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E71: Damaged Emotions Dominate · The Junto Podcast

0:10
Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
0:14
applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for joining us.
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Hello, America. Thanks for sticking with me. I appreciate each and every one
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of you good people. All right.
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So this episode is not easy breezy at all.
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But I've been talking about contradictions, but then I got an episode on resentment.
0:48
Well, I'm going to continue on with the resentment theme here,
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and I'm going to talk about something that's deeper and even more harsh than
0:57
what I've spoken of in the past.
1:00
And that's resentment in the immediate family unit, right? The husband and wife or children.
1:09
It can be explosive, yeah, but it's a slow, corrosive sort of resentment.
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And it builds. Yeah, it builds. That's why I say it's not necessarily explosive
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at first, But it erodes our connection.
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It erodes the way we interact, our maturity level, our emotional safety.
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I want to say that again in this episode a couple times probably to everyone
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involved. It erodes all those things.
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And that acid leaks in the gaps between what,
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our expectations and our reality That was the way we thought it was going to
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be The way we think it ought to be Expectations And then there's the way it is The reality.
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Whatever idealistic fantasies of a carefree, you know, young adulthood or youth,
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whatever freedom we thought we were going to have to chase whatever adventure,
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however we thought relationships were supposed to develop, form and develop,
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it don't always play out like that in real life.
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And then throw in early parenthood.
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And now you have other little lives to tend to.
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What follows is a little explosion of, well, unmet needs, unmet wants,
2:51
underdeveloped emotional needs, poor emotional regulation.
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And then sort of a cycle of, well, blame that you project onto the children, and they absorb it all.
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Even though they can't articulate it, they don't know what, but they absorb
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them. The blame and the emotional jabs. Hmm.
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So that early, well, let's just talk about the mother-child dynamic here for a minute.
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Women who give birth very young, and I say very young, you know,
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maybe late teens, even early 20s, but it was unplanned, right?
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Whether they were unmarried or they were in a, maybe a short-lived marriage,
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that was probably doomed to fail based on.
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Lack of maturity. And then there's the unplanned pregnancy.
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Well, motherhood at that point can probably feel a little bit less like bringing
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in a beautiful life into the world and more like somebody stole your childhood
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or your young adulthood.
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They stole your time and your ability to find yourself.
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All your friends are out there going to the clubs,
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perusing tinder hooking up,
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dating blazing through their 20s trying drugs sleeping with exotic dudes,
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maybe traveling maybe traveling the world just living the life so it seems to you,
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meanwhile you're changing diapers,
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and getting zero sleep and,
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trying to figure out how you're going to afford the groceries what programs
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can i be on it's not glamorous it's not sexy,
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And really, I mean, even the most loving mother, it's not fun changing a shitty diaper.
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And those children or that child, whatever, becomes, well, a highly visible,
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daily reminder of what you feel like was taken from you.
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Carefree lifestyle you thought it was going to be, whatever that self-discovery
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you thought you were going to have time for.
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Because that's all traded out now for constant responsibility.
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And it's tough. It's very tough.
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Now, you may not build a resentment out of pure malice, And it probably isn't out of pure malice.
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I learned a new word doing this research, and it's called matrescence.
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But it's a profound, seemingly forced identity reorganization,
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from going from carefree young girl to responsibility burdened mother.
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And look, within that, there exists real grief. It's real.
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I'm not taking away, I'm not invalidating your real feelings.
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But resentment is not the way. Resentment is corrosive and it's ugly.
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And unchecked, it will, well, we'll see.
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And the changes that happen during pregnancy in your brain are similar to the,
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they parallel the sort of development of an adolescent.
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And, well, the younger the mother having the baby, the less time that your brain
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and your emotions had to fully develop. So,
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it gets cut off right there. That development kind of gets cut off. or at least paused.
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And so the young mother lacks the emotional maturity or the emotional infrastructure,
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and possibly even the support, the family support maybe even,
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or possibly lacks anything remotely considering any childcare knowledge and experience.
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That's where you're at.
