than one!). Fine. Then consider this: you will need at least two separate households, and preferably two complete sets of parents, as well as a small staff (housecleaner, babysitter, driver, cook) to do it right. And obviously to do that, you need to be fairly well-established financially.
Will adhering to such measures probably decrease the world's population?
Would that be a bad thing?
Happy New Year!
In a blog piece entitled "DIVORCE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET," Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LCSW, says this:
"As a therapist with over fifteen years experience, I hear a lot about divorce, particularly divorces where children are involved. I have noticed a surprising sentiment among many divorcees: people secretly like their time off from parenting."
Well, thank you, Elisabeth. Nothing more refreshing than speaking and hearing the truth. I have frequently pointed out to people, and written about on this blog and others, that in my 30+ years of practicing psychotherapy, I could count on one hand the number of people who told me that they wished their parents hadn't gotten divorced when they were kids. Conversely, I can't even count how many have told me that they were glad that their parents got divorced, that it was absolutely the best thing for all involved, etc.
Here's more from LaMotte's piece:
"A newly divorced client in her forties puts it this way:
"I feel terrible admitting this, but I cherish my down-time each week. It rejuvenates me and leads to a great amount of patience and positivity when I am with my kids. I totally lacked this in the past. I sometimes wonder if what my ex and I really needed was more help with the kids, more down time, and more romance.'
"A divorced dad in his thirties echoes this sentiment, admitting:
"It wasn't until we separated that I truly invested in quality time with my kids. When we were married it was as if we were stuck on this gruesome, endless treadmill of chores, meals and obligations. I was just trying to get through the day. I'd read books to my kids and have no idea of the plot, because I was thinking about what I would say in the emails I needed to send when I finished. Now, my time with the kids is limited and precious and I make the most of it. I listen to them and I'm totally in the moment."
Yes! Yes!! YES!!!
Parenting, as we know it, folks, is not only dysfunctional, it is impossible!
In the soon-to be-extinct nuclear family model (just follow the statistical trends), 2 people (usually young) are expected to undertake the most incredibly taxing job on earth, 24-7, for two decades, with no qualifications!
That's right. Parents, of all available adults, are usually the least qualified to raise children. You need to pass two tests to get a license to drive a car or sell real estate. It's required to have a college degree or some period of focused training for most careers. Yet, to have children, one of the most important and difficult occupations in our society, all you have to do is (excuse me) fuck somebody!
Children need love to thrive, yes, but let me say two radical things here that might upset some parents or prospective parents: 1. Love is not enough; and 2. Love is not a function of biology.
In other words, in addition to love, children need guidance and training and protection, and for that, the guides in question need to be self-actualized to a significant degree, which means they need to have some amount of serious self-work under their emotional belts. And to provide the genuine love necessary for children to thrive, the caretakers in question need to be capable of giving that kind of love, not the co-dependent, over-identified, symbiotic substitute that so often is mistaken for love. And once again, to be able to channel that kind of love to another human being, the person in question has to be fairly self-actualized and... well, we're back to the self-work, aren't we?
So, what about LaMotte's piece? Well, we're obviously not at a place yet in our society where people will commit themselves to the needed self-work before they become parents (The ones that do, more and more often don't become parents.), and we're not yet at a place in our development collectively in which we will allow the wisest of the "village" to raise our children, so...
Divorce is the next best interim step!
Here's LaMotte again:
"If you dig past the pain and disappointment that devastates those who divorce, many will admit that they recharge during their time away from their children and become--albeit in time-limited doses--the parent they always wanted to be."
Hey... You're human. I understand. You may really want to express your generativity by having a child (Please don't even think about having more than one!). Fine. Then consider this: you will need at least two separate households, and preferably two complete sets of parents, as well as a small staff (housecleaner, babysitter, driver, cook) to do it right. And obviously to do that, you need to be fairly well-established financially.
Will adhering to such measures probably decrease the world's population?
Would that be a bad thing?
Happy New Year!
AVOIDING MARRIAGE AND AVOIDING HAVING KIDS IF YOU ARE MARRIED! BRING IT ON!!
Ah, it's a beautiful morning, after a solid month of record rain... what better time to take another shot at the sacred institutions of marriage and parenthood and get the hard-liners and the hunkered-down mad at me again.
I'm spinning off an article about the upside of avoiding marriage, written by Bella DePaulo, author of "SINGLED OUT" and the "LIVING SINGLE" blog.
Here's a clip from Bella's post:
"I don't equate being married with being loved; my view of love is far broader and less hackneyed. So the question I actually do address is this: Who is happier, physically healthier, psychologically stronger, less lonely, more likely to live longer, and more engaged with neighbors, friends, and family - people who got married and then got unmarried, or people who stayed single? The answer, in just about every study I've ever reviewed, is people who have stayed single."
By the way, Bella, an ex-mother-in-law I knew didn't equate being married with being happy either. When explained to her that her daughter and husband were splitting up because they weren't happy together, she admonished as if the young couple were naive, saying: "Happy?! What's happy got to do with marriage?!"
Right. But what about the children, Bella?
Bella:
"As I've noted here and in Singled Out, there are even ways in which children from single-parent households do better than children of married parents. I'm not arguing that you should create a single-parent household for the good of your children, but let's also not pretend that the children of single parents are doomed. Consider, for instance, what Melissa Harris-Lacewell (whom you may have seen on the Rachel Maddow Show) has said about Barack Obama in her thoughtful essay in the Nation: 'Had his father been present he might have had less adolescent angst, but then again that angst was part of what sent him into a world of books from which he emerged a formidable intellectual. Part of Barack Obama's greatness is his fatherlessness."
I would add that if you've ever watched "The Actors Studio" with James Lipton, you've often heard him remark on the phenomenon of great stars frequently arising from "broken" homes - homes where both parents weren't present due to divorce or death.
Whew! I can here the long-suffering, toughing-it-out-for-the-kids married folks with plateaued sex lives hissing now. But let's put aside our frozen "traditional" beliefs for a moment, and our resentful needs to believe that there's some greater good that comes from sacrificing happiness, and just examine what's evolved and what might be going on today.
First and foremost, marriage is indeed an institution, meaning, it was created and instituted as a societal entity to serve a purpose for the societal entity that created it. In other words, marriage, as an institution, with rules and contracts and socially dictated behavioral norms and structures and rites, did not evolve organically.
In fact, early on, love didn't even have anything to do with marriage.
Marriage served the purposes of diplomacy or maintaining property rights not that long ago, especially among the ruling classes, and still does in some regressive cultures. It also served as a means of creating cheap labor - i.e. - children - for the purposes of serving agricultural society. And finally, marriage served the dual purposes of fidelity (mainly mandated for women) and consumerism, both of which served as a means of control by churches and capital-based governments.
Secondly - and I'm speaking from many years of experience and thousands of therapy sessions with individuals, couples, families and children - a vast majority, and I mean a vast majority of people who get married do so because they are insecure about getting older and "being alone" or insecure about their financial well-being or insecure about how they'll be seen by others if they don't "succeed" at landing a spouse and having kids. You can do a search on this blog or on any search engine and you'll find innumerable articles on all the wrong reasons people get married.
Is there a right reason?
Well, the paradox is, if you are truly in love with another, blessed with a high level of love, Eros and sex with a partner that you're also really compatible with as a personality, you most likely feel that getting married is not a pressing priority. You could do it - for the fun and pomp and public announcement of your joy - but you know you don't need to. If you've ever really been in love, you know what I'm talking about here, right?
Okay, then - the kids?
Don't get me started. You can find a hundred articles on this blog alone about the damage that parents do to kids. I have said often that the least qualified people to raise kids are their parents.
Why?
Well, first of all, for many of the same reasons listed above as the dysfunctional reasons born out of insecurity that we get married. We try and live through our kids. We hope that they will boost our sagging self-esteem by loving us unconditionally, and raise our outer esteem in the eyes of others by how well they play soccer or guitar. We imagine that by having kids, we'll never be alone.
Hello? It should be easy to see how all of that kind of dependency on our kids damages them, but you'd be amazed at how ignorant most parents are of the negative effects of their own subconscious acting out.
But perhaps even worse than the above damage from dependency is that caused by the vice-grip of a bind that parents put children into by making them live in a 2-parent home where the passion, romance and sex has flattened out or died. It is this that led Alexander Lowen to once say that "99% of all children are abused."
The gulf in love, Eros and sex between two parents playing out the string creates a vortex, a black hole that children cannot help being sucked up into. This is the real cause of eating disorders, depression, OCD and all the so-called alphabet learning problems that kids are labeled with. It's not brain chemistry or genetics that are causing kids to be distracted, hyper or angry. It's that they have to give up being their true selves because they are being used as pawns in their parents' desperate attempts to fill a void they don't want to deal with through some tough self-work.
No wonder that so many great people came from single-parent homes. They only had half the burden and abuse to deal with.
So, come on folks, send me your protests. But understand, I understand that we are all on a continuum here, towards being fulfilled and healthy and wise. As always, my point is that we all have problems, but if you're not doing something about it for real, then you are the problem. And please, try not to waste our time pointing out that there are exceptions. Of course there are. There are happily married people having great sex-lives, enjoying their careers, and raising kids without any expectations of them fulfilling any unmet needs from the parents' childhoods. I know that there are fully self-actualized, married parents out there.
I just haven't met any yet.
I'm spinning off an article about the upside of avoiding marriage, written by Bella DePaulo, author of "SINGLED OUT" and the "LIVING SINGLE" blog.
Here's a clip from Bella's post:
"I don't equate being married with being loved; my view of love is far broader and less hackneyed. So the question I actually do address is this: Who is happier, physically healthier, psychologically stronger, less lonely, more likely to live longer, and more engaged with neighbors, friends, and family - people who got married and then got unmarried, or people who stayed single? The answer, in just about every study I've ever reviewed, is people who have stayed single."
By the way, Bella, an ex-mother-in-law I knew didn't equate being married with being happy either. When explained to her that her daughter and husband were splitting up because they weren't happy together, she admonished as if the young couple were naive, saying: "Happy?! What's happy got to do with marriage?!"
Right. But what about the children, Bella?
Bella:
"As I've noted here and in Singled Out, there are even ways in which children from single-parent households do better than children of married parents. I'm not arguing that you should create a single-parent household for the good of your children, but let's also not pretend that the children of single parents are doomed. Consider, for instance, what Melissa Harris-Lacewell (whom you may have seen on the Rachel Maddow Show) has said about Barack Obama in her thoughtful essay in the Nation: 'Had his father been present he might have had less adolescent angst, but then again that angst was part of what sent him into a world of books from which he emerged a formidable intellectual. Part of Barack Obama's greatness is his fatherlessness."
I would add that if you've ever watched "The Actors Studio" with James Lipton, you've often heard him remark on the phenomenon of great stars frequently arising from "broken" homes - homes where both parents weren't present due to divorce or death.
Whew! I can here the long-suffering, toughing-it-out-for-the-kids married folks with plateaued sex lives hissing now. But let's put aside our frozen "traditional" beliefs for a moment, and our resentful needs to believe that there's some greater good that comes from sacrificing happiness, and just examine what's evolved and what might be going on today.
