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April 16, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:50
1642 Advice for Parents with Regrets

An older listener asks me what he can do to bring value to the children he neglected.

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Oh, hi. It's April the 14th, I think.
2010. So I got a letter from an older guy.
I actually did have a conversation with this guy.
I don't think I'll ever publish it, but he's an older guy, and he had originally written to me because he was saying that I don't talk a lot about...
The challenges of older people, which is completely fair and a perfectly valid comment, and I think he meant it as a criticism, and I think it's a perfectly valid criticism, so I'd like to address that.
And his issue in particular...
Was that he's a guy in his 50s, and he feels that he was not a good parent.
And he wants to know...
Or he was talking about how I say restitution for...
An abusive childhood is not possible.
And I think that's true.
There may be people out there who would take $10 million to have gone through what they went through as a child.
I certainly wouldn't.
But there may be people out there.
But I think that functionally, restitution is pretty much impossible.
And so he feels that that's sort of a dead end for him as a parent.
And given that his kids are grown and they don't, I don't think that they're not listeners to this show, but I think they've stopped talking to him.
And I guess his question is, what can I do?
And I gotta tell you, I really think that is a noble question.
I mean, I mourn for the family history, of course, but I think it is a very noble question to say, what can I do now?
Well, I think, I mean, I've been sort of racking my brain.
Because, I mean, nothing makes me happier than families sorting things out.
I think that's fantastic.
I really, really do. Where it's possible.
And so I've been sort of thinking, well, what can this guy do?
Now, he didn't hit them, but he was kind of absent, he says, and just not a good dad.
So not violent, not physically abusive or anything like that.
Not terrorizing them, and of course so.
So it's a very interesting question, and I've sort of decided to ask that question by saying to myself, is there anything that my family could provide to me?
And the reality is that there are things that my family could provide to me, and given that this guy was a far better father than mine, I think that there are things that you can provide to your children, your adult children. I think this is all just opinions, right?
You understand? It's just my opinions.
I don't have any proof for this stuff.
This is just some pretty introspective and intense soul-searching on my part, which I'm trying to translate into what might be a possibility, if you accept the perspectives or the arguments.
And I think back...
To when my brother got married and my father came over for the wedding and stayed with me for a couple of days afterwards.
And I think I've mentioned this before, but we took a bus ride because I was going to school in Montreal.
And we took a bus ride from Toronto to Montreal.
Which is, if memory serves, six or seven hours.
And during that trip, my father talked about his life.
And it was quite a long and rambling narrative, and he certainly didn't ask for any input.
So it wasn't like engaging in the sense that I got to ask questions and there was a back and forth.
It really was a trauma brain dump.
And in that sense, it was not...
It was not good, but there were good things in it.
It was not a good thing to do, but there were good things in it.
And I don't really need to get into any details other than to say there were a few parts that gave me significant relief.
And one part of that tale, I still remember the bus.
I still remember what was passing by the window.
I still remember the dust patterns.
I still remember the fabric on the seat ahead and the cologne of the guy behind.
I still remember all of that so vividly.
Over 20 years later. Because my father said, I went to go and visit my father when I was 16.
He lived in Africa and I went for quite some time, couple of months.
And it was a really, really awkward and difficult trip.
To the point where we had so little to say that when he had to go off into the bush, he said, I was welcome to stay behind.
And I sort of accepted the offer saying, oh, I've got some letters to write as if I couldn't write those in the bush.
But things were just so awkward between us.
And, I mean, my dad put me to work in Africa.
He had the roof of his garage was metal, tin, metal, and it had rusted.
And so my job was, and I spent a couple of days, if not a week, doing this in some pretty damn hot sun, sanding it down and painting it, which is a really crazy thing to do when you're going to go visit your estranged father for him to put you to...
Hard, hot, manual labor for quite some time.
It's strange and wildly inappropriate, but, you know, I sort of realized in hindsight he put me up there not because he wanted his roof sanded, but because it gave him relief from my presence, right?
I mean, it's difficult for a father, for my father.
But I do remember, and this was, I think I was 20 or 21.
I won't do the math right now.
I was early 20s, early 20s.
And so I guess I had been to visit him six or seven years before, five or six years before.
And he didn't dwell on that visit, but he did say on that semi-fateful bus ride to Montreal, he did say that he was so depressed when I was out there that he didn't have anything to give to me.
And I wept when he told me that.
Of course, he didn't really notice.
I mean, I wasn't doing operatic Italian sobbing, but I wept.
And it wasn't nighttime. It was daytime.
We did a day trip. He didn't notice or pause or ask me what it was.
He just continued. And so, of course, I tried to hide it.
But it was a weight that had been lifted from my chest.
The weight of failure. The weight of failure.
The weight of... I was unable to interest my father, which you take personally.
You own that when you're a kid.
And that gave me some relief that it wasn't me, it was him.
And that helped. It really, really helped me.
And so I've been mulling over that and this fellow's email about what he can offer.
And I think I would like to say this, and this may be relevant to this fellow's situation, it may be relevant to other people's, but what I would like to suggest as what I think would be the most helpful thing that parents with significant regrets, or any regrets really, can do for their children is to give them two things.
