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Nov. 29, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:10:31
'HELP! My Mother Sabotages My Parenting!' Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
Hello, hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes, I can. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes. Good. I'm glad we made it.
I hope that Yui Berne went down all right.
Oh, yeah. He goes down pretty easy.
It's more the process of getting the clothes on, changing the diaper.
He thinks he's an alligator right now, so there's a lot of rolling.
I've been there. I'm still sometimes there, so I understand that completely and deeply.
Okay, so do you want to read your email?
Do you want to just jawbone it?
What's your pleasure? Well, I do want to start with I need to say thank you.
And I might cry a little bit because it means so much to me.
When I was pregnant with my son, I was listening to your peaceful parenting playlist.
And I already knew that's what I wanted to do and everything.
But those first few that you did, when Izzy...
I think when your wife was pregnant and when Izzy was little, it really hit me hard.
Especially with the, you know, they don't pick, I don't know why I'm crying so much, they don't pick us as their parents.
So we need to be the kind of parent that if they could pick, they would pick us.
And in those moments when things are kind of hard, that's one of the biggest things that helps me keep calm and help me not take out anything on my son.
And I truly believe that that's made me A much better parent than I would have been without it.
So I wanted to thank you for that.
Well, I appreciate that. And it's funny how, like, just one idea can just sort of sit in our brain and just changes.
I mean, it's a wild thing, right?
I mean, so I'm really thrilled to hear that.
And I'll be sure to let Lizzie know that she had her little part in that in one way or another.
So, yeah, go for it.
Okay, so...
The problem that...
Well, there's a two-fold problem.
One that I don't think I realized until recently.
But the big problem has been...
So we live...
My husband and I live very close to my parents.
Actually rent from my parents.
We basically live in their front yard.
It's a very large front yard. We live out in the middle of nowhere.
So we see them almost daily, which is for the most part great.
Yeah. And we get to see our son almost every day, which can give me a break, which is awesome.
But the problem is my mom will give my son just nasty food, like these big cheese poof balls that she'll get this giant container from the store, or like goldfish crackers, or just little cookies, things that he doesn't Yeah, I knew this was going to be one of those calls that were going to make me hungry, but that's all right.
I will power through somehow.
Yeah, sometimes I would love to reach for some, but I don't want him to under-realize it there.
I don't keep that stuff in the house, personally.
But anyway, so we did talk to them.
One thing that I talked to my mom about was how important it was to me and my husband to That we very much limited sugar as much as we could for the first two years.
He's little. He doesn't know what it is.
It's the easiest time to make that zero, basically.
And my mom seemed like she agreed.
She's had a history of really bad migraines.
And she really wanted to avoid medication as long as she could.
So she went to somebody that talked more about eating healthy and trying to control it that way.
And she's tried keto and all that.
So that's not foreign to her.
That's an idea that when she cooks and makes things, she tries to do low sugar.
It's not like she lives a really, really unhealthy lifestyle.
In front of us, anyway, she doesn't eat these things.
So as far as I know, she doesn't eat these things.
So I'm not sure why, especially after we talked and we seem to agree that she's okay with giving them to my son.
So that's Well, and I've sat her down, and now we're going to get into the secondary problem, which might be more of a problem than the first.
I have sat her down twice and talked about, hey, don't give him the stuff, please.
If he's hungry, give him something like green beans.
Last year, she canned a bunch of applesauce, and she didn't add any sugar, just the apples.
And, you know, we know where the apple came from.
Like, it's probably the best applesauce he can get his hands on.
Like, give him some of that. He loved that.
Like, you know, for his first birthday, she went to great pains, and I really appreciated it, to get him...
Like, to make... She made him a sugar-free cake.
Which, I mean, it probably wouldn't have hurt to give him sugar.
I mean, he didn't even eat the cake.
But, like, she went to great pains to do that.
And so I don't... Like, I don't understand...
Where the miscommunication is happening, where she's just not...
I mean, I sat her down and looked her in the eye and said, please don't give him the stuff that's not good for him.
Like, please don't!
And she's... You know, she's asked, well, what are examples of things that I can give him?
And I would give her examples. I said, you know, the closest it is to coming out of the ground, the better.
But... So then we come to our secondary problem, and I have a specific example from the night that I emailed you.
My mom had some single-serve bags of the fish crackers, the cheese crackers, and she has them on the floor.
So my son walked over and grabbed them, and he brought them to Grammy to open.
And I saw him going for the box, and I looked at mom and I said, I think...
It's late enough that he doesn't need any more snacks.
Like, it's close enough to bedtime. We don't need any more snacks.
And he comes walking over to her, and I can't remember if she was encouraging him to come to her.
I don't remember. I said at least four times, hey, we're done with snacks for the day.
Like, we're not doing this anymore.
Like, it's late enough. It's almost bedtime.
He's still nursing. I would like to keep that going as long as we can.
He's full of junk.
He's not going to want to nurse.
And... She opened the bag and gave him some anyway.
Like, I wasn't even in the room.
And where I failed was I just kind of sat there and didn't do anything.
And my husband was sitting right there.
And he swoops in and takes the snacks away from him and puts them somewhere else.
And my mom acts like nothing happened.
And I kind of sat there for a minute, not sure how to handle the situation.
And then I asked her, I said, Hey, when I said no more snacks, did you hear me?
Like, I can't imagine how she couldn't, but I wanted to ask anyway, like, did you hear me say that?
And she said, well, yeah, I heard you.
I said, okay, well, why did you give him the snacks anyway?
And she said, well, I thought he might be hungry, so I was going to give him a couple.
And I honestly don't remember what I said in response to that, but I think that secondary issue is my son watching my boundaries get crossed, like, Not even giving me the respect of acknowledging that I've said anything.
So, yeah, I think that's where we're at.
Wow. I mean, this is an incredible issue, really.
Because as you say, I mean, you're happy to have your mom around.
She's normally helpful and positive and it gives you a break.
And so, I mean, it's a really wild thing.
issue, right? Because, yeah, if she was so terrible meanie, it would be one thing, but, you know, she brings a lot of value, you say, and so this is, it's a little hard to fathom, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yep.
I don't understand.
I don't understand why she goes to such lengths to try to do healthy things, but then on the other hand, she just hands some of this junk.
Even, like, I don't understand why it's happening, and I don't understand.
I would love some help in how to Talk to her.
To be like, hey, we can't do this.
Part of the problem for me is I understand that it has to be connected in some way to her childhood trauma.
She had a really nasty childhood and they were on the verge of starvation a couple of times.
One winter, my grandpa built buildings and they were building some sort of store and the owner somehow Knew that they were having a hard time and gave him a ton of big gallon buckets of just oatmeal.
And that's all they had that winter.
That was it. They didn't have anything.
Just straight oatmeal. Nothing to put on it.
No flavoring. Nothing. And to this day, she won't eat oatmeal.
Which I can't blame her.
So I know that this has to stem from that.
But at the same time, if you're going to give me the argument that, oh, he might be hungry, green beans would fill that void.
Much healthier than...
Than the crackers.
I don't... Yeah.
I don't understand.
Okay. Yeah, no.
That's tough.
Okay. Now, first question.
How were you raised?
What was her parenting style like?
I don't have a very lovey, huggy mom.
I mean, she's been very attentive and Huggy with my son.
And I know hearing from other people when I was small, she was very good with me.
And I think as I got older, it got harder for her to connect.
So there wasn't a lot of connection.
My sister and I did get spanked when we were little.
It was very rare and it was almost never mom.
The only time I can remember her She got a belt out, which we had never been spanked with a belt.
My dad would put us over his knee and slap us with a bare hand, but there was never a belt involved.
And I don't even remember the actual spanking, but I remember being so scared when she got that belt out.
So there wasn't a lot of connection as I was growing up.
She... As I got older, her disciplinary tactics were really weird.
Like, she would go nuts over something so small.
Like, I didn't do all of the dishes.
So, because I didn't do all of the dishes as, say, a 12-year-old, I'm banned from all TV. I'm banned from, like, pretty much it's come home from school, go straight to your room for a month because I didn't do all the dishes or I missed something.
For a month? Yes.
Yeah. And it would normally not last for a whole month.
It would normally last, I'm not even sure how long it would last, but just she would kind of one day kind of catch me kind of sneaking a little bit of TV and she wouldn't really say anything.
And then it's like, okay, well, I guess like I would slowly watch more and more and she just wouldn't say anything.
Um, but there wasn't an official lifting of the ban typically.
Um, But I do know that she would stick to...
Like, if the next day I tried to watch TV... No, no, that's...
And maybe the TV she would let go...
But the playing video games would be off the table for a while...
Or... Like...
But there was never any solid...
Thing.
Like... Because of this...
You can't have whatever for X amount of time...
And then that happens and it's always true that...
So it was...
Frustrating for me.
And I know that different kids get parented differently.
But my sister and I, with the disciplinary thing, we're treated very differently.
And I think partially because my sister is very...
She's more of a people pleaser.
Like if she knows you don't like a topic, if she knows you don't like something, she doesn't really want to...
Like, she'll smooth things over to keep someone else happy.
So I think she would do that a bit when we were younger.
So she very rarely got any kind of punishment for anything.
So then that was frustrating for me, being the oldest, looking at my little sister, and she pretty much gets away with anything.
And meanwhile, I mess up in this very small way, and there's such a huge consequence for that.
Like, I had a... I tried to talk to my dad about this a couple years ago.
A specific story. I was...
I was maybe 10 or 11.
And my sister's three years younger than me.
So we had some friends visiting from out of state.
And they had three kids.
The oldest was a girl that was closer to my sister's age.
And... I remember all three of us girls were playing some video game, and we were switching out between us and then the girl's younger brother.
It was not like maybe two or three years younger than my sister and the other girl.
And the little boy was really pestering my sister.
I don't remember what he was doing now, but he was pestering her because it was almost his turn.
And she turned around and screamed at him.
And he runs away crying.
And the parents doled out...
I mean, both sets, to be fair, both sets of parents did this.
Because I and the other girl were in the room and didn't stop my sister from screaming, I got some month-long punishment for...
I mean, it was always the same thing.
And then the other girl couldn't go on this trip that she was going to go on with some friends.
Yeah. And my sister just didn't have to play.
She couldn't play the video game for the rest of the day, and the little boy got to play.
I'm sorry, I'm a little lost.
How are you supposed to stop your sister screaming if you don't know she's going to scream?
Yeah, I don't. There was definitely a situation going on where because I was the oldest, I had more responsibility.
But I was put in this impossible situation where I had the responsibility, but if she was doing something...
I couldn't. I was not allowed to stop her.
Like, as we got old enough to stay home by ourselves during the summertime, both my parents worked, my sister was jumping on a couch, and I told her, hey, stop jumping.
Like, she was probably 12, maybe?
11 or 12 at the time, and she's jumping on the couch.
I'm saying, hey, stop it.
Like, don't jump on the couch. Mom and Dad wouldn't like that.
She keeps doing it anyway.
I'm like, okay, whatever. I leave the room and she falls off the couch and breaks her arm.
And I got a total tongue lashing from my dad that she had fallen and broken her arm.
I'm like, I told her to stop.
I can't... If I tried to do something to make her stop, I would get punished.
Sorry, what ages were you here?
She was probably 11 or 12 and I'm three years older, so...
15, 6, wait, math.
14, 15-ish.
So when she said she was a people pleaser, she wasn't exactly a you pleaser.
No, she's never been a me pleaser.
I've had to...
I'm sorry, isn't that just called a suck-up?
I mean, maybe it's the wrong phrase.
I'm sorry to sound cold, but, you know, if you have a people-pleaser personality, then she should be like, oh, absolutely, you want me to stop jumping on the couch?
Yes, sister of mine, I want to be a people-pleaser.
It's like, okay, so if they have power, if someone has power over her, then she'll please them, right?
But isn't that just called being a suck-up?
Am I being too harsh? Actually, I think you just hit the nail on the head.
I'd never thought about that, but it is true.