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Your growth is now paused so that you can nurture a young life. And this,
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creates an isolation, and that isolation kind of intensifies your sense of your burden.
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And then that burden intensifies that resentment.
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And because of that emotional and mental lack of maturity, You don't have the
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capacity to separate your own unfinished development from your child's now need for it.
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Well, initially, just physical development, just keeping them alive.
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But even from the brand new infant, they feel the energy.
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And if it's negative, they feel it. And it develops like that.
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Is it malice? No, not necessarily, but it might grow into that.
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The resentment can manifest itself. Well, it manifests itself in many ways.
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It can manifest as physical abuse, and that is no bueno.
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There in no way is that acceptable. And I know this is hard to believe,
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but almost worse yet, emotional abuse, almost worse.
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Born of just you being harsh or just neglecting or withholding affection.
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You become irritable that your child has needs because they're imposing on your,
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scrolling or your texting.
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So you're irritated that your child has needs.
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Never mind developing them just satisfying a base need mom I'm hungry.
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And then you're either intentionally or unintentionally withholding of your,
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well, affection and warmth.
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Because you're irritated with them and because you have a little resentment,
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now you don't openly love them without cause, without prompt.
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And then you become critical because now they start doing little things to get
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your attention. Now they become even more annoying because they need your attention.
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They want your attention. They want your love and your emotional warmth that you lack.
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And now you're even more asked up because now they're doing little things to
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get your attention. And if you have multiple kids, now you got multiple kids
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vying for your attention.
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And you're overwhelmed because it's chaotic.
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And then any attention you do give is obligatory. It's cold.
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Mom, I'm hungry. What's for dinner? There's cold pizza in the fridge.
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So mom's more poor decisions have now created a cycle,
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of poor decisions and that emotional coldness leads itself to poor relationships,
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because that's what the children have,
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and then there the potential for substance abuse is always there i'm not going
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to belabor that stuff too much right now.
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Financial chaos, the inability to manage money.
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And then all that frustration comes out as resentment toward the children.
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You have a mentality that you look at your kids and you think to yourself internally,
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if it weren't for you, I would be able to X, Y, Z.
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Then the It's the norm at your house. The standard is affection is transactional. It's conditional.
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If a kid's being quiet, they're over in the corner on their little device,
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then they get a little scruff on the head.
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If they need something, then they're getting the anger or the coldness.
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So that's conditioning them. Be quiet. Stay out of my way.
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Love becomes a tool.
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Or it's like currency. And it's only given under certain conditions based on
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the child's behavior or their ability to,
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meet their own needs, to do their own laundry at a ridiculously young age.
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And then what does modern research tell us? Well, it tells us that that creates
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anxiety, creates low, low self-esteem,
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creates unregulated emotional capability.
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And then ultimately it creates resentment in the child. The child begins to
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resent you once they start getting older and understanding.
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I view it as selfishness.
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And selfishness, maybe initially it didn't, it came from, it was just a survival
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mechanism for you in this situation.
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And it was just, you're a manifestation of your own unmet needs and your lack
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of freedom and your lack of validation.
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How many people give you kudos for doing good? Not many, right?
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For doing the baseline, you don't get kudos. You get kudos for going above and beyond.
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And so since you don't ever get any of those kudos, you get zero validation.
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And inside, you feel empty.
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And you never develop the capacity to deal with that. And what it leads to is a lack of empathy.
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Because you don't get any validation. You don't think anybody else needs it.
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You don't have ability to look inside other people to include your children,
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to see how is this affecting them.
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Could I do something different to achieve the same goals, but where it has a
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more positive impact on them? You don't have the capacity to do that. You lack empathy.
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And you have this sort of sour ambivalence toward motherhood.
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Children are a burden. And one author out there made the statement that mothers
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are supposed to hate their children at times.
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I wholly disagree with that. And there's two things here. One,
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hate is a big word, a very big word.
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It's not, hey, you're supposed to be annoyed with your children once in a while,
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or you're supposed to be aggravated with your children once in a while.
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No, no, no. You're supposed to hate your children at times.
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And what bizarro world. How? Why?
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Because hate is, well, I said resentment was corrosive. Hate, oh my God.