First and foremost, marriage is indeed an institution, meaning, it was created and instituted as a societal entity to serve a purpose for the societal entity that created it. In other words, marriage, as an institution, with rules and contracts and socially dictated behavioral norms and structures and rites, did not evolve organically.
In fact, early on, love didn't even have anything to do with marriage.
Marriage served the purposes of diplomacy or maintaining property rights not that long ago, especially among the ruling classes, and still does in some regressive cultures. It also served as a means of creating cheap labor - i.e. - children - for the purposes of serving agricultural society. And finally, marriage served the dual purposes of fidelity (mainly mandated for women) and consumerism, both of which served as a means of control by churches and capital-based governments.
Secondly - and I'm speaking from many years of experience and thousands of therapy sessions with individuals, couples, families and children - a vast majority, and I mean a vast majority of people who get married do so because they are insecure about getting older and "being alone" or insecure about their financial well-being or insecure about how they'll be seen by others if they don't "succeed" at landing a spouse and having kids. You can do a search on this blog or on any search engine and you'll find innumerable articles on all the wrong reasons people get married.
Is there a right reason?
Well, the paradox is, if you are truly in love with another, blessed with a high level of love, Eros and sex with a partner that you're also really compatible with as a personality, you most likely feel that getting married is not a pressing priority. You could do it - for the fun and pomp and public announcement of your joy - but you know you don't need to. If you've ever really been in love, you know what I'm talking about here, right?
Okay, then - the kids?
Don't get me started. You can find a hundred articles on this blog alone about the damage that parents do to kids. I have said often that the least qualified people to raise kids are their parents.
Why?
Well, first of all, for many of the same reasons listed above as the dysfunctional reasons born out of insecurity that we get married. We try and live through our kids. We hope that they will boost our sagging self-esteem by loving us unconditionally, and raise our outer esteem in the eyes of others by how well they play soccer or guitar. We imagine that by having kids, we'll never be alone.
Hello? It should be easy to see how all of that kind of dependency on our kids damages them, but you'd be amazed at how ignorant most parents are of the negative effects of their own subconscious acting out.
But perhaps even worse than the above damage from dependency is that caused by the vice-grip of a bind that parents put children into by making them live in a 2-parent home where the passion, romance and sex has flattened out or died. It is this that led Alexander Lowen to once say that "99% of all children are abused."
The gulf in love, Eros and sex between two parents playing out the string creates a vortex, a black hole that children cannot help being sucked up into. This is the real cause of eating disorders, depression, OCD and all the so-called alphabet learning problems that kids are labeled with. It's not brain chemistry or genetics that are causing kids to be distracted, hyper or angry. It's that they have to give up being their true selves because they are being used as pawns in their parents' desperate attempts to fill a void they don't want to deal with through some tough self-work.
No wonder that so many great people came from single-parent homes. They only had half the burden and abuse to deal with.
So, come on folks, send me your protests. But understand, I understand that we are all on a continuum here, towards being fulfilled and healthy and wise. As always, my point is that we all have problems, but if you're not doing something about it for real, then you are the problem. And please, try not to waste our time pointing out that there are exceptions. Of course there are. There are happily married people having great sex-lives, enjoying their careers, and raising kids without any expectations of them fulfilling any unmet needs from the parents' childhoods. I know that there are fully self-actualized, married parents out there.
I just haven't met any yet.
REPOST: "AUNTLORI DOES MOTHERING RIGHT!"
Last fall, I wrote about the very enjoyable experience of witnessing some down-in-the-trenches mothering that soothed my grumpy heart. I decided to reprint it here today in celebration of Mother's Day. Some people mistakenly think that because I write and rail so much about narcissistic, over-involved parenting that I just don't like kids. It's quite the opposite. The problem for me is that I love kids. I always have, and they love me. It's parents that I don't like!
Anyway, onto my weekend at Auntlori's last fall...
"Auntlori," a regular reader and occasional contributor to this blog, is forty-three, and has two beautiful baby boys, ages two and a half and one year. Both boys are healthy and adorable, but more importantly, they don't exhibit the kind of anxious, aggressive, hyper energy that so many young children do, nor are they overly docile or passive at the other end of the spectrum. In other words, their spirits are not being broken by what euphemistically passes for child-rearing in our culture.
Auntlori, in other words, is doing mothering right!
What do I mean by "right?" I mean that she understands that her own self-actualization must always come first or she could not possibly be a mother that would be giving her children the smoothest road possible to their own developing selfhood.
Auntlori had her first baby at age forty. She had a career as a college English professor, and had a private hair-cutting practice prior to becoming a mother. She got married, for the second time, a couple of years earlier and her relationship with her husband is thriving. Auntlori has traveled, has experienced loss and death in her life; she has and is experiencing love, Eros and sex AND she has some years of therapy and self-work under her belt. These factors are what I consider to be healthy and sane prerequisites to a decision to have children. She has lived enough to have attained some wisdom, and knows and loves herself enough to truly be able to give to another. And of course, she knows that her own growth and self-care cannot get put on hold, now, because she has two little children.
Does she read to her kids, play music and videos for them and otherwise provide stimulation? Yes. Does she worry about what college they will be able to get into or what they might end up doing for a living one day? No.
Do her children cry, have tantrums, get sick, throw a little food around? Of course. Does she take her kids to fine restaurants? NO!
Here's an eye-opener, folks, though it shouldn't be. Your kids don't thrive to the degree that you dote on them or live for them or sacrifice for them. They thrive to the degree that you do.
That's right. More than anything you do for them, your kids learn from you as role models what it is to be an adult. Now, try and imagine what a kid might be thinking when they witness parents who have forgone their sex-lives and creative expression, who bend over backwards to respond to every whimper and demand from their children, adults, in other words, who live lives of quiet desperation, unfulfilled except to the degree that they are focused on their kids twenty-four-seven. Logically, said children, seeing such parents, would have to decide that growing up isn't such a great deal. Think about it. Kids are much more utilitarian and sensible than we realize: "Hmm... I could grow up and be like Mommy, a full-time servant, who looks subtly (or not so subtly) tense, sad or angry a lot of the time, or... I could just stay a kid and be waited on hand and foot. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Pass the narcissism please!"
I've said it before, too many time for most parents, and I'll celebrate Mother's Day by saying it again: Do your kids a favor, parents - Get a life!
Thank you, Auntlori, for giving me hope!
I may even try going back to Provini for dinner tonight!
Anyway, onto my weekend at Auntlori's last fall...
"Auntlori," a regular reader and occasional contributor to this blog, is forty-three, and has two beautiful baby boys, ages two and a half and one year. Both boys are healthy and adorable, but more importantly, they don't exhibit the kind of anxious, aggressive, hyper energy that so many young children do, nor are they overly docile or passive at the other end of the spectrum. In other words, their spirits are not being broken by what euphemistically passes for child-rearing in our culture.
Auntlori, in other words, is doing mothering right!
What do I mean by "right?" I mean that she understands that her own self-actualization must always come first or she could not possibly be a mother that would be giving her children the smoothest road possible to their own developing selfhood.
Auntlori had her first baby at age forty. She had a career as a college English professor, and had a private hair-cutting practice prior to becoming a mother. She got married, for the second time, a couple of years earlier and her relationship with her husband is thriving. Auntlori has traveled, has experienced loss and death in her life; she has and is experiencing love, Eros and sex AND she has some years of therapy and self-work under her belt. These factors are what I consider to be healthy and sane prerequisites to a decision to have children. She has lived enough to have attained some wisdom, and knows and loves herself enough to truly be able to give to another. And of course, she knows that her own growth and self-care cannot get put on hold, now, because she has two little children.
Does she read to her kids, play music and videos for them and otherwise provide stimulation? Yes. Does she worry about what college they will be able to get into or what they might end up doing for a living one day? No.
Do her children cry, have tantrums, get sick, throw a little food around? Of course. Does she take her kids to fine restaurants? NO!
Here's an eye-opener, folks, though it shouldn't be. Your kids don't thrive to the degree that you dote on them or live for them or sacrifice for them. They thrive to the degree that you do.
That's right. More than anything you do for them, your kids learn from you as role models what it is to be an adult. Now, try and imagine what a kid might be thinking when they witness parents who have forgone their sex-lives and creative expression, who bend over backwards to respond to every whimper and demand from their children, adults, in other words, who live lives of quiet desperation, unfulfilled except to the degree that they are focused on their kids twenty-four-seven. Logically, said children, seeing such parents, would have to decide that growing up isn't such a great deal. Think about it. Kids are much more utilitarian and sensible than we realize: "Hmm... I could grow up and be like Mommy, a full-time servant, who looks subtly (or not so subtly) tense, sad or angry a lot of the time, or... I could just stay a kid and be waited on hand and foot. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Pass the narcissism please!"
I've said it before, too many time for most parents, and I'll celebrate Mother's Day by saying it again: Do your kids a favor, parents - Get a life!
Thank you, Auntlori, for giving me hope!
I may even try going back to Provini for dinner tonight!
PARENTS ARE (STILL) ALWAYS PART OF THE PROBLEM! (EXCEPT FOR LAURA COLLINS LYSTER-MENSH?!)
Here's a surprising development. From time to time, I will comment on a piece on someone else's blog by writing about it only on their blog, in the comments section, rather than post my comment on my own blog. Said comments invariably get printed because while my writings may be controversial, they're never obscene or inappropriate.
But for the last two days, I have left comments on a piece by one Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an activist in the area of eating disorders, and they have not been printed. In her essay, called "She's Anorexic, and You're a Bad Mother," (the title meant to be sarcastic), Laura basically heaves a sigh of relief because she claims it is now unequivocal that "Eating disorders are brain disorders...biologically based and genetically transmitted. This isn't opinion," Laura says, "it is fact." How does she know that this is so? Because "Dr. Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute for Mental Health, says so."
Having worked with many young people (mostly women) with such disorders over the last thirty years, I challenged the absoluteness of Laura's assertion with my own considerable experience and research in this area. I mentioned such well-known books by people with hands-on practice with anorexics like "THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF EATING DISORDERS," by Peggy Claude-Pierre, and "THE BEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD." by Steven Levenkron (also a movie), and "WHEN FOOD IS LOVE," by Geneen Roth. There are many more books and studies about the psychological and emotional underpinnings of anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders.
I began my own career as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist working with a young woman in a psychiatric hospital who was anorexic and bulimic. Her condition was life-threatening, but I intuitively understood that her efforts at self-destruction had a connection to her early relationship with her parents, that she had negated her own need for emotional nourishment in favor of what she perceived to be the emotional needs of her parents, and then translated that self-negation into not even needing physical nourishment. By working with her strictly on an interpersonal basis over the course of a month, spending a lot of time with her each day, establishing a therapeutic alliance she could trust, she became able to eat and hold her food down to the point where she gained enough weight to be discharged and continue on in outpatient psychotherapy successfully.
It is tragic that parents, abetted by doctors who are lazy and greedy, so desperately seek to be not culpable to any degree in their children's dysfunctions that they have created a whole movement whose credo amounts to: "It's not my fault; it's nature." Which, of course, to the abundant joy of the AMA and Big Pharma, has to lead to the use of drugs and other applied methods without the use at all of insight into the nature of the emotional connection between parent and child and how that can go awry.