Like, she's a people-pleaser, too.
Like, if she's worried, like, my cousin, they're very, very good friends.
They're very close in age. They've always been best friends.
And she is very nice to my cousin.
Like, but to me, she's never, like, I've had to, since I've had my son, I've had to very much distance her.
I don't talk with her. I don't.
Because she's not nice with me.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I know we're going off your mom a bit, but just to drop on the sister for a sec, I mean, was there something in particular that caused the rift or was it just slow?
Well, she, with me, she can be cruel and she can also, I can't trust her with information and two good examples of that that I'll try to make succinct.
No, you can take your time.
I mean, that's no problem with me.
Well, when I was... You know, sorry to interrupt.
People wait their whole life to sort of tell their story to someone, and the last thing I want to do is rush you along, so go ahead.
Well, I don't want to, like, drag you out so late, and I want to be very...
Oh, you want to manage my side of the conversation.
You are such a nice young lady.
Please don't. If I think you're going on too long, don't worry, I'll tell you, but go ahead.
Okay, okay. Okay, so I moved out when I was 20, and And so when I was 22, I got tonsillitis that was so severe that they put me in the hospital because they were worried that my tonsils were going to block out my earway.
And so I was admitted for like three days.
And so after that, the doctor's like, we want to get those suckers out of there because we don't want this to happen again.
And he warned me, you know, having a tonsil or a I don't know what it's called, but having your tonsils taken out as an adult is a lot more painful.
It's a tonsillectomy, I think it's called.
It hurts, whatever it is.
But he warned me, I had several nurses warn me, hey, this is going to be really painful.
And I will say, I've had unmedicated labor, and I'm not saying it hurt worse than the labor, but the recovery did hurt worse than after labor.
Is it like a big swallowing thing?
Well, it's basically they cauterize Where I don't know if they actually cut it out or if they just...
I don't know how they do it.
But there were basically two giant burns in the back of my throat.
And I don't know what medication they put me on, but it was severe enough that I couldn't drive.
Oh, I guess because they can't...
Obviously, they can't bandage it.
They can't put it... Yeah. It's mucus and goop back there.
So I guess they have to cauterize it to stop the bleeding.
Oof. Yeah. It was really bad.
Yeah. Sorry, I'm just taking a moment here to thank and honor my own tonsils for not trying to kill me, but okay, with that having been done, please go on.
Oh no, yeah, that's very important.
So my mom wanted me to stay at their house because I was living on my own.
I was only like five minutes down the road, but still, I could understand her concern.
So I was basically...
Camping out in their living room.
So my mom and dad both work.
My dad has always worked insane hours.
He's a workaholic.
He thrives on the work.
I think he gets depressed when he doesn't.
And my mom was working some pretty crazy hours at the time.
And I was running out of my medication.
My sister I think she was home.
I don't know Basically, her schedule was much more flexible than theirs and I'm on a medication that I can't drive on.
So I asked her if she could please go to the pharmacy and get me more of my medication because I'm almost out and I tried ibuprofen and it wasn't touching it.
And she told me basically, first off, no, she wasn't going to do that.
And second off, I was a bum living on my parents' couch and And she just went off on me because I was such a horrible person because I just had my tonsils taken out and I'm with my parents while I'm recovering.
That's not how she saw it, I guess.
So she just ripped me a new one and I got so upset, I actually yelled back at her, which was a huge mistake.
Yeah, it was a big mistake.
And I think at that point, I just...
I don't think I said anything to mom and dad about getting more medication.
I just roughed it out.
But that's an example of her being cruel.
And an example of not being able to trust her with information, as we've gotten older, we would talk about my parents, like how we felt that they messed up with us as kids and how we would parent differently.
Yeah. And, you know, we both talk about things, you know, mom did this and dad did this, and, like, we both would let those things off our chest to each other.
Well, one day, my sister and I are having some argument at my parents' house, and my mom's sitting right there, and I don't remember what we were arguing about, but out of nowhere, it had nothing to do with the argument, my sister looks at me and she yells, well, at least I don't badmouth mom behind her back.
Oh, my God. And my mom's sitting right there, and my mom and I have not historically had the best relationship.
And to me, that felt like my sister was trying to sabotage that.
So that really made me angry.
I mean, I was already mad, but...
How old were you when this happened?
I was probably...
25 or 26, maybe.
So she would have been...
22 or 23. And do you know where this cruelty or this venom comes from?
I've had theories and tried to put my finger on it.
So, my mom and my sister have always been very close.
And as we've gotten older, my mom...
When my...
Oh, this was...
It wasn't long after I moved out, we say that my...
I don't know how fair it is to say it like this, but we say that my mom went kind of crazy.
She was on the verge of leaving my dad.
She, out of nowhere, decided that she was going to go to Canada and enter this program where they teach you how to be like A caretaker of, like, really rich people's houses.
Like, people that have multiple houses.
That level of rich. Like a property manager?
Kinda, yeah. Like, if this person, like, they have a tea party or whatever and she'd set the tea party up before they got, whatever.
Like, whatever.
But, uh, she had the option to leave.
Like, she had a couple of different flights that she could pick.
And the flight that she picked and the class that she picked made it so that she missed my sister's high school graduation.
Well, if I'm going to, I mean, obviously I'm just trying to feel my way around your family, but I would guess that she's stuck at home alone with a workaholic.
She's got nothing, right? Well, when you guys left.
What do you mean? Well, if your dad is a workaholic, then your mom has some contact with human beings through you and your sister being there.
But when you and your sister leave, then she's stuck in an empty house with a guy who's gone all the time, if I understand this correctly.
Well, my sister was still living at home.
She lived at home until she was probably 23.
Yeah. Okay, sorry about that.
So it's when you left, your mom went a little crazy?
She seemed to go a little nuts, yeah.
It wasn't right after.
It was probably at least a year, if not two, after.
I don't... I can't remember where she was.
No, so when I was 22, she had already come back because there weren't enough...
There's not very many openings for a position like that, so she couldn't find a job.
So she ended up coming back...
And she worked for a hotel that she had to drive two hours each way to get to this job.
But it was the closest thing she could find that was like what she had trained for.
And did she do that because she liked it?
Or did she do that because they needed the money?
Or it's a long commute?
Oh, yeah. I'm honestly not sure why she decided to do that.
She used to be a dental hygienist and she decided to quit doing that.
Probably when I was about 15, she quit that.
And then she wanted to go in to be a realtor.
She did that for, I don't know how long, a little while before she...
And that's the last thing I think that she was doing before she decided to learn how to do this other stuff.
I'm honestly not sure why she wanted to go to our way.
It wouldn't have been for money because...
She wasn't making very much.
My dad always said if she was that worried about money, she could go back into doing dental hygiene stuff.
She wasn't making a lot of decisions that seemed to make any sense to anybody else.
Just deciding to up and go to Canada and choose to miss my sister's graduation.
I don't know what she was thinking.
I don't want to interrupt your story, but there is something that has troubled me for the last couple of minutes, and I wanted to pause.
I can bookmark it if you want to keep going.
No, you go ahead. Okay.
What are you talking about? You say your mom was very close to your sister, right?
Mm-hmm. Okay, so that means your mom is like your sister, right?
I think mom might be more like me.
Okay, but if she's super close to your sister, then wouldn't she notice that your sister was kind of like a raving sadist or something like that when it came to treating you?
I have always felt like they kind of threw me under the bus for the whims of my sister.
I know when she was about five, she got this kidney infection, and Dad describing it later to me, He said...
Like, I was too little to understand what was going on.
And basically, they had to take her to the emergency room.
But Dad said he thought she was going to die in his arms.
Like, she was acting so...
Like, just by her behavior.
So... And I don't know if...
I haven't talked to Mom about that, so I don't know if that was her same feelings.
Like, she's... My sister's always been the baby of the family.
Um... Like, I remember her telling me that she could get away with a ton of things that I would never be able to get away with.
Like, I... And I think because, like, I'm much more laid back.
I'm much more easygoing. I don't...
Like, my sister would get upset if we went somewhere that she wasn't expecting us to go to.
Or, like, if we went to the library.
I loved going to the library as a kid.
And we were there longer than she wanted us to be.
She was just a fit. And so, as a family, we would...
So your parents have no parenting philosophy.
I mean, look, it bothers me because there's almost no better way to set siblings against each other than to treat them with different standards.
Because it just creates all this resentment and frustration.
If they don't have a parenting philosophy, then what are they doing?
What's the plan? If it's like, well, we've got to be severe because kids got to learn consequences.
Oh, she's having a tantrum.
We'll totally appease that. I don't understand the philosophy here.
Yeah, I don't either.
That's a good point. I would get in trouble for all this stuff.
I very rarely would throw tantrums.
I'm not saying I never did. But I didn't as much as my sister, and she never...
Well, I'm hoping to provoke one in this conversation.
No, I'm just kidding. It's possible.
I mean, if she's so close to your sister, then why didn't she notice that your sister was...
Mean, cruel, or whatever, right?
I mean, you know, if I had two kids and one of the kids was like, oh yeah, well, you know, you bad-mouthed dad behind his back, and I'd be like, why are you telling?
That's the wrong thing to tell me.
Did she tell you that in confidence?
And why are you telling? Do you know what I mean?
And they would notice the siblings not getting along, and they would, I'd hope, work like hell to try and fix that, right?
Yeah, yeah. No, I don't know what their approach was.
I know neither one of them I've had great relationships with their siblings growing up.
To this day, my mom, she's got eight siblings and she barely talks to any of them.
There's like one that she can't talk to sometimes. Right, so they know exactly how difficult it is if you don't get along with your siblings.
You know, it's funny because people say, well, you know, because she doesn't get along with her siblings, how on earth could she teach me to get along with mine or mine to get along with me?
It's like, that's exactly why.
It would be like saying, well, you know, you had tonsillectomy, right?
You had your tonsils out, so there's no possible way that you could take care of someone and help them feel better if they have their tonsils out.
And it's like, no, no, no, you having your tonsils out would mean that you'd be better at taking care of someone about that, not worse, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I know I've heard them kind of make...
I've kind of taken it as an excuse where they're like, well, we don't get along with our siblings.
Well, my dad gets along much better with his brothers now.
Growing up, it was different.
But my mom specifically said, well, I don't get along with my siblings.
And my dad's even saying, well, your mom doesn't get along with her siblings, so I guess this is just the way it is.
I'm like, yeah, okay. I don't agree with that, but whatever.
Has she ever tried to figure out why?
My mom. Like with her siblings or with me and my sister?
No, with her siblings.
Mom with her... That's so complicated.
There was also a lot of like just favoritism.
The boys... Like my mom grew up in this weird cultish sect of this...
Religion, which was weird because the most cultish part of it was within the family.
It wasn't even the church itself.
I've heard of other people talk about, that knew them at the time, that yeah, they're that weird family where the girls had to wear skirts all the time.
So the boys were treated much different than the girls were.
The girls basically raised the kids.
And the boys just did whatever the heck they wanted.
And it's just...
And I think my mom might be a little bit like me in that...
I don't know how to explain it.
You fight a little bit more, which doesn't make any sense with this particular situation since I haven't fought.
I've kind of rolled belly up.
Sorry, which situation?
You mean the mom with your mom and the food?
Yes. But my...
Uncles and aunts, they had a nickname for my mom.
They called her Sitting Bull because she was so stubborn.
And... I mean, she just...
There's just so much broken and weird about her childhood.
And I think the real rift that she has a hard time getting over is she has decided to exclude her parents.
She has nothing to do with them, either one.
But none of her siblings have done the same.
Um... My grandpa was having heart problems and he needed someone to take him to the doctor because he didn't want to call an ambulance and my aunt was right there to drop a hat to help him.
I wouldn't have been. So I can see how she would see that kind of behavior as fitting in the decision she's made.
But yeah, she just doesn't like her siblings.
And a lot of them have...
Several of them are into drugs.
They don't live super great lifestyles.
All of them have problems of their own.
None of the kids got out of that mess unscarred.
