Crap Parents - The Sequel

In reading some of the comments to my Crap Parents blog post (Thank You!), a few parenting stories of my own have popped back into my head.  I’ll admit that the memories are somewhat bittersweet, as I no longer have contact with the step kids I grew to love as my own.  Distance and a vindictive ex-wife, unfortunately, were enough to seal that fate. 

Anyway, I thought I’d share some real world examples of my own on how not being afraid to be a hard ass as a parent, can be a good thing.  Both stories involve my step-daughter; the one with screaming ADHD and resulting impulse control issues.  Keep in mind, particularly for the second story, that I was known as the hard ass of the two parental figures in her life. 

One Saturday afternoon, I was alone in the house with my daughter.  She was planning to head to a music festival and was eagerly waiting for one of her friends to pick her up.  I knew she was excited about the concert, having mentioned it several times during the previous week.  At some point, my attention was drawn to noise coming from the street / cul de sac in front of our home.  Looking out, I saw a worn out Chrysler minivan attempting to do donuts.  I called up to my daughter and asked if that was her friend.  She said that wasn’t his car to which I responded that it had better not be because there was no way my daughter, step or otherwise, was riding with that idiot.  I was also pretty angry because we lived in a rather nice neighborhood; yes, part of it was being a snob but a larger part was because there were small children present. 

The next thing I knew, you guessed it, the minivan pulled into our driveway and honked the horn.  I reminded my daughter of the time honored father’s code of ‘if you honk your horn in my driveway, you’d better be dropping off a package because you ain’t picking up my daughter’, and made it very clear she was not riding with this moron.  She was not so happy but said she’d tell her friend she wasn’t going.  The next thing I know, the aforementioned friends (another friend had tagged along) were on my back deck, where I was smoking a cigar (still not sure what I ever saw in those things).  In a respectful tone, he asked why I wouldn’t allow my daughter to go with him.  After I laid out the reasons, he proceeded to explain to me why I was wrong.  To this day, I’m quite proud of myself for not having two bodies to bury in the back yard.  However, after about two minutes of discourse between the two of us, I informed him his departure would be a wise move.  A strange teenager telling a man he was dumb in his own home is tantamount to asking to have the living daylights beaten out of him. 

Numb nuts finally left and my daughter sequestered herself into her room.  Much as I wanted to just let things lie, I decided a good father would chat with his daughter about the event.  Knowing how much she was looking forward to the concert, I knew I’d be facing the untamed wrath of a teenage girl.  I knocked on her door and walked in.

Before I even got two words out of my mouth, my daughter jumped up and threw her arms around me.  With tears in her eyes, she told me how grateful she was to have me as her dad.  That she’d never had anyone she could count on to protect her until I came along.  To say I was shocked would be an understatement.  That moment still brings a tear to my eyes.

The other story I’d like to share happened about six months after their mother and I separated.  I was chatting with my step daughter and she told me how much she missed me.  She said that she missed the structure I brought as a parent.  This shocked me a bit and I jokingly reminded her of her and her brother’s comments about my being the hard ass parent.  And then she said something I’ll never forget, so long as I live.  ‘You were firm, but you were fair, and we always knew you loved us.’  Wow, pretty powerful stuff, at least for me.

Beyond recounting seemingly self-serving stories, my point is that kids need a healthy, repeat healthy, structure during their formative years.  Regardless of how much they fight it sometimes, they crave structure; they appreciate it.  Honestly, it’s sometimes easier to let things slide.  You think ‘I just don’t feel like dealing with the drama right now.  I’ll deal with it later.’  If you’re not prepared to enforce your rules, then don’t set them.

At the risk of going into full babble mode, I’ll share one more story.  I was with a female friend recently.  Her son had his three cousins staying with her for a few nights over the holidays, so there were four pre-teen boys in the house.  They were typical rambunctious kids and a lot of fun.  At 8:45 pm, she announced that lights out would be at 9:00.  9:00 came and went with no effect on the mayhem upstairs.  At 9:15, I reminded her of her lights out time.  She responded that they were just being boys and I shouldn’t be such a hard ass.  She completely missed the point!  I had no issue with the boys having fun.  What I had an issue with was her drawing a line in the sand and walking away from it.

You might read this and think I ran my home like Army basic training.  You’d be wrong.  I didn’t have rules for everything; trust me, I’ve seen the damage that can do to kids.  Rules and limits were in place where it made sense.  When rules were broken, there were consequences commensurate with the importance of the rule.  Those consequences were consistent and uniformly enforced.

Crap Parents

I’ve noticed a recurring theme with a number of women I’ve met recently that both irritates and scares me.  Being the blunt person I am, I’ll come out and say it; they’re crap parents.  Before I head down the path, let me provide some context.  First, I make no claims to be an expert on parenting.  However, I do have experience with my (former) step kids in raising them from preteens to majority.  One was ADHD as well as the ‘black’ child of a BPD mother.  For reasons that will become obvious later, I’ll also mention that I was an only child and ADHD myself, before anyone knew what ADHD was.  I’ve done a fair amount of reading on ADHD kids as well, so I’m pretty in tune with the condition.

