The Resilient Parent: Perfect Parenting Skills

A narcissist is someone who claims an excellent performance, despite all evidence to the contrary. When you meet one, you will be inclined to argue. You will go crazy and get dizzy as you lose sight of the truth and your certainty about it. It’s a desperate spiral to escape.

First, like a fly escaping a web, the struggle. Then, you surrender, because you’ve realized all movement makes it worse. Finally, some help from the outside, and eventually, the exit – pure detachment.

My childhood was one of this pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey experience, with the blindfold coming off at eighteen. Poof! Now you are an adult, good luck with that, when you’ve never made a single decision of your own.

Like me, Ina writes that she wasn’t allowed to choose her clothing, her activities, her meals, or her ambitions, but felt the pull of rebellion anyway. Obedience is for dogs. One day, the cage flies open.

I had accumulated an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) score of 8, which is severe. Yet, there were no outside interventions in my life to ensure that I wasn’t a ticking time bomb, as such a score may indicate. A simple school test might have called out my need for therapy years before my behaviour did.

Today, the fact that “everyone has divorced parents” should scare society for what might be coming. Systems and supports don’t exist to handle the influx of adults who will need the help they didn’t get.

Judging by the products, perfect parenting is impossible. Mistakes will be made. Over 18 years, with changing and conflicting information about how to do it, how could they not? Perfect parenting is only possible in the world of the narcissist who, by nature and by definition, does no wrong.

Parenthood as an Expectation

Ina Gartner writes that she and her brother agree their parents shouldn’t have had children, but it was what was expected at the time.

Back in the day, when my parents were married, couples succumbed to the pressure to procreate. Single women were pressured to aim for marriage, and duty-bound, deluded youngsters threw their lives away for someone else’s dream, only to realize it after many people suffered the consequences and irreversible decisions were made.

Today, people go under the knife to conform to a desired label, when the problem is the label’s narrowness, its boundaries, and its inherent value as better or worse than the opposite. A simple matter of preference is based on that assumption – that one is better than the other. In reality, they are just different.

Equal, but different. That’s what I believe, yet I’ve struggled to find anyone who shares it. In relationships, I set out to prove myself an equal. I wanted to prove women as equals. Yet, despite any accomplishment or fact to the contrary, I am excluded, mocked, and treated differently. I believe that there must be men out there who, in fact, believe that women are their equals. I’ll tell you when I meet one; if you are one, please, introduce yourself.

I’ve met men who agreed with the premise and then wanted me to mother them. Or who only wanted to know what I could do with my mouth, and not what might come out of it. Invariably, they all have a list in mind of tasks, duties, and responsibilities tied to the term “girlfriend”. Now that they have bestowed you with that title, you’d better perform as expected, or you will be replaced.

Perfect parenting means raising the next generation with a better set of standards and definitions.

Parenthood as a Standard

When you aren’t doing it up to standard, they will be sure to tell you about it, because they are the boss, and you are the one who needs them.

You can be Whitney Houston, paying everyone’s bills and doing all the work, and yet, the attitude is still there, “Woman, do what you are told.” When it comes from every direction, it can be difficult to know what’s true.

That rebellious streak, I trust it every time, even if it’s a bit of a messy track record. That’s okay, I go through life with four-wheel drive, and as such, mud will splatter. Be warned.

Call me what you want. I’d rather be known as that witch than to go along with something that demeans me or devalues my existence.

No, I’ve had enough of that already. I’ve tried all the ways, and they weren’t fun. They were dangerous. Worst of all, people got hurt anyway, when I thought that’s what we were trying to avoid? If it’s a lose/lose situation, why bother with anything but the truth? Everything else requires more effort, and it seems that effort won’t be rewarded. With less-than-perfect parenting, let’s take the lazy way out.

I lay down my weapons of consumerism to make you jealous because look at all the stuff I can buy. With that, I lay down my weapon of criticism to make you hurt just as much as I am. I lay down my weapon of curation to put forth a story and an image that make me look effortlessly successful, virtuous, and glamorous. If I am going to lose, I might as well not even try; I’ll never learn, and it will all be wasted.

Parenthood as a Choice

I’d abandon my gender too, but I will not change my outsides to prevent the shocked exclamation I have heard echo far past day one, “It’s a girl!”