She hasn't tried to reconcile.
I don't think she wants to. Did she notice how cruel your sister can be to you?
Honestly, I don't know. I know it happened right in front of her.
I remember... Okay, so yes.
Right? I mean, if it happened right in front of her, then yes, right?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, and what did she do about that?
Nothing. Like, they weren't there.
They weren't home when the tonsil thing happened.
But like when my sister said the whole, you know, talking smack about mom behind her back, my mom just sat there.
Didn't say a word. And, uh, sorry if you've mentioned this, but was there something in particular that caused you to stop seeing your sister or did it just fade off?
Um, it was a combination of, well, the root of it was I didn't want my son to see me fighting like that.
I didn't want him to see my behavior with my sister when we were together.
Um, and I didn't want him to think it's okay that when someone treats you that way, that you are around them.
Um, So it was really a decision that I wanted to be a better example to him.
And I had told her...
I remember telling her as a teenager, probably 15-ish, that if she kept treating me the way that she was treating me, one day I wasn't going to be there anymore.
And I just kept saying it, kept saying it, and then I was like, you know what?
I think now's the time.
She's not changing anything.
She apologizes, but it's not a real apology because she keeps doing these things.
So... At that point, I decided it would be healthier for my family that I very much minimize contact.
And how's her life going, or at least last time you saw her?
We actually live right next door.
I don't see her very often, though.
She's in college right now, almost to the end of getting her nursing degree.
She works at a local hospital.
When she's not in class.
She's a hard worker. She's never been a happy person.
I think that's probably where a lot of her cruelty stems from.
She doesn't treat herself very nice.
She doesn't speak to herself very well.
You know why that is, right?
No. Because she's cruel to others.
I mean, it's the asshole text.
Sorry to be so blunt, but it's the asshole text.
Like, if you're an asshole to other people, you're not going to be happy.
You're not going to be in love.
You're not going to have a good relationship with yourself.
I mean, the conscience just takes everyone down.
I don't know why people are just like, oh, I'm just going to be mean.
Oh, I'm not going to go and get pain meds.
It's like, why would you do that?
I mean, even if you don't feel like it in the moment, do it for your own soul.
Do it for your own happiness. For the fact that you can look at yourself in the mirror?
I mean, I do not understand why people indulge in this vicious drug of cruelty.
I mean, I know it hurts you, and I don't want to brush past that, but my God, does it wreck your sister?
Yeah. No, I feel really bad for her.
Like, I honestly and truly...
Oh, I wouldn't go that far. I feel very bad for her.
Well, I wouldn't listen.
I think that there are people who can feel bad for your sister, but because she did some real harm to you, you may not necessarily have to be one of them.
If you do, that's fine. Obviously, I'm not going to tell you what to feel, but it's pretty horrible.
And then, you know, seeing what cruelty does to people in the long run, it's like, it's just, I don't understand how anybody thinks it's worth it.
Yeah. The bizarre thing is recently in the last...
Two years, I asked her about that situation.
I said, what were you thinking? Like, isn't that so obviously wrong with the tonsil one, with my medication?
Like, isn't that so...
Like, maybe you don't want to right now.
Fine, say no. Just say no.
You don't have to then rail into me for all these things that you feel like I'm doing wrong, that I'm sleeping on my parents' couch.
Like, okay, I can go to my own couch, but I can't drive.
Especially when she was living with her parents into her early mid-20s.
Yeah, yeah, that's...
Definitely a bit hypocritical.
How dare you do what I'm planning to do?
So I asked her about that.
I was like, well, what was going on?
Why did you do that?
And I had to retell that story to her.
And she kind of starts tearing up.
And she says, wow, that's a terrible thing.
That doesn't sound like something I would do.
She acted like she didn't remember.
Maybe she didn't. That she'd blocked it completely, that she had no idea.
She's like, wow, that's horrible. Did she have any head injuries in her life?
I mean, it's kind of weird when you remember something vividly and somebody else has absolutely no idea.
It's like, maybe that was your evil twin from another dimension.
It was very heated, so I'm a little surprised she didn't even have any recollection of it.
Then she quickly said, you know, I don't want to talk about this anymore because that's a horrible thing if I did that.
Yeah, no, she's just lying and denying, just lying and denying.
That's my general assumption with people.
If they've been cruel. I mean, how do you get out of bed if you've been that cruel to someone?
It's just a survival mechanism to just ignore your whole history at that point.
Yeah, that's a good point. Now, what has your mom done with the rift between you and your sister?
Or your dad, for that matter?
Uh... Mom doesn't really do anything.
Dad asks me to fix things.
Like when I was engaged, he told me that I had to ask my sister to be my maid of honor.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
We do not get along.
Why would I do that? Oh, so your dad's like a wallpaper guy.
Dad, there's this giant hole in the wall.
Well, I got a good fix for that.
Wallpaper. Oh, yeah.
And I asked him, I said, well, If my sister was engaged right now, would you tell her to ask me to be the maid of honor?
You would not, because you know she would ask my cousin.
You would not ask her to do the same.
So why are you asking me to do that?
And he kind of didn't really have an answer.
But there have been a lot of instances of...
Like, for example, my sister, so she also rents off my parents.
And to lower her rent, she would mow all the properties.
Um... And so she came and mowed my yard and she accidentally completely...
I slowly believe she didn't mean to.
She ran over one of my hoses to my garden.
And she apologized and everything.
She says, hey, I'm more than willing to buy you a new hose.
And I'm like, that was so responsible of her.
I thanked her. I said, you know, it was just a little bit of the hose.
I'll fix it. I should have made her get a new one.
But I told her, I can fix it.
Thank you so much for offering.
Like, it was a very good exchange.
My dad found out about this.
Not knowing that I'd already talked to my sister and we'd already figured it out.
And he said, don't ask her to buy you new house.
Like, okay, we're adults.
You don't really have a spot in this conversation.
And she should.
If I decide to decline that, cool.
But she should at least offer because she ruined my property.
It was an accident.
Still. I think everyone knows that when you mow, you've got to check The lawn, right?
You've got to make sure that there isn't things that you can destroy in there.
Yeah, and I mean, it was the very end of the hose.
I could see how she couldn't have seen it.
But again, she admits she owned up to the mistake, and she said, hey, I did this.
I'm really sorry. Let me get you a new hose.
I said, no, no, it's fine. I knew she didn't.
She was kind of financially struggling.
She was not on her own for very long.
I was like, you know, it's fine.
Don't worry about it. I can just get an easy thing to...
But on the end, it'll be fine.
It's a good thing you don't have two sisters and you have an issue with hoes.
That would be a monstrous challenge.
Just give up with hoes.
So it's been, was it two years since you've had significant contact with your sister?
Okay, and no one's, it's just amazing to me.
It's like everyone's just stepping over the corpse of this relationship like it ain't there.
Yep. I'm really sorry about that.
And to not have someone who knows you.
You know, when your parents die, who else is going to know you from when you were a kid?
Maybe a friend or two, but you know, your sister will know you for the whole journey, your sibling.
And it's just really tragic how many sibling relationships go south and how few parents step in.
And well, I guess I know why, which is that if it's problems with the parents that cause problems with the siblings, parents don't want to admit fault by trying to solve things with the siblings that would expose deficiencies on the parents.
Yeah. No, I agree.
And does she date?
She's had...
I don't know if she's dating now.
A lot of our arguments leading up to when we quit talking was a lot about her...
I don't know. To me, she was playing a very dangerous game with guys where she would give them her number.
Like guys at work, she would give them her number because there's no way else to get your number unless you give it to somebody.
Um, and then they would text her and she would complain about how annoying it was that they were texting her.
And, um, like basically if it wasn't an attractive enough guy or whatever, like she had, I'm like, you're leading them on.
Like you're responding to these text messages.
You're making them think everything's fine.
And you're coming to me and telling me that you think that they're gross and you hate that they talk to you.
It's like, don't talk to them.
Like the only reason they're talking, like if you don't send anything, they're not going to respond.
So, you know, on one hand, I'm like, you're being cruel to these guys, and on the other hand, you're playing a dangerous game.
Because if you play this with the wrong guy, like, these are all guys you work with.
Hello, stalker! Yeah.
Exactly! Well, and she worked, like, these kind of weird hours where she could be walking out to her car in the dark.
Like, this is dangerous.
Like, this is a dangerous game you're playing, and we would get into fights over that.
She has had, as far as I know, one boyfriend.
They dated... I think about six months.
And then they broke up.
Other than that, I don't know what she's doing now.
I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a boyfriend.
If she did, I'd probably know about it.
Yeah, and she'll probably never figure out that she can't ever be in love or trust anyone, least of all herself, unless she apologizes to you.
Now, again, I know it's your side of the story.
I'm sure that there's things that she would complain about.
But, you know, these two stories are pretty vivid, particularly one, I'm not getting my in agony sister painkillers.
I mean, that's straight up sadism. That's really ridiculously cruel, right?
It's not like you're asking her to go to Africa and get you the heart of gold or something, right?
So, yeah, I mean, it's just a shame.
I mean, I don't know, the pride, you know?
Like, if it's like, okay, you've got to swallow your pride, you've got to apologize, and on the other side of that, it's the capacity to fall in love and have a great life.
I say, why wouldn't you do that? I don't know.
It's strange to me, but I don't understand that level of pride where you're willing to burn down your entire future for the sake of not admitting you were wrong about anything.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. I wouldn't trade places with her for anything.
Right, right. Now, does she ever come up when your mom's over?
Well, we mostly go down to my mom's house.
My mom doesn't really come up here very often.
But she'll be there.
She appears to be really good with my son.
I'm sorry, she'll be there being your sister or your mom?
Well, both. Like, my sister will come, and she...
We don't cross paths very often.
Like, she'll see mom and dad in the morning before she goes to work.
My son doesn't wake up till 8 a.m., and they've already had breakfast because they all have to disperse and do their workday things.
I'm home with my son, so we're on whatever the heck he wants to do.
But, you know, we've crossed paths.
I... I try very hard when we are together to not, like if she talks to me, I will respond, but I try not to get into a conversation.
I try to keep it limited.
I try not to look at her.
Wow, it's pretty stressful with your son around, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm sorry because I'm a little confused.
It's my fault. I must have missed something.
Because I thought that you didn't want your son to see you in a situation where, you know, you were uncomfortable or couldn't be honest or couldn't be forthright or something like that.
But you still, I mean, your sister is around when you're socializing with your mom, right?
Sometimes? Sometimes.
Very rarely. I see my sister maybe once a month, maybe even less than that.
I don't see her often.
Okay, yeah, that's fine. I'm not trying to judge her or say good or bad.
I just want to make sure I understand the situation.
And your mom has not brought up much about...
I mean, you said your dad was like, fix it, whatever that means, which is like, I'm not going to be a parent.
But your mom, does she sit and say, you know, what's going on with you and your sister or anything like that?
No, she really...
I've talked to mom about it, but it was...
Similar to talking to a wall.
She doesn't really add anything.
She doesn't really... Oh, come on.
It's got to be a lot more painful than just talking to a wall.
Well, yeah. You don't expect a wall.
You know, it's a wall, right? Well, that's not unusual.
It's not that she does that just for this topic.
She does it pretty often. We'll be in the car.
When I go and get groceries, I go with my mom so she can help with my son, especially now that he's running everywhere and trying to kill himself.
Yeah. So, like, we'll be in the car, and, you know, I'll be talking to her about something, and I could, like, sometimes she'll respond, like, but for the most part, it could be just like I'm talking to my son.
Every once in a while, she might acknowledge that I've said something, but she doesn't really...
Like, with a grunt or an ooga-booga, or what do you mean?
She might be like, yeah, or, you know, I see that, or something like that.
She doesn't really... Enter the conversation or add very much.
This sounds like neutral and shut up combo of the two.
Almost, yeah. She kind of doesn't really care that I'm talking.
Although, if you...
Oh no, I'm sure she does. I mean, if you're bringing up family stuff, I'm sure she's pretty tense, but she's trying to shut it down with distance.