It is hard work, as a therapist and a parent, to go down into the emotional depths of a deep-rooted psychological condition with a child. It requires a level of self-penetration and healing that medical science is no longer interested in. There's no money in it, and it's just too difficult for the aggrandized ego to withstand.
So, Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh has a blog with comments only cheering her on and nothing from me. So be it. But it doesn't change the truth: parents are always part of the problem.
But for the last two days, I have left comments on a piece by one Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an activist in the area of eating disorders, and they have not been printed. In her essay, called "She's Anorexic, and You're a Bad Mother," (the title meant to be sarcastic), Laura basically heaves a sigh of relief because she claims it is now unequivocal that "Eating disorders are brain disorders...biologically based and genetically transmitted. This isn't opinion," Laura says, "it is fact." How does she know that this is so? Because "Dr. Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute for Mental Health, says so."
Having worked with many young people (mostly women) with such disorders over the last thirty years, I challenged the absoluteness of Laura's assertion with my own considerable experience and research in this area. I mentioned such well-known books by people with hands-on practice with anorexics like "THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF EATING DISORDERS," by Peggy Claude-Pierre, and "THE BEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD." by Steven Levenkron (also a movie), and "WHEN FOOD IS LOVE," by Geneen Roth. There are many more books and studies about the psychological and emotional underpinnings of anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders.
I began my own career as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist working with a young woman in a psychiatric hospital who was anorexic and bulimic. Her condition was life-threatening, but I intuitively understood that her efforts at self-destruction had a connection to her early relationship with her parents, that she had negated her own need for emotional nourishment in favor of what she perceived to be the emotional needs of her parents, and then translated that self-negation into not even needing physical nourishment. By working with her strictly on an interpersonal basis over the course of a month, spending a lot of time with her each day, establishing a therapeutic alliance she could trust, she became able to eat and hold her food down to the point where she gained enough weight to be discharged and continue on in outpatient psychotherapy successfully.
It is tragic that parents, abetted by doctors who are lazy and greedy, so desperately seek to be not culpable to any degree in their children's dysfunctions that they have created a whole movement whose credo amounts to: "It's not my fault; it's nature." Which, of course, to the abundant joy of the AMA and Big Pharma, has to lead to the use of drugs and other applied methods without the use at all of insight into the nature of the emotional connection between parent and child and how that can go awry.
It is hard work, as a therapist and a parent, to go down into the emotional depths of a deep-rooted psychological condition with a child. It requires a level of self-penetration and healing that medical science is no longer interested in. There's no money in it, and it's just too difficult for the aggrandized ego to withstand.
So, Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh has a blog with comments only cheering her on and nothing from me. So be it. But it doesn't change the truth: parents are always part of the problem.
Barbara Fischkin responds to PL on Autism/PL's response to Barbara
Barbara Fischkin left this comment on the FPL blog today:
"Yes it's me that 'dreadful' parent Barbara Fischkin. If it's always the parents' fault why do I have a younger son who is a caring, charming, handsome, articulate athlete? And by the way, I was older when I gave birth to him and so was my husband. This blog's views on autism are from the shameful depths of another century. People who decry abuse stopped worshiping Bettelheim decades ago."
PL's response:
Barbara - First of all, in no way was I saying that you were a "dreadful" parent. I am sure that you are a loving, dedicated mother, and while I wouldn't say that I "worship" Bettelheim, I do think that his landmark book, "Love Is Not Enough" has some very valuable information in it.
If you read my post, it is clear that what I am saying, Barbara, is that parenting in our society is an overwhelming challenge, and unfortunately, our medical establishment - which is first and foremost a business, today - exploits said overwhelmed parents by offering the false balm that it is nature that screws up our kids, not us, and that the magic solutions lie with the drugs that "correct" nature, an approach which the medical establishment just so happens to get rich from.
My experience, which has led me to observe that parenting is always part of the etiological picture of childhood disorders like autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, attention deficit problems, etc., etc., and the conclusions I draw, are not an assault on parents. If anything, they are my reflection on the opportunity for parents and children to heal together by exploring what went wrong and how, together, it can be corrected.
I am speaking from experience, not dogma or theory from "another century," Barbara. I have helped children diagnosed as "brain dsyfunctional" attain normalcy through play therapy and working with the parents. No drugs. Just hard, roll-up-your-sleeves emotional work. Don't fear this notion. I'm not saying it's your "fault." I'm saying you're connected to your child's struggles. Doesn't that make sense?
"Yes it's me that 'dreadful' parent Barbara Fischkin. If it's always the parents' fault why do I have a younger son who is a caring, charming, handsome, articulate athlete? And by the way, I was older when I gave birth to him and so was my husband. This blog's views on autism are from the shameful depths of another century. People who decry abuse stopped worshiping Bettelheim decades ago."
PL's response:
Barbara - First of all, in no way was I saying that you were a "dreadful" parent. I am sure that you are a loving, dedicated mother, and while I wouldn't say that I "worship" Bettelheim, I do think that his landmark book, "Love Is Not Enough" has some very valuable information in it.
If you read my post, it is clear that what I am saying, Barbara, is that parenting in our society is an overwhelming challenge, and unfortunately, our medical establishment - which is first and foremost a business, today - exploits said overwhelmed parents by offering the false balm that it is nature that screws up our kids, not us, and that the magic solutions lie with the drugs that "correct" nature, an approach which the medical establishment just so happens to get rich from.
My experience, which has led me to observe that parenting is always part of the etiological picture of childhood disorders like autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, attention deficit problems, etc., etc., and the conclusions I draw, are not an assault on parents. If anything, they are my reflection on the opportunity for parents and children to heal together by exploring what went wrong and how, together, it can be corrected.
I am speaking from experience, not dogma or theory from "another century," Barbara. I have helped children diagnosed as "brain dsyfunctional" attain normalcy through play therapy and working with the parents. No drugs. Just hard, roll-up-your-sleeves emotional work. Don't fear this notion. I'm not saying it's your "fault." I'm saying you're connected to your child's struggles. Doesn't that make sense?
SMARTMOM'S SON BECOMING A MAN/PL RESPONDS: THE GOOD YEARS AREN'T BEHIND US!
Here's another revealing "SMARTMOM" column by Louise Crawford that was on her blog - ONLY THE BLOG KNOWS BROOKLYN - today, followed below by some of my comments to her.
Here's Louise:
"In just a few months, Teen Spirit will turn 18. That’s the end of childhood, right? It’s the age when a boy can become a soldier and vote in a general election. He still can’t drink (legally, that is), but he can buy cigarettes and start working at the Park Slope Food Co-op as an adult member of the household.
Yeesh.
It’s weird to have a child who is at the end of childhood. That means he’s close to completing that idyllic stage of life that he will discuss again and again in bars, on first dates, in marital counseling and in memoir writing workshops.
His childhood may well be blamed for everything that goes right and wrong in his life, in his relationships and in his career. It will also be idealized and exaggerated. Events will be inflated; deprivations and high points will be exaggerated; parents and sibling will be demonized and glorified (though not always in equal measure).
For now, Smartmom is eschewing the “seems like yesterday” clichés about Teen Spirit’s ascent to full manhood. That said, she is allowing herself a few looks back. How is it possible, she has asked herself a few times this week, that it was nearly 18 years ago when she was wheeled into a delivery room to have her emergency C-section at Lenox Hill Hospital? To this day, she remembers singing, “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” as she lay in the recovery area.
Smartmom can remember the day they moved to Park Slope when Teen Spirit was a tiny 3-month-old. He was cute as a button — she and Hepcat called him their Maurice Sendak baby, thanks to his perfectly round face and his halo of blonde hair.
Truth be told, Teen Spirit was the cutest baby ever. No kidding. People used to stop them on the street to compliment their little boy. They were even asked on a few occasions if they were interested in having him model. Teen Spirit is actually on the cover of a corporation annual report wearing only a cloth diaper.
It’s funny to think back to that time. It’s like the Garden of Eden of Smartmom and Hepcat’s life together — before high school, middle age, and the realities of a 20-year marriage.
A lot of things didn’t turn out as they expected. For one thing, Smartmom and Hepcat never planned to stay in their small three-bedroom apartment this long. They didn’t think Teen Spirit’s tiny bedroom would be big enough for a 5-year-old.
Now at 17, Teen Spirit sleeps with his head touching one wall and his feet touching the other. Smartmom and Hepcat can hear his foot taps in their room, which is right next door.
But Teen Spirit never complained or went through that phase where he compared his life to the more-opulent lifestyles of his friends, who live in Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights brownstones. He’s always been comfortable in his own economic skin and doesn’t pine for material possessions or name-brand clothing. Quite the contrary, Teen Spirit dresses in clothing he finds on the street (washed first, most of the time).
Teen Spirit has always been very attached to their building on Third Street, especially when a boy named Eddie moved in downstairs when Teen Spirit was 3. The two quickly became best friends. For years, “I’m going down Eddie’s” was a constant refrain as the boys played non-stop in one or the other’s apartment.
The other refrain? “I’ll chain myself to a lamppost,” Teen Spirit would say whenever Smartmom and Hepcat were looking for a new home in whatever affordable neighborhood they were considering at the time.
Sadly, Eddie and his family moved away when he was 12, and it was a sad day for Teen Spirit. Smartmom always expected to follow their lead and move to a small town somewhere where they would have a big Victorian house with lots of space for everyone.
But Smartmom could never wrap her head around living anywhere else but Brooklyn. She never even got around to moving the family to Ditmas Park or Kensington, where she could give Teen Spirit a backyard and at least a small piece of that childhood idyll: watching the flowers grow, the dogwood tree bloom or the neighbor’s weird chain link fence.
Smartmom and Hepcat aspired to the American Dream, but Teen Spirit got the Brooklyn Dream instead. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
How cool was it to have his best friend living right downstairs? There’s a special closeness that develops between childhood neighbors in a New York apartment building.
Teen Spirit got to play on the sidewalks of Park Slope. Those summer nights were fun. Especially when the parents barbecued on the street and the kids made ’smores.
Teen Spirit never had to depend on his parents to drive him around except when he needed band equipment schlepped all the way to Red Hook. And he never had to worry about getting into a car with a drunk teenage driver.
From a young age, he had the freedom to walk wherever he wanted. Seventh Avenue. Prospect Park. Fifth Avenue. At the age of 14, he was riding the subway all over the city.
He got to watch his freelancer father agonize over work in his office (a.k.a. the living room). He got to see his mother sweat over a hot computer in her office (a.k.a. the dining room).
And think of the food. The cuisines of the world are available 24/7. Hey, what do you feel like tonight: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Grand Canyon?
Finally, he absorbed that worldly vibe that comes from living in New York City, which includes a comfort level with a diverse cast of characters, an interest in how people are different, and appreciation for the colorful and the unusual side of things.
So with the end of Teen Spirit’s childhood right around the corner, Smartmom is pretty sure that she and Hepcat gave Teen Spirit a childhood to remember. It may not be the pastoral childhood that Smartmom imagined, but it was a childhood Brooklyn-style.
And that makes him ready to be a man."
PL:
As always, Smartmom, your candor and openness in revealing your personal journey is refreshing and hopeful in a world where masks of adulthood tend to supplant the real thing far too often. And above all else, your kids have and will benefit from that openness on their journeys into adulthood, as Teen Spirit is now just beginning his.