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And if that hate, well, it does, definitely hardens into, well, emotional rejection.
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Like now you're not even aggravated with them. You completely reject their need
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for any emotional comfort whatsoever.
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And then you have zero mothering skills. So everything you say is said in anger,
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or emotional disconnection.
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And the children are existing in a state of permanent invalidation.
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Not only do they not get any validation, but now with that angst and that resentment
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and that hate, they're invalidated. They feel less than.
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And they don't even know why. They have no idea why. they just feel it.
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The cycle continues. So mom's lack of maturity and maturity and emotional development,
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drives further poor choices.
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The children absorb those poor choices. They don't know what you're saying or
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how or why or context, but what they do here is toned and they do feel the energy.
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And then as those children grow and they struggle with their own relationship
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problems and emptiness.
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What's the logical step there?
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I got kids. If I weren't already married, I need to be married because I need help.
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Resentment between spouses. Oh, my God.
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Resentment between spouses creates a negative storm.
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A corrosive storm that just eats away at all the goodness.
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And if it can't be checked, it has to be deleted.
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And it follows the same path of interrupted development.
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So let's set it up. Two people, two good-looking young people meet,
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I don't know, out at a bar or online on a dating app. And they expect,
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yeah, that person's pretty good looking. Might be a little tasty.
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Let's give it a go.
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For whatever reason, they don't do the long-term math and they do what they do.
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And then pregnancy arrives in the way that pregnancies do.
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There's a very predictable outcome putting your penis inside a vagina it's a
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very predictable outcome.
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The pregnancy comes. And God bless you. You chose life over death.
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You chose to bring the baby into the world and good on you for that.
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It was the morally correct thing to do. But then the subsequent marriage,
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the partnership, the contract before God and the state of whoever,
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you go into this partnership with zero emotional maturity neither one of you
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have zero any emotional maturity whatsoever you don't even know that you have
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the same value system because you met.
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And that's it. So you never even discussed anything of any substance.
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And any skill necessary for a long-term partnership, you don't have it because you didn't develop.
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You're still in development phase yourself.
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But the pregnancy put a pause on that.
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So the baby comes along and now you guys are facing parenting challenges.
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And massive incompatibilities start to arise to the surface.
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Maybe even alcoholism or drug use rises to the surface.
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Little secret sexual dalliances linger out there amidst the unhappiness.
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Financial irresponsibility is the norm, not the exception.
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You have no idea how to manage what little money even comes in,
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and you guys deal with conflict in polar opposite ways neither one of you,
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have the capacity to deal with conflict in a healthy way neither one of you
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have the same capacity for intimacy true intimacy,
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anybody can have sex that's not intimacy,
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that's just physical bits,
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anybody can do it everybody does it it's out there it's crazy,
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neither one of you have a capacity for intimacy because you're guarded you're always guarded and.
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Take full responsibility for your own actions. You don't have the capacity.
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You don't know how to be accountable to someone else.
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You're not even accountable to yourself. You don't know how to be accountable to someone else.
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Each of you justify your own fucked up behaviors in your own way.
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Well, she did this so I can do that. He did this so I can do it. It's scorekeeping.
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It's relational score keeping i'm keeping tabs that way i know what i can get
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away with or what i can bring up when i get caught doing xyz,
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and in every opportunity you get even if you're not fighting about a thing you
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ample you you focus in on each other's flaws you magnify each other's flaws to chip away at their,
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security, their emotional security, as opposed to building each other up.
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So you both struggle to find higher ground, moral higher ground.
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Well, I found this out about him, but then tables turn. It's a constant turning
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of the tables, both of you trying to one-up each other instead of build up each other.
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Any honesty that may exist in a relationship is piecemeal it's little half truths,
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that way you can keep the door open for your little fucked up thing you're doing,
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well my friend though where are we're friends,
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so you keep the door open with your half truths,
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keeping the door the door open that's a lack of accountability to your spouse and to yourself.
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If you don't deliberately close the door, you want it open.
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In any respect, if there ever was any, is now just eroded away and it turns
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into contempt and resentment.