Well, it wouldn't even be family stuff.
I could be talking about... I go on all these rants about How important stay-at-home mom stuff is.
I'm really passionate about that, obviously.
And all the stuff for my son for the future and my plans and those kinds of things.
It's not even just...
The only way that I can consistently get mom to join in a conversation is if I bring up gossip or if I bring up something that someone did that annoyed me or...
Like, if it's a negative thing, she'll kind of get into it, but she doesn't...
It's hard to have a conversation with her.
Was she a stay-at-home mom?
No, she worked...
Were you like daycare kids, or was she home when you were very young?
No. So she, when I was born, she was still in school.
So she had her maternity leave and then she, a friend of the family, my sister and I have never been in a daycare and my parents pride themselves on that.
We went to, a family friend would watch me when I was little.
When my sister was born, my mom took off work for like a year or something, like a longer period of time.
She did watch other, like she had an in-home daycare at the time where she would watch other people's kids.
And then When we were in school, like, so her mom would watch us when we were very little before mom cut off contact.
And then one of her sisters would watch us.
Like, we would just be passed around from family, member to family member.
During school, I do not have fond memories until I got my license.
I mean, even then, I hated school all the way through.
I just hate it. Like, I will die on the hill if my son will be homeschooled.
It's not a negotiable thing.
But when we were really little, sometimes my mom would have to go to work early.
And my sister and I from grade one to eight were in like this one room school with just one teacher.
And like typical, we had only eight kids in the entire school.
I think one year we had 12.
So we really grew. But...
There would be mornings, not all the time, but there would be mornings where we'd be there at least 45 minutes before the teacher even got there.
So we had a key to get in and, you know, we'd watch a TV show or whatever.
And most days, we got home like an hour or two before bedtime because then, you know, some other person would go to some other person's house and they'd watch us.
And then my mom or dad would pick us up.
I'm usually just mom. And we'd get home.
Super late. Go to bed.
Get up. It felt like we were never home.
So, you know, mom worked quite a bit.
And then when I got my license, I could drive myself home, and that was great.
But, yeah.
So it may be a little rough for her to hear.
I'm not saying it's wrong to talk about, but I mean, I'm sort of hearing her brain screaming a little bit if you're talking about the values of homeschooling and connected parenting and stay-at-home moms and all of that.
I mean, it's certainly a deviation from what she did, right?
That's possible. I know that she agrees with me.
Wait, so sorry. It's possible that it's a deviation or it's possible that she perceives that?
It's possible that she perceives that because I know like we'll...
I've talked about it, and I know she agrees with me.
Like, she agrees that this is the better way.
Like, she's told...
Like, in her...
In her mind, my dad is, like, enemy number one.
And she talks all the time.
Enemy number one. Oh, sorry.
That seems like a big statement.
I just wanted to make sure I got that correct.
So, your dad is enemy number one?
I mean, it's almost like she's fleeing the draft by going to Canada, but what does that mean?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, my dad...
I mean, in her defense, my dad has really matured and grown over the years.
Like, he is much different than he was when he was younger.
But she would hold on to these little things that he would do.
And she just, like, I have the analogy of it's like she's a fish in a fish tank.
And she's just let all this poop and stuff just dirty the water.
And she just swims in it instead of cleaning it out.
So she says all the time that dad would never let her be a stay-at-home mom.
You know, she really, really wanted it, but dad just would never let her, which I guess I can kind of see, but at the same time, when my husband and I started dating, like, we were just dating, and I said, yeah, I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom, and that's not a negotiable thing.
Like, that's just what's going to happen.
So if you're going to marry me and have kids with me, understand that I will be a stay-at-home mom.
Yeah, you can't blame your partner that you chose for your decisions.
I mean, because he's one of your decisions, right?
Yeah, yeah. I don't need to tell you, but yeah.
No, yeah. That was very important for me.
And mom says it was important for her, but my dad has acknowledged that if she had pushed that when they were young, he would have...
They would have been a fight over it.
So she's not...
I'm sorry, they would have fought over it?
They would have fought over it.
Like, he didn't like how...
Like, my dad... He grew up in poverty.
And... Being financially stable has been very important to him.
Like, they've always been very smart with our money.
He bought his first home when he was, like, 22 or something.
Oh, so he's a good moneymaker, so why did she need to work?
Well, that's...
Maybe, oh, I'm so good with money that my wife has to work.
It's like, I'm sorry, isn't that one of the reasons you are good with money?
I see your wife doesn't have to... Anyway. Yeah, well, his explanation was he was so worried about being there again.
He didn't want to be there again without, you know...
Well, that's fine, but then, you know, wait to have kids until you've got some savings.
Yeah, well, and I was so surprised.
They were not expecting me. They were married for, like, four months when my mom got pregnant.
Yeah, okay, so they had unprotected sex?
And, okay, well, that's the risk you take, right?
You don't make your kids pay for the fact that you rolled the dice, right?
No, I 100% agree.
Like, I can see the...
What's the word? I can see excuses.
I'm not sure that looking back they necessarily see the excuses, but I can see the excuses that...
Well, your mom's blaming your dad for her not being home, right?
Yes. So that's an excuse?
Yep. In my opinion, it is yes.
Has your mother apologized or taken ownership for anything in her parenting that you have an issue with or that might be negative?
She came to me once and she said, if there's anything that I did when you were growing up that was wrong, I'm sorry.
Yeah, that's not taking any.
That's like a blanket pardon.
That's not admitting to anything.
And that's basically saying, don't tell me anything.
Because, hey, I already apologized.
Yep. No, I agree.
When she said that, I was like, oh, okay, thanks, Mom.
Yep. I'm not buying it.
Okay. Okay. Yeah, but that's the closest she's come to apologizing for anything.
And has your dad apologized or said anything about things that he regrets or might have done wrong?
We've talked about stuff.
I don't know that he's outright said I'm sorry.
He does kind of make excuses.
We talked about that story where my sister yelled at the little boy and myself and the friend got in trouble much more than my sister did.
And he just falls over himself with excuses.
Like, well, at the time, that's what we thought.
And he doesn't really remember the circumstance.
He just makes all these excuses.
You're in the fog of no memory, right?
Yeah. You know, if that happened, you know, that was bad.
But I don't have any...
Well, he didn't...
To be fair, he just said he didn't remember it.
But he didn't say anything that made me feel like he didn't think it happened.
Well, no, here's the trick, right?
But if someone can't remember something, but desperately wants to remember it, do you know what they do?
They think? Well, no, they keep asking for details.
Like, oh, okay, where was it?
What time of day was it?
How old were you?
And they sit there and they concentrate, right?
You know, if you said to your dad, I don't know, I've got a hundred bitcoins buried somewhere in the backyard, would he say, I don't know anything about that?
He'd be like, well, okay, where were they and where were you standing and what was around you?
If people really want to remember something, they will keep asking to try and narrow it down.
And, you know, because the memory is in there probably, right?
It just needs to be, you need some association, something to trip the wire to get the memory out, right?
So when people, if something's important to you and somebody says, well, I don't remember, If they're honorably dealing with you, then they will, knowing how important it is to you, if they genuinely don't remember, they will say, okay, tell me more, and then they'll call up their wife and say, okay, do you remember this?
They'll call up their sister and say, do you remember this?
And they will really work to try and jog their memory, right?
Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say he didn't remember it, and that's kind of the end of it, right?
Yeah, yeah. Well, after he made a bunch of excuses of why that was the way, like why he handled it the way that they did.
So he didn't remember it, but he made excuses as to why he handled it?
Yeah. But if he didn't remember it, how on earth would he remember what the excuses are?
That's a really good question.
I didn't think to ask that.
Well, no, I mean, I wouldn't either in your situation because I'm only doing this because it's not my parents, right?
So it's easy for me to see from the outside, but it's impossible for me to see.
Yes, my mom did the same thing, just got all kinds of foggy, you know?
Just like, oh, I don't remember this, I don't remember that, I don't remember the other.
And it's like, okay, well, but you're not asking me any clarifying questions.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, if I lost something my mom had, she'd keep asking me, well, where did you last leave it?
And when did you last have it? And she'd just keep going on and on about it, right?
But if I ask her something she doesn't want to remember or can't remember, she's just like, nope, that's the end of it.
Can't remember it. We're done. That's a good point.
Yeah, that's exactly how he handled that.
That's tragic. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry about that. I mean, to me, I view that as just another kind of rejection.
And it's an abuse of power, right?
Because, I mean, if the government called and said, we need this piece of paper, right?
He wouldn't be like, oh, I don't remember where it is.
Right? But its own kid?
I don't remember that. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point.
So, I know we've gone about six million tangents, which is mostly me.
So, I just want to make sure I get back to the core issue.
Okay. So, the deviation that you have from your mother in terms of parenting is significant.
Have you talked to her about peaceful parenting?
Yeah, we've...
She's listened...
The whole family's listened to your show.
I think most of them have kind of peered off.
My dad's the one that introduced me to you.
They... Like, they've The things that you've talked about with Gentle Parenting, he's grown a lot with that.
He has apologized for spanking.
That was wrong.
I'm sorry for doing that. Okay, that's good.
Good for him. Or good for you, I guess, if he's listening at some point.
Fantastic. Does he remember the bit where your sister broke her arm from the couch jumping?
I've never asked him about that.
I mean, that he would remember, right?
If he remembers your sister with the kidney infection, I'm sure he would remember the arm breaking, right?
And how he handled that. Probably.
And does your mom... Sorry, go ahead.
Well, I know he was under a lot of...
Like, the financial aspect of that was stressing him out quite a bit.
So I'm sure he remembers that.
Right. Like, I'm going to the doctor and getting her cast and all that.
And does your mom remember you being sent to your room for a month for not finishing the dishes when you were 12?
I've never brought that up with her.
I'm sure she does. I mean, we were fighting like cats until I left.
So she told me...
So we tried to do homeschooling when I was little.
And she does not have the patience to do homeschooling.
So I was set back a little bit.
So when I was 19, I was a senior in high school.
I turned 20 like two weeks after my graduation.
And so she told me...
Um, sometime early in my senior year, uh, a month or two into school that the day after graduation, I was out of the house.
Um, but how long did she, how long did she try to homeschool for?
Uh, when I finally got into school, I was 10 years old going into third grade.
Um, wait, so sorry.
I thought she was not a stay at home mom.
Then how did she homeschool? Yeah, I don't...
I remember a lot of fighting.
I remember a lot of...
Just, you know, her thing was I just wouldn't mind.
Like, I remember her saying, well, I just...
The message that I got was I can't homeschool you.
You're the problem, right? Yeah, but she didn't homeschool my sister either, so...
Wait, wait, no, but she did try to homeschool you.
Did she try to homeschool your sister?
Mm-hmm. I think so, a little bit.
But she was young enough.
She was probably a little bit older than your average first grader.
But not as much as...
Wait, sorry. Were you homeschooled from 5 to 10?
I honestly don't know when she started.
I'm not sure. Do you remember being in school when you were 5 or 6?
I got...
We started...
Like, actually going to school when I was 10, and I honestly don't remember what age she started homeschooling.
Like, I don't know when... But you don't remember being in school before 10?
No, I know that I wasn't in school before 10.
Like, we were doing homeschooling things.
Okay, that's all I'm asking. So she was homeschooling you for, what, five or six years?
I don't know.
I don't know how long she tried.
I don't know what age I was. That is a long time to be screwing something up, isn't it?
Yeah. No, she royally messed that up.
Like, everyone in the family acknowledges that.
That was a mess.
And has she apologized for that?
No, she hasn't.
Good lord. I didn't feel that until I got older and...
But so she wasn't working?
No, she was. She was trying to homeschool after she got home.
She was trying to homeschool on the weekends, things like that.
What? Okay, so sorry.
So from five to ten, where were you?
During the day? During the day, we were probably at an aunt's house.
Like that literally wouldn't have left us.
Either grandma's house or one of my mom's sisters.
