“Dad, are we normal?” my son asked, bending from his perch on my shoulders, trying to look into my face.
“Why do you ask?” I said, looking up at him while holding his ankles in one hand and feeling his weight swirl to one side.
We did these “walks” around the block almost daily. We’d start out, his five year old body striding out ahead of me, beckoning me to hurry, usually toward the steel climbing equipment on the public school play area. I knew that if the walk was in the evening light was dimming and the alleys between the houses were throwing darker and changing shadows my son would plead tiredness, beg to ride on my shoulders.
I braced for big questions.
Was his question going about the deeper things in life? I wondered in these brief moments if he’d noticed some of the economic disparities that surrounded him. Race? I thought perhaps he’d been exposed to something at school and seen how unusual bi-racial families were in our part of the world. Perhaps he wanted to explore the intricacies of adoption or solo-parenting.
“We have a truck, dad. Everyone has cars. Everyone’s gate works. Ours doesn’t,” he said.
Days of riding on my shoulders are long past…… but the joy has not.
“What parenting advice could you offer my wife and me,” said the delighted dad, “my son is 16 months young.”
Above all, love your wife with joy, freedom and courage. This will reduce and deflect loads of the anxiety that naturally tries to derail all childhoods.
Lavish your baby, then young child, then pre-teen and teenager with affirmation and affection. No matter what you and your wife face, when you come home from work, or he returns after time away, or when he wakes in the morning or in the middle of the night — baby or teenager — be glad to see him, and, say so. Verbally express the joys your son brings you, to each other, and to him.
Teach him to talk Joy.
Regard the ages 5, 8, 12, 14 and 16 as transition ages. At these times discuss with him your parental plans (your mutually agreed upon plans you’ve made as parents) to do less and less for him, while expecting more and more from him. Yes, even at 5 — point out that he can make his own, age-appropriate decisions. Include him in planning and establishing his growing independence. Plan your parenting so that by his eighteenth year your parenting roles are accomplished and he has all it takes to be an interdependent young adult.
Hold in high regard the beautiful idea that you parent (the verb) for his sake and not yours.
Our new painting will go up in my home-office this week….. from Friday this week, both of my adult sons are launched and living independently of me. Oh the joy; oh the niggling pain. #graceupongrace
The “outside world” can be a dangerous place for children.
Another exceedingly dangerous environment for children can also be their own homes. While medicine cabinets, cleaning materials and unlocked swimming pool gates are a legitimate threat to the child-safety, the unguarded mouth of an angry adult can inflict grievous harm to a child.
A vigilant parent might install childproof locks yet leave a totally exposed web of anger in every room of the house. Unresolved anger in a parent, expressed through unpredictable displays of frustration and annoyance or rage, can quite effectively sabotage a childhood and even pass a baton of anxiety and rage to unborn generations. It is in their own homes that children might be at most in danger. At home they learn about trust, and exercise the most trust. It is at home they will learn, or fail to learn, by watching and experiencing, almost everything they will ever know about love.
It is at home they will make the most mistakes and receive the most affirmation and correction. It is at home that children will learn about fear and hurt and rejection and empathy and love and acceptance.
Children are constantly seeing, feeling, learning, trying, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, watching, waiting and taking it all in.
Monitoring diets is a crucial aspect of childhood health. Another “diet” is the calm, security, predictability and warmth healthy parents can provide.
If you have the opportunity to see “The King of Broken Things” run at it.
A few years back my sons and I attended a Birth Mother’s Day Dinner with about 19 brave birth moms, women who’d chosen to place their babies for adoption.
They lit candles.
Some held treasured ear-marked photographs.
There was talk about their love and support of all moms everywhere who have made the powerful choice of adoption.
All were deeply contemplative – for a few, memories from hard choices made 50-plus years ago were revisited.
A few women remained silent, holding tightly to affirmed, supported anonymity.
Mothers who have chosen adoption for their babies are often ignored on Mothers Day.
And, how their hearts must surely ache.
May 12, 2024, several nations, including South Africa, will celebrate Mothers Day and an unseen army of brave women will quietly witness other families rightfully celebrating Mothers Day and find no place at the tables with the children whom they generously offered to families eager to love their babies.