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Continues. So what you call a
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home, now it's just a frigging minefield of excuses and tiptoeing around,
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explosive emotional angst, hiding this, hiding that, because you don't want
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to deal with the outfall, the outcome of it.
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You throw weak-ass justifications at each other for doing whatever it is you did.
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And then you overly harshly condemn the other for whatever it is they did.
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Meanwhile, meanwhile, your children are hearing every word.
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Do they know what the words mean? Maybe not. Do they know the context of the words? Maybe not.
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But they hear the tones. They hear the mood. They feel the heavy mood.
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They hear doors slamming. and they hear raised voices, they feel the energy.
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And all that shit that two immature, selfish adults squabble over gets etched
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into these children's brains,
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and they have two very fucked-up models of failed intimacy, zero rational conflict resolution,
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and zero self-worth.
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And what's the inevitable outcome of this? Yeah, divorce. Divorce is the inevitable outcome.
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You intensify so much that neither one of you can take it anymore.
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But still, because of the lack of accountability, you both feel completely justified.
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Without any thoughts whatsoever of your piece of the pie there,
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of what you did to help influence this outcome, you feel fully justified.
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So now you go to go to trashing each other on social media or going to trash
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each other in the courts so that i can withhold the visitation i'm going to
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use my children as a weapon against you now,
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neither one of you been honest with yourselves,
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the children witness all this madness and all this mudslinging.
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Parents start ripping on the other parent to the children to try to manipulate them.
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Pawns to be sacrificed in your fucked up little game against each other.
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Thus the cycle continues. Your children have now inherited all of your emotional damage,
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all of your piss poor patterns, all of your immaturity, and they will never
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have a solid relationship.
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And they may never even be productive humans.
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And as this cycle goes on, and as you guys are doing the things you're doing to each other,
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without either realizing or caring what you're doing to your children,
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you're just contributing to a fucked up society.
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Because what you're doing is you're producing little humans that don't have
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the ability to interact with other humans in a positive way,
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in a way that is.
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Positive, in a way that can get relationships built and solid and lasting.
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Even going to work, they can't even have good relationships with work people
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because they're conditional, because that's what they've learned.
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And the longer-term effects are these kids go out and they, substance abuse,
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horrible, horrible relationships, one after the other, maybe teen pregnancies.
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If you have a little girl, yeah, there's very big statistics on this, folks, very big.
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Anything new. There's nothing new. You're not recreating anything.
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You're not, or you're not creating anything new. There's, you don't have any new, unique problems.
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Everything that you do with these, these bickering and then,
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and then fights and these, and cheating and drinking and boozing and, and running off.
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It's all been done before. It's in the textbooks. and,
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already been given, you're not unique. You're a cliche.
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The mechanism's pretty obvious. Emotionally immature adults who put their own
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needs before the needs of their children, and I mean their own superficial needs,
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never mind the deeper needs.
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When your own needs take priority over all else and you lack any meaningful
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emotional regulation whatsoever,
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and anything expected of you becomes a challenge and you become defensive that
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anything is expected of you,
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you lack any ability to reflect upon your your own your own part in this game,
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and then you you treat the children as burdens and just annoyances and that
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possibly even if it weren't for the children the marriage could be better,
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and you treat your children like tools against the spouse.
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Instead of treating the children like little individuals that they are little
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individuals with emotional needs and developmental needs, real physical and
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emotional and mental developmental needs.
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When you disregard those needs for your own or your affections are transactional,
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they're contingent, they're conditional,
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and that's what you're teaching them, that love is conditional. Use it as a tool.
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It must be earned Love must be earned,
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Respect must be earned Love should be unconditional Amongst your family It's
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easy to predict the future folks You can just go read the books I read the books,
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It's easy to predict the future.
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It's easy to predict the future,
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without any real and true.
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And accountability, thus the cycle continues.
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There's data out there, folks. There's data. Almost universal.
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It's everywhere. There's so much.
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This isn't some unstudied new science here.
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I already said it. You're not doing anything new. It's in the books already.
