First Three Chapters of The Perfect Child

The Perfect Child is about psychological health and overcoming past experiences of abuse, disappointment, and fear, especially as it relates to childhood and relationships. Learn how to resolve the past and build real confidence and self-esteem. These are the first three chapters. Available in paperback (319 pages) and eBook.

1

The Perfect Parent

In the Summer of 1998 when I was seventeen I finally found some friends with whom I could be rebellious. It wasn’t my intent to be rebellious, but for most of my teenage years I had associated with a crowd of well-behaved kids from religiously conservative families, because that was expected of me, and they were some of the worst people I have ever met—constantly gossiping, rarely warm, and as a closeted gay boy people with whom I felt in constant danger for my wellbeing should they really get to know me. My new friends were two boys my age whom I had observed at a distance and greatly longed to be companions until I eventually gathered enough courage to approach them (one of whom is still a best friend to this day and possessed of not an ounce of malice). But they were inclined toward slightly more mischief than the others with whom I associated, and so when my new friends first proposed we go “pool-hopping,” I was immediately gripped both by a thrill of excitement and an arresting sense of hesitation. Pool-hopping is just the act of trespassing on (in?) public or private swimming pools after hours and under cover of darkness so as not to get caught. Our first target was the local recreation center which had only a low fence surrounding the enormous complex. During the day I practiced there with my swimming team, so when we pulled up to the street outside I feigned a bit more excitement than I actually felt, since to me this was a familiar and comfortable place but which also made it perfect for my first brazen attempt at lawbreaking. But when we ran up and over the fence I suddenly realized we were all going swimming in our underwear. Being raised in a prudish, body-shaming culture this aspect of my unexpected rebellion was suddenly a far greater taboo than trespassing. Making the situation more heated was the invitation of several other high school boys, one for whom I had an enormous crush. The surge of teenage testosterone drove me to blind indulgence as we stripped off our shirts and pants and slipped into the dark, cool water. Well, I slipped into the pool because I was smart. The others (including my crush) chose to cannonball. 

“Hey, idiot!” my friend Tanner whispered angrily to the boy after he came up for air. “Be quiet!” 

The warm, dry Summer air was perfect for a night swim, and we all cruised around low in the water, laughing quietly, splashing, and wrestling each other and having some of the most fun I ever had in my childhood. Suddenly a light nearly as bright as the sun shone across the pool and illuminated the fences closing us in, suddenly making them appear like the perimeter of an incarceration center. “Shhhh!” said Tanner, though all of us were already frozen by instinct, keeping our heads just above water and below the lip of the pool deck. The light moved back and forth across the complex. It was originating from the street, and clearly from that of a police car. Luckily for us the pool was on the top of a small hill, which made looking down into it impossible unless one were to walk right up to it. An inaudible sound of a police radio crackled for a moment, then the light went off and the sound of the car faded into the distance. 

Emboldened by our success we lingered a great while longer, then when our fingers were pruny and cold we slipped back out of the water, put on our clothes over soaking wet skin and retreated back to our respective homes to sneak in late after curfew.

Several weeks and pools later the end of Summer fast approached, and the looming threat of our final year in High School began to burden us with a vague but impending sense of urgency. All of us boys came from unstable homes, and being together was cathartic and escapist, but not yet adults had no sense of what the real world was really like, nor how to remove ourselves from the kinds of turmoil each of us was subjected to on a daily basis. The usual neighborhood pool-hopping and toilet papering was no longer a sufficient counterbalance to the fast approaching end of our childhood. One Saturday night when Tanner was feeling especially restless, he proposed something truly epic. “How about we jump the fence at Seven Peaks?” 

Seven Peaks was a giant water park near our town. The only one in our region, actually. It was huge, with towering water slides, a lazy river, and an enormous wave pool. It was a sweltering night, and our teenage restlessness demanded an outlet this daring, this risky. Like common criminals our complacency of getting away with our earlier misdeeds had deluded us into an errant sense of impunity that not a single moment was spent considering the ill-conceived nature of this plan, and off we went to the water park. 

The complex sprawled for acres and acres surrounded by a very tall fence beyond which was open space and treeless lawn. Finding an acceptably secluded and shaded spot to begin our assault was tricky, but eventually we happened on a place where we could scale the fence in darkness. “What if they have security cameras?” I asked as we walked up to the complex. “There’s not any,” confidently replied my friend Will. The long drive to the park had given my brain enough time to suggest some second thoughts, and now that we had arrived and seeing it in person, I knew that this was a bad idea. But I had never before had such a bond with friends, nor felt like I truly belonged with anyone, and I would do anything to keep myself in their lives. Including put myself into danger. So when they began to scale the fence, I followed.

Leaping over the top of the fence I landed on the other side where there was no turning back—Well, technically I could have turned back, but I was committed now and decided to enjoy without any reservation the last remaining moments of my childhood. We scattered across the park, some of us going directly for the wave pool, leaving a trail of clothes behind us as we went. The water was very cold, which felt refreshing in the heated night air, but the complex was so open, so exposed that there was none of the relaxation or joy that came with our previous experiences. The wave pool, closest to the fence and set low by the pool deck felt the safest. But my adventurous friends and the others we’d invited along couldn’t resist the sight of the empty water slides and after only a few moments in the wave pool took off toward the tower, laughing with even more carelessness than we had trespassing a small neighborhood pool.

Reluctantly, I pulled myself out of the water and followed. As our bare feet plodded up the steps, their middling attempts to muffle laughter was amplified by the empty, hollow slides. “There’s no water in them!” said one of the others suddenly. Their bare feet began squeaking loudly against the dry fiberglass shell as they tried to descend, the tube acting as a megaphone for their hollering and the banging of feet, knees, and elbows. Any pretense to be clandestine was totally abandoned. Of course, they also had to go to the very tallest of the corkscrew slides, so by the time I finally reached the top some had already emerged at the other end and splashed out into the landing pools. 

The tube was completely dark, and the silence of the night seemed to somehow echo back at me as I stared down its throat. Only once had I ever been in such a tight space, a pair of caves outside our small town we regularly explored which were later sealed up for good after someone got stuck in them and died. There was a little bit of water in the queue trough. I splashed some of the water into the slide to lubricate it, and jumped inside. 

I only slid for a few feet, as the water rushed quickly away from me and as soon as it was gone the slide was suddenly as dry as if water had never been in it. Stuck to the shell I proceeded to crab walk down the rest of the way, wishing now the experience had been thrilling enough to justify all of this trouble when suddenly I heard the voices of grown men outside, down below me.

“What’s going on?” one of them said. Will’s reply was inaudible, but his sheepish tone which meant he was in trouble was unmistakable. For a moment I considered hiding in the slide and waiting for them all to leave. But then I would be alone, in my underwear, trapped in a giant water park in another town without a ride home.

I was not surprised to see the police when I emerged from the other end. It just seemed like a natural consequence to our stupidity, so I smiled a bit when they directed their combat-grade flashlights in my face, feeling only a little ridiculous at being caught in such a compromising position. The cops were nice enough, actually, especially because we didn’t resist at all (and probably because we were all teenagers in our underwear). After we had retrieved our clothes and settled obediently on the curb they told us of the time they were called to the park to apprehend adults who were naked and one they had to chase up the side of the nearby mountain with a helicopter as he tried to flee. One by one they called each of our parents, but when they got to me, my parents were at a resort in the mountains for the weekend with the rest of my family. I had purposefully protested going with them because things with my parents were going so badly. Being around them did nothing but fuel my overwhelming depression, which would soon culminate in trying to take my own life with a serrated bread knife, and any reprieve from them was becoming a necessity and not simple teenage discontent. In truth I was suddenly proud of myself for having done something daring, something fun, something that would make a great story when enough time had passed. But now this meant that there was no one to collect me. One of the officers drove me to a nearby juvenile detention center. It was dark, as if not a single other person was in the building. He opened a door to a dorm with two small beds wrapped with coarse, brown blankets. My father would be there to collect me in the morning, he said. 

I slept fast and heavy, exhausted from the night’s antics, but early in the morning, before the sun had even rose over the mountains, my angry father appeared at the door to my little prison, the noise of which woke me immediately. He was silent most of our drive home. There was some lecture, but I didn’t pay attention because it was the same kind of bullshit they flung at me when I didn’t want to wear my hair a certain way or asked to take a foreign language class instead of seminary. But then he said I had to accompany him back up to the resort. I had been on many of these family trips to hotels for a few days, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag because my parents couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for extra rooms, herded from activity to activity because my restless parents could never just sit poolside or take a picnic on the hike and take in the view. I was also now six-foot-six and two hundred twenty-five pounds, and riding in the back of his Porsche was like riding in a carnival bumper car. A few months earlier my father had also caught me looking at gay porn on the computers at his office building. He had forced me against my will to tell my mother, and both had promptly rejected me. Constant lectures, condemnation, and pressure to engage our bishop and other religious leaders about my sexuality (which I did not understand, since I was only seventeen) was driving me unawares toward irreparable despair, and being in their presence only served to intensify the pain of my torment. The anxiety made me snap. Angry, I refused to go. Then my father began to berate me for all of it, and every insult, every harsh word uttered in my direction across my entire childhood suddenly broke me. I shouted that I hated him and slammed the plate of food I was carrying onto the ground and it shattered across the clean wood floor. Never in my life had I lashed out in anger. Not even once had I ever punched or hit my brother, or broken something in a fit of rage. In that moment both I and my father realized that I was becoming a man and was large enough to stand up for myself, not physically but emotionally and intellectually. Frightened of my new power, I fled the house and into the surrounding woods. 

