SELF-ESTEEM -- AN EXCHANGE ON THE SUBJECT!

SELF-ESTEEM -- AN EXCHANGE ON THE SUBJECT!

Note: This is an exchange on a most sensitive issue. That is the reason for sharing.

GEORGE WROTE:

Hi Jim and Happy New Year to you and BB. Once again thank you so much for keeping me in the loop, as it were. I owe a great deal to you for opening my eyes in so many ways, for comforting me, and for reassuring me at times as I struggled to understand certain situations at work and home. I think it’s been almost 10 years since I first encountered your writing on the Statewave website. And, I thank God for the Internet!

This seems like as good a time as any to share this item with you. I have mentioned to you before my reservations about this building of self-esteem in children by doting parents. I have seen some of the results and it’s not pretty. Your “cage” metaphor is perfect for some of the people who develop this high self-esteem without a work ethic and with no sense of personal responsibility. It seems others have noticed what you and I have.

This Dr. Mezmer is a clever fellow certainly, witty and with a way with words. I actually disagree with him that his mouse example illustrates the building of self-esteem but he’s onto something.

By my own definition he is talking more about confidence. It’s all mixed together I think. Regardless, I thought you would might like to see it and I’m a bit curious what you think of his point. I admit, I only scanned your essay quickly but I intend to read it through before saying anything about it. But hey, thanks for writing it and for sending a copy to me.

Very best regards from Calgary,

Your friend, George

PS One comment concerning our children:

As parents we think we know what and who our children are and likely, as you say, we do not. But certainly, from the opposite standpoint, the same is true for our children. They know we are their parents, i.e., what we are, but do they ever think about who we are? Not that I can see.

But since at a certain age they consider themselves quite grown up and extremely wise, isn’t it apropos for a parent suggest to these all-knowing people of the world that they really don’t know “who” we are either and to stop projecting their limiting concept of us onto our persons. That is, stop treating us as father and mother and start seeing us for who we really are. That could be very liberating for parents. Can you write an article like that for our adult children to read Jim? I hope so.
Thanks and regards, George

MY RESPONSE TO GEORGE:

George,

Thank you for your response

I'm afraid children don't see their parents as persons (WHO WE ARE) until they become parents themselves, and then the shit really hits the fan. My children (all but one) are in their forties, and a little of that light is starting to break through.

Recently, my brother-in-law and my BB's sister were here. They have one of those monster mobile homes on wheels. They never learned to say "no" to their kids, who even though now married (and remarried in a couple cases several times) have failed to grow up, and are still attempting to take an easy ride off of "dad and mom." The monster mobile home on wheels is their great escape.

One daughter, whom they thought was on a two-week vacation, literally moved in with them with her husband and two kids, and stayed for months. To reconcile the situation, what do you imagine they did? They gave them their house and built their own. This is only one of their excesses.

They gave another son a home and large piece of property, which he sold and took the profits to buy even a larger piece of property (none of profits did he return to his parents). Then he got into trouble on the taxes, upkeep and mortgage, and now he is at the point of foreclosure.

Guess what? He is looking for his parents to bail him out again certain that they won't let him tank it. Obviously, he fails to see the irony in this.

In another case, two brothers and two sisters were each given five-figure sums from their octogenarian father who didn't want to get his assets caught up in inheritance taxes when he died.

All four were traumatized that their children might find out and demand the money. Not one of them had the gumption to hold their ground to such demands, and say, "no!" So, a little conspiracy developed among them to hedge off that confrontation. I watched this with great sadness, knowing there was nothing I could do or say for them to see the absurdity of this.

This is why BB's sister and husband hit the road. They cannot find the capacity to say "no." So, they say to me, whom they think is a hard ass (which I am), in defense of their posture: "How could you say 'no' when your grandchildren are involved?"

I guess they expected me to concede, well, that is different, but it is not. I wasn't put on earth to raise my children's children. If they won't assume the responsibility and don't have the capacity to love and care for them, then they don't deserve them. They will lose them to the state.

I have one daughter that has demonstrated a capacity to ruin her own life and to have no option than to send her son to my ex-wife in Iowa, and have him reared there. She never asked me to do it, as she knew the answer. She is lucky for that option because I would not assume that responsibility.

If I were a legislator, I would create a law that would have such parents' wages garnisheed (I think that is the term) to support such children, or put the parents in jail.

We have created a society here in America of people without conscience and consequence and it permeates all levels. We are meant to be the heavy for their mistakes if we don't capitulate and take them off the hook, as if it is our problem, and not theirs.