I must take issue with two statements, though, that reflect a belief of yours, apparently, that many others hold onto as well. You refer to the end of childhood as "completing that idyllic stage of life..." and you refer to your son's infant years as the "Garden of Eden of Smartmom and Hepcat’s life together — before high school, middle age, and the realities of a 20-year marriage." That point of view may be common, but it is not the way it is naturally meant to be. Ending childhood is organically much more "idyllic" than childhood - for the child - because now, he can become the master of his own life as an adult in an adult world. As kids, we are continually subject to the constructs, dictates and foibles of the adults in whose care we exist in states of utter dependency. Adulthood is freedom, and yes, with that freedom comes self-responsibility, but that is the greatest gift of all: I get to choose. Yahoo! Furthermore, the twentieth year of a marriage should organically be the best so far - until the twenty-first - because unless you've stopped growing and thriving together, nothing behind you can be better than where you are and where you're going.
If there's any message we should be giving to our kids, then, it's that life gets better and better over time, that the future is to be embraced and sought after, that the Garden lies down the road, not in the past. If some previous times represent the good old days, who would want to grow up?
Here's Louise:
"In just a few months, Teen Spirit will turn 18. That’s the end of childhood, right? It’s the age when a boy can become a soldier and vote in a general election. He still can’t drink (legally, that is), but he can buy cigarettes and start working at the Park Slope Food Co-op as an adult member of the household.
Yeesh.
It’s weird to have a child who is at the end of childhood. That means he’s close to completing that idyllic stage of life that he will discuss again and again in bars, on first dates, in marital counseling and in memoir writing workshops.
His childhood may well be blamed for everything that goes right and wrong in his life, in his relationships and in his career. It will also be idealized and exaggerated. Events will be inflated; deprivations and high points will be exaggerated; parents and sibling will be demonized and glorified (though not always in equal measure).
For now, Smartmom is eschewing the “seems like yesterday” clichés about Teen Spirit’s ascent to full manhood. That said, she is allowing herself a few looks back. How is it possible, she has asked herself a few times this week, that it was nearly 18 years ago when she was wheeled into a delivery room to have her emergency C-section at Lenox Hill Hospital? To this day, she remembers singing, “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” as she lay in the recovery area.
Smartmom can remember the day they moved to Park Slope when Teen Spirit was a tiny 3-month-old. He was cute as a button — she and Hepcat called him their Maurice Sendak baby, thanks to his perfectly round face and his halo of blonde hair.
Truth be told, Teen Spirit was the cutest baby ever. No kidding. People used to stop them on the street to compliment their little boy. They were even asked on a few occasions if they were interested in having him model. Teen Spirit is actually on the cover of a corporation annual report wearing only a cloth diaper.
It’s funny to think back to that time. It’s like the Garden of Eden of Smartmom and Hepcat’s life together — before high school, middle age, and the realities of a 20-year marriage.
A lot of things didn’t turn out as they expected. For one thing, Smartmom and Hepcat never planned to stay in their small three-bedroom apartment this long. They didn’t think Teen Spirit’s tiny bedroom would be big enough for a 5-year-old.
Now at 17, Teen Spirit sleeps with his head touching one wall and his feet touching the other. Smartmom and Hepcat can hear his foot taps in their room, which is right next door.
But Teen Spirit never complained or went through that phase where he compared his life to the more-opulent lifestyles of his friends, who live in Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights brownstones. He’s always been comfortable in his own economic skin and doesn’t pine for material possessions or name-brand clothing. Quite the contrary, Teen Spirit dresses in clothing he finds on the street (washed first, most of the time).
Teen Spirit has always been very attached to their building on Third Street, especially when a boy named Eddie moved in downstairs when Teen Spirit was 3. The two quickly became best friends. For years, “I’m going down Eddie’s” was a constant refrain as the boys played non-stop in one or the other’s apartment.
The other refrain? “I’ll chain myself to a lamppost,” Teen Spirit would say whenever Smartmom and Hepcat were looking for a new home in whatever affordable neighborhood they were considering at the time.
Sadly, Eddie and his family moved away when he was 12, and it was a sad day for Teen Spirit. Smartmom always expected to follow their lead and move to a small town somewhere where they would have a big Victorian house with lots of space for everyone.
But Smartmom could never wrap her head around living anywhere else but Brooklyn. She never even got around to moving the family to Ditmas Park or Kensington, where she could give Teen Spirit a backyard and at least a small piece of that childhood idyll: watching the flowers grow, the dogwood tree bloom or the neighbor’s weird chain link fence.
Smartmom and Hepcat aspired to the American Dream, but Teen Spirit got the Brooklyn Dream instead. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
How cool was it to have his best friend living right downstairs? There’s a special closeness that develops between childhood neighbors in a New York apartment building.
Teen Spirit got to play on the sidewalks of Park Slope. Those summer nights were fun. Especially when the parents barbecued on the street and the kids made ’smores.
Teen Spirit never had to depend on his parents to drive him around except when he needed band equipment schlepped all the way to Red Hook. And he never had to worry about getting into a car with a drunk teenage driver.
From a young age, he had the freedom to walk wherever he wanted. Seventh Avenue. Prospect Park. Fifth Avenue. At the age of 14, he was riding the subway all over the city.
He got to watch his freelancer father agonize over work in his office (a.k.a. the living room). He got to see his mother sweat over a hot computer in her office (a.k.a. the dining room).
And think of the food. The cuisines of the world are available 24/7. Hey, what do you feel like tonight: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Grand Canyon?
Finally, he absorbed that worldly vibe that comes from living in New York City, which includes a comfort level with a diverse cast of characters, an interest in how people are different, and appreciation for the colorful and the unusual side of things.
So with the end of Teen Spirit’s childhood right around the corner, Smartmom is pretty sure that she and Hepcat gave Teen Spirit a childhood to remember. It may not be the pastoral childhood that Smartmom imagined, but it was a childhood Brooklyn-style.
And that makes him ready to be a man."
PL:
As always, Smartmom, your candor and openness in revealing your personal journey is refreshing and hopeful in a world where masks of adulthood tend to supplant the real thing far too often. And above all else, your kids have and will benefit from that openness on their journeys into adulthood, as Teen Spirit is now just beginning his.
I must take issue with two statements, though, that reflect a belief of yours, apparently, that many others hold onto as well. You refer to the end of childhood as "completing that idyllic stage of life..." and you refer to your son's infant years as the "Garden of Eden of Smartmom and Hepcat’s life together — before high school, middle age, and the realities of a 20-year marriage." That point of view may be common, but it is not the way it is naturally meant to be. Ending childhood is organically much more "idyllic" than childhood - for the child - because now, he can become the master of his own life as an adult in an adult world. As kids, we are continually subject to the constructs, dictates and foibles of the adults in whose care we exist in states of utter dependency. Adulthood is freedom, and yes, with that freedom comes self-responsibility, but that is the greatest gift of all: I get to choose. Yahoo! Furthermore, the twentieth year of a marriage should organically be the best so far - until the twenty-first - because unless you've stopped growing and thriving together, nothing behind you can be better than where you are and where you're going.
If there's any message we should be giving to our kids, then, it's that life gets better and better over time, that the future is to be embraced and sought after, that the Garden lies down the road, not in the past. If some previous times represent the good old days, who would want to grow up?
Anonymous Responds to "RUFFLED FEATHERS!!" And PL's Response.
Here's "Anonymous":
"Interesting. I'm wondering what she's REALLY angry about. Surely it's not that you're in a committed relationship without benefit of the state's approval, and that you haven't contributed sperm to the children you've raised..."
PL:
I am not at all surprised at the kind of response that my piece "ARE ALL MOMS MAD AT DAD?" received.
First, my tone in the piece was harsh and direct and meant to be. Apparently, some people think that because I am a therapist or a writer in a public forum, my tone should always be congenial. Sorry about that, but that's not a rule of etiquette I feel obliged to follow. I am not trying to convince or persuade anyone about anything on this blog. Nor am I trying to attract fans. I am speaking out on various subjects in my own way, and that can serve as a beacon for others if what I say and how I say it reaches them. Or not.
I see a lot of damaging things being done by parents to children, and I don't mean just the obvious kinds of abuse, but also in many ways that are considered socially acceptable and even sanctioned by our institutions. Again, sorry, but like I said in my other post that got some people pissed off, "ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GET LAID," parents don't get elevated status in my book because of biology.
Second, the notion that as a non-biological parent who has shared child-rearing with biological parents, I am somehow less qualified to speak out about parenting is a red herring. As a father who has worked from home for most of my career, I have spent more time with my children than most biological parents of either sex, and having raised TWO generations of children I have spent more cumulative years raising children than most biological parents. And add to that the fact that for thirty years, I have worked with children and their parents in therapy and come to understand their inner lives in ways that most parents don't even attempt. If not having a DNA connection to my children has done anything to make me a different kind of parent, it's that it has made it easier for my ego to not be involved in my parenting because I'm not hung-up on passing on my "name" or "bloodline" to my progeny. Because my children weren't "born" to me, I see our connection to each other as a soul thing, and as such, it has kept me in touch with my role as a temporary guide to my children while they find out what it is that they came here to do.
Finally, the bottom line is this - what I said in the previous posts mentioned here is that you don't get a free pass because you gave physical birth to a child, and if you're unhappy in any part of your life, it's your responsibility, not your spouse's. That's what the two pieces were about. As the messenger, I do use not only my knowledge and wisdom as a tool, but I also use myself and my own experience. I understand that when I do that, some people who don't like the message will attempt to discredit the messenger. That's too bad, and really a waste of time.
"Interesting. I'm wondering what she's REALLY angry about. Surely it's not that you're in a committed relationship without benefit of the state's approval, and that you haven't contributed sperm to the children you've raised..."
PL:
I am not at all surprised at the kind of response that my piece "ARE ALL MOMS MAD AT DAD?" received.
First, my tone in the piece was harsh and direct and meant to be. Apparently, some people think that because I am a therapist or a writer in a public forum, my tone should always be congenial. Sorry about that, but that's not a rule of etiquette I feel obliged to follow. I am not trying to convince or persuade anyone about anything on this blog. Nor am I trying to attract fans. I am speaking out on various subjects in my own way, and that can serve as a beacon for others if what I say and how I say it reaches them. Or not.
I see a lot of damaging things being done by parents to children, and I don't mean just the obvious kinds of abuse, but also in many ways that are considered socially acceptable and even sanctioned by our institutions. Again, sorry, but like I said in my other post that got some people pissed off, "ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GET LAID," parents don't get elevated status in my book because of biology.
Second, the notion that as a non-biological parent who has shared child-rearing with biological parents, I am somehow less qualified to speak out about parenting is a red herring. As a father who has worked from home for most of my career, I have spent more time with my children than most biological parents of either sex, and having raised TWO generations of children I have spent more cumulative years raising children than most biological parents. And add to that the fact that for thirty years, I have worked with children and their parents in therapy and come to understand their inner lives in ways that most parents don't even attempt. If not having a DNA connection to my children has done anything to make me a different kind of parent, it's that it has made it easier for my ego to not be involved in my parenting because I'm not hung-up on passing on my "name" or "bloodline" to my progeny. Because my children weren't "born" to me, I see our connection to each other as a soul thing, and as such, it has kept me in touch with my role as a temporary guide to my children while they find out what it is that they came here to do.