The sun was bright and blazing, and the dry scrub oaks were thick and comforting. Far enough from the house, that I could still see it but not risk being seen, I sat down against a rock. The buzz of cicadas rang loud against the apparent stillness. Even though I was emotionally exhausted I could not cry very much. Instead of sadness or anger or hatred there simply seemed to be a whole lot of nothing. I knew that trespassing was both stupid and wrong, and I knew that my Dad didn’t really care that I had gone there. He drank alcohol as a teenager, smoked pot, had Playboys, engaged in recreational arson, and engaged in all sorts of premarital sex, and also looked at pornography even as an adult, in his marriage. I got the best grades in my family, was captain of my swim team, and was on student council. I had never even kissed another person, drank, smoked, or once gotten in any other trouble. He would later admit to me that he thought my stunt was funny at the time, but thought he needed to be mean and calloused to teach me a lesson, which meant showing no compassion, no camaraderie, no pity for his oldest child. 

Despair threatened to overwhelm me. Why did I have to suffer this burden? What had I done to deserve the hatred and shame which threatened to swallow me up before I had even made it out of childhood? Why even with all my obedience and spiritual wrestling and pleading couldn’t I draw redemption to myself? I could not understand why I felt the way I did, why I did not want to live, why my family didn’t love me, why I couldn’t be straight. I finally cried there until there were no more tears left to cry and the sun began to burn my skin, reluctantly picked myself up and headed back toward the house. 

It must have only been an hour or so since I ran off, and when I got home I thought I was seeing things again at the sight of another police cruiser parked out front of our house. Immediately I thought something was wrong with my father and hurried inside.

Two policemen stood talking with my dad in the dining room. They all scowled at me when I showed up, and suddenly I realized they were there about me. “Son,” said one of them. “We have to respond to calls about domestic violence. You’re lucky you didn’t do anything worse. Next time we’ll have to arrest you.” 

The blood drained from my face. I had just been arrested, and now my own father had called the police on me because I broke a plate? Did he tell you about all the horrific things he said to me? I wanted to say. But I knew if I caused a scene that things would get worse for me, so I remained quiet. The police finished talking to my father, strutting around the house as if their belts and their guns and their uniform gave them power over all of humanity, and I finally realized that my father didn’t actually care about me. It all made sense—how they responded to finding out I was gay, how they encouraged me to lie, the constant disparagement, never coming to any of my swimming meets or school events, never engaging with academics, not helping me prepare for college, making me work for him instead of letting me have a normal summer job. Why he’d forced me to play basketball when I started growing tall and then began telling me I wasn’t athletic or driven when I didn’t do well or show the requisite amount of enthusiasm for his constant criticism and harassment. It was all about them. About control. It was all justified as concern for me, but I was dying. It couldn’t be for me. It seemed I was nothing more than a constant reminder of everything he hated in himself. All his own personal disappointments and regrets and failures.  I understood that there, standing before him and the two police officers in my own home. It was never about me.

I completely shut down after that, surrendering to my fate, understanding that I only had to endure the last year or so of my time with them. My Senior Year was an empty blur filled with remorse, fear, and loss. My body began to buckle under my depression. I became tired and lethargic, distant, distracted. The year before I was in three advanced placement classes and done exceptionally. I could barely handle normal classes and so I dropped all but advanced placement art class, which was a rare respite and opportunity to release some of my pain and frustration through creativity. But unable still to reconcile my struggle I grew ever resistant to my parent’s abuse and neglect, and as soon as graduation passed they wasted no more than a few weeks before asking me to leave. Then, lost in the world of men and ill prepared for adulthood I would struggle valiantly for a couple more years before finally trying to kill myself. 

I have often been rebuffed by parents when attempting to intervene on the behalf of their children as if my advice is criticism rather than attempts to empower them, as if I could not possibly comprehend the realities parenthood, and the mere suggestion that they are not shining pillars of success is somehow morally offensive. Toward the end of my twenties during a family reunion my brother and his new young daughter, the first of many nieces and nephews, had a total meltdown when she didn’t want to get in the car to go somewhere. She was particularly good at grabbing anything at all she could hold onto, and after visiting with my dogs had crawled into their kennel and when her parents tried to extract her clung screaming, hilariously, to the bars from inside the cage with both hands. But, frustrated by her fit he began to hurl insults at her, telling her how terrible she was. Empathetic to the feelings that children have which cause such disparities between adult needs or wants and the child’s I tried to intervene for both their sakes—to help my lovely niece feel safe and to empower my brother with effective strategies which would help him get what he needed and help spare her from the kind of pain I had gone through. Instead, he quickly cut me off with a curt reply, “It’s different when you’re actually a parent,” he said. “You’ll know if you ever have your own,” and forcibly hauled her off, tears streaming down her pudgy little cheeks. 

But in reality my brother had no more comprehension of parenthood than I did. Less even, considering his approach to parenting which showed the same kind of callous, detached, and ineffective authoritarian behavior he learned from my own parents which in the end required the brutish leveraging of his size advantage to force his will on a little, thirty-pound child. A total, abject inability to understand the motivations of children and the reasons they act and react as they do, without any compassion or patience for their newness and innocence and ignorance. Yes, I’m the one that doesn’t know how to parent even though it’s your child sprawled out on the floor screaming at the top of her lungs just because she has to get into the car. 

The insistence by parents that they remain uncriticized for their mistakes or even praised for simply showing up is a uniquely arrogant position that would not be tolerated in any other capacity of human life. If a young man walked onto a baseball field with no prior experience expecting to be a starter he would be roundly chastised and rightly harangued for his naivety and sense of entitlement. Nobody would be expected to even attempt Chopin let alone well if they had never practiced piano. Yet for some inexplicable reason parents are expected to be good at parenting even though they’ve never done it before, and expect other people to keep their mouth shut when they are clearly failing at best and at worst actively committing abuse and clearly being stressed out to all hell by the experience. Worst of all, parents themselves expect that they should be good at something they’ve never done before and in all likelihood had very poor instruction. Several studies have shown (what is already obvious) that intergenerational parenting (meaning that grandparents participate in the active, daily rearing of children) produces more successful and healthy adults. Most societies which still practice intergenerational parenting are those which tend to be more economically challenged (or not yet seduced away by conveniences of monetary success), because the younger adults of reproducing age are also those which generally provide for the family, so the children are then incidentally left with grandparents as caretakers and thus benefit from a wider group of adults, some of whom also possess more knowledge, wisdom, and experience whom are thus more effective. In our Western and more economically prosperous societies our wealth and opportunity interrupts this natural tribal structure of human existence, with more experienced grandparents being far less involved in the direct responsibilities of parenting, and as such thrusts new parents into their role without adequate preparation or resources, while also burdened with the virility and distractions of youth, which in turn further strains their emotional, social, and intellectual resources, their marriages, and then their connection with their own children. Especially when previous generations are also inadequate and ineffective at parenting this problem compounds itself as successive generations become more and more self-centered due to instincts for self-preservation which are caused by abuse at the hands of the previous generation. 

I was absolutely one of the best possible children any parent could have hoped for—talented, ambitious, handsome, creative, helpful, loving, kind, and extremely intelligent, and yet because of the shit job their own parents did, and the scars and trauma they carried into their adulthoods they could not even see the reality of their own family, that of one which most parents in the history of mankind would be envious, and instead used it as a stage on which to reenact over and over their own unresolved and psychologically stunted development and childhood trauma, causing the very problems with their children they wanted to avoid and making their lives a miserable nightmare of hatred, anger, and pain. Parenting is often much harder than it needs to be, only becoming difficult largely due to our own experiences and unresolved pain and trauma which color our perception of life, our sense of self-worth, what it means to be a parent, our children, ignorance, the effectiveness of our behavior, our relationships with other people including our spouse or significant other, and misunderstandings about life in general. Many parents believe they must be perfect in order to be good parents or even a good person, but this misses entirely the point of parenthood, which is to empower your children with the skills, strengths, and wisdom they will need not just to lead a successful life, but even to survive it. Tumbling through parenthood we become alarmed when our experiences cause us to realize that maybe we don’t actually know what we’re doing, which only further emboldens us to try harder but which also makes our mistakes that much more painful and setbacks that much more infuriating, as the clock counts down faster and faster. 