Okay, so they weren't homeschooling you.
So like five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, you are bouncing around here and there.
You're not getting any education during the day and your mom's trying to jam stiff up on the weekend?
I think so, yeah. I don't really remember it, but I'm assuming that's what was going on.
Oh, come on. It's five years. You've got to have some memories.
Don't make me prompt you. We just had this conversation.
I will prompt you if I have to.
I highly doubt we started school at five.
She probably tried to start school closer to seven.
I don't remember.
I just remember fighting.
I remember her being really frustrated.
Like, I don't know that she stuck with it very consistently.
It was probably like, okay, we did it, and we did it for a couple of days or maybe a week, and then we just didn't do anything for a while.
So, I mean, but what were you learning, or, I mean, were you just diving into books, or were you, like, I don't know, some sort of wolf child or Lord of the Flies?
I mean, what the hell?
Honestly, it feels more like a Lord of the Flies situation, looking back.
I don't remember. Like, I know we had some books, like some, like...
Handwriting books and stuff.
I know...
I distinctly remember going to the library and picking up books to try to get me to read.
Trying to get you to read?
Or just throw some books at you?
Good luck, kid. Basically, I don't...
I didn't start picking...
In my opinion, I did not learn to read until I was 12.
When my grandmother gifted me some books...
That had a subject that I was really interested in and I just took off and became a bookworm and really started reading after that.
But the school we went to was not very great either.
I'm trying to figure out the theory here.
Your sister's in school, right?
She was not in school separate of me.
We started school together. Oh, you started school together.
So, she's got two kids that she's trying to homeschool occasionally on the weekends?
I mean, I'm trying to, like, why weren't you in school?
And, I mean, your mom is probably not quite as alternative as, say, you and I would be, but why wouldn't she put you in school?
If she's not going to do it, doesn't someone have to give you guys a little bit of a leg up in form of the read and write and arithmetic stuff?
That's a fantastic question.
And the answer to that is we were in the same religion that my mom grew up in.
And so it was kind of a, we don't want to go to the public school because...
Oh, it's secular and it's materialistic and secular humanism and so on.
Yeah, okay. I understand that and I have a great deal of sympathy with, I guess, more mainstream Christians or maybe even less mainstream Christians about the effects of the school turning into a...
Rainbow-haired communist or something like that.
Okay, so she kept you.
But didn't the church or the religion that she was part of, didn't it have any structure?
I mean, was everyone just supposed to homeschool?
I mean, aren't you supposed to be brought up in the religion?
Isn't there sort of day school or schools for the religious principles?
Well, to this day, it's a very small church.
There's not a lot of people there.
It's not like your mainstream Catholic.
It's more of like a little...
I'm trying to think of which finger here, but okay.
Really, you can pick any of them.
But my mom actually was one of the people that pushed really hard for this, like our church, our school was in the church.
Oh, the school that you went to when you were 10?
Yes. Both my parents really pushed for that.
So there was no school before you were 10, but then when she realized she couldn't homeschool, she pushed for a school and put you there?
Yep. Okay, got it.
Well, I believe she started pushing when we were about school age.
It took years to get this thing to go.
Yeah. And that's partially why it was so tiny, is there weren't that many kids in the school, or in the church.
Wow, that's wild.
And your father is part of the same church?
They were at the time, yeah.
My dad didn't grow up in the church, but he found it at some point.
I'm not sure if it was after he moved out or before.
I know his parents found it along the way, too, so I don't know if they all found it together or separately or what.
Is your mother still in this church?
No. All of us, my mom, my dad, my sister, we all left it at about the same time.
And how long ago was that?
This would have been about 15 years ago.
I was about 15.
Right. And what was the impetus to leave the church?
For my mom, I'm not quite sure.
From what she says, She was kind of ready to leave for a while.
My dad...
I'm sorry.
You finish. I'll hold my thought.
Go ahead. Well, my dad, he...
So in this church, they believe that the earth is only...
Like, X amount old. I don't even remember how old that is now.
Probably 6,000 or something, yeah. Some people have done the math.
Something, yeah. They've counted all the begats and, yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When my dad came across something that really made him think, like, wait a minute, I don't think that's right.
And that led him down this path of, oh, this is not correct.
And that's kind of the doorway that led him out, I guess.
And... Okay, so I can't contain myself any longer.
So, they raised you for 15 years in a belief that they then abandoned.
Yes. Have they apologized for that?
My dad has, yeah.
My dad admits that the biggest mistake he feels that was made was...
I mean, we were giving like...
We were giving a ton of money to the church.
Yeah. No, no, that can't be right.
No, hang on. That can't be right.
Do you know how I know that that can't be right?
Because dad's financially here.
Well, because your mom's got to go to work because I'm so concerned about money.
So there's no way he's just shoveling gold into the maw of the church.
Well, his way of it was that that was our key to heaven.
Basically, he needed to be able and like this, this particular sect of Christianity.
Sorry, his wife had to go to work so he could give money.
He took her salary and gave it to the church.
That's a good point. That's a good point.
I'm a little kid like, well, you know, he'd never let me be a stay-at-home mom.
He'd rather be being a slave to the church.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
That might have been partially why mom was so sour about that, too.
Well, no, but she grew up in that church, so I guess she agreed, right?
Okay, so there's none in that.
No, there's none in this. So I'm just trying to get back to your origin story, right?
So this thing about, well, we're worried about money and I've got to work because we grew up poor and so on.
But that's all nonsense. The reason you didn't have a stay-at-home mom was so they could give money to the church.
Do I have that wrong? No, that's...
I hadn't thought about that, but that's...
I know that mom did not like how much dad was sending to the church.
But didn't she introduce him to the church?
She did not. He had already found this religion when he met her.
They met through the church, but yeah.
And was it a particular tithe or a fixed amount that they were supposed to give, like a percentage of income?
Or was he giving more than that?
Well, so traditionally, like the Bible says you're supposed to give X amount.
I don't remember what that is. I think it's 10% for some people, but yeah.
Yeah, yeah. But it was 10% of the extra that you make.
So like after you've paid to live and everything, the extra 10% of that.
The way that this religion pushes is 10% of everything.
Oh, like of the gross, even before taxes?
Yeah. Right, right. So basically all of...
Not all of, but a lot of our extra was going to the church then.
A lot of the extra that they were making was then going to the church.
Several thousand dollars, if I'm not mistaken.
So then you...
You couldn't get educated and you couldn't have a mom who had the patience to educate you.
Maybe she didn't have it just innately or maybe if she hadn't had to work full-time as well as homeschool.
So their involvement in this religion kind of robbed you of a mom to some degree and of education to some degree.
And then they put you into the church to be taught things which then a couple of years later they completely abandoned.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Right. That's a really good point.
Well, that's a mess. Yeah, kind of.
I never looked at it like that.
Whoops, sorry. Sorry you didn't get any education, really.
And sorry that we were so stressed.
Sorry that mom had to work.
And sorry that we put you in an educational system to teach you all these things as true, which we then abandoned completely and reversed a couple of years later.
So did they pull you out of the school when you were 15 or what?
No, it only went to 8th grade, and so I was 15 as an 8th grader, so I was 16 as a freshman in high school.
Wow. So I just upgraded from that.
So then you went to a regular school, right?
Yep, then I went to a public school.
Wow. And they did send me to one that was not, like, a law had just passed that we didn't have to have, like, we could have more of a school choice type thing, because Mom and Dad didn't like the school, the district that we were in, so I went to a school that was a little bit further away.
To be in a better district, I don't know if it really was or not.
I mean, public school is just a giant crapshoot anyway.
The really depressing part is, is like on top of paying all that money to the church and they were paying for our tuition at this private school, which was not cheap, my education at the public school was so much better than my education at the private school.
Right. Because like the teacher wouldn't answer.
It was basically, we were homeschooling ourselves without any, like she just sat there.
She wouldn't answer questions. She'd give us the chapter, okay, read that, and then answer these questions.
Like, I went through my time from third to eighth grade, and for a period of time in there, I didn't know the word for it, but I fully believed I was autistic.
Right. Because I couldn't...
These things were just so hard, and we had a girl that she came from a different church school, from a bigger church, same kind of church, and She had gotten a better start.
Somebody actually taught her. She came in when I was in probably sixth grade and she taught me a lot of things.
Math got a little bit easier when she came in.
The teacher just sat there.
Not super useful at all.
Then I hit public school and suddenly I have straight A's in math.
Algebra is actually fun and Like, I'm excelling and doing really, really well.
And then I fell into the whole...
As I got older and more aware of these things, you know, what's the point of this?
Why am I learning geometry that's stupid?
And then I just did the bare minimum.
But, yeah, we put so much money into that church school, and it really wasn't good.
It was not worth the money.
Well, I'm sorry about that.
Yeah, I mean, it's messed up.
Now, did your sister... Rebel against any of this stuff before your family left the church?
No. If you're speaking specifically on the religion thing, we all kind of left together.
Mom kind of quit going, and Dad went for a while.
And I honestly have...
Maybe I should, but I don't really have any hard feelings towards the church.
I remember... That was my big social event of the week.
When I was little, I talked to everyone.
I would talk your ear off.
I just owned the church in my head.
I just owned the whole church. For me, it was more...
I guess I just didn't believe it.
I didn't have any hard feelings towards them.
I just didn't really believe it.
I never really did.
My sister was very...
She went through...
Like, I've never considered myself an atheist.
I don't know what the heck I am, but I don't know that I'm an atheist.
But my sister went through this angry, I'm an atheist faith.
Like, blatantly, I'm...
And she was very angry about it.
She's calmed down since then.
But for a couple of years, she was really pissed.
But that all... We all just kind of left at the same time.
Like, Dad's always said how...
Like... Miraculous, that seems, that we all just sort of, there was no family shifting, nobody got kicked out, nobody, we're not going to talk to you because you're not this anymore, which kind of left, and it was pretty peaceful and pain-free.
Right, okay, okay.
So I think, I mean, I think I might have an idea what's going on with your mom.
So there's a lot of undiscussed differences.
Right? You say that she doesn't really respond to these conversations.
You just get the neutral, mm-hmm.
Oh, that's interesting. Oh, you're making word sounds.
Yes. So, if there are a lot of undiscussed differences, they're going to come out somehow.
Mm-hmm. Like, there's a battle.
So if there are undiscussed differences, and if your way of doing things is better, and as a peaceful parent, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, yes, your way of doing things is better.
So if there has been an improvement, then there needs to be an acknowledgement of the differences.
And if there's no acknowledgement of the differences, and apologies made for things that were...
Not great, right? I mean, look, there's things that, you know, your parents probably didn't have much of an access to things like the philosophy of peaceful parenting and so on.
It was around, for sure. But let's say that they didn't.
But, you know, even by the, you know, parenting standards of the day, you know, a month in house arrest for not finishing the dishes, pretty freaking harsh, right?
And threatening a kid with a belt is not good at all, and not intervening when sibling relationships are going awry, and punishing a child for the actions of another.
I mean, there's bad parenting by any post-Roman standard, right?
I mean, so there's stuff that...
And the apology stuff is important.
I don't want to humiliate parents.
It's because I want people to get along.
And I know that if mistakes are not acknowledged and apologized for, people can't really get along.
There's too much unspoken stuff.
There's too many weird subterranean currents going back and forth between people for them to just be able to get along.
So with regards to your mother, you're parenting in a very different manner.
You're not working. You're going to educate your kid.
And when he has a sibling, if that comes along, then you're going to make sure those siblings get along well.
So you are deviating a significant amount.
And you're also going to teach your kid, or in the process of teaching your kid, how to think for himself, as opposed to your parents who raised you with religious doctrine, which was, these are facts, don't question it.
Because the moment your dad started questioning things, he kind of pulled the eject button, right?
Or hit the eject button.
So there is a huge, you know, a delta, like a change.
Ooh, look at me using math terms and everything.
And either these things are consciously talked about or they come out in weird ways.