It is not enough to say, "I'm sorry," and leave it at that for screw up after screw up. Someone must pay, and that is not ambulance chasing parents bailing out their grown up children who refuse to grow up.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions, and nobody else. If they don't learn from their mistakes, and keep repeating them, then it is "they" that should suffer, not everyone else. If they do not see the light, it is not for us to pay for their darkness.

My brother-in-law was talking to my daughter that has trouble taking control of her life, and he says, "Your father is soft as putty underneath. Do you know that? You think you can't get him to budge; that he is stuck on 'no,' but that is an act."

She shook her head, and said, "It's obvious you don't know my father at all."

I am not "hard" on my kids because I enjoy it. I'm hard on them because life is tough and if you are not tough enough to deal with it then you're going to be beaten down and eaten alive.

There are many ways of dying and the most painful way is to kill yourself by denial, deceit and poor decisions day-by-day-by-day.

As soon as the mind turns naturally to someone else to bail them out of their troubles, then it is obvious that they are lost, and the bailers as well.

Such people have no moral compass, no map to "where we are," and no way to find themselves back to "who we are." Like it or not, life is a morality play with the only sin, waste.

The "what we are" is an immature, self-pitying, permanent child in an adult's body suspended in permanent adolescence.

With such a mindset, we will blast our parents until the day we die complaining "it is all their fault," never having a clue that parents never owned us even though we came through them. They are, at best, our custodians and mentors for at most eighteen years. In all parts of nature, except human, animals have the instinct to recognize this fact of life.

Children today want to play house in their teens like adults -- to bed their mates, eat, drink, smoke, do drugs, and make merry on their parents' credit cards; swear, dance, tattoo and violate their bodies with rings through their lips, eyebrows and tongue in defiance of everyone, but never on their own coin; knock school and education and play the role of know-it-alls when they know nothing, and have the skills to toss hamburgers or wait on tables for the rest of their lives; have fancy cars and all the electronic wonders in the world; and live the idyllic life of affluence without ever earning any of it.

They don't want to put any of it off until they are emotionally ready to take on the responsibilities of their actions.

Only last night I had a conversation with someone who was mentioning all the wonderful electronic tools there are, and how it is hard to keep up with them. I said that electronic toys have nothing to do with the ability to think, problem solve and make decisions.

On the contrary, I said, these electronic toys discourage framing problems in the context that they appear, then looking at their content, and defining them in terms of the most appropriate course of action, which is called thinking and problem solving.

Electronics, which are not going to go away, are yet another crutch that offers escape into the wonderful world of gadgetry instead getting off the dime and off their asses and making a life for themselves.

This is not true of this person I was talking to, as she is a senior in college and has worked hard to get there, but she is surrounded by the types I describe. We are not only what we eat; we are how we live.

Returning to my daughter that never has gotten off the dime, the reason she hasn't is that her siblings have always been there to break her fall, forgive her these mistakes, give her a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance, not realizing the harm they have done to her.

Chronic problems show a pattern that repeats itself ad nauseum with very predictable behaviors and results.

These are not the causes nor are they the symptoms. They are the disease that feeds on itself. Radicalize the pattern and the chronic problem dissolves. For example, if the guys you meet are always in bars, and you become bar bait, which results in the same self-negating behavior, go to church, not to bars, and voila! Change is in the air.

For many of us, we will never grow up if we don't have to. If someone is there (always) when a life lesson confronts us, and is about to be learned, and someone rips it away from our face, then we won't grow up. We will repeat the error again and again.

I don't know this doctor you speak of and so I have no idea how helpful he is. If you find him helpful, that is good enough for me.

George, I had the advantage of being born to parents who were poor in material terms but rich in spiritual ones. I hope it shows IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE.

When I was six-years-old and in the first grade, it was Christmas, and there was just my little sister, Patsy, and my little brother, Jackie, and me. My da came to me on Christmas Eve, and told me that there were no presents for me under the tree; that it was hard times. He said he had a little doll for Patsy, and a Teddy Bear for Jackie, and that was it. He told me he loved me, and my mother repeated the same. My brother and sister were in bed. My parents were not educated, but they were better educated than most parents I have met with pedigrees of distinction.

My parents didn't know it, but they launched their son that day to recognize it was not a material world that made the difference, but a spiritual one. They gave me the greatest present I ever received, and I've never tired of it, the memory of their love and honesty with a little boy.

Be always well,
Jim
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