It is entirely possible for parents to be perfect parents. Not in the sense of never making mistakes, but to instead wholly fulfill the role and function we are meant to, which is a role that most of us are also wholly ignorant, you know, because of our own parents, and their parents, and their parents before them and so on. When we do discover what it means to be a good parent, not only can we be more effective in our role and more efficient with our time, energy, and resources, the responsibility becomes as easy and even more satisfying than our lives when we were single, because being a perfect parent, for instance, requires that we make mistakes that our children learn how to handle the mistakes that they will make. But most of us want to believe we can avoid mistakes or should not make them in the first place, and so model for our children willful ignorance and self-destructive behaviors and then act surprised when they get knocked up or we find them smoking cigarettes behind the church or when they try to commit suicide. Trying to be perfect is exactly the opposite of being a good parent. This world is not perfect and we fail our children only when we fail to recognize our own self-worth and the realities of life and, as would be expected, parenting then becomes impossibly stressful. Every parent has the capacity to succeed, even to heights we never thought possible and even when our own pasts seem too difficult to bear. We can discover bliss not only in our role as parents but also ourselves, and actually live the kinds of lives promised by all those other books on parenting.

2

Intergenerational Trauma

When I was only a few months old my parents went on a trip to Europe even though they had also only been there a month before I was born and wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime reason to leave their very first, very young child. I was left in the care of my Nana, and when they returned a few weeks later I forgot who they were and refused to go to them, and it seems that before I could even roll over I knew what was in store for my life with them and wanted nothing to do with it. 

For all I knew my Nana was a wonderful person. Though not very personable or trusting she was always brightly cheerful and welcoming, her bright eyes shining even until her final years, the tone in her voice always as warm as a Summer’s day, and her generosity had no bounds, in truth it was difficult after receiving fifty-dollars every birthday from them even when they lived only on social security not to feel some resentment for my other, wealthier Grandmother who gave us only five. But now as an adult I realize my Nana’s incessant pleasantness was every bit as artificial as her jet-black, perfectly coiffed hair. Pricilla Joyce, as she was named, came from a time when parents didn’t really spend the luxury of acting on emotions, and she was composed and reserved and never suffered fools. She was of the generation which endured the terrors of the Second World War, a time when humanity very nearly ate itself and committed unspeakable atrocities the world never even knew was possible. Her parents too were those who saw the First World War, when for the first time in human history untold thousands of human beings could be exploded apart by bombs or extinguished by chemical agents. The trauma of living through those kinds of events is not something the human mind can manage, at all, and even for those who survived or never directly saw combat it takes from them the meaning of being human and everything we have ever believed about life and God. 

One day when seeing a picture of my Nana’s father in his own military uniform I asked her about him, having never been told about our grandparents long passed and thinking how handsome he was. He had fought in the First World War and she still had his hat, which to my excitement she extracted from a closet and gifted to me. To know that I was related to someone so brave and strong was indescribably affirming. 

Both my Nana and my Granddad were always quick to make us feel welcome and loved, but never broached anything even remotely vulnerable. When I was in eighth grade I received an assignment to interview a family member about their life, and after much deliberation decided to choose my Granddad even though I also felt extremely intimidated by him. We lived in a different State than they did, a ten-hour drive once or twice every summer which seemed like a week itself to little children, and grew up hearing stories of how tough and mean my Granddad was, which were justified when we saw him bark at his mules or dogs but rebuffed when he made us pie and whipped cream or tricked us into believing he could inflate his bicep by blowing into his thumb. 

I probably started our conversation with some awkward formality about interviewing him about his life. “I have to interview you,” I think I said.

“Oh?” he replied, sounding surprised but also open. “What should we talk about?”

“What was life like when you were a teenager?” I asked. I knew he had served in the war, but at that age really had no idea what that really meant nor that there were so many which occurred in the twentieth century let alone the difference between any of them. “Well,” he said. “I was too young to be drafted until it was nearly over. But when I turned eighteen they sent me off to basic training in San Diego. I made a buddy when I got there, and our nights on leave we went out looking for girls and to get a drink. One night we went out and found this bar, but when we went inside we realized we had gotten into a bar for homosexuals—” 

I froze immediately, waiting for the stinging words to come from his mouth which would add to all the other horrible things I had heard about gay men, knowing well by that time I was one of them and understanding now that my secret would cost me the love of my family should it ever get out. In a moment which stretched out far longer than it was, I secretly hoped he would be the one to show me the love I had not yet found from my own flesh and blood, not from my religion, and not even from God.

“We didn’t mind,” he laughed. “We had a drink and a guy hit on my buddy and we had a great time.” 

I couldn’t believe my ears. All my life I had only ever heard of homosexuals in the context of visceral animus, of hatred and condemnation, not deserving of love but certainly disease. Here was my Granddad, the tough guy, the patriarch, the rancher and horse breeder, the man feared by every one of my uncles talking admirably about a time he went to a gay bar. In the 1940’s. Clearly Granddad knew I was gay and meant in that moment to help me. It did, though not to the degree I would require to avoid the despair which would savage me as a young man, but without which I would nonetheless have believed life to be utterly without love. Later, throughout my teenage years whenever we visited my Grandparents he would joke incessantly about when I was going to bring home a girlfriend, like the time when he first taught me how to drive stick-shift through the dry Arizona mountains in his twenty-year-old Dodge Ram pickup. “So when you gonna get yourself a girlfriend, Nathan?” He would say while elbowing me strongly, the pearl buttons of his cowboy shirt sleeves pressing sharply into my skin. I would smile to hide my embarrassment and secretly wish I could run away and hide. This continued even into my twenties, after my suicide attempt, long after I had come out but which I now realize too late was probably his attempt to get me to come out to him, but because they and my own parents’ collective religious conservatism, bigotry, and habit of taking life too seriously I sadly mistook it for harassment and never did give him a chance to show if he accepted me or not. I found out later that Granddad had a niece who was lesbian who came out many, many years before whom I met later when my Great Uncle Gary was dying, and my Granddad’s generosity of spirit made more and more sense as I got to know more of his own extended family.

Though my parents have many striking and admirable qualities as people, parenting is something at which they really failed (unless the bar being set is that they didn’t kill us, but is that really the standard we’re trying to meet?). But their particular failure is not at all unique to their generation, with emotional trauma, discontent, and destructive and contentious interpersonal relationships being the norm rather than the exception with the majority of their generation. I have twenty-four aunts and uncles and only one single pair of them are not angry, divisive, bigoted, hateful, fearful, suspicious, entitled, contemptuous, and utterly failed at parenting. Nearly all of them are child abusers, some even drugged their children, and most of them rejected me and my other homosexual cousins when we came out. Several years after recovering from cancer and a failed relationship and not having been home to see my family for several years (because the stress of being around them was the last thing I could handle) my father during a nice weekend afternoon in which I had been trying to get him to stop working and spend time with me to watch a show about the history of food and cooking since we are both skilled chefs suddenly turned on me after an innocuous comment about the economy probably going under in the next year or two (which it did) and excoriated me as if I were an actual geopolitical adversary and not his son whom he hadn’t seen in person for almost three years who was trying to lighten the mood. He was so incensed that for a moment I actually feared for my physical safety, which I had not even on that day when I broke the plate. He left and I was shaking so badly I had to sit down for fear of my legs giving out (I had just been recovering from cancer and was still pretty weak). Having had enough of my mother’s dissociation and obsessively compulsive cleaning to avoid any sort of meaningful interaction with me too I cut my trip short and cried the entire twelve-hour drive back to Los Angeles. Anguished and cursing my stupidity for falling back into expecting them to be any different than they were I tried to channel my remorse into something useful and began to ponder why it was that nearly every one of my parent’s generation were so angry, so resentful, so ungrateful and discontent even as they gorge themselves on obscene amounts of wealth and prosperity that no other generation throughout the entire history of mankind has even dreamed. The immoral accumulation of junk and crap and excess simply for the sake of it, presented with an abundance of opportunity while obliterating any chance at making real and lasting changes to the human race, money and privilege hoarded by a generation who whine like pigs while possessed of such incongruent and unimaginable prosperity equalled only by their contempt. 

The mass murder of High School students in Parkland, Florida by gun violence had also just occurred, and my thoughts drifted to the murdered children and their friends who will be forever traumatized by what they went through. I thought of the children who will never experience a school shooting but whom are regularly subjected to active shooter drills, hiding under their desks as practice alarms suggest their own impending, violent deaths and suddenly the image merged with that of my own parents’ generation hiding under their desks during preparatory nuclear drills during the Cold War Era. Suddenly I saw the kids at Parkland and Newtown and Red Lake all the way back to Columbine the year I graduated High School and the mass terror being perpetrated on children not just from actual shootings but the entire system focused pathologically to the systemic torment of children and understood that the very same mass fear of violence and imminent threat of bodily harm was also done to the Baby-boom generation. For decades my parents’ generation were surrounded not just by war but also the threat of war, and their parents having been through actual war, robbed of naivety and happiness became scarred and detached, unable to comfort themselves for the horrors they had seen were unable to save their own children from nebulous and omnipotent psychological threat of an unstoppable and omniscient foreign government raining down total nuclear holocaust, threats which continued for decades through the tumultuous conflicts into the Sixties and Seventies. I cannot imagine how terrible my childhood would have been with regular indoctrination and fear of imminent death by nuclear immolation, and yet my parent’s generation lived it. 