I abide by my body’s wisdom to show itself as it chooses. Those cells organized. This outcome is the product of their instruction, of their creativity. I recognize the domain as one over which I do not rule. I don’t know how they do it, or why, yet, I presume to step in and take over. Who the heck am I?

Oh, the pressure to be called a mother, versus the shame in saying you are childfree. Worse, when you say “childfree” instead of “childless,” you are saying that you never wanted any, versus saying that you don’t have any.

With a label, you are declaring yourself an out-of-the-closet rebel, a dangerous clarity to make in the populous crowd. There is power in labels. They are influenced by the opinions of society, a society that is under the impression that there are good people and there are bad people, and we know the difference.

I believe that DNA, situations, and people are products of that more than they are responsible for their choices. Free will is not so free – you have to pry it out of the grip of your history, your biological motivations, and your education. You are programmed as a child to behave in ways that are survival-oriented, yet societally dysfunctional.

You never know what you have until someone tries to take it away from you. Your voice, your opinion. Before you had one, you were pushed toward one. As an adult who can reflect and choose for oneself, is this the opinion of the adult version of you? Sometimes perfect parenting means knowing you aren’t one.

I am so lucky that worse things could have happened to me. There are ways things could have turned out differently, sending me down an entirely different life path.

If Ina Gartner credits luck for her success, ongoing and continued success at rolling the dice like Las Vegas’s worst nightmare of a gambler, then it can go the other way for anyone else, and they might pour just as much hard work into it.

Knowing this truth allows me to see my enemies with a clear heart. If I had been in your shoes, I probably would have done what you did, too, because truly being in your shoes means having the motivations you do, not the ones I have, and having the knowledge you do, not what I have. It means to fully and compassionately embrace the reality that you are not me, and I am not you.

It has taken time and distance to see such things, but life has given me the luxury to do so. I’ve learned that sadness is unprocessed anger (Start with: how dare you). Anger is fear turned outward (What are you afraid of?).  In the future, I can only hope for the insight to do better in my own shoes, in the moment when it arrives.

When I look at the justice system, I wonder, what then, is this thing we call justice? A punishment system? Removal from society in caveman days meant sure death. Today, it sometimes does involve that. We take time away for harms done, and sometimes, all of it that’s left. Yet, I wonder what real justice there is in this? Aren’t we smarter than cavemen by now? Shouldn’t we know what perfect parenting entails by now?

Turning for Help

As a teenager, the day occurred when my dad was telling me that all he could do was to tell me to call the cops. On my sister, for repeatedly and violently attacking me, leaving permanent scars on my hands and face. For stealing my bonds and my wallet to cash them in, impersonating me at the bank, and leaving me with none of the savings I’d accumulated to pay for my first year’s university tuition, due in months.

This is on his resume of perfect parenting.

That’s what I did, I called the cops on my sister, face bleeding.

Later events convinced me I would have been better off if I’d done anything else. Like, say nothing; move out and move on, never looking back. She did her time, but I had to move out, and the relocation cost me dearly and put me in further harm’s way, both immediately and when she got out and knew who to blame for her segue from society. The only way to change results is to change your own behavior. I shall no longer expect anyone to come running when I need saving.

As a society, we blame adults, but I think we blame the wrong ones. Unintentionally, parents belittle emotional expression, minimize emotional experiences, sanction sibling bullying and exploitation, condone abuse, force complicity, and act as authoritarians who have all the answers. If it is unintentional, insight and education should be easy solutions.

If we are going to assign labels for the convenience of understanding the pecking order of morality, there would first be monks and healers, and then parents. But we can’t because we support parents to the point that weak ones are going at the job, and gaps are being filled with social programs. Or are they?

Licensing the Parents

In my utopian society, perfect parenting would be common and a result of needing a license to be a parent. You’d be trained and tested, and if you can’t prove that you can do it without harming others, then you would get to go on, procreate at will, if that’s what you want.

Social laziness is harming the child because you are following the wrong instructions. A license makes it clear which instructions are best so that fewer become naïve agents of the mean.

For the parentless, there would be institutions, but the job of being a Parent would be coveted. Not for the income, not for the status, but for the opportunity to nurture and guide, for the honor of receiving and providing unconditional love to another human being. Every child deserves this and needs it to develop into a well-functioning adult capable of contributing to a better society.