Like either you have a conversation about the way in which you're parenting differently and why.
that your dad did that were good, and it's important to acknowledge those, but the deficiencies are where it matters, right, in terms of getting along.
So you parenting triggers two things in your mom.
It triggers her parenting you and how she was parented.
Now, she's either going to be conscious of those differences or they're going to come Now, generally, because you are of the female persuasion, in the male paradigm, these kinds of differences will often come out as aggression.
But in the female paradigm, do you know how they come out?
Passive aggression. Sabotage.
Oh. Sabotage, right?
So when boys have an issue, they'll fight.
When girls have an issue, they sabotage relations.
They sabotage reputations, right?
Mm-hmm. So with your mom, I assume, and based upon what you've said, I think it's a fairly safe assumption that there's a lot of change between the generations.
Mm-hmm. And now she may say, well, there's a big change from my mother to me.
And it's like, well, yeah, and you don't talk to your mother, right?
So if you don't discuss the changes between the generations, then things get really messy and in strange ways.
It comes out in strange ways.
So when you say...
I mean, here's the funny thing, right?
And it's really quite tragic in a way, right?
This actually feels a bit sad, really quite sad, just even mentioning this.
But you have a rule, like no goldfish crackers or whatever, right?
Or the one example you gave was when your son was, you know, he's done snacking for the day, right?
And then you go out and your mom gives him some crackers, right?
And your mom seems to have agreed that he's done for the day, right?
Mm-hmm. So your mom couldn't keep the rule going for five minutes, right?
Yeah. What was it like for you when you didn't do the dishes when you were 12?
Chaotic. See, she broke the rule in five minutes, but you were locked in your room for close on a month.
Yeah. So, this is what's so strange about it, is when she was in charge, the rules were absolute and, you know, kind of Nazi in a way, right?
And then when you're in charge, the rules mean nothing.
This is what I mean when it's like, well, what's the philosophy here?
Because your mom should be like, well, of course I'm not going to give you a cracker, oh grandson of mine, because boy, do I ever know something about having rules that need to be enforced.
Right? You're lucky to get a cracker for the next month, right?
But instead, this is what I mean when I say it's so strange, right?
Because with you, when you were a kid, and 12, by the way, and much older, right?
So when you were a kid, like these rules were like absolute, pretty savage and...
Unbreakable. And yet, when she's the grandma, that's when she's the mom, right?
But when she's the grandmom, she's undermining you.
Yeah. And she's breaking the rules that she's agreed to enforce.
And this would be, literally, this would be like her saying, you cannot leave your room for the rest of the week.
And then five minutes later, she's coming up saying, let's go see a movie.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not kidding.
And this kind of divergence is when people are unconscious of change.
Because if you talk to someone and say, well, he seemed hungry and I grew up hungry.
That's all nonsense.
All you'd have to say is, well, your rules with me lasted a month.
My rules with my son, you sabotage in five minutes.
What on earth are you doing?
Like either it was wrong, you know, like you sent me to my room when I was 12 and I couldn't come down for a snack.
Right? So either that was wrong or this is wrong.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have real absolute rules with me and then break the rules in five minutes with my son.
I mean, imagine how she would have reacted if...
She had told your dad, oh, she came, our daughter, she can't leave her room for a month, and then five minutes later, your dad was taking you out to McDonald's.
Oh my gosh, there would have been, oh wow.
She would have hit the freaking roof, right?
Yeah. Okay, so this is what I mean when I say this is like fragmentary personality where the pieces aren't talking to each other.
So the piece that was like Mussolini with you is now like, I don't know, the Joker with her grandson, with your son.
And if anyone had undermined her authority as a mother, she would have hit the roof.
But now she completely and with open eyes and a guileless face justifies her own undermining of you as a mother.
Why do people end up so fragmented that they have no connection to the things they did in the past and they just exist in these tiny little islands with no communication between them?
Well, it's because they haven't had honest conversations to knit their history together.
Their history is in fragments.
And it's in fragments that don't even know that they're fragments.
She couldn't make any connection because it's too wide a gap, right?
She can't even see the other islands.
So she can't sit there and say, well, you know, gosh, if I had been undermined as a mother, I would be really mad, so I don't want to do that to my daughter, right?
Because that would be a pretty obvious thing.
I mean, that's Parenting 101, right?
Yeah. And yet, what she would have blown up against when she was a mother...
She now is upset for you even mentioning or like confused or baffled for you even mentioning now that you're a mother.
And why do people end up so fragmented?
Because their history is just these broken bits of justification with no principle to tie anything together.
And it's basic empathy, right?
Like the big question for me, which I've been circling around like a hawk on a rabbit here, is how did your sister end up so cruel?
Well, it's really cruel to undermine a mother.
Now, she may disagree with your rules, and that's perfectly fine.
And then she can say to you privately at another time, out of earshot of your son, she can say, listen, I don't really agree with this, that, or the other, and here's why, and let's have the right...
But you don't undermine the parent in front of the child.
And certainly not behind the parents' back, right?
So she is, I mean, this to me is about as cruel as your sister with the painkillers.
Because it's put you in such an impossible situation.
I mean, what do you do with that level of sabotage?
What do you do with that level of subdefusion, undermining, and lying?
I mean, heaven forbid you hadn't caught her, she wouldn't have said, right?
Yeah, I know when I sent him down there without me, he's eating things that I don't want him to be.
And if you hadn't caught with the crackers, right?
Then she wouldn't have said later, oh no, I know I agreed not to give him the crackers, but I did anyway.
She wouldn't have said that. So she's undermining, she's lying, there's a lot of subterfuge, and there's betrayal, right?
And then you wonder why your sister betrayed your confidence with your mother.
Well, your mother's betraying her word to you right now.
I mean, if you were to say, if you were to put to theoretical, mom, do you think it's, you know, do you think it's good?
You would make it a third party story, you know.
You know, my friend, she's married and she was trying to get her kid to bed.
And, you know, she said no more TV. And then her husband laughed and put on her kid's favorite show and said, come sit and watch it with me.
I mean, your mom would be outraged, right?
Oh, that's so terrible.
Right? And no connection to what she's doing.
And that fragmentary personalities, you can't win.
You cannot win with fragmentary personalities because they're not even real personalities.
They're just little bits of isolated justifications with no connection to each other.
And so, you know, my suggestion is you can't enforce rules on a personality that has no rules.
And your mother's personality doesn't have any rules.
Because what she would have been outraged at, she's utterly defending without even noticing that it's wrong.
If someone had undermined her authority as a mother, she would have been outraged.
She undermines your authority as a mother and is like, what?
What? He's hungry. So you can't enforce any rules on her.
And she's saying to you, it's like a cry for help in my opinion.
I'm not saying it's conscious. Well, she's saying, look, I'm really fragmented here.
I'm really broken up here.
I don't have any principles to stitch my personality together.
So I think that the conversation about principles is important.
And if people justify bad things that they've done in the past...
Or won't admit to bad things they've done in the past, how on earth are you expecting them to not justify bad things they're doing in the present?
If they make excuses for themselves in the past, of course they will make excuses for themselves in the present.
If she can't admit fault in the past, how on earth is she going to admit fault in the present?
It's like saying, well, I really, really want to...
I really, really want to play piano, but I never want to have practiced in the past.
And I'm never going to practice now.
It's like, well, that means you won't learn piano, right?
So I think that is the issue in terms of principles, right?
And people are genuinely baffled, some people are genuinely baffled when you say, well, hang on a sec, you would have been outraged with this as you were a mom, but you just did this to me.
And when you try to connect These dots, when you try to bring this archipelago into a continent, when you try and unite these disparate and fragmented aspects of the personality, it's a real challenge, for sure, and the person has to really want to do it.
It's quite a painful thing to do.
But it does give you...
Then you don't act out.
Then you don't just do weird things that put the other person in an impossible situation.
And I would say that when people are this fragmented, what they are...
The actions that they take that evoke feelings in you are their own feelings they can't experience or express.
So the feeling that you had with your mother over the crackers and the snacks, the feeling that you had was anger and helplessness and frustration and a bit of bewilderment.
Is that fair to say? Were there other things I'm missing?
No, that's...
I couldn't believe she was just ignoring me.
I don't know why I took it as a shock.
Well, so those are the feelings that she's experiencing watching you parent that she can't process or express.
So why is she experiencing these feelings of helplessness and frustration and anger and shock?
Why is she experiencing all of this when she watches you parent?
Because it's so different from how she did everything.
Is it different enough that it's an implicit criticism that's not expressed directly?
Oh. I could see that.
Hey, look, we just put two of your eyelids together.
Right. This is why you have to talk about these things, because they're going to come up either consciously or unconsciously.
Right? So she's looking at you, parenting, and she sees the tenderness and the care, and you're staying home, and you're not indoctrinating into odd things.
Beliefs of conclusion rather than reasoning and, you know, you're close with your husband and your husband is peaceful parenting and I assume he's not a workaholic who's never home.
Like, all of these wonderful things are happening in your life.
How does that make her feel?
About her parenting, her life, her history, her choices, her husband.
She has told Dad...
He told me that she and my sister were talking and they were saying what a good job I was doing with my son.
And my dad asked them, so have you told her that?
Like, have you mentioned that? And there's kind of, you know, shook it off or whatever, shook it off.
Like, no, neither one.
I mean, I don't necessarily expect to hear anything from my sister, but no, my mom hasn't really...
I mean, I know I'm a good mom.
I don't need to hear that from her.
Like, I know... I don't know if that sounds like pompous or proud or whatever.
I would hope that you know if you're a good mom and if you've got, you know, if you're not in some areas, you work to fix it like we all do.
But yeah, of course, I mean, that's the most important job we're ever going to have is to be a parent.
So that's the one thing we really want to make sure we get right.
Okay, so what does it mean to your mother that despite how you were raised, and again, I'm not saying she's some monster or anything, but you know, there were some issues.
So if you can do it, could she have done it?
Yep. I'm sorry?
I, yeah.
I mean, I can, I, when she makes those excuses, that's kind of, you know, you could have, you could have chosen this.
It's not that, it's not like this life fell in my lap.
Well, and the reason she couldn't choose it is because she gave herself excuses.
Like, so she didn't, she didn't parent badly and now she has excuses.
She parented badly because she had excuses.
Mm-hmm. The excuses are the cause, not the effect of bad parenting.
And you parent better because you're not giving yourself excuses, right?
Right. I mean, I have good reason.
You know, both my parents ended up in mental institutions and there was violence and brutality.
I would have all the excuses in the world to be a bad parent or to choose not to be a parent at all, I suppose, right?
Or to be a bad husband or I could be a drug addict or a criminal, whatever.
And people would look and say, well, yeah, look where he came from.
That's understandable, right? And it's like, ew.
Yeah, I don't know.
Because that's how the past wins is when it corners you into giving excuses, which are then just promises of repetition.
The virus of the past infects you.
And then it just replicates.
That's how it replicates.
If it can get you to make excuses, it can replicate in comfort.
And that's how the future becomes the past.
It's through this portal called excuses, which is why I hate them so much.
I really do. I have no tolerance for excuses.
Sympathy, I have. Understanding, I have.
Excuses, no.
Because excuses are how evil replicates.
And again, I'm not trying to call your mom evil here.
I'm just talking about some of the negative aspects of the behavior, right?
So she looks at you and she knows you in a sense better than you know yourself because she saw you from the beginning in things you can't even remember.
She saw you as a baby and you didn't, right?
So she looks at you and the whole arc of your life and she sees her life unlived.
She sees the life she could have had if she hadn't made excuses.
And it's too late to have that life.
It's way too late to have that life.
And because she can't be a parent again.
Now, she could be a grandparent, and I get all of that, but she's kind of faffing that up, too, in some ways.
I know she's doing a lot of good and being very helpful, so I'm not trying to dismiss all of that, but this is causing some significant problems, right?
So she's looking at you.
This is the life she could have had if she hadn't made excuses.
And then, of course, her first instinct is to make excuses, right?