There is a black and white cartoon from 1951 called “Duck and Cover” which begins with a cutesy, Disney-style animated turtle walking down the road on a beautiful sunny day to a stupid jingle, minding his own business, wearing a comically small hard hat, when out of nowhere a mischievous monkey lowers a firecracker near his head. The firecracker explodes, but the turtle is spared from having his head split open and suffering a gruesome death because he “ducked for cover.” This cartoon was an attempt to gently introduce the threat of nuclear holocaust to children, and goes on to tell them about atomic bombs and how it will absolutely kill you if someone drops it on us, which they will do, and that dying from an atomic bomb is a lot like burning to death, but you wouldn’t know what that’s like so they then show video of enormous flames engulfing the screen so they could vividly imagine it. Before long the film segues into images of children, without any parental support, fleeing a playground while the banshee-wails of a nuclear warning siren play ominously in the distance, describing the exact horrific events of a nuclear explosion through animated images of homes being knocked over and burned and trees being stripped of their foliage, just in case your nightmare tonight lacks any details. The purpose of those films, and of active shooter drills being practiced today, was never to get children prepared for actual catastrophe, which in all reality they would die anyway and such films would do nothing to save them. Children can be prepared for emergencies of any type without being told how they will actually die, or the frightening particulars of why the threat exists in the first place. The film’s discussion of evil actors possessing cruel and violent means to end your life stemmed from an authoritarian government and fear-mongering culture of the time, lead from the Eisenhower Presidency which helped catalyze and feed post-war tensions and thus a role for him in which to feel effective, he and his enablers seeking to extend the controversy, fear, and anxiety of military conflict in order to maintain control and power, which is accomplished exactly through such kinds of propaganda and fear-mongering, especially toward and exploiting children. Even if it was imperative for children to practice such drills, such as we do today for active shooters, such information can be non-specific and generalized for any emergency, to avoid traumatizing them. But it does not accomplish this because the point is not preparation, but indoctrination, with fear and distrust, which in turn creates more reactionary and fearful adults whom then subject themselves to control and authoritarianism but which in turn damages an entire generation. The anger of my parent’s generation is that which has its origins in mass childhood trauma. Pain and fear which has never been named, let alone healed, which has resurfaced as their lifelines wane and their visit from the angel of death fast approaches, forcing out the unresolved trauma and fear of their past as they desperately search for salvation. All their lives they were told if they just believed certain ways or achieved certain success or bought certain things they would be happy. Their marriages in ruins and their children mentally ill they are realizing too late the mistakes of their past. They have run out of time and only at the very end have they realized they have never been happy, and lash out in resentment and anger and hatred. It makes sense that their generation should be restless and unfulfilled in spite of their prosperity. The prosperity was always just a distraction from the trauma of their youths which resides at the back of the mind, the driving force behind their restless ambition and calloused disregard for others, the earth, and even their own wellbeing and their own children. It is this way with anyone who has experienced overwhelming pain and heartache in their childhoods—unable to heal the memory of such horrors and conditioned to believe that life is so invaluable and dispensable creates people who can never recognize peace, even when it holds them tight.

Though robbed of the financial windfall of the preceding generation, my Millennial generation is quite lucky in terms of history—The prospect of imminent death by nuclear annihilation ceased being inflicted on children just as we were born, and the trauma of mass school shootings had not yet begun. We existed in a brief and relatively blissful world of He-Man, Pogs, Nintendo, and Neopets, where the only real danger to our eventual adulthood was whether or not we would get into a prestigious university or a regular one. While many of us might have individual trauma from localized origins such as parental abuse which, at the hands of affected Baby-Boomers is quite wide-spread, we have had a general luxury of being blessed with a prosperous and optimistic worldview, having come of age under the prosperous times of the Clinton Administration which, in spite of conservative rancor and the Clinton’s propensity for antagonism and divisiveness was marked by unprecedented economic success, technological innovation, and relative peace. It’s no wonder that while Millennials struggle in the current economic climate we are more able to let go of such ambitions and the pathological pursuit of money because we have no strong motivation to distract ourselves from the kinds of existential crises which other generations have suffered. Making matters worse, my parents’ generation are often religious, even those who were Hippies in their younger years, but because their religious beliefs do nothing to resolve the internal conflict of trauma within the subconscious they are left believing they should feel wonderful when they do not, further frustrating their struggle to find happiness and satisfaction, and as their time runs out they grow ever more angry at the world, believing their entire lives that wealth and strong religious convictions and entitlement would bring the kind of enlightenment they so desperately crave to realize only at the very end the consequence of the deception and no time left to course correct.

But of course there is always time to change, to repair the past, to find healing. Those who don’t are only stuck because of the nature of the ego, which believes itself trapped in imaginary cement, and the lack of skills which are required to do it. Relief from trauma is sweet no matter what time of life it is achieved. When it happens it is as if all that ever hurt no longer matters, making the past no longer matter, and since we are only ever what we are at the present moment it becomes our entire life.

Worrisome is the threat of school shootings, or more appropriately the hysteria and misplaced policies and practices which burden children with fears which should be borne instead by adults, and the effect these policies will have upon the young when they enter their own adulthoods will result in the very same kinds of anxiety, fear, anger, and pursuit of insubstantial distractions as currently plagues the Boomer generation if they are not careful to overcome their own collective trauma and find resolution to the internal conflicts of pain and loss which will surely result. We all have trauma to some degree or another from our pasts, and this kind of work is required by anyone who wishes to find resolution to themes with which they struggle during our lives, even if it is not as grandiose as geopolitical and intergenerational conflict. But larger, intergenerational trauma such as occurred to the Boomer generation and to those experiencing mass-shootings alters the course of man and history itself, and can render entire generations ineffective and destructive if we do not help each other toward healing. 

Awareness at least can be some kind of salve. But there are more effective therapies which can achieve real and lasting healing and resolution. These themes also illustrate the first and foremost requirement for becoming a good or effective parent, which is that we must first resolve within ourselves the tumult of emotional conflict which resulted from our own childhood. Oh, is that all? you might ask. Yes it seems like an overwhelming prospect, especially since most of us choose to deal with our unresolved pain and trauma in the same way that previous generations always have—by ignoring it or distracting ourselves from it. Often parents are thrust into the role of parenting before any kind of healing can occur, and though adults appear as adults, when they first become one they have not yet actually lived as an adult, in an adult body, doing adult things, and as such are actually a child residing in an adult’s body. It is no wonder that parents are bad at being parents, because they are often still children when they become parents themselves, not yet having had the experiences from which they will eventually gain wisdom. While many people are resistant to change or to self-analysis, which can come off or appear as self-centeredness, it is not actually self-centeredness which motivates us to resist but simply the lack of effective means which help us feel empowered to change and to heal. Most of us feel helpless and at the mercy of our past and our trauma and unresolved pain, because in reality we are helpless to it. Being unable to understand even how to make a change let alone make one we then feel inadequate, and fear others discovering this inadequacy and insecurity, and so like my brother lash out in resentment and anger when confronted with criticism or offers for help, as it seems to confirm our fear of being helpless. Willingness to learn and then willingness to make changes are first required before actually attempting to make the change, and the fact that you have opened this book and reached this point demonstrates those qualities! In fact, this is one of the hallmarks of good parenting, which is simply a willingness to grow and do better. Harms can almost always be repaired, if done properly, so even making mistakes is not really a problem so much as the refusal to fix them, and this too results from feeling unable to fix wrongs when it is required of us, never having been taught how to do so and thus possessing no confidence or familiarity for it. If at any time my parents had come to me voluntarily and said they were sorry for the way they treated me, in spite of all the abuse and neglect and pain and suffering I would still have gladly forgiven all of it without hesitation or question, even after forty years of it. The reality is that children always love their parents—but sadly it is not true the other way around. There are far too many abusers and murderers of children to demonstrate the falsity of that idea—but that children do always love their parents with undying affection is built into our very biology, and it is only through serious neglect, abuse, and the corruption of love that it can ever be otherwise. Even to this day I still acquiesce to my parents though they have done almost nothing to amend the pain and suffering they caused and continue to cause, because from the time that I could see and even after they drove me to try and take my own life I wanted nothing more than to have them near me and to love me in return.

Because of the work I have done on my own life I have achieved the ability to see into people’s minds and hearts, to understand their long histories of pain and trauma, the events which have preceded their lives to the point in which I engage with them and the fears and insecurities that originate the actions they take and the things they say. My disappointment in my parents and the way they treated me is not gone, but it is enlightened by an understanding of why they, as human animals, do not possess the magnanimous qualities I was raised to believe they did, and without excusing their behavior understand and have compassion for the pain which drives them. This is the skill which parents can learn in order to become effective toward their own children and role as parent—removing the trauma and pain of our own past we become empowered with the ability to understand why people do what they do (i.e. our children) and what they really want, which is not always what they are able to communicate. 