I admit, my awareness of birth mothers is acute.
These women, often shamed, labeled as irresponsible, hard, or uncaring, have radically shifted my life. Each of my boys’ mothers fought untold difficulties – unknown to me – while carrying her child to full term, in full knowledge other options existed.
Despite abandonment, derision from family members, financial difficulties, and who knows what other pressures, each delivered a beautiful baby and made the hard choice to forever enrich my life by allowing me, a single man, to adopt her infant son.
I know you are not forgotten – not on Mothers Day weekend or any other day.
You are so deeply etched into their individual psyches and into our family experience that you are regularly part of our awareness and conversation.
So deep is their desire for you, so deep is the urge for a mother that my boys sometimes called me “mom”.
I have never stopped them. I let it go because I think I know what it’s about.
It’s a primal urge.
It expresses a heartfelt longing.
To stop them, when each was learning to talk, seemed unwise, as if I were stopping something deep, powerful within each.
“Mama” or “mom” and even “mother” seemed to come as easily as rolling over, as cooing, as first steps, and as all those things that come with early development – and so I let it go.
It was as if “mother” and all forms of Her names were buried within each boy to emerge and be attached to the nearest, warmest person no matter what his or her gender.
Yes, the woman waiting your table at your Mothers Day lunch, the teacher whom your child adores, the woman co-worker who goes silent for no identifiable reason or who appears to be sometimes lost in another world when the conversation turns to babies or showers or Mother’s Day, just may be a member of that unseen army of birth-mothers. She may be one of the gracious, brave women who have made Mother’s Day complete for countless women around the world and given a man like me the unique pleasure of sometimes being called “mom.”
I ache for the millions of women whose Mothers Day is tainted with shame, loneliness, disconnection, for having made the tough choice for adoption.
If that’s you or almost you, and are in KZN, and your adoption was recent or decades ago, I have an invitation for you.
Please join me for lunch or an early dinner on May 11, 2024 – yes, the day before Mothers Day is referred to as Birth Mothers Day.
Come alone or bring a friend. I shall speak briefly, simply to thank you and honor your bravery.
Expenses for your lunch will be fully covered – I have already received several financial gifts to cover costs.
The venue will be beautiful and private and safe —- details are unfolding.
Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za so we can get you — and a friend — onto the list and get details to you as they unfold.
Generous readers, restaurateurs, sponsors, gift bag creators, please email Shirley you’d like to pay for a meal or sponsor a table or assist in any manner.
Closing note.
I know this is a tough invitation, Birth Mom.
But, you have already demonstrated your strength.
Join me, please.
[if you’re in the USA and want to give, all gifts are tax deductible— contact me and I’ll guide you through the easy process of giving to OpenHand International, a 501C3 corporation]
Your family – blood-, marriage, relatives-by-choice, adoption, and any other means people become family – is vastly more than a list of people on your group-chat or birthdays to try and remember or the ready-made crowd for weddings and funerals.
The hundreds of links (a family of 4 has 16 relationships) in your network – your family – and how you are linked (just right, over-connected, under-connected, loosely-affiliated, cut-off in anger, the “I’ll never talk to him/her-again” kind of connection) is of crucial importance.
How you are connected will either sustain and support and nourish you or drain and exhaust you. And, there is no escaping. Severe disconnections can wield a driving power even in a so-called non-relationship.
We are all “linked” and positioned in a variety of ways within the same extended family and so a family can nourish and support while, at the same time, it can rip to shreds and bleed someone dry.
I’d like to avoid this dramatic contrast but simply look around — listen to people’s family stories — you’ll see it is so.
We are each integral to the health (and un-health) of our family.
We are each a cell-within-the-whole.
The healthier we are, the more “just right” our connections, the more we will be nourishers and be nourished within the unique group of people we each call family.
The healthier I am will lead to a healthier “we” even if it results in hardship* along the way.
* attempts at greater health will be met with resistance from those around, especially those who’ve “benefited” from unhealthy habits and patterns.
I have had the joy of being with you this past week: several of you shared meals with me and we met in ways I know I will remember. I hope you will, too. Thank you. Given the time I would have enjoyed such an opportunity with each of you. During your first session with me I told you I would give you my notes from each of my talks. If you read this letter today or in ten years it is all ok with me. People do what they are ready to do. Keep them. See how well they age. Remind yourself that I repeatedly said I am addressing the future you.