Finally, the bottom line is this - what I said in the previous posts mentioned here is that you don't get a free pass because you gave physical birth to a child, and if you're unhappy in any part of your life, it's your responsibility, not your spouse's. That's what the two pieces were about. As the messenger, I do use not only my knowledge and wisdom as a tool, but I also use myself and my own experience. I understand that when I do that, some people who don't like the message will attempt to discredit the messenger. That's too bad, and really a waste of time.
LOFF56 ON: "PSYCHOPATHIC KIDS THAT KILL DON'T HAVE 'DECENT' PARENTS!" - PL RESPONDS
Here's L56:
"Hey Pete.
This is not so much about the entry at hand here, but I'm interested in the one you cited regarding autism. I must have missed it the first time around, but thanks for providing the link. Understand I'm getting in on this for the first time.
I can't say that I agree or disagree with the idea that autism is entwined so thoroughly with the parents' psyche. Mostly because I just don't know enough about it. But it's really a fascinating idea that I haven't really heard much about.
I'm curious about the research (if any) that's been done on this. Do you know of any studies that have been done to isolate parental involvement as a major contributing factor to autism? Perhaps twin studies to rule out genetics. I think I've heard of studies done with twins separated at birth which isolate environmental factors from genetic factors. (Although this is probably a statistical long shot for autism). What about controlled experiments with treatments involving the parents versus not involving the parents. To be quite honest, I didn't think that autism was a curable thing. If it's truly a psychological problem does that mean that there are hopes for a psychological solution? Also Fischkin makes an interesting point about having one child that's not autistic. If it's the same genetics (same parents obviously) and the same parental "issues" (for a lack of a better term), why the two different results? Or do the psychological factors involved with two separate births alter the psychological hair-triggers enough to get two different results?
I'm sure you've heard a lot of skepticism on this idea, but I'm not coming at it from that angle. I've just never heard of this, and I would be mighty impressed by the power of psychology if there was some real hard evidence for this idea."
PL:
Very thoughtful comments and questions, L56, and since I started out in the therapy business working with children, these are issues close to my heart that I have pondered and researched for decades myself. Ironically, understanding that childhood mental and emotional disabilities were inextricably tied to parenting actually was the prevailing view in psychology up until about 25 years ago or so.
Bruno Bettelheim, an Austrian child psychologist, and a refugee to the United States in 1939, gained an international reputation for his views on autism and for his success in treating emotionally disturbed children.
Bettelheim subscribed to and became a prominent proponent of the theory of autism that autistic behaviors stemmed from an emotional disconnect in the children's mothers. Bettelheim's 1967 book, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, was very well-known and respected at the time, in both the the popular press and in professional circles.
Unfortunately, and I was on the ground in the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's to witness it, the tide of government support for funding long-term residential psychotherapy turned with the election of Ronald Reagan, and simultaneously, parents joined forces with the medical profession and Big Pharma to discredit Bettleheim's theories - and successes - in favor of a genetic/biological etiology, in which nature was to blame for autism and, of course, drugs, not therapy, were the solution.
Tragically, to this day, not one proponent of the "nature fucked up" ideology has been able to claim success in treating autism. BUT - and isn't this always the most important thing - it got parents off the hook! Oh, yeah, and it made big bucks for doctors and drug companies. Amazing how much money there is in NOT curing illnesses, huh? Kind of like AIDS, cancer, diabetes...
Hey, thanks for getting my juices flowing this morning, L56!
"Hey Pete.
This is not so much about the entry at hand here, but I'm interested in the one you cited regarding autism. I must have missed it the first time around, but thanks for providing the link. Understand I'm getting in on this for the first time.
I can't say that I agree or disagree with the idea that autism is entwined so thoroughly with the parents' psyche. Mostly because I just don't know enough about it. But it's really a fascinating idea that I haven't really heard much about.
I'm curious about the research (if any) that's been done on this. Do you know of any studies that have been done to isolate parental involvement as a major contributing factor to autism? Perhaps twin studies to rule out genetics. I think I've heard of studies done with twins separated at birth which isolate environmental factors from genetic factors. (Although this is probably a statistical long shot for autism). What about controlled experiments with treatments involving the parents versus not involving the parents. To be quite honest, I didn't think that autism was a curable thing. If it's truly a psychological problem does that mean that there are hopes for a psychological solution? Also Fischkin makes an interesting point about having one child that's not autistic. If it's the same genetics (same parents obviously) and the same parental "issues" (for a lack of a better term), why the two different results? Or do the psychological factors involved with two separate births alter the psychological hair-triggers enough to get two different results?
I'm sure you've heard a lot of skepticism on this idea, but I'm not coming at it from that angle. I've just never heard of this, and I would be mighty impressed by the power of psychology if there was some real hard evidence for this idea."
PL:
Very thoughtful comments and questions, L56, and since I started out in the therapy business working with children, these are issues close to my heart that I have pondered and researched for decades myself. Ironically, understanding that childhood mental and emotional disabilities were inextricably tied to parenting actually was the prevailing view in psychology up until about 25 years ago or so.
Bruno Bettelheim, an Austrian child psychologist, and a refugee to the United States in 1939, gained an international reputation for his views on autism and for his success in treating emotionally disturbed children.
Bettelheim subscribed to and became a prominent proponent of the theory of autism that autistic behaviors stemmed from an emotional disconnect in the children's mothers. Bettelheim's 1967 book, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self, was very well-known and respected at the time, in both the the popular press and in professional circles.
Unfortunately, and I was on the ground in the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's to witness it, the tide of government support for funding long-term residential psychotherapy turned with the election of Ronald Reagan, and simultaneously, parents joined forces with the medical profession and Big Pharma to discredit Bettleheim's theories - and successes - in favor of a genetic/biological etiology, in which nature was to blame for autism and, of course, drugs, not therapy, were the solution.
Tragically, to this day, not one proponent of the "nature fucked up" ideology has been able to claim success in treating autism. BUT - and isn't this always the most important thing - it got parents off the hook! Oh, yeah, and it made big bucks for doctors and drug companies. Amazing how much money there is in NOT curing illnesses, huh? Kind of like AIDS, cancer, diabetes...
Hey, thanks for getting my juices flowing this morning, L56!
CDC REPORTS DRAMATIC RISE IN "AUTISM!" IS IT REALLY "TOUCH?!"
THIS is from a news article released on Reuters yesterday:
"About one in 88 children in the United States has autism or a related disorder, the highest estimate to date and one that is sure to revive a national argument over how the condition is diagnosed and treated. The estimate released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention represents an overall increase of about 25 percent since the last analysis in 2006 and a near-doubling of the rate reported in 2002. Among boys, the rate of autism spectrum disorders is one in 54, almost five times that of girls, in whom the rate is one in 252."
Here on FPL and on other blogs, I have debated with parents and medical professionals about the causes of autism before. Many took umbrage with my position that we shouldn't ignore environmental factors, including the infant-mother relationship, when trying to understand what causes the so-called "disorder." Since Bruno Bettelheim wrote his landmark book, "LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH," on the subject sixty years ago, parents and doctors have tried to figure out the cause of autism, and the theories have abounded, from genetics to toxic vaccines to leaking plastic water bottles.
Well, guilt-ridden parents (and parents in denial) take heart - there's another theory out there, and it is... out there!
This other theory asks the question simply:
"What if autism isn't a disorder at all?"
What if - take a breath - what we are mistakenly referring to as a disability is actually an evolutionary advance for humankind?
That's where the new series, "TOUCH," comes in. In the show, a young "autistic" boy, David Mazouz, the son of a bewildered single father, played by Keifer Sutherland, doesn't speak, is obsessed with numbers and doesn't want to be physically touched, typical signs of what we diagnose as autism. But the boy also has a gift - he can predict, through numbers, events that will take place in other people's lives, and in so doing, alter their course and the course of humanity for the better.
The concept of the series may be novel for network TV, but it is not unheard of. The various sources of channeled information that I often reference on FPL from time to time have frequently talked about the recent generations of human beings being born on planet Earth as coming in with fuller awareness of who they are as spiritual/extraterrestrial beings and with abilities to see beyond the veil of the 3-dimensional space-time continuum as we think of it.
Okay, for some of you, I may be too far off the rails here. Challenging the traditions, dogma and behavior of parents, doctors, teachers and politicians is one thing, but autism as a sign of otherworldly abilities?! Well, the truth is, the world of entertainment, which is mainly an expression of our imagination, is always ahead of mainstream science and conventional wisdom. Human beings were traveling to the moon in movies decades before it actually happened. Einstein himself once said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
So, maybe Touch is onto something. Maybe it, like many shows on TV, going back 50 years to the original Star Trek, is actually channeled information coming to us in an entertaining way to ease us into the new, expanded realities.
Anyway, does this let parents and doctors off the hook for causing autism? Well, sort of but not exactly. It just demonstrates that whatever a soul comes in to experience and accomplish, it will choose the parents who will help set up the conditions necessary for said task. You see, the beauty of the universe is that everything - everything - is material for the growth and expansion of who we are.
"About one in 88 children in the United States has autism or a related disorder, the highest estimate to date and one that is sure to revive a national argument over how the condition is diagnosed and treated. The estimate released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention represents an overall increase of about 25 percent since the last analysis in 2006 and a near-doubling of the rate reported in 2002. Among boys, the rate of autism spectrum disorders is one in 54, almost five times that of girls, in whom the rate is one in 252."
Here on FPL and on other blogs, I have debated with parents and medical professionals about the causes of autism before. Many took umbrage with my position that we shouldn't ignore environmental factors, including the infant-mother relationship, when trying to understand what causes the so-called "disorder." Since Bruno Bettelheim wrote his landmark book, "LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH," on the subject sixty years ago, parents and doctors have tried to figure out the cause of autism, and the theories have abounded, from genetics to toxic vaccines to leaking plastic water bottles.
Well, guilt-ridden parents (and parents in denial) take heart - there's another theory out there, and it is... out there!
This other theory asks the question simply:
"What if autism isn't a disorder at all?"
What if - take a breath - what we are mistakenly referring to as a disability is actually an evolutionary advance for humankind?
That's where the new series, "TOUCH," comes in. In the show, a young "autistic" boy, David Mazouz, the son of a bewildered single father, played by Keifer Sutherland, doesn't speak, is obsessed with numbers and doesn't want to be physically touched, typical signs of what we diagnose as autism. But the boy also has a gift - he can predict, through numbers, events that will take place in other people's lives, and in so doing, alter their course and the course of humanity for the better.
The concept of the series may be novel for network TV, but it is not unheard of. The various sources of channeled information that I often reference on FPL from time to time have frequently talked about the recent generations of human beings being born on planet Earth as coming in with fuller awareness of who they are as spiritual/extraterrestrial beings and with abilities to see beyond the veil of the 3-dimensional space-time continuum as we think of it.
Okay, for some of you, I may be too far off the rails here. Challenging the traditions, dogma and behavior of parents, doctors, teachers and politicians is one thing, but autism as a sign of otherworldly abilities?! Well, the truth is, the world of entertainment, which is mainly an expression of our imagination, is always ahead of mainstream science and conventional wisdom. Human beings were traveling to the moon in movies decades before it actually happened. Einstein himself once said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
So, maybe Touch is onto something. Maybe it, like many shows on TV, going back 50 years to the original Star Trek, is actually channeled information coming to us in an entertaining way to ease us into the new, expanded realities.