One Christmas when I was home visiting my family and we were all congregating at a condominium in Park City, Utah one of my new nephews suddenly broke down and fell completely to pieces. His mother, embarrassed at his behavior and lacking compassion for herself and her child, immediately became belligerent, refused to entertain his tantrum, and hauled him off to the pantry and shut him in the dark. The screams that little boy released still haunt me. But my sister was treated exactly the same way during her own childhood. When she refused to go to bed my father would take her and put her into the garage, alone, in the dark and cold, and her screams would shake the entire house, filling me with fear and hatred for him and my mother who encouraged it. Because this trauma happened to my sister it was the only reality which she knew to deal with noncompliant children. Another approach had never been demonstrated to her. We also as humans typically deal with this kind of childhood trauma by trying to ignore it, or move on from it which is in practice just ignoring it. This actually means that we shut down our sense of compassion, for ourselves, our minds engaging in all kinds of acrobatics to either justify, excuse, or ignore those things which we have very little power in resolving, such as trauma caused by those on whom we were utterly reliant as children. Because my sister both didn’t understand that what she had gone through as a child was in fact child abuse, and had tried all her life to move past and deal with this abuse by putting it aside, it in turn meant cutting of compassion for the little girl she once was, and since that little girl went through horrifying trauma then could not feel compassion for someone else going through the exact same thing, which in this moment was her own son. Horrified by what was occurring but not seeking to enflame the situation I quickly stood up and put my body between her and the pantry without saying a word, opened the door, and got down on my knees to look into my nephew’s tear-stained face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I want my shorts,” he eventually managed to choke out. Apparently he had a favorite pair of orange shorts which were at my parents’ house and not at the condo where we were. But for some reason my sister was unable to communicate this to him in a way which satisfied both his desire for them and her desire that he stop asking. Being unburdened by both the responsibilities and stress of parenthood but also the particular traumas unique to her own life experience, I was able to understand exactly what he wanted and how the situation could be resolved. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said to him while giving him a hug. “I know you want those, and we would give them to you but they’re at Grandma’s right now, so we can’t actually get them until we go there. But when we do go back there you’ll have them.”

His impulse was at first to continue crying for them, but what I said made so much plain sense that even a toddler in the midst of a meltdown understood the logic. He wiped his eyes and we stood up but not before my sister tried to lob another threat his way which I promptly stopped with an angry wave of my hand. The episode was then entirely over in less than a minute and never even needed to be a problem in the first place.

In reality, this episode was only ever a problem because of my sister’s own abuse as a child and unresolved pain and trauma triggered by stimuli of the situation, which recreated the very same conditions under which she had also been abused as a child, because a child wanting a favorite pair of shorts is demonstrably not a problem. But unable to summon the kind of patience and compassion that would have otherwise diffused the situation, since those were not shown to her as a child and as such did not possess them for herself, was instead controlled by the heightened emotions and the way in which her child’s behavior touched the sensitive and painful memories it triggered within herself. 

Years later my sister would come around to realize that the trauma and pain from her childhood was getting in the way of her adult life and her relationship with her husband and children, and learned how to find compassion for herself and resolve childhood trauma as is discussed throughout this book. Seeing how it benefited my life she also wanted to experience the same relief and empowerment it brought. Clouded by her own trauma, her perception of her children was burdensome, frustrating, constantly strained by conflict, and was actually causing her to see her own children as a loathsome burden, which she did not want to be experiencing. 

Children are utterly and in every way incapable of providing for themselves, both materialistically and developmentally but also emotionally and intellectually, and although they have never yet lived, children are usually treated as if they are manipulative masterminds with as much life experience and wiles as an adult, little schemers who purposefully coerce and inconvenience to attain selfish and self-centered ends rather than the entirely helpless, reactionary, instinctual, naive, and innocent creatures they are. A child only acts the way they do because they are utterly helpless and unable to care or provide for themselves. Without parents children will die, so they are designed by nature to be loud, obnoxious, and demanding by instinct, to draw the attention of neglectful and abusive parents, to force adequate rearing if the parents are not otherwise naturally able to do it well. A baby doesn’t cry because it’s a brat. A baby cries because if it didn’t, adults would have no idea when it needs something and they would all die and so would we as a species. Younger children don’t crave sugar because they are undisciplined hedonists addicted to happiness but because sugar is a biochemical method of energy storage which helps their bodies to feel good (especially when they are stressed). When adults are unable to resolve their own emotional trauma and it impairs their effectiveness as parents, survival instincts within the child kick in to try to attain the things they need for their own survival that the adult is otherwise unable or unwilling to provide, even if it causes the child to become the recipient of abuse or neglect, because that is still better than death. But this in turn stresses out the adult even more, whose behavior is no less instinctual or mature than that of the children, and then the entire family unit is left operating on base, animalistic, survival instincts. When she was able to resolve the pain and trauma of her past, my sister finally saw that her children’s combative, disagreeable behavior was simply a reaction to her own reactions to her own insecurities which had the effect of withholding love, tenderness, and compassion from them, because she also withheld it from herself, and when this was resolved her children very rapidly became calmer, happier, more productive, nearly like they were different people altogether, though they weren’t in reality any different, only the situation was different because of the work she was willing to do. 

We are met by the unfortunate reality that although it is our parents’ fault that we are traumatized and abused it is our responsibility to heal from it, and to not pass on the same mistakes and pain to the next generation as they did to us. Life works this way to teach us the reality of existence, that we are both alone and together, that there is sadness as well as happiness, that life and death exist together. Balance is the word to describe this, though most people errantly and arrogantly consider balance to mean perfection in one thing, which is not at all what balance is. We are affected and we also affect. Those who are ineffectual parents refuse to recognize the former while dwelling excessively on the latter, because the dearth of interpersonal skills and emotional self-care makes us feel keenly our ineffectiveness and inadequacies. When we empower ourselves to first resolve our own trauma, by exercising self-compassion by undertaking this work to care for ourselves, only then can we operate effectively to empower our own children to do the same and pass down the kinds of knowledge, skills, and self-compassion which is the true point of parenting. 

Intergenerational trauma is the only real impediment to good parenting. Failing to have compassion for ourselves in turn prevents us from having compassion for our children. Trying to be a good parent without ever having taken care of yourself in this way is like trying to play Chopin when you have never sat at a piano while suffering from unresolved Cold War trauma. You will fail. But failure is not the problem—when we have tools to accomplish the resolution of our unresolved pain and experiences of trauma there is no such thing as failure, because everything can be resolved, mistakes can be fixed, and that is the most important skill that any person can learn. Especially parents, because it not only helps ourselves but will help our children help themselves in return, thus empowering children to live successful lives on their own, which is the entire point of parenting in the first place, and thus also resolve the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

3

Basics of Parenting

The summer when I was thirty-two-years old was the first time in my entire life I was ever allowed to bring home a romantic partner to meet my family. The last of my siblings was getting married and I had initially refused the invitation based on my previous experience with my parents and siblings who practice exclusionary religious rituals which preclude from participating those who do not conform to their religious beliefs (even other family members and members of their own religion) at special occasions such as marriage which is traditionally supposed to affirm family relationships, not divide them. When my only brother got married I was not asked to be his best man, since I was gay and would not be allowed at the ceremony, and the only friend I have known my entire life got married without me. My sisters too all spent their joyful day hidden in a secret church building rather than walking the aisle before family and friends in a beautiful wedding dress and allowing us to witness and participate in what should be a happy and momentous occasion to strengthen the legitimacy, social support, and bonds of a marriage. Rather than be humiliated and isolated, this time I had planned simply to stay home, especially since I now had a man at my side whom I loved deeply and felt offense at being required to choose between him and their callous religious ideology. 

“Oh, I was looking forward to meeting him,” replied my Mother when I told her of my decision. “But I understand if you don’t want to come.” 

It was not the response I expected, and I was suddenly surprised. “Really?” I asked. “That changes things. If you are inviting both of us I will come.” “Yes,” she replied. But there were more issues, so I continued. “I’m worried about other people.” I said. “Like Grandma. Does she know I’m gay?”

“I already talked to her,” said my Mom. “I told her that Nathan was going to bring his partner and that she wasn’t allowed to say anything inappropriate but she said, ‘I’ve known Nathan was that way since he was a little kid, and I would NEVER say anything to hurt him.”

 Hearing this put a big smile on my face. For the first time it seemed like I had an actual family, and one who actually loved me for who I was. Everything was going to turn out okay in the end, it seemed, even if we did have our differences.

Most of my siblings had already met my partner via webcam, so his introduction was not an enormous affair, but the warmth which they showed in welcoming both him and me quickly undid nearly all the decades of pain and rejection I had endured. My parents had rented us a very large vacation home to house everyone for the wedding, and I had not anticipated how cathartic it would be to see my brand new nieces and nephews all clamoring around my partner. I cried quietly in our bedroom when the emotions became overwhelming. This is what it’s like to get married and grow a family, I thought. 

My partner and I were put straight to work helping with the wedding preparations. He helped the bride construct her bouquet which had been driving her nuts. Then we started helping to construct a favorite dish of our family’s (and that of the bride to be) called Kalua Pig which, as you might have guessed, originates from the Hawaiian Islands where we lived for several years and requires ungodly amounts of meat even when it’s not made for several hundred wedding guests. Suddenly my family were all dressed in their Sunday clothes and departing for the wedding while my partner and I were still shredding pork. They just assumed that since we weren’t allowed in the ceremony that we could just take care of nearly two-hundred pounds of meat-shredding by ourselves. Suddenly I couldn’t help but feel like I had been overly quixotic in my earlier reevaluation of people who had no qualms about cutting their own child out of their lives in the first place, and when the last person shut the front door to the big, empty, unfamiliar home, I had to fight not to let the lump in my throat win out. “I’m sorry,” I said to him as our fingers began cramping. “I probably should have expected this.” 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I love your family, and at least we’re together.” 