And so all of the helplessness and frustration and the anger and the bewilderment and all of that, that she looks at you, it's unconscious, right?
Her deeper self, her true self is calling out and saying, we could have had that, we could have had that, but we just made excuses and we messed it up year after year after year.
And then she can't express that.
So, because she can't be a good mother like you, she's going to unconsciously try to make you a less good mother.
By distracting you with this level of frustration, by this level of confusion, this level of anger, this level like it's disconnecting from your son to be mad at your mom.
So, she can't drag herself up to your level because it's way deep in the past.
So, again, I'm not saying this is conscious, but unconsciously, the most common thing is to try and drag you down a little, or maybe more than a little.
And the concern, of course, is that the sabotage may continue.
It may escalate, right?
Because she is...
This is a strong way to put it, so please take this with a grain of salt, but with regards to the sugar, she's drugging your child to like her, to prefer her.
And sugar is that powerful a stimulant for kids.
And if somebody was drugging your child to prefer that person to you...
Right? Because this is setting up another problem, right?
She gives him sugar. He's going to want sugar from you.
You say no. Who does he gravitate to?
Grandma. Right. He prefers grandma.
He likes grandma. And then he is going to like you less...
Because you won't give him sugar.
Wow. I did not see that.
This is the level of sabotage that I wanted to take the call for and why I said it's so fascinating at the beginning and what I'm most concerned about is that she may be in the process of undermining your son's relationship with you through drugs.
The drug of sugar, the drug of indulgence, right?
Mm-hmm. Wow.
And I'm not giving her a conscious motive for this.
I don't know. I don't know her well enough.
But this is what happens when you don't have a discussion about difference in parenting.
You don't have a clear discussion about it and have her process these changes is that she's going to be instinctually drawn to sabotage.
Wow. I was hoping the fix would be easier.
No, the fix is easy.
You just have to have really, really, really honest conversations about your childhood and how you're doing things differently and why.
And she's going to have to admit fault and apologize.
The fix is easy.
Whether she'll do it or not is another matter.
I know you can handle it. Whether she can do it or not is another matter.
Yeah. I see her, you know, just shutting down and not, you know, just...
Sitting there. Yeah, no, and listen, you know this as well as I do, that the typical situation is if the dad is mad at the mom, if the dad is mad at his wife, like the husband is mad at his wife, then he will indulge the children.
So that they prefer him and have problems with her.
Mm-hmm. And it's not an accident.
See, she was super strict with you when you were a kid, right?
About certain things, yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean, the punishments were pretty hysterical, right?
They were nuts. Like, you've got to do the dishes, you've got to watch your sister.
So she was super strict with you.
This is why I was asking, like, what the hell's the philosophy?
Because if she's super strict with you, but then super indulgent with her grandson, That means that there was never any principle.
Never any principle.
Right? I mean, let me sort of give you an example, right?
When I was a kid, nobody knew anything about sunscreen, really, so, you know, whatever, right?
But now we kind of understand that your kids are out in the day, in the sun, put some sunscreen on, right?
Mm-hmm. Now, if she is super strict with sunscreen with you, right, when you were a kid, like you couldn't go out without SPF 9 million or a suit of armor or something like that, right?
And then every time you give your son to your mom, he comes back with a horrible sunburn.
What would that mean about her focus on sunscreen on you as a kid?
It had no principle to it.
Yeah, it had no principle to it.
So this is how messed up things are.
If your mom was super strict with your son, as she was with you, you'd be like, okay, well, I don't agree with it.
We'll need to negotiate it, but at least she's got some principles.
But if she's super strict with you when you were a kid and super indulgent with your son, it's like, well, what the hell was all that?
It had nothing to do with principle.
It was all about control.
Not to do with principle, not to do with making any good parenting decisions, not with doing anything that was best for you, just about control.
Like I've said this story about this girl that I dated in my 20s.
I lived with her for a bit and she was constantly nagging me to keep the place clean and tidy and this and that and clean up and there's some grit on the counter and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, so obviously that didn't last forever and I moved out and then I had to go back to get some paperwork a year or so later.
The place was a complete pigsty. Complete pigsty.
Wow. So it was like, okay, so this tidiness didn't have anything to do with any principle of tidiness.
It was just about bullying and control.
So this is the stuff that you've got to figure out with your mom and maybe work out with your mom.
It's like, okay, how was it that you were so...
And this is, you know, grandparents say, well, you know, we get to be grandparents.
We get to indulge now.
It's like, no, no, no, no. If indulgence is bad for children, you don't get to indulge my kid.
If indulging is good for children, then you were bad for punishing me so harshly when I was a kid.
You were a bad parent.
Right? This is the question about indulgence, right?
So if caving and giving way and giving kids what they want, if that's good, then she's a good grandmother but was a terrible mother.
And she needs to acknowledge that gap and deal with it, apologize for it.
If, on the other hand, indulging kids is bad, then she has at least some defense, although it was way too strict with you when she was your mom.
She has some defense, but then she's got no defense now.
Because then it means she was somewhat in the vicinity of a decent mom, but then she's a terrible grandmother.
Right? Indulgence and undermining authority If that's bad, indulging children and undermining legitimate parental authority, like legitimate parental authority, yes, there's a time when kids got to stop eating, right? They can be a little bit like goldfish, right?
And you're perfectly within your rights to say, let's minimize or keep sugar, right?
We're going to have tons of time and in the future to enjoy it, but like right now, it's, you know, let's not get them addicted to sugar at such an early age.
That's perfectly legitimate parental authority.
So if undermining legitimate parental authority was bad for her when she was a mom, then it's bad for you when you're a mom.
So the reason this is important, obviously there's many reasons, but I think the most hidden one is this releases you from any idea that your mother was very strict.
Because your mother is not at all strict, and you can see that, which is why it's so jaw-dropping with your son.
She's not at all strict.
And she's not at all strict in a guilty way.
She's like brazen up front.
Yeah, he's hungry. Right?
Don't feed him sugar. Oh, he can have sugar.
Right? So she was never strict, which casts your whole childhood in a completely different light, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah. It was never about strictness.
It was never about rules. It was just about control.
And maybe some bullying, but just a feeling of exercising power and control of us.
I know people invent rules because they don't want to say, well, I'm just a jerk who likes bossing kids around.
They have to invent these rules.
But the rules meant nothing.
And we know that because the rules mean nothing now.
Sensible, decent, logical rules that you have mean nothing to your mother.
You just violate them, no problem, it's fine, it's relaxed, you know, blah, blah, blah, right?
Which means that the rules...
And she didn't say, listen, when I was younger, rules were super important to me.
I've realized that was wrong. I'm so sorry about that.
But, you know, here's my new approach.
She hasn't said any of that.
So there's an island of tyranny called rules, but it's just tyranny, just bullying, just bossiness, just control.
And then there's this island of indulgence.
And she's in charge of both islands.
In one island, the children are kind of terrorized and locked in their rooms.
In the other island, kids get candy and snacks night and day.
You know, it's like one is a gulag and one is like Captain Neverland's Paradise of Candyhead.
And these are both great for kids.
It's a little schizo, if you don't mind me saying, right?
Oh, no, yeah. Yeah, mm-hmm.
And this comes from unacknowledged criticisms of her parents.
And I'm not saying this is anything you're doing.
You've got to be a good parent. You know, if being a good parent upsets your mom, well, too bad, mom, you should have been a better parent.
Yeah. You know, if me losing weight annoys people who are overweight, like, I'm sorry, but, you know, you're welcome to lose weight, right?
And it goes a little bit different now because she can't be a mom again, right?
Yeah. But this implicit criticism thing is really important.
And women often...
It's like opposing poles on a magnet.
It's just trying to push them together. Trying to get this confrontation is very difficult.
Men can be a little bit more...
You sit down and just thrash it out.
If you raise your voice, you raise your voice.
Whatever, right? But you deal with it.
And there's pluses and minuses.
I'm not sort of saying one is better than the other.
But for women, it generally comes across in this...
Sabotage and undermining and this laughing kind of rule-breaking while casting you.
It's funny because this woman who is infinitely more strict than you is laughing and calling you uptight because you want to enforce any rules at all, right?
That's a good point.
I mean, that's completely lunatic, right?
And your mom's not a lunatic.
It just means that she's fragmented and she doesn't have principles.
Now, the problem is, I'll tell you this, so the problem is you go back If you say, what's your relationship to rules, right?
It's like, oh, well, I'm all about the indulgent.
It's like, okay, well... So you think I should be an indulgent mother?
You think I should give him sugar and I should give him snacks and I should just indulge him, right?
Yes. Okay. Well, then you were a bad mother because you didn't indulge me, right?
Oh, well, that was different. It's like, no, no, no.
That was different is not an excuse.
It's not a reason, right? The magical difference is not at all an argument and it should hold no weight with you whatsoever.
Like, no, if indulgence is good for kids, it's fine, and you don't want to be too uptight and too rules-based.
If indulgence is fine for kids, then you were bad to punish me that harshly.
You were wrong. You were harming me.
Because indulgence is good.
Now, if indulgence is not good, then, okay, you have some excuse for what you did too much even still, but then you're absolutely doing the wrong thing with my son.
And trying to knit these fragments together.
I mean, it can be kind of exhausting, and your mom has to participate because you can't do it for her.
And whether she will or won't, it's obviously up to her.
I hope she will, and she's certainly welcome.
If she listens, she's welcome to call in.
And I'd love to talk to her about all of this stuff, too.
But, you know, my particular concern is the parenting in the here and now, not the parenting of 20 years ago, right?
Yeah. Because you can't have somebody undermining your legitimate authority.
You can't have it. It's really bad for your son.
Because he won't know which way is up.
And it will teach him to be hedonistic.
In other words, to respond to pleasure rather than principle.
And to be bribed in a way, right?
Because, I mean, isn't that what she's doing?
Is bribing him with snacks and sugar?
That's true. So you don't want him to be for sale that way.
Yeah. Well, the maddening, crazy part is if I asked her...
Is it healthier that he doesn't have sugar?
She would say, oh yeah.
She would agree with that.
Right. But then she would reframe it in that she wants...
She wants to close the gap between your parenting unconsciously because the gap between your parenting styles is very painful to her and she doesn't know how to express it or acknowledge it or vocalize it or discuss it or find some way to make amends or whatever, right? So there's this gap.
There's this gap between your quality parent and her less quality parenting.
And she can't fix that gap by becoming a better parent because that's all in the rear view.
So the only way she can close that gap is by undermining your parenting.
Gotcha. That's sad.
Well, I mean, this is the price you pay for, you know, doing things.
And it's not the price you pay for doing things that are wrong, because we all do that.
It's the price you pay for not acknowledging them and making excuses and making it the other person's fault and calling them crazy or whatever is going on, right?
Yeah. So if I try to talk with her and she just shuts down and doesn't acknowledge, I don't know what would be the appropriate response.
Like in that moment, what I want to do is if she handles a situation like that, be like, okay, well, we're going to go home and we'll see you later.
Well, I mean, you can't, I mean, rules are rules, right?
If you have a rule called no sugar for my son without my permission, right?
I'm in charge of his sugar, right?
If you have that as a rule, well, what happens if somebody breaks that rule?
I'm not sure. Sure you are.
You're not around them.
Well, no, I mean, like, you can't, I can't, if I can't trust you to spend time with my son without giving him sugar, and it's not just about the sugar, right?
Oh, it's just a little piece of candy.
It's like, no, no, no, it's a whole undermining thing.
You're undermining me as a mother.
You're undermining me as a mother.
Because my son knows the rules, right?
No sugar. You give him sugar, and you're in my life.
I've given him two rules.
I've said, no sugar, but you also have to listen to and obey the person who says his sugar.
I won't do that to my son. That's really confusing and it's really bad for him.
Because then he doesn't know which way is up and what's the right behavior.
We have to be on the same page. No sugar is no sugar.
If you give sugar to my son, you can't see him.
Because I won't do that to him.
I won't give him contradictory rules.
That's an impossible situation for him.