Day One I tried to tell you how unique and beautiful you are. This is not an older adult attempting to convince you of something adults generally want you to believe. As I said I really have never met – 50 countries and thousands of people later – anyone, anywhere who is not beautiful. Yes, I have met people who have done really ugly things and done a few myself, but, you (we) are beautiful. Get to know any human by listening, really listening, and I believe you will soon agree with me. We talked about leadership: I said Leadership is a Function, a role, not a position. If your motive in becoming a leader is to see your name at the top of a list or to be the boss, your distorted motive will be your constant hurdle. Leadership is about who and what you are and what you do within a community. It is not about status. If it is the status you seek, your drive for recognition will persistently contaminate your leadership. To lead others effectively it is necessary to know what you are good at and what you are not good at. Work at your strengths. Accommodate your weaknesses. Both are yours for the long-haul.
I encouraged you to consistently define yourself. If you don’t, someone will. Resist the natural anxious urge to define others. Become an expert in your own behavior. Resist the natural (anxious) urge to be an expert in the behavior of others, especially those who annoy you. Listen more than you speak. Make sure you are hearing, not waiting to talk. I closed saying Self-Leadership has by far the greatest impact on how effective you are as a leader. If you can’t lead yourself you can effectively lead nothing and no one.
Day Two I emphasized your (and my) uniqueness. I urged you to find within the depths of where your hearts, minds, spirits, souls meet (see it as a kind of Venn diagram) the beautiful “place” generally referred to as the SELF. YourSELF is beautiful, it’s as unique as your fingerprints, your voice, and your personality. It is shaped by your family history, your DNA, by enduring joyful and nurturing experiences. It is shaped also by trauma, by loss, grief and so much else. This SELF is resilient. The Self wants to be well. It self-repairs (given conducive conditions). It is not Selfish to find and love and know yourSelf. I would suggest it is selfish NOT to. People who avoid Self-Awareness because they consider it selfISH are usually people who put stress on leadership teams and on friendships and battle with boundary confusion – “I am I, you are you, we are we, Let’s not confuse the three” – Remember? It’s corny BUT if you live it, it will save you a LOT of pain and therapist bills!
Day Three I emphasized your God-given desire for Autonomy. It’s part of your humanity. To desire self-directedness (AUTONOMY – SPACE, ROOM TO MOVE, freedom to be yourself) comes with your birth package. When it is unfulfilled – or ignored – you will be discontent. You have a similar God-given desire for Intimacy. This is part of your humanity. We all want some closeness, to belong, to be part of. Accepting that these Dueling Desires live within you and recognizing they are present in all the people will make it easier for you to welcome both into their legitimate place within your life. You (and I) really grow up when you (we) meet these needs in yourself AND understand that others are similarly driven. When your best friend chooses to be alone (wants Autonomy) it is not a rejection of you (necessarily) if you, at the same time, want Intimacy. Remember, you cannot LOVE and CONTROL the same person.
This afternoon (Thursday) and Day Four, I left you with eight things I would tell my younger self:
Save, and never touch, one third of all the money you earn. Few people regret having saved from an early age. Few things upset adulthood as well as financial pressures.
Honor your family and extended family relationships above all other relationships. If you are a brother or a son, a niece or an aunt, be the best one you can be.
Learn to live without blaming others. While others are indeed imperfect, blaming others for anything will seldom get you to where you really want to go. There are exceptions which I made clear (I hope).
Forgive, truly forgive, but remember. To forgive and forget is often foolish and even impossible. Remembering is not the same as holding a grudge. There are exceptions which I made clear (I hope).
Find your VOICE and hold onto it. Finding your voice means figuring out what you want your life to say. Only a small portion of finding your voice has to do with actual words.
Every unfortunate or bad thing that happens to you will ultimately offer you a choice. Will it become SEED (for growth) or STONE (resentment or hardness)? Seed will be most helpful to you. The choice will always be yours.
Pursue (chase) education even over romance. Few people regret having a sound education.