“Yeah,” I agreed. 

During the wedding I introduced many of my cousins to my partner. One of my little cousins was not so little anymore, now nearly looking at me at eye level spent a long time in enthusiastic conversation with both my partner and I. We knew that look—the realization that you are not actually alone in this world. Since I was the only out gay boy in our whole family it was very exciting to know that someone else in our family was on my side (although I also immediately felt sorry for him, knowing that he would have a similar experience in his family as I did in mine). 

Driving back home in my parent’s car, alone with my Mom and Dad and my partner I mentioned that my little cousin was also gay. “Don’t say that,” said my Mother tersely. My father didn’t say anything, and suddenly all four of us were frozen in the awkwardness of realizing that my partner and I were not being embraced, but simply tolerated. After the wedding they all went back to the tradition of keeping their distance, even though I constantly tried to reach out to them, show interest in their lives, their children, help in their pursuits and struggles, buy expensive presents for their birthdays and holidays even when I couldn’t afford it, and spent much time and energy helping them and their children with their health problems.

Several years after getting cancer and the tragic end of that relationship, after finally putting my life back together, my brother one day unsolicitedly lectured me on my relationship with our parents. He’d had a particularly wonderful moment of love for his own children and couldn’t possibly understand how parents could not love their children and decided to cope with that horrible realization by insisting that our parents loved me. “Sure, they think they love me,” I said, “but that’s not love. They like me. They want me in their lives because I’m fun, I’m charming, smart, and handsome. I care about them and help them with their health. I make them feel good, and they are proud of being the parent of someone so talented and admirable. But that is not love. They think only of me in terms of what I can do for them. When your child comes out as gay and you throw them out of the house or when he nearly completes suicide and you respond by comparing him to pedophiles and murderers, or spend the last twenty years only talking to him a few minutes once or twice a month, refusing to ever meet any of his friends and lovers or include him in important family events, and with their time and money support institutions and governments which actively work to harm his safety, and prejudice his own siblings against him that is the very antithesis of love. They don’t let me into their lives. They never ask how I am or what I’m doing because they don’t want to know. If I talk about meeting someone they avert their eyes and change the subject. Or when I tell them about me or my cousin being attacked with homophobic slurs by those with whom they are ostensibly allied and warn them that the same thing is going to happen to their grandchildren they respond either by ignoring it or actually defending those people. They don’t know what love is.”

It was a hard pill to swallow. But my parents’ generation were not shown the kind of love which children need and deserve because of their own parents’ collective trauma and inability to give it to them, and since they never experienced love do not have any to give. Love is the most basic tenet of parenting, but it is also unfortunately one of the most elusive and difficult to accomplish since many of us do not even know what love really looks like. Love is not a feeling. Love is action. The feeling we mistake as love is really only our selfish sense of want and the desire to fulfill our own needs, where love recognizes the value of another through demonstrable action. I took the occasion with my brother to also point out the disparity of claiming to love me while raising his children in a religion which teaches them to despise me. Unlike my parents, my brother does love me and has demonstrated it many times over the years, but he immediately became defensive and accused me of hating his children, leveraging my obvious affection for them and my vulnerability as a single, childless gay man as ammunition to win an argument and subvert his own personal responsibility. But his reticence to consider the effect of his choices on my life and our relationship is also rooted in our childhood and the things I did as a child in response to the environment in which we were raised which created an adversarial rather than brotherly relationship between us. Because they were not empowered with more effective and healthy parenting skills, my mother and father engendered a sense of competition between us in order to dominate us. This an extremely common tactic parents use to feel more in control, using their children against each other to subordinate them. This is also almost never a conscious parenting strategy, but occurs simply because of the dependence relationship between parents and children and competition for scarce emotional and material resources between children and their siblings. Around the time that I was eight-years old we lived in a small suburban rambler in Norther Utah, and my brother and I shared a room at the far end of an unfinished basement. The walls were sheet-rocked and painted but the floor was bare, cold concrete littered with a few randomly placed carpet scraps. Even the laundry room was closer to the stairs than we were. One Sunday after returning home and dinner was being prepared my mother commanded us all to spit out our gum, which was used during long and boring religious services as a way to keep us quiet. Being the overachieving and eager-to-please gay boy I was, this command was obeyed promptly and without question. Gay boys are often the best at everything, including obedience, as a way to overcompensate for debilitating fears of rejection. But a little while later in the basement I noticed my brother still chewing his gum. Eager for any opportunity to justify my existence and prove my indispensability to our parents and thus receive the majority of the love and attention which was in short supply, I immediately bounded up the stairs to report him. I felt great pride and cunning at finding a way to trumpet my own obedience while exploiting his mistake and demonstrating myself a responsible and willing participant in the authoritarian system, thus increasing my position within the ranks, and followed my mother eagerly back down to the basement to enact merciless vengeance upon my little brother. 

“Why didn’t you spit out your gum?” she said angrily. “I did,” he protested, opening his mouth to reveal it completely empty. My mother looked inside and was satisfied. 

But it was too convenient, too fast for my brother to have gotten rid of his gum in a responsible way. I knew he had been disobedient and, robbed of my chance to dominate and win the approval of my mother, I was determined to exploit his error. Quickly looking around for a possible hiding spot for the illicit chewing gum I saw there were very few places which could have served as an improvised receptacle. Under the carpets it would have stuck and eventually been discovered. There was a couch at the far end by the stairs but that would have risked getting caught as my mother came from upstairs. Then there was the dark and empty laundry room immediately near where he had been standing. Suddenly I saw the abyssal gap between the dryer and washer—the only possible place that gum could have gone so quickly without risk of being discovered. I walked to the gap and sure enough there was a little green wad of chewing gum in the back on the floor between the machines. “Mom!” I shouted excitedly. “It’s here!” My mother’s indignation at being disobeyed came swiftly to his bottom, and though I was filled even then with a sense of guilt for my failure to protect my own brother I had, at least temporarily, greatly improved my own chances for survival.

This kind of exploitative competition continued throughout our childhood, our brotherly relationship regularly interrupted with opportunistic occasions to subjugate the other. But since I was always bigger and more experienced it more often resulted in his disparagement and my promotion at his expense. Gay boys typically go through puberty on the same timeline as girls (where straight boys do not until a bit later), so even though I was only a year older than him I was always far taller and more mature, and there was a period of years where I had discovered my penis while my little brother was still naively stuck in childhood. Having to share a room with someone who was both immature and given to competition with me for approval from our parents by tattling proved truly frustrating. It reached an apex when, after inheriting my parents’ old, discarded television I one day saw a preview for the movie of the week called The Blue Lagoon airing on television, which is a famous film about two teenagers coming of age while marooned on a desert island. Any straight boy who saw this movie during their youth was forever enchained to Brooke Shields. But as a twelve-year-old gay boy the teenage Christopher Atkins with his incredible head of blonde curls and pouty lips, wearing nothing but a loin cloth was a fantasy I had never even dreamed. The preview also teased an incredibly erotic romantic sex scene. It was my first chance to ever see another boy naked, and I was not about to let my nosy little brother ruin it. Abhorrently, I resorted to extreme harassment and ridicule to purposefully make him cry so much that my parents would finally relent and give us separate rooms, which they unfortunately did. I got to see that movie and Christopher’s naked butt as he made love under a canopy of flowers and have one of my own incredible coming-of-age experiences, but my behavior toward my brother effectively castrated what little relationship we had remaining, which has never closed even as we matured into kinder and more caring adults and even in spite of my efforts to make amends for my behavior, because some wounds can never, in truth, be healed, which is a hard lesson that many of us never learn until it is too late. 

Baby birds of many species will actively peck and kill their siblings and toss their lifeless bodies out of the nest in competition for the parents’ undivided support and attention. Many baby mammals get crowded out of access to mother’s teat if they are not big enough to wrestle their siblings out of the way. Human instincts to survive are no less vicious, and when children are not provided with sufficient access to emotional intimacy (or in other words, love) instinctive drives to fight for sparing resources inspire competitive behaviors every bit as wild and animalistic as any other creature on this earth. The gum incident was about so much more than gum. Because children are absolutely incapable of providing for themselves, both materially but also emotionally, they are wholly reliant on parents for the things required to survive in life, and if parents are unable or unwilling to provide sufficiently for their children, the desperate desire to survive typically overcomes higher emotions and children then engage in cutthroat and desperate conflicts. Competition for love is also not simply an esoteric concept, but is practically relevant for actual survival since a parent’s love directly results in tangible resources needed for survival like food, clothing, shelter, and skills and knowledge which may empower offspring to survive. When a child feels the need to compete with their siblings something maleficent has occurred which sets the children in fear for their own survival which thus triggers competitive instincts within them at the expense of others, since children are far more naturally inclined toward cooperation and love than adults. 