Anyway, does this let parents and doctors off the hook for causing autism? Well, sort of but not exactly. It just demonstrates that whatever a soul comes in to experience and accomplish, it will choose the parents who will help set up the conditions necessary for said task. You see, the beauty of the universe is that everything - everything - is material for the growth and expansion of who we are.
Get those kids out of your bed. Please!
In today's NY Times is a piece on parents who have their children (not infants) sleep in their bed, and how many of said parents keep it a secret for fear of being criticized. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/health/23well.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=science&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1193151604-FG49PfGcnl+QvHZvv1bixw)
Well, let me add my critical voice to the discussion. There's a reason why such parents fear criticism. I can tell you of countless situations where a child was suffering from developmental problems and delayed maturity, even up to as old as seven-to-ten years of age, because parents were allowing the child into their adult bed. In these situations, when the parents followed my recommendation to get the child out of the parental bed, the child experienced a maturational growth spurt almost immediately. Why? Because what children want and what children need are not always the same thing. In early childhood, the pull to regress back to an earlier stage of development is strong. Growing up is hard. But in every species of higher mammal, the mother knows that her offsrping have to be pushed out of the nest and off of the maternal teat, so the young being can attain healthy, life-sustaining independence. Fortunately, for those animals such good parenting is instinctual. Unfortunately, for human children, parents can overrule their instincts. I've said this before and I'll say it again - parents who let their children into their bed past infancy are emotionally lazy, and are not operating from a place of mature parental love, but rather are being driven by their own unworked on fears of deprivation. Get those kids out of your bed. Please!
Peter Loffredo, LCSW
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/
Well, let me add my critical voice to the discussion. There's a reason why such parents fear criticism. I can tell you of countless situations where a child was suffering from developmental problems and delayed maturity, even up to as old as seven-to-ten years of age, because parents were allowing the child into their adult bed. In these situations, when the parents followed my recommendation to get the child out of the parental bed, the child experienced a maturational growth spurt almost immediately. Why? Because what children want and what children need are not always the same thing. In early childhood, the pull to regress back to an earlier stage of development is strong. Growing up is hard. But in every species of higher mammal, the mother knows that her offsrping have to be pushed out of the nest and off of the maternal teat, so the young being can attain healthy, life-sustaining independence. Fortunately, for those animals such good parenting is instinctual. Unfortunately, for human children, parents can overrule their instincts. I've said this before and I'll say it again - parents who let their children into their bed past infancy are emotionally lazy, and are not operating from a place of mature parental love, but rather are being driven by their own unworked on fears of deprivation. Get those kids out of your bed. Please!
Peter Loffredo, LCSW
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/
NOW HEAR THIS! PARENTAL OVERINVOLVEMENT IS NOT A GOOD THING!!
Here's an article I found yesterday that hits the nail on the head about the damage done to kids by overinvolved parents. It's entitled: "What Price, Privilege? Has our overinvolved parenting style created a generation of kids with an impaired sense of self?"
Needless to say, I've been screaming "YES!" from the rooftops about this forever. This is a very professional and clinical piece stating the case.
Here are some excerpts:
"If warm connection has been shown to be the silver bullet of effective parenting, how can it possibly damage children or impair their development? The hard-to-face answer is that warmth and connection easily can slide into overinvolvement, enmeshment and intrusion. Sometimes our children's unsafe behavior dictates that we have no choice but to fully insert ourselves into their lives, but more frequently we have drifted into overinvolvement out of our own fear of uncertainty or anxiety about loss of connection. At times it can be difficult to know whether we are being appropriately loving, or intrusive. But listen to your instincts, and your children; they will usually be only too happy to help you with this distinction.
"Persistent worry about how well one's child stacks up against other children inevitably leads to parents who are overinvolved and emotionally exhausted as well as to children who are impaired in their ability to function independently. In spite of good intentions, the levels of adult overinvolvement that have become typical in so many comfortable homes and communities are startling and counterproductive. Both intrusion and overinvolvement prevent the development of the kinds of skills that children need to be successful: the ability to be a self-starter, the willingness to engage in trial-and-error learning, the ability to delay gratification, to tolerate frustration, to show self control, to learn from mistakes and to be a flexible and creative thinker. Kids who develop these skills have a large toolbox to dig into, both to enrich their lives and to help them problem-solve.
"Little has been written about the falling off of creativity among kids; it is, however, an ominous trend. Creativity, the ability to look at things from a fresh perspective, is an underrated but critical life skill. Children can read the needs of their parents remarkably well. They know that the mother who spends a disproportionate amount of time and energy inserting herself into her child's life is likely to be fending off her own unhappiness. She needs to be overinvolved, and, in an unfortunately common psychological drama, her child is willing to sacrifice his own needs to meet hers.
"Parental overinvolvement and intrusion are typically indications that a parent's own needs are not being adequately met. The more we pour ourselves, our talents, concerns and aspirations into our children, the less room they have to develop their own talents, concerns and aspirations. Autonomy, not dependency, is always the goal of good parenting. Mother birds know the value of nudging their fledglings out of the nest so that they learn how to soar on their own wings. Overinvolved parents are clipping their children's wings.
"Parents who persistently fall on the side of intervening for their child, as opposed to supporting their child's attempts to problem solve, interfere with the most important task of childhood and adolescence: the development of a sense of self. Autonomy, what we commonly call independence, along with competence and interpersonal relationships, are considered to be inborn human needs. Their development is central to psychological health. In a supportive and respectful family, children go about the business of forging a "sense of self" by being exposed to, and learning to manage, increasingly complex personal and interpersonal challenges.
"When we coerce, intrude on or take over for our children unnecessarily we may be 'spoiling' them, but the far more significant consequence is that we are interfering with their ability to construct a sense of self. My patient was empty because she had not been able to develop the internal resources that would make it possible for her to feel that she 'owned' her life or could manage her feelings. She felt little control over what happened to her and had no confidence in her ability to handle the curveballs of adolescence.
"Well-meaning parents contribute to problems in self-development by pressuring their children, emphasizing external measures of success, being overly critical, and being alternately emotionally unavailable or intrusive. Becoming independent, and forging an identity becomes particularly difficult for children under these circumstances.
What looks like healthy assimilation into the family and community -- getting high grades, conforming to parents' and community standards, and being receptive to the interests and activities valued by others -- can be deceptive. Kids can present as models of competence and still lack a fundamental sense of who they are. Psychologists call this the 'false self,' and it is highly correlated with a number of emotional problems, most notably depression.
"We need to examine our parenting paradigm. Raising children has come to look more and more like a business endeavor and less and less like an endeavor of the heart. We are overly concerned with "the bottom line," with how our children 'do' rather than with who our children "are." We pour time, attention and money into insuring their performance, consistently making it to their soccer game while inconsistently making it to the dinner table. The fact that our persistent and often critical involvement is well intended, that we believe that our efforts ultimately will help our children to be happy and to successfully compete in a demanding world, does not lessen the damage."
Needless to say, I've been screaming "YES!" from the rooftops about this forever. This is a very professional and clinical piece stating the case.
Here are some excerpts:
"If warm connection has been shown to be the silver bullet of effective parenting, how can it possibly damage children or impair their development? The hard-to-face answer is that warmth and connection easily can slide into overinvolvement, enmeshment and intrusion. Sometimes our children's unsafe behavior dictates that we have no choice but to fully insert ourselves into their lives, but more frequently we have drifted into overinvolvement out of our own fear of uncertainty or anxiety about loss of connection. At times it can be difficult to know whether we are being appropriately loving, or intrusive. But listen to your instincts, and your children; they will usually be only too happy to help you with this distinction.
"Persistent worry about how well one's child stacks up against other children inevitably leads to parents who are overinvolved and emotionally exhausted as well as to children who are impaired in their ability to function independently. In spite of good intentions, the levels of adult overinvolvement that have become typical in so many comfortable homes and communities are startling and counterproductive. Both intrusion and overinvolvement prevent the development of the kinds of skills that children need to be successful: the ability to be a self-starter, the willingness to engage in trial-and-error learning, the ability to delay gratification, to tolerate frustration, to show self control, to learn from mistakes and to be a flexible and creative thinker. Kids who develop these skills have a large toolbox to dig into, both to enrich their lives and to help them problem-solve.
"Little has been written about the falling off of creativity among kids; it is, however, an ominous trend. Creativity, the ability to look at things from a fresh perspective, is an underrated but critical life skill. Children can read the needs of their parents remarkably well. They know that the mother who spends a disproportionate amount of time and energy inserting herself into her child's life is likely to be fending off her own unhappiness. She needs to be overinvolved, and, in an unfortunately common psychological drama, her child is willing to sacrifice his own needs to meet hers.
"Parental overinvolvement and intrusion are typically indications that a parent's own needs are not being adequately met. The more we pour ourselves, our talents, concerns and aspirations into our children, the less room they have to develop their own talents, concerns and aspirations. Autonomy, not dependency, is always the goal of good parenting. Mother birds know the value of nudging their fledglings out of the nest so that they learn how to soar on their own wings. Overinvolved parents are clipping their children's wings.
"Parents who persistently fall on the side of intervening for their child, as opposed to supporting their child's attempts to problem solve, interfere with the most important task of childhood and adolescence: the development of a sense of self. Autonomy, what we commonly call independence, along with competence and interpersonal relationships, are considered to be inborn human needs. Their development is central to psychological health. In a supportive and respectful family, children go about the business of forging a "sense of self" by being exposed to, and learning to manage, increasingly complex personal and interpersonal challenges.
"When we coerce, intrude on or take over for our children unnecessarily we may be 'spoiling' them, but the far more significant consequence is that we are interfering with their ability to construct a sense of self. My patient was empty because she had not been able to develop the internal resources that would make it possible for her to feel that she 'owned' her life or could manage her feelings. She felt little control over what happened to her and had no confidence in her ability to handle the curveballs of adolescence.
"Well-meaning parents contribute to problems in self-development by pressuring their children, emphasizing external measures of success, being overly critical, and being alternately emotionally unavailable or intrusive. Becoming independent, and forging an identity becomes particularly difficult for children under these circumstances.
What looks like healthy assimilation into the family and community -- getting high grades, conforming to parents' and community standards, and being receptive to the interests and activities valued by others -- can be deceptive. Kids can present as models of competence and still lack a fundamental sense of who they are. Psychologists call this the 'false self,' and it is highly correlated with a number of emotional problems, most notably depression.
"We need to examine our parenting paradigm. Raising children has come to look more and more like a business endeavor and less and less like an endeavor of the heart. We are overly concerned with "the bottom line," with how our children 'do' rather than with who our children "are." We pour time, attention and money into insuring their performance, consistently making it to their soccer game while inconsistently making it to the dinner table. The fact that our persistent and often critical involvement is well intended, that we believe that our efforts ultimately will help our children to be happy and to successfully compete in a demanding world, does not lessen the damage."
AUNTLORI WITH A STRONG COMMENT AND EXAMPLE OF WHY KIDS HAVE NO EMPATHY!/PL RESPONDS!
Here's Auntlori:
Finally, the opportunity and motivation to comment on this blog subject, sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors-two toddlers in the back ground.....