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You can reverse this. This can be reversed, not only stopped and you just go
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on with the damage you have. You can reverse this damage if you're willing to, honestly.
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But it starts with working on yourself. You taking responsibility for the way
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you treat people, your family, and not allowing yourself to erupt in anger or
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to show the frustration,
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to build your own emotional maturity, to work on your relationship skills, do what you can do.
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Maybe they're not going to respond straight away. They might even be skeptical
30:26
of your spouse, but you don't stop there.
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You're not going to get the instant feedback, folks. That's what everybody wants.
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They want the instant fix. Oh, well, I said this.
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Well, I said, I'm sorry, but I don't change years of.
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Mistrust and abuse and verbal abuse and all these things.
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You don't get instant feedback. that. It's work.
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And look, the ultimate goal ain't just staying together for the kids.
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At some point, it's more healthy to divorce so that the kids don't have to witness this.
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The problem is they're just going to witness it again in a different relationship
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because you haven't worked on yourself.
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Yeah, you can get out of one relationship because it's It's damaging your children and damaging you.
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And then you get back into another relationship and the same cycle continues,
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because you haven't fixed yourself.
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Together, as opposed to even considering divorce, consider actually becoming
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a team together and consider, hey, let's change the mood of this house.
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Now, I'm a strong believer that the husband sets the tone.
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The husband sets the tone, the mood, the energy.
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You come home with a smile on your face and you hug everybody up,
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big kiss, scruff on the hair.
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Hey guys, I love you. What you been doing today?
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The husband sets the tone. I read a random thing from one woman to another that
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said something to the effect of, he came home today and he chose violence.
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Not meaning physical violence, meaning emotional violence, anger.
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Choose together to create an environment where everybody is emotionally safe
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and secure to say the things that's on their mind, things that they are concerned about,
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to say the things that they're worried about or the things that they love.
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Create the genuine connection not just a little short pieces the genuine connection
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with your kids and your spouse you can do it if you just relax yourself open yourself up,
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but adults don't want to open themselves up if they feel like they're going to get ambushed.
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Each other at every opportunity, you're a part of the problem.
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Take your own accountability of yourself first. You should be accountable to
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each other, absolutely. Be accountable to yourself.
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And if you've done all this work honestly, and it still leads to divorce,
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the honest effort has been put forth.
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And I mean the honest, real, long-term effort.
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First, folks. That's what nobody wants to accept, is that you have to fix yourself first.
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Nobody wants to fix themselves because nobody wants to admit fault.
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Nobody wants to look deep within and think, ah, could I have done that differently?
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How did that benefit me, really?
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If you're just doing shit to get the upper hand, you're all wrong.
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Work on yourself first. And then if you've resolve to work on yourself,
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and you're taking actions based on that, which means you're consciously aware
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of how your emotions are flaring, how your anger might flare, or your resentment,
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or the burden that the kids are putting on you, if you just breathe it out and
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take that child not as a burden,
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but as an act of love,
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the love will spring up in you folks, but I'm just talking utopia here.
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Therapy exists. Go to it.
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Take wise words from people who know more than you. Excuse me.
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Implement those things.
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And you guys, I always poop on therapy, but this is a case where it's necessary
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because you've got two dysfunctional individuals come together to create a dysfunctional monster,
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that are just creating dysfunctional kids.
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It's, it's horrible. It.
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And you're just contributing to a toxic society overall as opposed to a healthy
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society, go to therapy. Name these problems.
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Open yourself up to accept that, like, yes, I may be a part of this problem.
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I may be contributing fuel to this fire.
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What are some tools to change that?
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You may find some long-term childhood trauma of your own. You probably will.
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Even what you consider to be pretty good parents. Still, they were young at
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some point. They did not have the answers.
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They were going parenting trial and error style, just like most parents do to start off with.
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Some try harder than others. Some error harder than others.
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You might find some childhood problems that started early,
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but you can stop that from being transferred down the line, and you should that
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should bother you enough like shit I got this from my parents I don't want to
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pass it on to my kids now I've.
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If there's alcohol or substance abuse involved, that has to get fixed first.
