Link to Part 9
(cw: child abuse)
Okay, I lied.
Despite the promise I made in the teaser at the end of the previous post, there is no way to completely undo the mistakes your parents made. Sure, you can take steps to correct these mistakes; taking your mental health seriously and seeing a therapist seems to work wonders, although I don’t recommend you wait until your forties like I did.
No, as I’ve stated previously, the closest you’ll actually get to a do-over is to be aware of what your parents did wrong and strive to not make those same mistakes. Of course, you’ll make your own mistakes, because parenting is in no way an exact science. There is no definitive instruction manual, nor do children display error messages one can type into Google in order to find solutions. Plus, kids are always growing and changing, installing new software updates if you will. All you can do is parent them to the best of your ability, accept that something you did might someday inspire your kid to seek therapy, and hope it’s more “embarrassed them in front of their friends by being uncool” and less “carelessly caused easily-preventable harm”.
My father raised me as best as he could. He never beat me, never threw household objects in the direction of my head with intent to injure me. That’s what his father did. And while I have no basis for this assumption, I’m going to guess that my grandfather, miserable and abusive though he was, didn’t terrorize or physically injure his kids quite as abominably as his own father did him and his siblings. (Which is not to excuse any of it.) But whether it’s physical or sexual abuse, neglect, gaslighting, narcissism, or even just gross negligence that we suffered, I like to think that most of us are capable at some point – maybe not while it’s happening, maybe not for years after it stops, and maybe not without the help of a mental health professional – of recognizing that what we went through is not normal or healthy, and then find it in ourselves to do better.
Even before I realized just how many missteps my parents made, I had already identified problematic child-rearing behavior in my extended family. Long before my daughter was born – hell, before my wife and I had even met – I saw things that made me say, “Okay, I’m never doing that.” And yeah, people without kids talk a big game about the compromises they see other parents making, insist they’ll never make the same ones, and then immediately backpedal once they have kids and realize some of the compromises they previously condemned are part of an ongoing negotiation that comes with being a parent.
At the end of the day, who cares if the kid wears Spider-Man pajamas out of the house? They’re fun and they’re comfortable, and besides, you’re just going to the grocery store. Let them wear the pajamas so they can pretend to be everyone’s favorite friendly-neighborhood wall-crawler or you’re never going to leave. Plus, you have given your child agency – I got to choose what I wanted to wear! – and you’ve allowed them to use their imagination, because any kid wearing Spidey jammies in the car is probably imagining they’re swinging on webs from building to building as you drive to the store.
Sure, when my daughter was a baby I hoped that when she was old enough to pick her clothes she’d opt to wear something other than a princess dress, a reflective construction worker vest, or last year’s Halloween costume when we ran errands. But suddenly she’s three and her whole universe depends on her being a princess at Target. You learn to pick your battles.
Beyond that, I was giving my daughter the freedom to be herself. In that moment, for reasons I can’t fathom, wearing something batshit crazy allowed her to do that. Ultimately it does no harm, and if anyone at Target judged me for letting her do it, they were either not a parent, or else they were the sort of parent whose kids currently resent them.
(Also, don’t shop at Target if you’ve got other options. Fuck them and their racist, anti-LGBTQIA+ garbage.)
But the aforementioned problematic child-rearing behavior I saw in my extended family is nothing as innocuous as superhero jammies. I’m talking about demonstrating in front of an impressionable child just how tenuous your relationship is by arguing vehemently in front of them, or even fighting. I’m talking about using the child as a pawn in your petty marital conflicts. I’m talking about being so suffocatingly overprotective that you install iron bars on their windows and then insist they sleep in your bed until it’s years past the point of being acceptable, thereby instilling in the child a sense of fear so all-encompassing that it makes me look like Daredevil. You know, the Man Without Fear.
Every time I consider that my parents may have screwed me up somewhat, I usually feel gratitude that I’m not the cousin who went through everything I described in the previous paragraph. Still, I don’t let them off the hook. Beyond the aforementioned “something to fall back on” line, I was also told that while my parents loved me, I shouldn’t expect anyone else to. Now, that’s not necessarily the exact wording they used. I don’t even remember it being said, but my mom does. And as with the other line, I understand her reason for saying it; she was trying to keep me grounded and create realistic expectations so that I didn’t go through life with delusions of grandeur and expect that people were going to fall down at my feet and worship me.
Or was she trying to further my dependence on her and my father? I suppose it’s possible. Maybe it’s even probable. Honestly, I don’t want to know. It’s not like I’m going to confront them and tell them what awful parents they were. I’m sure they already have a pretty good idea; I doubt either of them look at me and think, “Damn, we really knocked it out of the park with this guy.” But you know who does have thoughts like that? Me, every time I think about my daughter. And that’s what I mean by a do-over childhood.
Oh, is this where I’m supposed to mention that the reason my daughter is so capable, so high-functioning, and so successful is that I analyzed my own damage, learned from my parents’ mistakes, and did the opposite? Any praise of my daughter is praise of my parenting skills as well. As I said previously, I mention this a lot.
Up next: Back to Work, wherein I go back to work.