OK, my husband is a high school teacher and coaches varsity sports, as well. He's had a lot of experience with teenagers, their parents and all kinds of over-indulgence and over-involvement, talked about on this blog, for many years. Here's the latest example of why so many of today's kids are turning out incapable of empathy, self-reliance, and motivation for anything beyond themselves:
My husband teaches a course to high school seniors that is required for graduation. It is called Senior Project. The project is of the student's choosing and the field is wide open. They spend half the semester doing research on their project and the other half of the semester putting their research into action. He's had projects such as raising chickens, producing a CD, midwifery, raising a puppy, cooking, etc. While there is freedom in choice of project, it is still a required course, with specific guidelines and dealines, and IT IS REQUIRED FOR GRADUATION.
Each and every year, about two weeks before graduation, he gets the inevitible tears from the students who refused to take is seriously, refused every EXTRA opportunity to complete their work, refused all the extra help offered and now face the reality that they won't graduate. This year, one student's mother got involved, which is not uncommon but this parent actually threatened a lawsuit against the school if they did not pass her son, her son who did not complete any of his work, ignored all extra opportunities, and simply did not care. The parents ignored phone calls, emails and letters home informing them of his failure. The prinicpal, out of fear of a lawsuit, immediately gave the student ANOTHER opportunity and suggested that perhaps in the future the teachers could call home once a week to update parents on their child's status in school. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!! These are 18 year olds! Last night, at 7 pm, my husband was sitting in his classroom with the kid and his mother, while the kid did the work and the mother was typing up his work. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????????? This is a senior in HIGH SCHOOL!! A LAWSUIT??!! The school is going to be punished for doing exactly what they said and are supposed to do when your child doesn't do what he/she is supposed to do?
Do these over-involved, over-indulgent parents actually think they are creating individuals who will be able to take care of themselves as adults? These students end up in my freshmen college classrooms and fall flat on their face because no longer are parents allowed to be involved, no longer are notes sent home, no longer are there any reminders what so ever about due dates for assignments.
What the hell is a mother doing sitting in a classroom typing papers for her son at 7:00 on a Monday night, days before graduation?
Today's generation is not empathetic because THEY CAN'T SEE PAST THEIR OWN NOSES! How can you possibly have any empathy for anyone at all when the only thing you can see is yourself and the little bubble you are walking around in. Parents-WAKE UP, you're not doing anyone a favor. Let your kids fail, let them learn the consequences for their own behavior, let them learn appreciation, let them learn the thrill of becoming successful, let them gain confidence and independence. Your over-involvement is self-serving and setting your kids up for disaster as adults!
Here's PL:
Indeed, Auntlori, your example vividly illustrates the sad state of parenting in so many quarters, and the disastrous results for all involved. I will add one caveat, though, and it relates to The Wave of necessary change I've been talking about that is afoot in recent times. Our educational systems, just like parenting, have fallen flat on their faces when it comes to inspiring kids to learn. No doubt your husband is dedicated and seeks to inspire his students, but by the time they've reached him they are already late teenagers and tainted by years of rote, mandatory force-feeding of information, not that different in its effect than the spoon-feeding they were subject to by their parents. In the best of systems, kids don't need to be inspired to learn, it is an innate urge in them. The question to be asked is how to we drive that urge out of them in the first place?
To be continued, for sure, but thanks, Auntlori. Thoughtful as always!
Finally, the opportunity and motivation to comment on this blog subject, sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors-two toddlers in the back ground.....
OK, my husband is a high school teacher and coaches varsity sports, as well. He's had a lot of experience with teenagers, their parents and all kinds of over-indulgence and over-involvement, talked about on this blog, for many years. Here's the latest example of why so many of today's kids are turning out incapable of empathy, self-reliance, and motivation for anything beyond themselves:
My husband teaches a course to high school seniors that is required for graduation. It is called Senior Project. The project is of the student's choosing and the field is wide open. They spend half the semester doing research on their project and the other half of the semester putting their research into action. He's had projects such as raising chickens, producing a CD, midwifery, raising a puppy, cooking, etc. While there is freedom in choice of project, it is still a required course, with specific guidelines and dealines, and IT IS REQUIRED FOR GRADUATION.
Each and every year, about two weeks before graduation, he gets the inevitible tears from the students who refused to take is seriously, refused every EXTRA opportunity to complete their work, refused all the extra help offered and now face the reality that they won't graduate. This year, one student's mother got involved, which is not uncommon but this parent actually threatened a lawsuit against the school if they did not pass her son, her son who did not complete any of his work, ignored all extra opportunities, and simply did not care. The parents ignored phone calls, emails and letters home informing them of his failure. The prinicpal, out of fear of a lawsuit, immediately gave the student ANOTHER opportunity and suggested that perhaps in the future the teachers could call home once a week to update parents on their child's status in school. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!! These are 18 year olds! Last night, at 7 pm, my husband was sitting in his classroom with the kid and his mother, while the kid did the work and the mother was typing up his work. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????????? This is a senior in HIGH SCHOOL!! A LAWSUIT??!! The school is going to be punished for doing exactly what they said and are supposed to do when your child doesn't do what he/she is supposed to do?
Do these over-involved, over-indulgent parents actually think they are creating individuals who will be able to take care of themselves as adults? These students end up in my freshmen college classrooms and fall flat on their face because no longer are parents allowed to be involved, no longer are notes sent home, no longer are there any reminders what so ever about due dates for assignments.
What the hell is a mother doing sitting in a classroom typing papers for her son at 7:00 on a Monday night, days before graduation?
Today's generation is not empathetic because THEY CAN'T SEE PAST THEIR OWN NOSES! How can you possibly have any empathy for anyone at all when the only thing you can see is yourself and the little bubble you are walking around in. Parents-WAKE UP, you're not doing anyone a favor. Let your kids fail, let them learn the consequences for their own behavior, let them learn appreciation, let them learn the thrill of becoming successful, let them gain confidence and independence. Your over-involvement is self-serving and setting your kids up for disaster as adults!
Here's PL:
Indeed, Auntlori, your example vividly illustrates the sad state of parenting in so many quarters, and the disastrous results for all involved. I will add one caveat, though, and it relates to The Wave of necessary change I've been talking about that is afoot in recent times. Our educational systems, just like parenting, have fallen flat on their faces when it comes to inspiring kids to learn. No doubt your husband is dedicated and seeks to inspire his students, but by the time they've reached him they are already late teenagers and tainted by years of rote, mandatory force-feeding of information, not that different in its effect than the spoon-feeding they were subject to by their parents. In the best of systems, kids don't need to be inspired to learn, it is an innate urge in them. The question to be asked is how to we drive that urge out of them in the first place?
To be continued, for sure, but thanks, Auntlori. Thoughtful as always!
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
My father was 20 years old when I was born in 1954. My mother was 21. Although being married and having children at that age was pretty much the norm in those baby boom years, when I think about it now, as a grown man who has raised children, and as a psychotherapist who’s worked with people of all ages, it is stunning. My parents, for all their good intentions, had no real wisdom to offer a growing child. They couldn’t. Developmentally, they had just begun the early stages of adulthood.
Erik Erikson, one of the few well-known psychologist who wrote about the developmental stages of adulthood,and who I referenced for a class I taught on adulthood, said this about the young adult:
“It is only after a reasonable sense of identity has been established that real intimacy with others can be possible. ‘Generativity’ is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation. This is a stage of growth of the healthy personality, and where such enrichment fails, regression from generativity to an obsessive need for pseudo intimacy takes place, often with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment. The mere fact of having, or even wanting children does not itself attest to generativity.”
The person I called “Dad” back then, now the 75 year old man I will call tomorrow to say “Happy Father’s Day” to, had issues… and consequently, so did I. And not just because he was young.
But as I’ve often said to people, underneath our character structure elements lies the true light of our higher selves, of our souls.
Technically speaking, my father’s main character structures were psychopathic and masochistic. By clicking on the words, you can see the problems that caused him... and me. His grandiosity, his need for attention, his sadistic style of relating to his underlings (both his kids and his employees) caused me, among other things, to think I was "too sensitive" as a child, so by the time I'd reached adolescence I had learned how not to cry (When I finally broke through my character structure as a 40-year old man, and once again became able to cry fully, it felt like the greatest gift imaginable.).
But there's more to our stories than the slings and arrows we must endure as children at the hands of our parents. If you check out the “higher self” part of the charts, you will find my true inheritance from my “old man” (still so young it’s embarrassing at times!) and perhaps yours.
My father embraced life. He got up every day, and still does, with an energy and attitude that said it was good to be alive, that there were things worth doing in life, and not just out of obligation, but out of desire. As a result, even though we were a working class family, and no matter what the economic ups and downs of the decades of my youth, our life always felt abundant. It was primarily my father's attitude that inspired that feeling. As a painting contractor, and then later a home improvement contractor, my father worked for some very wealthy people. I spent my summers working for him in the incredible homes of some of the rich and famous. Yet, we entered those homes, thanks to my father, like we belonged there, like we were partners in a project with the home owners, not like lowly laborers. (If anything, at times it seemed as if the customers were working for my father and not the other way around!)
My father created things. He was always building or re-building, designing or redecorating something, and it really made him happy to do so. It was (and still is) a family joke among my siblings that when dad was worried or anxious about something, he'd add another room or a deck or some kind of addition to our house.
We tend to form our personalities in both emulation of and in defiance of our parents, very often the one of the same gender. Miraculously, like everything that seems to "randomly" occur in life, our soul makes use of that material to fulfill our destinies. So, I am a psychotherapist in spite of my father, who even just recently referred to my profession of inner world exploration as not being "in the real world." But I am also a writer who has written music and screenplays and has this blog because I, too, in identification with my father, am fired-up by the need to create. And like my father, I don't doubt that even in my fifties, if I want to become a successful writer, I can.
So, thanks, Dad - for the good, the bad and the ugly! For dishing it out, and for taking a few blows in return.
And folks, take heart - if you do the work to face what was negative about your parents and your childhood, you don't end up empty and bereft. By surfacing the dark stuff into the light, it dissipates, and you end up with what was good about your childhood, and you can understand why your soul chose those parents to be born to.
Happy Father's Day!
Erik Erikson, one of the few well-known psychologist who wrote about the developmental stages of adulthood,and who I referenced for a class I taught on adulthood, said this about the young adult:
“It is only after a reasonable sense of identity has been established that real intimacy with others can be possible. ‘Generativity’ is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation. This is a stage of growth of the healthy personality, and where such enrichment fails, regression from generativity to an obsessive need for pseudo intimacy takes place, often with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment. The mere fact of having, or even wanting children does not itself attest to generativity.”
The person I called “Dad” back then, now the 75 year old man I will call tomorrow to say “Happy Father’s Day” to, had issues… and consequently, so did I. And not just because he was young.
But as I’ve often said to people, underneath our character structure elements lies the true light of our higher selves, of our souls.
Technically speaking, my father’s main character structures were psychopathic and masochistic. By clicking on the words, you can see the problems that caused him... and me. His grandiosity, his need for attention, his sadistic style of relating to his underlings (both his kids and his employees) caused me, among other things, to think I was "too sensitive" as a child, so by the time I'd reached adolescence I had learned how not to cry (When I finally broke through my character structure as a 40-year old man, and once again became able to cry fully, it felt like the greatest gift imaginable.).