Gain understanding about your power, the power that comes with being human. Treasure it; Protect it, Deploy it. Use it for its intended purpose only.
I have loved being with you. Thank you. I especially enjoyed the Talent Show and the party. I loved watching your amazing capacity to have fun and I particularly enjoyed seeing some of you who arrived earlier this week appearing shy and withdrawn having the time of your lives.
Rod
Dad, Uber Driver, International Speaker and Newspaper Columnist
You were “easy” babies, fabulous toddlers and terrific young children.
You were hilarious preteens and mostly cooperative teenagers.
Now, you are productive, employed, adults.
I have written to readers far and wide – often to severe resistance – my belief that parenting ends.
While I will always be your dad, you may have recognized that some years ago, wise or unwise on my part, believing I had imparted all that was necessary, I “pulled back” and gradually stopped parenting each of you. You have been making almost all your own decisions for years and have both been rather good at it.
Now, we are three men (mostly) enjoying our shared relationships and one of us happens to also be your dad.
As far as possible I will be available for you. I probably will “jump in” if I discern a dire need to do so, but generally I will resist any urge to impose my need to parent upon you.
I love you, I will seek your highest good and love all whom you love. Know this: each of you in your own way saved my life. You have made this dad really appreciate Father’s Day and I thank you.
Today, and every day, try to be the adult you hope your children will become. How else will they learn what it means to be an adult? Who else will teach them?
Try to stop blaming the teachers, coaches, or the school for your child’s every challenge, difficulty, or hurdle. Blame restricts maturing, yours and theirs.
Try to stop blaming the government, the economy, or prejudice for every distress or dilemma you face, unless you think blame will be a good tool for your child to take into adulthood. If you want your children to be adults who take responsibility for their lives then show them how it’s done. Your children won’t forget your temper tantrums no matter how young they may be; and they will probably emulate them.
Demonstrate, by your own display of excellent manners, the manner in which you hope your child will navigate life and relationships. It is true, they are going to watch and learn from multiple sources, but you are their primary resource when it comes to how they will respect and treat others. Little eyes are watching.
Respect, visit, and be kind to the elderly so they know exactly how to do it when it’s your turn.
Dismiss no one; look down on no one. Young eyes and ears are absorbing how to be in the world, and we, we parents, are the primary teachers.
Blending families, smoothly and successfully, is not easy.
Each family imports its own set of norms and expectations into the new family configuration and these norms and expectations will inevitably clash. Each person, too, brings expectations into the new family quite apart from what the rest of what his or her original family brings to the party. There will also be remaining scars from the sequence of events that made blending two families possible in the first place.
Blending families calls for super-maturity from the marrying or newly married adults.
They are called to lead in such a manner that all the members of the newly constituted family’s voices are heard and opinions are respected, irrespective of age.
The adults will be wise to avoid blaming others like a former spouse or former in-laws for the inevitable difficulties that will arise.
The adults will be wise to avoid disciplining other people’s children, even if he or she is newly married to the children’s mom or dad.
The adults will be wise to avoid believing the children – no matter what they may say when wanting to please the parent – want this new family as much as the newly married adults do.
The adults will be wise to speak well of the parents who are excluded from this new blended family.
The problem with difficult childhoods in troubled families (pick your conflicts or addictions or stressors or health concerns – or a combination of several) is that children with difficult childhoods have had to dress for self-protection, and, as a lifestyle, have often had to prepare themselves for enduring domestic tensions or wars and regarded it as normal. This is how everyone lives isn’t it?
Once the child becomes an adult its difficult to shed engrained protection measures and essentials and throw off a guarded and conflictual lifestyle even if it’s no longer needed.
Carefree happy children may become carefree happy adults but it’s unlikely a stressed and anxious child will enter realms of stressfree bliss and trusting vulnerability on coming of age.
Adult survivors of difficult childhoods hear things like, “You’re so difficult to get to know,” and “You’re so difficult to get close to,” and “Why does everything have to be a fight?” and proceed with the hard work of adult life that mirrors the hard work of childhood wondering what on earth people are talking about.
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Unrelated to column: got some new art in our home today: Cameroon artist Patrick Yogo Oumar (see Instagram if interested).
difficultrelationships.com 