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And that's not an easy fix, I get it. But it has to be addressed.
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You cannot build anything on that foundation.
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That's a foundation on sand.
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And every time a wave of booze flushes in, whatever was built there goes out to sea. It's no good.
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Nothing is going to get fixed without that being fixed first.
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And you got to be honest with yourself about it.
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So therapy, there's some stuff. Now there's some methodology out there and I'm
36:56
going to tell you about this one. I think it's a good one. I like it. I like the analogy.
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The Gottman Method, they call it identifying and replacing the four horsemen.
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The four horsemen of the apocalypse, right?
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And those four horsemen of the apocalypse, the relationship apocalypse,
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criticism, contempt, Contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
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Think about that. Are these things in your relationship? Do you heavily criticize
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one another or your children?
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Do you hold contempt for your husband, spouse, wife, or children?
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And think about that. Don't just say, no, I don't. Think about it.
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Are you always defensive? Every time somebody opens their mouth,
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you feel like you're having to defend your position or your actions.
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And look, some of them, there's nothing you can do to defend.
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You've done something so fucked up, it's indefensible.
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But you'll make up some defense. Think about that.
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And then stonewalling. That's just going silent, comms black.
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I'm not telling you anything. Tool.
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For some imaginary metric, I'm not saying anything until you calm down.
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Meanwhile, it's just causing more anger. Do you do any of those things?
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The four horsemen of the relationship, apocalypse, criticism,
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contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling.
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And Gottman Method says you replace those. Now, it's a little anecdotal, but be with me.
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Gentle startup. So you ease into a conversation, right?
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Building a culture of appreciation in your house as opposed to contempt.
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A husband can come home and give his wife a kiss. Babe, thanks for holding the
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house down today. I love you.
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Take responsibility for your own actions.
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Says here, physiological self-soothing.
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That seems a little jinky to me. I liken that to maybe going to the gym or maybe
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getting a little massage or maybe,
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not substance-wise. All right, no substance or no unhealthy self-soothing.
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You can get emotional coaching from a professional and learn how to recognize
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feelings and learn how to validate your spouse.
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Learn how to label your emotions, properly label them.
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Learn how to have boundaries. Even in a marriage, there needs to be some boundaries.
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Learn how to problem solve together. And if you can learn that together as a
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couple, you can then transfer those skills to your children.
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And in transferring those skills, you're building a relationship,
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a real genuine relationship.
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It's not just go clean your room, go change your brother's diaper,
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go do the dishes, go do your laundry, go clean up the yard. That's not a relationship.
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That's not a relationship.
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So if you can do those things together, you can do those with your kids,
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and that'll improve everybody's reaction to each other.
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And then there's relational life therapy, a fellow named Terry Real,
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and then the Imago Dialogue.
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This direct confrontation of dysfunctional patterns combined with structured
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listening that slows reactivity and fosters empathy.
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Some people ain't there yet i think that i think you have to be a little more
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mature for that one yeah some people aren't there yet,
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and then there's integrative behavioral couple therapy and skills training that
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helps to manage emotions and helps you to be more.
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In the way you think about a problem, and it helps you moderate your own behavior.
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Then there's some little tools. They talk about agreed timeouts, adult timeouts.
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Hey, let's just take a timeout, okay? Go to your corner.
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I don't know about that. I'm not a professional, right? But then there's a thing.
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I like this one. It's kind of silly. Biff, B-I-F-F. If the Biff response, well,
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even in a heated thing, be brief, be very, very short, and just deliver only,
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factual and informative words.
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And do it in a friendly tone, even though it's brief, still do it in a friendly, even tone.
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And then be firm in your stance on this situation. And then be done with it and let it simmer.
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The friendly portion is big because i told you and i've said it a couple times,
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children might not understand the words but they understand the tone they understand the energy,
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so if you are delivering this whether it's a critique or a pointed question,
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be brief be informative Be friendly and be firm about it.
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And then make deliberate, folks, you have to decide that you want things to be better.
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You, as an individual, have to make a deliberate attempt to repair the problem.