When children get knocked off the course of receiving unconditional love, it’s almost predictable. Courses through life are charted like a billiard ball sent rolling in a certain and straight line. Yet as adults, we do not allow for the science that draws a line between punishment and the need for further development. For love, safety, and compassion, not punishment, banishment, and blame.

It’s not that jails need reform; it’s that we need somewhere else that siphons off those who need deep work, not time to stew and strategize their inevitable release. Those who are open and willing to respond are worthy of the chance to receive the investment, if only as an experiment in how best to spend tax dollars on the convicted.

For the good of society, and what good does it do to simply take away time?

Growing like Cancer

If there is a sickness, we are only allowing it the time and space to grow and take over, like a cancer.

We don’t treat wrongdoers with the compassion and treatment we’d give to a sick person, yet that is what they are – sick – infected with a childhood hole created with a lack of perfect parenting, or contaminated by an experience a child should never endure, still thinking they are powerless to the situation, and lacking a viable alternative.

People do the best they can with what they have. When you might do differently, it can be difficult to realize you have things they do not. Especially, without looking down on them as you think that.

Human to human, as a society, we need to move beyond the caveman mentality toward an enlightened, healing mindset. Of widening our awareness of what it means to be sick. Mental health, you can call it. A peaceful mind, a clear heart. A completely different model of providing health care where and when it’s needed to those who need it.  A model driven by compassion instead of anger. Time and distance may be required to get there. Wounds need to heal if they can. Both sides need intervention and systematic assistance.

Even better, we know how to provide the right solution to those traumas, and it’s less costly than the time-in-exchange-for-harm model. I know that, as someone harmed, it does me nothing whatsoever for someone who caused me harm to go to jail. Hopefully, our live trajectories are no longer intertwined in a way I’d notice, but that wasn’t my experience. My abuser wound up back in my life and under the same roof as I, because the label “sister” is supposed to matter more than the label “abuser”.

I paid for a lot of therapy and spent a lot of time learning, or rather re-learning and unlearning, things I thought I knew, as a result of the experiences I’d had, and the DNA that makes me human. I did my own perfect parenting.

On the other side, this is the journey I would wish for everyone before they land in a place society deems inescapable or one with irreversible consequences. After all, not everyone should be a parent, nor do they want to, and finally, society is arriving at a place where that truth can exist without judgment.

For what is a label without judgment? It is a scientific truth. In biology, the difference between male and female is the question of whether or not there is a Y chromosome. Do what you want on the outside. But on a cellular level, and only on the cellular level, we need to know.

A license is merely a vehicle to take control of that learning curve and education and point it toward science, with the pedal to the floor, toward the best-known truths.

There was a time when you didn’t need a license to drive. Then, more and more people were doing it, and order was needed for the good of all. Over time, it became a test that was increasingly difficult to pass because more and more rules were required for the good of all. More importantly, when the consequences of new behaviors come to light, new laws can be passed, which require everyone to adapt.

When distracted driving came to light as a new problem, a new law was introduced, a grace period was provided, and then the tickets started. Slowly, licenses force better outcomes.

What Children Need

In parenting, corporal punishment emerged as a new problem. Today, it’s not legal to beat your kids, but then why are so many getting away with it? They may not be aware of better options, the eventual ramifications, or ways to redirect that energy before they lose control.

Perfect parenting is impossible, indeed. Why can’t we make it easier on everyone instead of merely picking up the slack, for the greater good of society? There’s an overwhelming load of information. When you realize you need it, who has the time or energy to filter through it? Clarity is required.

Parents need help. They need to know who to trust in a world full of people selling advice and banking on image in an influencer era. When parenting advice is tidal, what is time-tested, and not the latest extreme fad, set to create a generation with all new problems? Is there a happy medium between all the generations gone before?

Parenting needs better control, including clearer boundaries for acceptable behavior. Have your religious freedom, your familial traditions, but no child will be harmed.

Every child is born innocent. It’s what they learn that matters, and that is a societal problem with far bigger implications than a crashed car could ever cause.

Toward empowered accountability means recognizing that children have rights. They are innocent in their situation, can be affected most by the smallest interventions, and aren’t in a position to act for themselves.

Now, I’m putting myself first, and refuse to dull the pain, redirect the anger, and swallow my opinions. For I’ve survived ostracism before, and I can do so again. You can’t make everyone happy, so this may be the only true way to the community that is your self-selected family. Ostracize me into where I belong.