Of course, this often happens because parents are selfish and desire more resources or time for ourselves, but parents only feel this way in the first place because we do not understand how to take care of both our own needs and that of our children at the same time, feeling that “me time” only exists if our children are not physically present, and since children are always present means as parent we are never caring for our own needs. 

The parent who cannot care for their own needs while also caring for children is also one who then withdraws emotionally from their children, because the inability to take care of their own needs engenders resentment toward their children which in turn prejudices how the parent interacts with a child. This then interrupts access to other areas necessary for a child’s wellbeing like time, food, energy, opportunity, and even emotional and physical safety. This reduced access to resources required for survival then triggers insecurity and reactive survival instincts in children like competition and attention seeking. These behaviors place further demands upon a parent with already limited capacity to handle parenthood and thus results in further frustration, resentment, anger, and resultant deprivation of emotional support and material access for their children. For example, if a parent feels that the only time they can take care of themselves is at night when children are asleep a parent might then anticipate and desire bedtime as a break from their parenting responsibilities so that they can take care of their own needs. When a child then has problems getting to bed the parent, frustrated and tired and looking forward to their break will then attack or punish a child for not going to bed. This then communicates to a child that their parent is not emotionally available which then triggers crying and other emotional conflict in order to force a parent’s attention upon them, but because the parent’s goal for bedtime is not the wellbeing of the child but instead that they themselves can have a break from parenting, the parent grows even more frustrated and angry which further deprives a child of emotional support which causes even more emotional turmoil until a struggle for control eventually culminates with the parent asserting dominance at the expense of the child’s wellbeing. 

Most parents think that the opposite of punishment is indulgence, but this isn’t even close to how reality works and is only a result of previous inadequate and abusive parenting. Indulging children is just another method of manipulation and control, which in turn results from parents and adults who do not understand their own life experiences, trauma, and pain nor how to be effective in life. Giving children what they need in terms of love and affection, hugs and kisses, close physical contact, eye contact and personal intimacy, food and nutrition, clothes, toys, time, friends, shelter, opportunity, and education only ever seems indulgent if we were also raised by calloused, cruel, and harsh parents who themselves were raised this way and thus use our needs and wants against us, to manipulate and control, and so on and so on. But parents who employ such strategies of deprivation and reward find themselves then dealing with the headache of warring, dissatisfied children, constantly at odds with each other, having to put out the very fires we started and unable to see the fruits of our own malicious behavior as if these little humans who came out of our bodies and raised and reared solely by ourselves are a product of their machinations and not ours, the adult. I can be among as many as ten or twelve of my nieces and nephews and feel less stressed than I do around just one of my siblings, because children are easy to control but adults trenchant and obtuse. Children can be satisfied with a kind smile, a hug, and a little eye contact even when we don’t give them what they want. But because parenting for most parents is an exercise in control and domination we regard providing that which is necessary for children as the very act of ceding power and control rather than good, effective parenting. A niece who had a reputation for being “difficult” and “out of control” became putty in my hands in about five minutes after throwing a tantrum because I demonstrated to her that I cared for how she felt and how she was being taken care of, instead of threatening her with punishment, which only reinforces the problem of scarce emotional support and access to resources which triggers such behavior in the first place. She had fallen apart at the sight of her cousins’ car pulling away from the parking lot to go home and nearly dashed after them into the road even though it was a wintry, bitterly cold day. Thankfully my arms were long enough to catch her coat before she ran into traffic. But she fought my hold and screamed to be taken with them. Other parents view this kind of behavior as willfulness and defiance, but in reality she just wanted to be part of our family and to not miss out on being together, since those needs were not met with her own family. Sympathetic to her needs I refused to let her down at all until she listened to me, never threatening punishment but instead exercising persistence. “I am not going to let you down until you listen to me,” I repeated until she realized that resistance was futile. I then explained to her (even though she was pouting and not looking at me) that the day was ending and our cousins were going home to their own house, not back to hers as she thought, and that if she went with them it would mean driving all the way to their house just to go to bed once they got there. “Do you want to go home to their house?” I asked. “No,” she admitted. “I know you want to be with them, and I’m sorry you felt left out. But they’re coming back tomorrow too, so the sooner we get home and go to bed the sooner you will see them again.” My willingness to be patient with her supported through action my proclamation of love, and my ability to communicate an understanding of exactly why she was disappointed and hurt showed empathy, which is the manifestation of love. Though not once during the encounter did I give her what she demanded nor allow her to control the situation, she was so completely satisfied that she stopped crying and sat in the wagon willingly, and even began laughing as we continued home and rolled over the bumps in the uneven sidewalk (and also never again gave me trouble that entire trip). 

I was effective in that moment with my niece in being her surrogate parent because I gave her the things she needed (which in that moment she identified as only available from the things she was asking for) which were unconditional love and a sense of belonging. Knowing they are loved provides so much emotional stability it also helps prevent many of the consequences of other mistakes, since children are naturally inclined toward unconditional love themselves, and love in return helps them know that at the end of the day they are always going to be cared for, even if they don’t get the things they want. 

But the inability or failure to provide sufficiently for love and affection for children is in reality an inability for the adult to acquire these things for themselves. Raised by people who did as bad or worse a job at parenting as we are doing means we too were not given the skills required to achieve these things for ourselves, so how can we be expected to provide such things for children when we do not even have them in the first place? Just as my own parents’ generation was denied access to love and thus have no idea what it is, we too cannot give love until we have found it for ourselves. Single, childless adults like myself are able to ignore such shortcomings of self-care, but by the very presence of children parents are forced to confront their own inadequacies and shortcomings, and this in turn causes much more dismay, resentment, pain, frustration, and perhaps failure and feelings of inadequacy, because we are inadequate, because no one ever taught us the skills we need to take care of ourselves as adults, and since we can’t even take care of ourselves how in the world are we to care for children?

As a parent we are hardly ever alone, and if we require alone time to take care of ourself we will be woefully uncared for. The definition of adulthood is the ability to provide for our own needs, whether that be securing food or shelter or seeking out companionship, but also (and perhaps most importantly) our own emotional support. When our ability to care for ourselves is retarded, because of inadequate parenting, we are in reality adults who are still children, and like children we blame the world and our circumstances for our own problems since we have never moved beyond childhood into the self-sufficient nature of adulthood, which is not the shallow facades of earning money or having things and material success or even having sex and partying but the ability to provide for one’s own emotional and personal wellbeing. This is one of the reasons why rich people are so often poor in character, because their resources and the resultant permissiveness it facilitates provides an opportunity to never be confronted by the consequences of childish behavior. The same happens in any adult who is raised by another which does not also possess skills and abilities of self-awareness, self-care, self-compassion, and self-determination. As a parent with responsibilities it is not only possible that we achieve self-care while also caring for children, but required. 

Our responsibility to ourselves and to our families are not mutually exclusive, but only seem to be when we have never been shown how this is accomplished. Essentially, parents who fail to care for themselves while caring for children fail to differentiate themselves from their child and the responsibilities of parenthood, feeling obligated to indulge every whim and need of a child or to oppositely react in frustration and exhaustion from this obligation through rejection and punishment when neglect of our own self-care becomes too great to bear. Because parents do not differentiate themselves from their children or their responsibility as a parent we confuse acts of parenting and childcare as acts of caring for ourselves, when in fact they are not. If we were to go to a spa and get lunch with several friends, the presence of our friends does not distract from enjoyment of our time, and even adds to our enjoyment, even if they talk on and on about their relationship troubles or how much they hate their parents or are frustrated by work. When we take our children to a pool we are also at the pool, an activity that for many people would be otherwise relaxing and enjoyable. We would even be playing in the water and having a good time, but suddenly add children into the dynamic and all relaxation and recreation vanishes, because we are no longer having a good time but instead have intertwined our identities with our children and then spend the entire time experiencing the occasion through their experience and not our own. If this can be separated, everything we do with and for our children can also be for ourselves and thus also accomplish self care without neglecting our responsibilities as a parent. If we were single, most of the activities required in parenting are things we would be doing anyway— Cleaning, cooking, reading, working, going to the park, taking care of the dog, paying bills, earning money, going to school, waking up early, staying up late, eating healthy, etc. Parenting most often only requires that we make a little more food, read a little more books, spend a little more money, and clean a little more mess (okay—sometimes it is a lot more mess, but you’re deluding yourself if you think you wouldn’t also be cleaning up your own messes anyway). There is no reason why an adult cannot enjoy every moment of every day even with children around. But because as adults we are now the ones responsible for our own emotional and material wellbeing it is we who must find love for ourselves in order that we may give it to others. Failure to understand that we are worthy of self-care, self-compassion, and self-determination is what stands in our way of having that. Children are only a reminder of it.

Many of us as adults wait for love to come to us, believing that we are reliant on others to obtain it. But because other adults are also too often burdened with unresolved pain and trauma from their own childhoods, this proves difficult, if not impossible. Since the definition of adulthood is also not other people’s responsibility to us but instead our own capacity to provide for ourselves, reliance on others for love as an adult is actually the opposite of love. This too is not an esoteric concept, but one rooted in practicality and demonstrable behavior. Just as I demonstrated love to my niece by being patient and showing empathy, finding love for ourselves lies in action, choices, and behavior. Having patience for ourselves, empathy for our experiences, and compassion for our needs and desires are behaviors which care for our own wellbeing. Because love is the demonstration of these behaviors, the very act of practicing these towards ourselves is the act of having love for ourselves, and the more it is practiced the more familiar and easy and cathartic it can become. Since we then provide love for ourselves we can then increase our supply of it, and in turn have enough to share with others.