And I won't teach him to disrespect the rules by being bribed with sugar for breaking the rules.
And I won't be undermined As a parent.
It's not an option. I have to do what is best for my son.
And people bribing him, you understand, sugar for kids, you've got to say this to your mom.
You don't have to, but it's true.
Sugar is a drug for children.
You're drugging him. Oh, that's too far.
No, no, no. You look at the studies, man.
You look at how children respond to sugar.
It is a powerful drug.
I mean, it's a powerful drug for...
Have you seen Walmart lately?
It's a powerful drug for adults.
Have you seen what's in three quarters of the...
Food that's in American grocery store shelves.
I mean, my God, it's one of the most addictive and powerful drugs in existence.
People die rather than quit sugar.
People die rather than control sugar.
People would rather get diabetes.
And people would rather lose limbs and their eyesight than control their sugar.
Now, look, I'm fine.
I have a little sugar. It's fine, right?
But it's a powerful drug.
It's a very powerful drug.
I mean, we developed sweet tooth so that we didn't die from scurvy because we'd pursue fruit and eat fruit and we like things that are bright and sweet.
Bright colored and sweet, which is why all the candy is bright colored and sweet.
So, you know, this sort of demon powder has completely hijacked our entire...
Neurological system to feed this addiction that kills, I don't know, more people than smoking, I think, every year.
So I don't want to demonize sugar because, again, I mean, I'll have, you know, I had a couple of bites of candy when my daughter had some.
I like it, but I think it's a powerful drug.
And it's like, no, no, no, you don't get to do that to my son, right?
And you don't, like, if you say, I'm going to contradict your rules and give something that acts as a powerful drug to your son, Then you can tell me that up front and I can say you can't do that or you can't be with him if you're going to do that.
And if you're going to say to me I won't give him sugar and then you give him sugar behind my back then you're lying to me and betraying me and undermining my parenting and I won't have it.
Listen, mom, you sent me to my freaking bedroom for a month for not doing the dishes.
Don't think I won't put those standards on you for something infinitely more serious than that.
I mean, what's she going to say? Well, you shouldn't have...
You can't punish me like that.
It's like, what are you talking about? This is exactly what you did to me, and I was only 12.
You're in your 50s, for God's sakes.
You should know better by now.
Yes. No, I mean, like, I'm sorry, this...
You know what's best for you, son.
You can't have somebody in there undermining your parenting and bribing him with sugar and food and sneaking it to him and laughing about it.
From your son's perspective, that's really unfair.
And it's going to harm his relationship with you.
Because if you say, oh, here's this person, she can come into your life, and she can give you sugar, and she can stay in your life, and maybe I'll grumble at her from time to time, but then he's going to be like, well, sugar can't be that bad if grandma gives it to me.
And mom lets him, right?
Mom lets her, and mom still has her around, so sugar can't be that bad.
So if sugar's not that bad, why won't mom give it to me?
She must, I don't know, she just must want me to be unhappy or not be happy.
It's really confusing for kids with that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I hadn't...
I mean, I knew the undermining me was not good.
I had focused so much on teaching him how to be healthy and healthy food things, and I hadn't even thought about how confusing that was for him.
Oh, it's really confusing.
And he will lose respect for you.
The kids need to see their parents enforcing their rules, without exception.
Because if your mother gets away with stuff that he doesn't, like if he sneaked candy, you would tell him not to, right?
And you would make that pretty strong.
I mean, not punish him for his room or anything, right?
But you wouldn't let him sneak candy, right?
And so if your mom sneaks him candy and she's still around and he doesn't see any negative consequences or anything like that, then he'll be like, oh, okay, so it's not about virtue, it's just about power.
So mom has power over me, so I don't...
It's bad for me to get my own candy.
But mom doesn't have power over grandma, so it's fine for grandma to do it.
So you will undermine his appreciation of virtue by not applying it consistently.
That's a good point. Oh, so if you're big and strong, you can do whatever you want.
But if you're small and weak like me, well, mom will give me rules, but she won't give her mom rules.
Now, if you won't give your mom rules, and you won't enforce those rules, right?
What's going to happen when he gets bigger and looks at you?
Yes. He's going to be like, well, I don't have to enforce any rules with mom.
I don't have to obey any of mom's rules.
Because she didn't make her own mom obey rules, and she's my mom.
So that's what you do. You don't have to make your mom obey any rules.
They can do whatever they want. They can get away with anything, and you don't have to enforce any rules.
So... I don't have to enforce any rules on my mom.
She can't enforce any rules on me.
So yeah, it's a very powerful and deep thing that is occurring.
And that's why I wanted to spend the time on the call because it's really, really important.
I really appreciate it because I thought I knew what you were going to say and I wasn't totally wrong, but you've hit stuff that I... I did not see it all.
Well, and you've seen this.
Sorry to be annoying. You've seen this.
You've seen this very clearly between you and your sister, and you told me that about an hour and a half ago, if you remember.
Right? You had all these rules enforced on you, and what happened with your sister?
Yeah. They didn't enforce the rules, right?
Yep. And how did your sister turn out with that level of indulgence and contradiction?
Very sad. It's pretty bad, right?
So no rules were enforced on her, and that means she can't enforce any rules on herself, which means she can do whatever she wants.
She can indulge in whatever she wants.
If she's mad, she'll just yell at people.
If she doesn't feel like going to get your painkillers, she just won't go and get your painkillers, right?
She just blurps out and acts out, and there's no restraint, and there's no rules for herself.
And that's the result of indulgence, right?
So you can say to your mom, like, how did indulging my sister work out?
And now you want to do it to my son.
I don't think so, lady.
I don't think so. Yeah, that's a good point.
Well, that's all more connected than I thought it was.
Oh, it always is. It always is.
And it's easier for me to see, of course, as I say, from the outside, right?
Because it's not my family.
I can't see smack in my family, but it's relatively easy to see.
If I was telling you about my family, you'd be pointing out obvious things I'd missed.
But yeah, the rules are the rules, man.
And if your rules are reasonable, people get on board or get off board.
The price of contact with my daughter is peaceful parenting and a respecting of parental authority.
And if somebody doesn't respect a rule that I have, they're perfectly willing, I want them to tell me if I'm being unreasonable, if I'm missing something, if I'm being unjust or unfair, absolutely, but no, no, no, you can't just sneak around behind my back and undermine the reasonable rules that we have.
No, that's not a thing.
God, no. How is she going to internalize rules if they're contradictory?
I mean, it's that 1984 scene.
Two and two is whatever the party wants it to be.
You can't ever, right? It's yes, it's no.
Sugar is bad. Sugar is good.
You can't have snacks.
Oh, you should have snacks. How is the kid supposed to make...
You can't internalize rules if they're contradictory.
Any more than you can get...
I don't need to...
I'm trying to think of some analogy, but nothing makes sense, because it's so irrational.
If you tell a kid to go north and south at the same time, they just get paralyzed.
And then you go to your room for a month if you don't do it.
Right, right. Well, yeah, that's the thing, too, right?
I mean, so who is he supposed to listen to?
Who's right? Who's he going to obey?
Well, he's going to be drawn to power, right?
All kids are drawn to power, all children, and particularly boys, I'm afraid.
We're very much drawn to power slightly like steam engines and Tyrannosaurus Rexes and big dinosaurs, and, you know, we just love those.
Big giant thinks of the big, strong, and powerful.
Okay, so your son, I guarantee you, is going through a very complicated and detailed analysis of the power structure in his environment.
And who's coming out on top?
Who has the most power? Your mother has the most power, right?
He's going to be drawn to her.
She's got sugar and snacks and power.
Boy, there's nothing bigger for boys than sugar, snacks, and power, right?
So he's going to be drawn to her.
Now, if he's drawn to her, and she indulges him, and you are the weak one because you can't enforce your own rules against her, then he is going to be drawn to her at your expense.
At your expense.
Boys love a winner. We don't have much respect for the loser.
And if you're in a battle with your mom, and...
She wins and you lose.
His allegiance to her, his loyalty to her will go up.
His respect for you will go down.
And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.
You have to nip this in the bud.
In my humble opinion, I can't tell you what to do, but if I were in your shoes, this could never happen again.
Like, never. I agree.
I told myself that.
After the other night, I was very upset.
And I hugely respect that.
So the reason why it's tough to do is you think it's about you.
Like, I want to listen to me.
But when you think it's like, no, it's out of my hands.
I have to do what's best for my son.
Yeah. If you were out at the beach and your mother was like, oh, you know, it's only 40 degrees in Florida here and he doesn't need any sunscreen, it wouldn't be a battle of wills, would it?
I mean, it wouldn't be a fight to be like, no, I'm putting on sunscreen.
It's not a fight, right? Because that's what's best for him.
It's the same thing. You think this is a fight between you and your mom.
It's not. This is just you standing up for what's best for your son.
It's not a fight between you and your mom.
It's just about what's best for your son.
It's like, no, I can't.
No, you can't do that.
If she wouldn't put sunscreen on him and he came home with a sunburn, it wouldn't be a big fight.
It'd be just like, well, no, you can't take him if you're not going to put sunscreen on him because I don't want him to get skin cancer when he's 40.
So, no, you can't. If he comes home every day with a bad sunburn whenever he's with you, No.
It's not a big fight. Like, oh, you've got to put this in.
No, I hope I'm making some kind of sense here, but it's a whole lot easier than that.
Because you think you have to get your mom to do something, and you don't.
You think you have to get your mom to stop giving him sugar, or stop doing this, or stop giving him snacks.
It's like you don't have to do any of that.
It's just that she can't be with him if she does that.
Oh, it's just a little snack.
It's like, hey man, it was just some dishes you sent me to my room for a month.
Are you kidding me? You don't have any credibility saying it's just this or it's just that because my punishments were outlandish.
Disproportionate in the extreme.
I mean, Stalin came back from the dead and said, oh, that's too harsh.
Oh my gosh. So, no, it's just, nah, that's not a thing.
Like, it's not a thing. I have these rules.
You're on board or you're not.
Yep. And, I mean, it definitely is best for your son.
And then you have to apologize to your son.
I think. And say, listen, you know, again, I'm not sure where his verbal skills are, but, you know, wherever it's appropriate, it's like, I'm sorry, I let someone around who was giving you sugar and snacks, and that was wrong with me.
It was a mistake. I apologize.
It's confusing. Is sugar good?
Is sugar bad? Well, grandma gives me sugar, mom won't give me sugar, grandma gives me snacks, mom will give me snacks.
I'm sorry, that's really confusing.
It's my bad. Yep.
But then he'll respect you, respect the rules, then he can internalize the rules, and all those wonderful things can go forward, if that makes sense.
Oh, yeah. I definitely think apologizing is important.
It's going to be a little interesting.
We just learned what a panda was today.
But still, I think it's important, even for me, to do that for her.
Well, you could dress up as one and say, I've come to give you a panda-pology.
There we go. You're done.
You're set. There's your weekend.
Yeah, yeah. Does that give you a fairly, at least, I think, a reasonable philosophical approach?
It does, yeah.
I'm definitely not looking forward to it, but...
No, I get that, for sure.
But it's a lot easier than the alternative, which is, I mean, in a sense, losing the loyalty and respect of your son.
Yeah. Yep.
And making the peaceful parenting a lot harder.
Yeah. Right.
Well, yeah. I mean, nobody said saving the world was going to be a piece of cake.
Oh, piece of cake. Now I'm hungry again.
All right. Well, will you keep me posted about how things are going?
I can, yes. And again, if your mom wants to call on, I'm certainly happy to talk.
If she wants to tell me how I got everything wrong, I'm certainly happy to hear that too.
And yeah, I hope you'll keep me posted and all my very best to you.
And listen, massive congratulations on what you're doing with your family and thank you again.
I don't want to ignore the incredibly kind words that you gave me at the beginning of the conversation.
I really do appreciate those and it makes it all worthwhile.
Thank you. My life would look so much different right now if I had never...
Thank you. You're welcome.
Keep me posted. Thanks for the convo.
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