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Ignoring the problem don't make it go away, folks. Having done your fucked up
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thing up until last week, and then say, okay, I was wrong, but never admitting
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that you've done it. Thank you.
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Water because it doesn't lend itself to the trust that you don't trust enough,
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to openly admit you're just admitting something was wrong and i'll stop doing something,
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or you're telling the half truth so that the door can stay cracked open then
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you're not really committed,
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if you leave the door cracked you ain't committed but if you use these techniques
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and even in front of your children that that especially the brief informative friendly and firm,
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they're learning something that's productive and more healthy than unhealthy.
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And when it comes to your kids, folks, your love, your attention,
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your help, your validation should not be conditional in any way,
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whether they did the dishes and cleaned their room or not.
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The love should be there. At some point, they will want to do the right thing,
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for you just because they love you.
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Not because you're going to give them some instant validation.
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You should always be loving with your children. Maybe not spilling over loving,
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but don't neglect touch, folks.
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Pat on the head, a little hug. Don't neglect it. It's important because children need that touch as well.
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Shit, maybe adults need that sometimes too. A thought ran through my mind.
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I was sitting on the couch the other night and my grown ass daughter,
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24 year old daughter, um.
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She plops down on my lap and throws her arms around my neck and lays her head
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on my chest. And I'm holding her up like she was a baby.
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And she just stayed there for a little while. That's it. I gave her a little kiss on her forehead.
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I even don't judge. I'll pat her on her ass.
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My family, we hug. We're huggers amongst the family.
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I don't like strangers touching me, but that's another thing. It's another episode.
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My grown daughter. And then what came to my mind was, look, one of my favorite
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all-time movies ever was Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean, Natalie Wood.
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And it was arguably like one of the first early, like epic teen angst movies.
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It was called Rebel Without a Cause.
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As most teens are, he was rebellious.
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He didn't like this and that and the other well what he didn't like was the
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hypocrisy of his parents which is also probably common amongst a lot of teens,
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is there they think their parents are all wrong and they're rebelling against
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whatever their parents are doing or whatever the system is,
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anyway there's a scene in that movie,
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natalie wood i don't even know was probably 15 or 16 at the time,
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maybe in reality, maybe a little older, I don't know.
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But she was, they were playing, they were high school students, right? And.
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Wood like that character their family sitting around a dinner now this is 1955
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folks they're sitting around the dinner table,
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and natalie wood has a little brother who's eight or nine and dad's sitting
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at the head of the table and the little brother comes in and he's got his little
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atomic age spaceman gun and blah blah blah and dad's like a little scamp,
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and the kid goes to sit down and and natalie woods that and she she goes over,
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and says something dad kind of has,
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not ignored her outright but just didn't really acknowledge and then she reached
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down and gave him a kiss on the cheek and he smacked her in the face,
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you're too old for that you're getting too that's not appropriate for a girl your age fuck Look,
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a teenage girl can't kiss her old man on the cheek.
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She needed affection. She wanted some acknowledgement, some validation.
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The little brother just got the little love, a little scruff on the head.
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The daughter, she told him something that she did that day, and he's,
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oh, very good, very good.
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Then she gives him a kiss, and he smacked her. Can you imagine that? Yeah.
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They need affection, even touch, even a kiss on the cheek or a kiss on the forehead.
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They need it, and it needs to be genuine, and it needs to be genuine,
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and it needs to be genuine. Love your children.
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Protection of our children is non-negotiable. It is non-negotiable.
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We have to contribute to the development of our kids in a positive, healthy way,
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and I'm not meaning to be religious here, but in a healthy Christian way.
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But even secular, it can be healthy.
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But they have to know where their values come from.
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We have to care for the kids.
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We have to raise them right.
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We have to put their emotional development over our own damaged emotions. We have to do it.
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We can heal ourselves. It's possible we can do it by taking accountability for ourselves.
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By choosing curiosity in our spouse over contempt, we can do it.
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This negative cycle, it's not destiny, folks. It's not destiny.
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We can be aware. We can build skills.
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And we can break the cycle. We can do it. You can do it.
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I love you, good people. Take care.