But there's more to our stories than the slings and arrows we must endure as children at the hands of our parents. If you check out the “higher self” part of the charts, you will find my true inheritance from my “old man” (still so young it’s embarrassing at times!) and perhaps yours.
My father embraced life. He got up every day, and still does, with an energy and attitude that said it was good to be alive, that there were things worth doing in life, and not just out of obligation, but out of desire. As a result, even though we were a working class family, and no matter what the economic ups and downs of the decades of my youth, our life always felt abundant. It was primarily my father's attitude that inspired that feeling. As a painting contractor, and then later a home improvement contractor, my father worked for some very wealthy people. I spent my summers working for him in the incredible homes of some of the rich and famous. Yet, we entered those homes, thanks to my father, like we belonged there, like we were partners in a project with the home owners, not like lowly laborers. (If anything, at times it seemed as if the customers were working for my father and not the other way around!)
My father created things. He was always building or re-building, designing or redecorating something, and it really made him happy to do so. It was (and still is) a family joke among my siblings that when dad was worried or anxious about something, he'd add another room or a deck or some kind of addition to our house.
We tend to form our personalities in both emulation of and in defiance of our parents, very often the one of the same gender. Miraculously, like everything that seems to "randomly" occur in life, our soul makes use of that material to fulfill our destinies. So, I am a psychotherapist in spite of my father, who even just recently referred to my profession of inner world exploration as not being "in the real world." But I am also a writer who has written music and screenplays and has this blog because I, too, in identification with my father, am fired-up by the need to create. And like my father, I don't doubt that even in my fifties, if I want to become a successful writer, I can.
So, thanks, Dad - for the good, the bad and the ugly! For dishing it out, and for taking a few blows in return.
And folks, take heart - if you do the work to face what was negative about your parents and your childhood, you don't end up empty and bereft. By surfacing the dark stuff into the light, it dissipates, and you end up with what was good about your childhood, and you can understand why your soul chose those parents to be born to.
Happy Father's Day!
REPOST: IN PRAISE OF LAZY PARENTING!
Bravo! Yahoo! I love this!!
This wonderful article, "In Praise of Lazy Parenting," once appeared in an issue of Wondertime Magazine. In a playful but dead-on bit of writing, the author and mother, Brett Paesel, describes the benefits to all of being an adult around your kids, so your kids can be kids. I have been saying this as loudly as I can for years now. But now, listen to someone else.
This is music-to-my-ears from Paesel:
"Your devotion to your own well-being may benefit your children more than you know. It could be making you a happier, saner mother. You could be doing your kids a favor by giving them a chance to develop a solid sense of independence. In fact, you could even consider your laissez-faire approach an act of faith in your kids and their ability to figure things out for themselves."
Yes! Yes! That is one of my biggest chastisements of the over-involved, course-controlling parent - you are showing no faith in the child's innate ability to learn and grow in a direction set forth before birth by their souls. In fact, you are treating your children as if they were soulless, and therefore in desperate need of your self-ordained Godly intervention.
Here's more from Paesel:
"I’ve noticed that an unintended benefit of my indolence is that my sons have made do with each other as playmates — thereby becoming best friends. This is something I hadn’t anticipated, since they’re almost four years apart. But last Saturday, after spending the entire afternoon with just each other, they told me they’re starting a business together: selling information they’ve printed out from the Internet. I feel proud. And why mess with this potentially lucrative partnership?"
Right. Children learn best from each other. Parents can only input information to children, and that inputting decreases their independent capacities to learn and be inquisitive, and the information being given is always, ALWAYS biased by the parents' set of experiences, beliefs and values.
Keep going, Brett:
"Since Spence [the oldest] wants more sophisticated company, he’s teaching 3-year-old Murphy to read. Spencer started reading at around 4 because, though I love reading chapter books, I tired of his repeated requests to hear dry accounts of the life cycle of beetles or termites eating dung. If he taught himself to read, I told him, he wouldn’t have to depend on me to entertain him. Now he has something to do on long car trips while Daddy and Mommy rock out to Led Zeppelin."
Mmm-hmm! But what about domestic duties?
"I wish I could say parenthood has awakened my dormant interest in cooking. But it turns out the interest isn’t dormant — it’s nonexistent. So in an effort to keep my kids healthy, I’ve stumbled onto the raw foods craze. True, Spencer and Murphy won’t eat foods that touch each other, but they do eat tons of fresh strawberries, broccoli, and avocado. So I’m not just a mom who can’t be bothered to sauté; I’m on the cutting edge of nutrition. I can’t face picking up toys that will simply wind up back on the floor. As a result, I’ve mandated “clean-up time” after dinner: The kids have to throw all of their toys in the appropriate bins in 10 minutes, and then they get their gummy vitamins. I set the kitchen timer, and the boys run around picking up toys like it’s an Olympic event. Their lucky wives are going to thank me later."
That's a big one. I am always railing about how treating your children like Princes or Princesses, with the parents in the role of servants, is not only discouraging the kids from ever growing up, but also making it impossible for them to be in an adult relationship one day. I can assure you that no adult partner is going to trim the crust off your son's toast when he's 30 years old, and any daughter who continues to need to be told that she's the "fairest in the land" in order to feel secure is in for a lot of psychotherapy!
More:
"As Spencer and Murphy have gotten older, they’ve found it increasingly difficult to fall asleep at 7:30. I, however, still need two or three hours to myself at night, precious childfree time to devote to my husband and Jon Stewart. So, instead of pushing their bedtime, I’ve created “Adult Time”: The boys can stay up until 9, talking and playing quietly, as long as they don’t bother me for anything more involved than a glass of water. “Adult Time” was initially enforced to serve my needs, but I’ve found the boys enjoy conspiring and giggling in their beds. Last week, I was delighted to be shooed out of the room when I came in to close a window. “No adults allowed,” Spence said. I deferentially retired to the living room and a make-out session with my husband under the unknowing eyes of Jon Stewart."
JOY! JOY! JOY! ADULT TIME!! Listen, folks, if you're an adult and you think you don't need much adult time, YOU'RE NOT AN ADULT! And if you think you don't need regular doses of heavy-duty making-out, you're letting your children know how passionless adult life will be for them one day, too. Like the author/mother here demonstrates, when you live your life like an independent, sensually alive adult, your kids become self-reliant and confident, they love their bodies and feelings, and they discover the true joy of mastery. One of the things James Lipton of the Actors Studio is always remarking on is how many really successful and talented actors who come on his show came from broken homes, either through divorce or death. Well, how obvious is that? LESS PARENTAL AVAILABILITY equals MORE SUCCESSFUL OFFSPRING!
Thank you, Brett Paesel! You are one heck of a great lazy mom!!
This wonderful article, "In Praise of Lazy Parenting," once appeared in an issue of Wondertime Magazine. In a playful but dead-on bit of writing, the author and mother, Brett Paesel, describes the benefits to all of being an adult around your kids, so your kids can be kids. I have been saying this as loudly as I can for years now. But now, listen to someone else.
This is music-to-my-ears from Paesel:
"Your devotion to your own well-being may benefit your children more than you know. It could be making you a happier, saner mother. You could be doing your kids a favor by giving them a chance to develop a solid sense of independence. In fact, you could even consider your laissez-faire approach an act of faith in your kids and their ability to figure things out for themselves."
Yes! Yes! That is one of my biggest chastisements of the over-involved, course-controlling parent - you are showing no faith in the child's innate ability to learn and grow in a direction set forth before birth by their souls. In fact, you are treating your children as if they were soulless, and therefore in desperate need of your self-ordained Godly intervention.
Here's more from Paesel:
"I’ve noticed that an unintended benefit of my indolence is that my sons have made do with each other as playmates — thereby becoming best friends. This is something I hadn’t anticipated, since they’re almost four years apart. But last Saturday, after spending the entire afternoon with just each other, they told me they’re starting a business together: selling information they’ve printed out from the Internet. I feel proud. And why mess with this potentially lucrative partnership?"
Right. Children learn best from each other. Parents can only input information to children, and that inputting decreases their independent capacities to learn and be inquisitive, and the information being given is always, ALWAYS biased by the parents' set of experiences, beliefs and values.
Keep going, Brett:
"Since Spence [the oldest] wants more sophisticated company, he’s teaching 3-year-old Murphy to read. Spencer started reading at around 4 because, though I love reading chapter books, I tired of his repeated requests to hear dry accounts of the life cycle of beetles or termites eating dung. If he taught himself to read, I told him, he wouldn’t have to depend on me to entertain him. Now he has something to do on long car trips while Daddy and Mommy rock out to Led Zeppelin."
Mmm-hmm! But what about domestic duties?
"I wish I could say parenthood has awakened my dormant interest in cooking. But it turns out the interest isn’t dormant — it’s nonexistent. So in an effort to keep my kids healthy, I’ve stumbled onto the raw foods craze. True, Spencer and Murphy won’t eat foods that touch each other, but they do eat tons of fresh strawberries, broccoli, and avocado. So I’m not just a mom who can’t be bothered to sauté; I’m on the cutting edge of nutrition. I can’t face picking up toys that will simply wind up back on the floor. As a result, I’ve mandated “clean-up time” after dinner: The kids have to throw all of their toys in the appropriate bins in 10 minutes, and then they get their gummy vitamins. I set the kitchen timer, and the boys run around picking up toys like it’s an Olympic event. Their lucky wives are going to thank me later."
That's a big one. I am always railing about how treating your children like Princes or Princesses, with the parents in the role of servants, is not only discouraging the kids from ever growing up, but also making it impossible for them to be in an adult relationship one day. I can assure you that no adult partner is going to trim the crust off your son's toast when he's 30 years old, and any daughter who continues to need to be told that she's the "fairest in the land" in order to feel secure is in for a lot of psychotherapy!
More:
"As Spencer and Murphy have gotten older, they’ve found it increasingly difficult to fall asleep at 7:30. I, however, still need two or three hours to myself at night, precious childfree time to devote to my husband and Jon Stewart. So, instead of pushing their bedtime, I’ve created “Adult Time”: The boys can stay up until 9, talking and playing quietly, as long as they don’t bother me for anything more involved than a glass of water. “Adult Time” was initially enforced to serve my needs, but I’ve found the boys enjoy conspiring and giggling in their beds. Last week, I was delighted to be shooed out of the room when I came in to close a window. “No adults allowed,” Spence said. I deferentially retired to the living room and a make-out session with my husband under the unknowing eyes of Jon Stewart."
JOY! JOY! JOY! ADULT TIME!! Listen, folks, if you're an adult and you think you don't need much adult time, YOU'RE NOT AN ADULT! And if you think you don't need regular doses of heavy-duty making-out, you're letting your children know how passionless adult life will be for them one day, too. Like the author/mother here demonstrates, when you live your life like an independent, sensually alive adult, your kids become self-reliant and confident, they love their bodies and feelings, and they discover the true joy of mastery. One of the things James Lipton of the Actors Studio is always remarking on is how many really successful and talented actors who come on his show came from broken homes, either through divorce or death. Well, how obvious is that? LESS PARENTAL AVAILABILITY equals MORE SUCCESSFUL OFFSPRING!
Thank you, Brett Paesel! You are one heck of a great lazy mom!!
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