The Best Gift I Can Give
For the next few weeks, Jason is helpless, with a broken leg. I have to empty his pee bottle, which is embarrassing for him. He wants to just play video games, but he needs to do at least two sessions of homework every day. He tries to push the time back and back, promising to do multiple sessions the next day, begging and pleading and accusing — all raving fear. And if he is pushed too hard, he shuts down, hiding under his blankets or so freaked out that he shakes and sweats. All the terror that he hides under the bravado will come boiling up. He’ll attack me in any way he can, trying to get me to over-react so he can trip his circuit breakers and shut down.
But this is an opportunity for me, for us. His helplessness also opens his little USB port so I can program him the way we did when he was a child. Helplessness does that. So I am using it to increase discipline, but if I push too hard…he will shut down with fear and anger.
But I’ve seen him here before, and if I hold fast, he WILL come around. Every time. But Lord, the resistance, and sometimes tears and accusations and verbal attacks can be wearying.
I cannot yield. I WILL not yield. I am fighting for my son’s life. And terrified that I might fail.
Now I know how my mother felt, when she denied me the right to go to a party, because I hadn’t finished my work.
“I wish I could be your friend,” she said. “But I can’t. I’m just a mother.”
“I’ll say you are,” I snapped back. And…after a moment of shock, we both laughed.
Didn’t go to that party, though.
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He wants the standard “adulting train” that about 99% of humans want: to grow up to be an adult human being, capable of protecting and strengthening his body, satisfying his romantic and sexual urges with responsibility, producing goods and services to exchange with his community, and having a healthy life. That’s what everyone wants. THAT’S the foundation. The rest: having and nurturing children, understanding the world, speaking the truth, aging with dignity and dying at peace…everything else is built atop that physical and emotional and basic mental mastery.
And with a damaged body, and an unsecure academic future, his entire future is in doubt. A void stretches before him, and he could easily fall into it, and be consumed.
But this is also an opportunity to change his life, if I can just be wise enough to find the way.
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Jason’s school term is almost over, and the last weeks, after his leg break, have been a matter of spoon-feeding him his work. And the frustrating thing is seeing that when the avoidance, and fear, and anger, and resistance finally peel away…he does his work just fine. His mind is find. His emotions are a disaster area.
Working with Jason is precisely an “Ancient Child” exercise: it is seeing myself in him, my own flaws and strengths, and seeking ways to help him along the road I’ve traveled in a way that also strengthens my own life. Teaching him what I need to learn myself.
Helping each other along the Hero’s Journey. This might be considered a Road of Trials, although there are moments along that path that he will consider Dark Nights of the Soul.
So…he had undiagnosed ADHD. Hey…I might have, too. We didn’t have those diagnosis back then. But by the time we learned the truth, he was behind academically. Which led to fear and stress, which he dealt with by pretending not to care, and hanging out with other “slackers” who didn’t care, internalizing their values in a downward spiral.
Fear leading to avoidance leading to disorganization leading to procrastination leading to an avalanche of unfinished work leading to fear.
That’s the downward spiral, and it leads to a disastrous life.
The upward spiral is CONFIDENCE leading to action, leading to organization, leading to performance, leading to quality results, leading back to confidence.
That’s the upward spiral.
What I have to do is
- Help him get his work done by Friday deadline
- In such a way that he learns to be confident, independent, efficient and effective.
I’m going to try an approach that is grounded in the physical (tangable results) with emotional (confidence) and intellectual (organized) all at the same time.
First WHAT
Then WHY
Then HOW
The WHAT is to bring up his grades.
The WHY is to develop the mental and emotional skills that will enable him to become an independent adult, capable of producing goods and services to exchange with his community and “build a nest”. Therefore: money, love, self respect. And sex. Yeah, he’s 14, but he’s feeling the tug, and there is nothing more pitiful than a grown man who doesn’t understand that a healthy female bird wants a male bird who can build a nest. Otherwise the eggs fall to the forest floor and become Omelets. “Pick Up Artists” are just thieves and con men, pretending to be healthy and available.
The HOW is learning how to control his emotions, and focus his mind for peak efficiency and effectiveness.
Got that? If I can get him to focus on WHAT needs to be done, the enormity of it creates resistance and inertia. He has to connect with his WHYs to break that inertia, to have his own internal motivations to move forward. And one of them must be self-love. And ultimately, the desire to create a nest for a helpless child is one of the most powerful.
It connects with his self-love
It represents becoming an adult
It opens the door to healthy sexuality and a loving bond with a good woman.
NOTHING increases a man’s “mate-ability” like owning his own house. An adult should aim at making enough money to support themselves and two other people. Do that, and you’ve crossed the material threshhold. Add emotional health and reasonable physical attractiveness, and Bob’s Your Uncle — you are in the game.
He wants to be safe. An adult. To make his Mom and Dad proud. To make HIMSELF proud. The first chunk of life should be learning to master the basics which avoid pain. After that, with those things at “unconscious competence” you can focus on PLEASURE. Joy. Love.
Move AWAY from pain, and TOWARD pleasure, with the adult responsibilities at “Unconscious Competence” so that life isn’t a succession of crisis, but just “chop wood, carry water.”
And have fun.
So…today I have to focus on two tests he has to finish. Those are both a “What” (what he has to do) and a “How” (how to bring up his grades) but they ain’t “Why” at all. The lure of lazing around, playing video games, tripping his emotional “circuit breaker” is strong.
The “How” will be to take it a step at a time, breathing smoothly between every question to keep himself from panicking, remembering that he will be able to play games as soon as he is done.
WHAT
WHY
HOW
Over and over. Looking for the weak links. Zooming in, zooming out. Keeping him on the upward spiral, disrupting the downward spiral.
And the most important things I can do?
- Provide discipline. He WILL do this work, or be unable to play.
- Give him love. Confidence. He needs this like roses need rain.
- Teach him to access his positive emotions, believe in himself. Want to protect his future.
Make him work, and understand the need for the work, and how to take the lessons from the work and build on them. To look back from twenty years from now, a successful man with a family and a loving wife, seeing how he got there, one step at a time.
If I can do that…Merry Christmas indeed. No greater gift you can give a child than his own life.
Namaste
Steve