And the first thing to give them is...
Non-ownership. Non-ownership for the relationship.
As my father did accidentally and tangentially in that bus ride, which gave me some significant relief.
Non-ownership for how awkward and terrible that trip was.
That he was the one who was depressed.
And that helped me a lot.
Now, along with non-ownership comes a kind of really intense basic and scolding honesty that I think is just essential for this kind of stuff.
If you...
I mean, the natural tendency of everyone is to make excuses.
I mean, me, you, I think everybody is to make excuses.
Something happens and you make excuses.
Right, so... If I'm taking a picture of Isabella and she trips, I'm like, oh, well, I make up an excuse.
Well, you can't watch her all the time, and I don't take pictures all the time, and right, because I feel bad that I was slow in catching her when she fell.
So we make excuses as parents.
And I think that it would be a very powerful and useful thing to do.
I don't know what it's going to do to the relationship in the future, but I think it's definitely going to help things in the past.
It's never too late to be a good parent.
It doesn't mean that everything gets healed, but there are still things that you can give to your kids.
So, you give non-ownership to your children, which means, of course, taking full ownership for the relationship.
And I'm more certain of this than ever, being a parent myself, just how much is not even dependent, but everything is defined by the parent.
The relationship is entirely defined by the parent.
Isabella has a strong personality, which I'm very happy about, but everything is defined by the parent.
The relationship is the parent's And of course, if the relationship is fully the parents, then it can be more mutual.
And I think that's really important.
I mean, if I define the relationship in sort of positive terms of equality and negotiation, then Isabella can show up as a human being, right?
If I was sort of bullying or aggressive, then that would not be the case.
So, complete and total ownership for the relationship, I think, is the most important thing that parents can provide.
And with that comes the second aspect that I think adult parents with regrets can provide their children.
Now, this level of honesty...
That is truly a gift to your children.
It is truly, truly, truly perhaps the greatest gift you can give to your children as an adult, when they're adults, is a frank explanation.
Not justification, but a frank explanation of why you did what you did.
So, I mean, it's important to understand between blame, justification, and explanation.
So, blame is, I did this because you were bad.
Justification is, I did this because I was exasperated or angry.
Those are not healing statements when you have responsibility for something.
I did this because I chose badly, because I did not confront myself, because I was lazy, Because I acted out, because I was immature, because I did not follow the rules that I gave to you.
I said, when you were angry, you shouldn't lash out.
You shouldn't hit another kid or whatever.
But then when I was angry, I lashed out.
I did it because I was hypocritical.
I did it because it was easier than dealing with my own stuff.
I did it because I was afraid that my own parents would get angry if I didn't Do to you what they did to me.
I mean, lots of things, right?
Things that are actually real, right?
So, obviously, you don't say to your adult kids, I yelled at you because you were impossible.
I mean, that's blame. And I was a single mom.
It was a different time.
I didn't have any support. Those are all just excuses, justifications, right?
That's not ownership. Ownership is when you have chosen to do something.
Or chosen to avoid doing something which results in bad behavior.
Chosen to avoid self-examination.
Chosen to avoid living by your own standards.
When you have wielded morals against children which you then have not stood up to or stood by yourself and not accepted or explained or understood the difference, well, it's because I did something wrong.
I did a lot of things wrong.
I was weak.
I was lazy. I was hypocritical.
I mean, we all have these things within us and we all act in this way from time to time.
And so as a parent, if you have regrets, it's so important to explain to your children why you did what you did without blame, without justification.
I mean, when you were a parent, if you were harsh or punitive towards your children, you did so because you had moral rules and you were, quote, punishing them, right?
And if you did not live up to those same moral standards as an adult, then you have, of course, massive apologies to make towards your children, because expecting a four- or five- or ten-year-old to obey moral rules that the adult is not consistently obeying is irrational and ugly, fundamentally. It's a use of power in the guise of morality, and of course that is the state and the church.
So we have lots of precedents, and I do understand Where this template comes from, that doesn't mean that we're not responsible for the discrepancies, right?
Just because everyone else is an idiot doesn't mean that we have to be idiots, and parents will always say this to their children.
If everybody else was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do so too?
Well, if everybody else is cloaking power in moral sanctimoniousness, do you have to as well?
And this is the temptation.
We have this temptation consistently and continually.
I think it is because we are damaged.
I don't think it is because of our nature.
We have this temptation to continually invent justifications and excuses and blame others for the effects of our own behavior.
But we are responsible.
Everything that I've done in this show, good and bad and indifferent, It's mine and mine alone.
I was not forced to do any of it.
I certainly believe that I have done as much work as humanly possible on my past, given that I also have to brush my teeth and do other things in my life.
I have devoted an enormous amount of time to self-knowledge and self-exploration.
I think that the dividends are clear.
This does not mean that I behave perfectly, but it does mean that I have pride in most things that I have done.
And where I have done wrong, I have pride in that I have examined it, admitted it, and attempted to correct it, unusually successfully.
You can...
You as a parent with regret, you hold the key to unlocking the chains that weigh The hearts of your children down.