So, what makes some of the women I’ve met crap parents?  A few things, actually.  First, comes the irritating part.  It seems that the ones with kids who have behavior problems (and there seem to be more than I’d thought there would be out there) are the ones who want absolutely no input from anyone else on attempting to modify that behavior.  They discount any knowledge you might have gained by raising your own kids and are often combative when you try to share some of that knowledge.  One of my favorites was with a woman I was dating who couldn’t get her 12 year old son ready for school without having to yell at him multiple times for each step.  Get up, brush your teeth, get dressed, etc.  The kid would stop after each step and wander into space.  When I told her that something needed to be done to get his act together, she replied ‘that’s how teenagers are but you wouldn’t know anything about that.’  Uh, yeah, I’ve got no experience with teenagers, particularly those two who ran around my house and were getting themselves to school way before age 12…what was I thinking? 

As you can imagine, regardless of how compatible you might be with someone, it’s a bit difficult to respect them when they tell you to butt out, that they know how to parent their kids.  Then those same kids have a meltdown and tell their mother they hate her, for no apparent reason, ten minutes later.  Yeah, you’ve got it well in hand, ‘mom’.

From my perspective, the common thread in most of the poorly behaving children, is lack of consequences and boundaries.  Certain behavior is par for the course with kids.  Messy rooms, some whining, sneaking cookies, etc.  Obviously, it shouldn’t be encouraged but you have to roll with that stuff and not harp on it.   Hell, it’ll kill you if you don’t learn to pick your battles.  I’m a big fan of the 7 positive comments to each negative; I saw great results when I consciously incorporated that into my own interactions with my step kids.  

However, there are behaviors that cross a boundary into completely unacceptable behavior.  Meltdowns, mouthing off to parents (hell, anyone really), stealing, etc. Yet, I see parents letting these behaviors occur and excuse it as their kids ‘expressing themselves’ or some other bullshit.  ‘We need to find a positive reward system for their good behavior.’  Yeah, that’s worked great so far!  If you allow a child to get away with this behavior without appropriate consequences, you’re teaching them that it’s okay.  Furthermore, what do kids do best?  They push boundaries.

A friend of mine is the perfect example of this.  Over the course of the three years I’ve known her, I’ve observed her son’s behavior progress from bad to worse.  He’s never had any compunction over having a meltdown in front of me, over something trivial like not being able to take his tablet to bed (which should never even be considered, IMO).  Nor has he shown any hesitance to mouth off to me, although he tends to do that once he’s mostly up the stairs.  In general, he’s a spoiled little brat.  Never have I seen any consequences dished out for the bad behavior; only excuses of how he’s ADHD and unable to control his impulses.  Well, sure enough, a few weeks ago, he went off (again, over something trivial) and out it came…’Fuck you!’  Surely, there were consequences for this outburst.  Nope.  Nor were there any for him attempting to physically take something she had confiscated in a rare instance of attempted punishment.

The bottom line is that a parent treats mouthing off / defiant insubordination the same as the child having a dirty room, how is the child expected to differentiate between the two?   If the child doesn’t learn boundaries from his/her parents, then those parents have failed.  End of story.

And this leads me to what will likely be a controversial assertion; that single women are at somewhat of a disadvantage in raising kids.  Be very clear that I’m not saying they’re not good parents but just at a disadvantage.  The advantage of having a father in the house is that it brings the ‘nuclear option’ to the table.  For example, you can imagine being an only child, I was pretty spoiled.  And my ADHD could have meant trouble with my poor impulse control.  However, I knew there were boundaries on what I could spout off to my parents.  I also knew that, if I exceeded them, my father would kick the shit out of me.  As a result, I never told my parents to go screw themselves or anything of the sort.  And to be clear, my father never kicked the shit out of me or anything close.

My step daughter was screaming ADHD; her therapist told me she was the most impulsive person she’d ever met.  Understandably, there were unpleasant encounters from time to time.  Only a matter of time before I received a ‘fuck you’ right?  Or maybe from my step son, asserting his manhood.  Nope, there were clear boundaries in place so that both kids knew exactly how the script would read. 

‘Blah, blah, blah, fuck you….hey, how’d I get on the floor?’ 

I don’t doubt for a second that many readers had the same dynamic in their homes growing up. 

And it was a universal truth both for me growing up, as well as for my step kids.  If you laid a hand on your mother, you’d be visiting the ER. 

Wow, threatening your kids with violence; how horrible!  Funny thing is I don’t recall my father ever threatening to beat the hell out of me.  I know I never threatened my kids.  It was just a given that crossing certain lines would not be tolerated.  And, to be clear, the only physical punishment I got from my dad were limited to a few well deserved spankings.  Furthermore, I never raised a hand to either of my children.  Much like maintaining a nuclear weapons arsenal, just having the capability and willingness to use it ensured I never had to. 

Back to my assertion.  Unfortunately, the threat of physical consequences to a teenage boy from a 5’4” mom just won’t be as much of a deterrent as from a man.  So, single mothers have to be even more resourceful and, quite frankly, more vigilant in establishing and enforcing clear boundaries.  And they must do so much earlier, when they are still physically imposing to their demon offspring.