Parenthood

Whilst in therapy we explored a bit of stuff to do with my childhood. Judy thought it was useful to have some insight into where some unhelpful core beliefs came from … but nothing more than that. The focus was always on ‘what are we going to do about it’. My mother and my relationship with her was at the centre of those core beliefs and what astonished me then and now is how the boy shaped the man.

At the time Xavier was one and I couldn’t help relating what I was learning to him and my relationship with him. So many people say ‘I don’t want to become my mother… I won’t make the same mistakes’. It isn’t as easy as it sounds… certainly when I am stretched I seem more vulnerable to becoming my parents and I watch myself in astonishment when I behave as they would.

I can’t really remember a great deal of my early childhood. I posted some old photographs on Facebook yesterday and I don’t remember any of the days they capture. I wonder if there are happy memories in there that I just can’t get at…. that I’ve forgotten. I certainly look really happy in a few of the photos.

I must have been a pit of a pickle when I was little. When I was naughty my mother would take her shoe off and beat me with it. I think that made me rebellious. When I was older, knowing that I had done something that warranted a smack, I would then goad her from across the room until she had thrown both shoes and thus run out of ammunition. I couldn’t have been an easy child.

My aunts had a cruel sense of humour; I don’t think they knew any better. My mother is one of seven sisters. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me… that I was somehow destined to be a bad person. Aunt Y was convinced that I had the devil in me, or at least that’s what she told me. When you’re a kid I guess that’s kind of terrifying.

I don’t really remember seeing my dad much… As a first generation immigrant making a new life for himself and his family, he worked two or three jobs at a time. It seems like a noble thing to do but I swore that Xavier would see more of me than I saw of my dad. I didn’t always get that right though. Like I say… it seems the default position is to be like your parents in times of stress.

The single most important thing I realised about parenting was that if you do anything with your children, make sure they feel that the world is a safe place and that you love them unconditionally. I underplayed the significance of that in my own upbringing but as Judy explained to me: when you are a child you are completely dependent on your parents for your survival in an animal way, and so if a parent withdraws love from you as a child it will feel life threatening.  

My mother did the best she could, given the person she was. She didn’t have a host of super nanny strategies to keep me in line; instead she switched love on and off to check my behaviour. I remember feelings of utter helplessness as a little boy, banging on the door trying to win her love back and being shunned.

I could have been angry at her and blamed her, but I also realised that she was once a child and that this person had been shaped by her own parenting. It made me curious about her childhood and for the first time I started to see her as a person with her own emotional baggage, rather than just my mother. It made us closer for a long time, but when the depression surfaces it’s best to keep her at arm’s length.

Now, as Xavier’s father, I must tell him a hundred times a day that I love him, that I’ll always love him whatever happens, and that I am so proud of him. He’s a smart three year old, loving, gentle, confident, kind and very funny. There are those occasional times when we need to have words but through it all I can’t tell him enough how much I love him. Alicia knows how important this is to me and sometimes when she has to tell him off she sees me wincing in the corner saying ‘but tell him you love him too’…. And she does. She’s a good mother.