Physical affection is an important affirmation of love and is the outlet through which emotional availability is facilitated since, remember, love is not a feeling, but action. But with children it is commonly difficult for parents to show physical affection, especially when demonstrable affection was also withheld from us, never having had an example of what that looks like and even feeling threatened by it. But a lack of physical affection is guaranteed to cause children stress, depression, or even more severe emotional problems which can later in life lead to things like eating disorders, choosing harmful friends and associates, and engaging in self-destructive behaviors such promiscuity as the child seeks to find acceptance and intimacy from other sources. When a young child does not receive enough physical closeness and emotional availability from a parent one of the first visible signs of this stress is prolonged finger or object sucking. Denied the intimacy of closeness with a parent the child feels unsafe, and as such seeks to provide reassurance which would otherwise come from the touch of a parent. Finger sucking or blankey or toy sucking is actually a form of self-care, providing for themselves what is not forthcoming from their environment, but because of our moralistic and calloused ideologies is typically viewed as a weakness and vulnerability to which parents react with anger, shame, and punishment. As fully-grown adults, a child who was deprived of physical closeness with their parent will participate in excessive obsession with relationships and sex in attempts to soothe the stress created by the physical absence of the parent. This is actually a natural, instinctual and biological reaction for a human animal in response to deprivation of physical closeness since such deprivation in evolution terms would have more often been caused by a high mortality rate among adults and not simply emotional retardation on the part of parents. The stress caused by physical absence of a parent (whether or not they are actually absent) thus promotes an increase in promiscuity as a counter measure to the loss of adult members by increasing chances for procreation by stimulating behavior more likely to result in a correction of population deficiency. Withholding physical affection from children may spare us the discomfort of drawing close to others and confronting our emotional pain and disappointment, but it will doom children to an emotionally volatile future as well as burden you with the headaches and frustration of promiscuous teenagers, early pregnancy, broken families, drug and alcohol addiction, emotional turmoil, and other effects caused by the stress of emotional isolation.

Once in California after I put my life back together and benefited from an increase in the kind of awareness such as has led me to write about my experiences, one of my sisters came to visit, and after a nice dinner as we walked back to the car which was several blocks away I instinctually put my arm around her. Suddenly, she stiffened so rigidly that it became difficult for us to even walk, such was her aversion to touch, even from close family members. When I was a teenager one of my beautiful cousins got pregnant when she was seventeen, in spite of her parents strict adherence to their religious institution. Her parents then not only forced her and the father to get married, they did so in their basement, in a hasty, tiny, quiet ceremony without the typical joy and celebration of a marriage, even though my cousin was so in love with her incredible boyfriend (to whom she is still married) and the fact that they were bringing a new life into this world. Similarly traumatized from their childhood as my own parents, my cousin’s parents also used their access to pharmaceuticals since the father was a drug rep to drug their children and avoid the immediate consequences which came from withholding affection from their children, and in turn caused severe emotional and physical damage to their children which led to much greater heartache in the future, including rampant depression, alcoholism, and even infertility in some of them.

 It is so difficult to explore and correct these deficiencies we suffer from our childhoods that parents would rather harm their own children than confront their own pain and trauma. But as parents we often fail to see how our indulgence of emotional sensitivities and pain in the present sets in motion later events which are even worse, and the reluctance then to acknowledge how our problems are of our own making impairs us from ever correcting the past and thus engenders yet more suffering in the future as we fail to learn and to take care of ourselves. In terms of cause and consequence, it does not matter that it is difficult to show or receive displays of emotional affection as an adult. It may be true that this aversion comes from very painful events in our past. But our failure to provide this for ourselves and thus our children will also damage them the way it damaged us, and will always create more suffering for ourselves in the future and sustain the cycles of pain and abuse which are passed from generation to generation. Once when visiting my parents, one of my older nephews out of the blue ran up to his mother and threw his arms around her and declared, unsolicited, “I love you, Mom,” melting my sister’s heart and then running off again to play. I was touched by the affection she had so deftly earned from her own children and the closeness engendered in spite of also having come from our family which never did that kind of thing, and told her how much I appreciated getting to see it and how proud I was of her as a mother. I think her experience as a surrogate parent along with me in the care and rearing of our own siblings gave both of us valuable insight which for her paid off well and helped to avoid the same abuse and harm we suffered, and many generations can be spared from the cycles of abuse and trauma if only one parent makes the effort to heal themselves from it. 

Taking care of ourselves while also caring for children in such a way which produces the outcome of creating love and providing emotional availably looks in practice like doing things for yourself while you are also doing them for children, not instead of. A parent who cannot give their children hugs and kisses without feeling uncomfortable is only considering the act as one of giving. But giving hugs and kisses to your children can also be the act of getting hugs and kisses for yourself. Giving physical affection to children is also getting it for yourself. Instead of being a short-order chef for your children, make something for breakfast, lunch, or dinner that you want to eat. Sure, children will not and should not eat some things like shellfish or raw, bitter greens, but that does not also mean you have to be their personal chef and make macaroni and cheese when you’re also making other food. I was once horrified when visiting a sister to see her walk around at lunch time and ask every child what they wanted for lunch, then proceed to make three separate dishes which took about forty-five minutes to prepare and then did not eat anything herself. No. Even if this provides you a sense of purpose, this is not good parenting. It engenders entitlement, ingratitude, and teaches children that your time is not worth much to you. Later, it came as no surprise when their children whined at having to eat certain foods, and even turned their nose up at what was provided for dessert, which then frustrated my sister and her husband, but she had earlier shown her children that she was willing to wait on them, so why shouldn’t they expect that? Such parenting demonstrates behaviors of people-pleasing and failure to practice self-care and set boundaries, and children whose parents do everything for them grow up to be adults who do not know how to take care of themselves, because it was never demonstrated for them by their parent who was too busy doing things for other people. To practice self-care, make what you want for lunch, because you are the adult and children are along for the ride (while making reasonable accommodations for the needs and limitations of children). If you require a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich every day for lunch to feel satisfied and happy then make yourself a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich every day for lunch. Making them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is then not much more effort since you already have to get out the bread and utensils, and spreading some peanut butter or jelly requires very little effort. After hearing me talk about self-care in a similar way, a sister of mine told me that she didn’t realize she was neglecting herself in the mornings, always rushing to get her children breakfast before herself. But self-care is important because we must care for ourselves so that we can then have the energy and resources to care for others. It’s a lot like the pre-flight safety briefing—put on your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others. When our first goal as a parent is to neutralize any possible unpleasantness, punish disobedience, and maintain order you are putting the mask on the other passengers before yourself. First you must learn how to practice self care and then actually practice self care. Once you have done this you can then help others and actually be effective. My sister now makes something for herself first (or what she is making for everyone), and it gives her more energy and emotional strength to take care of her kids. 

Another example of self-care is not waiting until children go to bed before enjoying yourself for the evening. If you like to end the day with some dessert, make it for your children too. If you like to end the day reading, include them in a book you will also enjoy or, if they are too young, you can set them near you with books of their own, to read together as a family but separate with your own interests. If you need to practice therapies such as those contained within this book to resolve emotional pain and trauma—set aside time during the day when children are expected to play with their toys, read books, or entreat your spouse or other family members to care for them while you take the time to take care of yourself. When your children trigger emotions in you that cause you to react with resentment, anger, and frustration, first ask yourself why you feel this way and examine that answer before you respond. This is the act of practicing empathy and patience for yourself, by recognizing or understanding why you feel the way you do, rather than jumping right into reaction which oppositely ignores why you feel that way and as such practices indifference and apathy to your own experience. 

A parent can always care for their children and themselves at the same time. It is only because our own parents taught us that they are separate that we even think it’s not possible, having never seen how it is done. But because we are now adults we can teach ourselves new skills and provide for our own needs without neglecting those of whom we are responsible. Abandoning one responsibility for the other is simply a result of coping and control mechanisms acquired in youth which distort our perception of our own self worth, and first discovering what that means for us and resolving the issues of our past can then make space for us to hug our children and view their (and our) mistakes with compassion and pity rather than the resentment which impairs emotional availability. 

The most basic provision a parent needs to provide for children is love. All other failures of parenting can be resolved, but not the absence of love. Providing love for children is done through demonstrable acts of affection—touch, hugs, kisses, and play, but also giving our time, energy, attention, and care. Empathy is love in action, without which it is not love but want. Love is the recognition of value in another, which the act of empathy demonstrates, and if accomplishing these things is difficult it only means that we first need to practice showing love to ourselves. Doing so will give us the resources to in turn share love with others.

The remainder of the book explores themes of self-care, resolving the trauma of our pasts, and effective approaches for themes such as discipline, nutrition, education, sexuality, and more. The Perfect Child is available in paperback (319 pages) and eBook.