And that is to take ownership, complete and total ownership, for what it is you have done as a parent.
Complete and total ownership, no excuses.
Let the regret inform you.
Feel the pain of having acted wrongly.
It's very important.
You can always wish that pain away, which is an excuse for future actions, right?
If you want people to trust you in the future, you have to take ownership for the wrongs you've done in the past.
The moment you start excusing and explaining away and minimizing and attacking and all that, everybody gets deep down.
It's not about the past. That's all you're doing is giving yourself permission to act badly again in the future.
If you have the magic wand to wave it away, if you love cake and you have this magic wand to wave away any accumulated fat or cavities, everybody knows whenever you wave that magic wand, it's because you want to eat cake again in the future.
And when you have this magic wand called explanations and justifications and attacks and blame and excuses, everybody knows around you, everybody knows whether they express it or not, whether they even know it consciously or not.
Everybody knows that that's because you want to act badly again in the future, so you will not be able to gain anybody's trust.
Unless you take full and complete ownership and go through that pain of knowing that you did wrong, accepting that you did wrong, that you chose to do wrong.
It's a difficult and ugly business, let me tell you.
I've got an entire novel centered around that, The God of Atheists.
I have done wrong in my life, and it is an ugly and painful and difficult thing to see our own capacity for exploitation.
But it is necessary to see our shadow so that we can finally step into the light.
Well, it's the shadow that lets us know where the light is, right?
The other way. Want to know where the sun is?
Can't look up?
Look at your shadow.
If you can do that, if you can honestly say that I did wrong, It wasn't your fault. It was my choice.
It was, you know, I was...
I did wrong. I did wrong.
I was greedy. I was destructive.
I was abusive. I was harsh.
I was... Inconsiderate, I did not live by the standards I inflicted on you, which is a horrible thing to do when you have all the power, to inflict property rights upon the slaves, right?
They're slaves, they're not property.
I mean, you can't have property rights.
I mean, it's a violation, you understand, so I don't need to explain it.
Because, and I'm not talking to this fellow in general, I'm just...
The final abuse is secrecy.
The final abuse is...
I think, I don't know, but I think the reason why people separate from abusive families in the end is because you simply can't get the truth.
All you get is excuses and avoidances and blames and projections and evasions and minimizations and subject changes and, and, and.
There's nothing but an empty void of self-justifications nobody actually there to have a relationship with.
Nobody there. If you don't have self-ownership, you don't have a self.
If you don't own your actions, you aren't even there.
You're a ghost in a pillar of shambling meat.
You aren't there.
There's no one to relate to if all you are is excuses and justifications and blame.
You are a hall of mirrors with striking ghostly serpents.
You don't really exist.
And the final abuse that occurs...
Is the parents who won't take ownership.
Because if you're in a relationship where things go wrong, I mean, because an adult-child relationship, it's the adult's responsibility.
It's the adult's responsibility.
I'm sorry. I'm saying it.
I'll say it again. I will say it until the end of my days.
And I say it even more emphatically having become a parent.
The quality of my relationship with my daughter is 100% my responsibility.
100% my responsibility.
The quality of my relationship with my wife is not 100% my responsibility because she's an adult.
She has her own levels of responsibility, but my daughter is responsible for nothing.
The other day, I set a coffee cup out, let the coffee cup go cold, and didn't realize how I put it on the center of the ottoman, didn't realize she could reach it, and she grabs it and tips it and pours it all over our expensive ottoman and our very expensive nice carpet.
It's a nice carpet. And I looked at it and I was like, who is responsible for the carpet?
Getting coffeed. Who is responsible for the ottoman?
Getting coffeed. Is my daughter responsible?
Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
She is not at all responsible for what has just happened.
I am completely and totally responsible for what happened.
And I love it.
I love it. It's just a different perspective I have.
I mean, the second day we had Isabella home, I was taking coffee cups downstairs.
It was the middle of the night for sure, and I had a bunch of coffee cups, a bunch of cups up in my room, and as I was holding them, one of them tipped as I went down the stairs, and there were three spots of coffee on our landing.
You think, oh, the carpet's ruined.
No, the carpet is not ruined.
I will look at that and forever remember the second day that my daughter came home.
It's a beautiful thing that is on my carpet.
It's not a stain. Whenever I look at that corner of the ottoman that's discolored, I will remember that day when she was 15 months old and I left the coffee cup out.
I mean, it's not ruined.
It's adorned, right?
We've put these gates on the stairs because she's so active.
And we don't want her to go up and down the stairs yet.
She can, but it's not quite safe.
And I was just saying to Christina yesterday, I was saying, you know what?
We're never taking these brackets down.
We'll take the gates off the stairs, but we're never taking the brackets down.
And she said, why not? And I said, because I... I always want to remember...
I always want to remember her at this age and this time.
We played upstairs today for like an hour.
We played hide and seek. She just learned how to do it today.
Oh my god, it's just too much fun for words.
I want these brackets there so that I can look at it for the next 50 years and I can remember this phase of her life and just how incredible and beautiful it was.
So, full ownership is the essence of parenting.
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