Our son is officially a 9th grader, adding to our list of milestones and events we weren’t sure we would see.
We are very fortunate to be able to start high school in the best way possible. The school he has been at since 6th grade offers a transition year, which we are taking advantage of with the support of our school district. That means he will have the same teachers, peers, and environment to continue his journey for another year. Especially with the looming surgery, recovery time, and uncertainty with his tolerance for calibrating the brain stimulator, keeping him in a place where he is comfortable and cared for is a gift.
This is going to be a year of changes. Unless higher grades magically appear, this will be his last year at the school, and his peers who have been concentrated at his school will find high schools in their home districts. This will likely be his last year of baseball, as the level of play and competition at the next level may not be something he can manage. His peers will get their learner’s permits and start driving, something he won’t be able to do while he is still having seizures.
No one knows what is on the other side of these changes. I am sure he will find friends among his new peers and that other interests will replace baseball. While he won’t learn to drive with his peers, there will be other rights of passage to conquer and other ways to grow.
But many of these changes are still on the horizon. He has 9th grade to look forward to and another baseball season. He has his school, teachers, peers, and friends. He has and will always have his family. And together, we can navigate these changes and discover what’s next.
I recently stumbled upon a reference to how cultural anthropologists categorize societies based on how they control behavior in those societies as guild-shame-fear.
I pulled these descriptions from the always dependable Wikipedia:
Guilt Society
In a guilt society, control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors. The guilt worldview focuses on law and punishment. A person in this type of culture may ask, “Is my behavior fair or unfair?” This type of culture also emphasizes individual conscience.
Shame Society
In a shame society (sometimes called an honor–shame culture), the means of control is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. The shame–honor worldview seeks an “honor balance” and can lead to revenge dynamics. A person in this type of culture may ask, “Shall I look ashamed if I do X?” or “How will people look at me if I do Y?” Shame cultures are typically based on the concepts of pride and honor. Often actions are all that count and matter.
Fear Society
In a fear society, control is kept by the fear of retribution. The fear worldview focuses on physical dominance. A person in this culture may ask, “Will someone hurt me if I do this?”
I was interested in the topic because I have lived at the intersection of all three.
Until sixth grade, I went to an old-school Catholic school and church, where the nuns still wielded rulers as weapons, and God was always watching and never approving. I can still picture one of the sisters with terrible arthritis, and her hand contorted perfectly to wrap around one of the long wooden chalk sticks. I remember feeling that everything I did was a sin, deserving of punishment, and wrong, deserving of exclusion.
I also grew up in a household with a single, frustrated, angry mother and an older, equally angry sister. I spent a lot of time trying to be and keep everything perfect to avoid getting punished, always fearful of the hand and the wooden spoon.
I thought this was normal. As I got older, the voice inside my head would take over for the nuns, my mother, and my sister, reinforcing the messages of guilt, shame, and fear.
It wasn’t until after I was married and we had our son (and a lot of therapy) that I started to see and understand that my childhood was traumatic and how it affected me as an adult.
Guilt is what kept me feeling wrong.
Shame is what kept me feeling alone.
Fear is what kept me feeling small.
The behaviors that I developed to help me survive in a state of guilt-shame-fear became toxic in my adult relationships, closing me off to the people I desperately wanted to be close to and spreading out to every aspect of my existence: relationships, love, intimacy, sexuality, self-esteem, friendships, goals, expectations, happiness, comfort, safety.
What got you here won’t get you there…
I am on a journey of recovery and untethering myself from my old patterns and beliefs. However, as I go through this process, I want to ensure that my son has a different experience. While we’re not religious, and there (probably) aren’t nuns waiting around the corner, the most likely transmitter of the guild-shame-fear burden is me.
I still wrestle with my lingering expectations of perfection and fear that I will disappoint the people around me. I still feel the grip of guilt and shame for my actions and who I am.
While I am very conscious of the words I use when I engage in these topics with my son, it’s not only the words that influence how he interprets these messages. It’s how he sees my relationship with these feelings that will demonstrate what his relationship with the feelings should be. Even when I think I successfully internalize or hide these feelings, I know I am not that good of an actor. Their effects are visible on my face, body, voice, and how I present myself to the world.
In many ways, the work my wife and I have done has created a very different environment for our son than either of us had. I can see that in how he interacts with the world. He isn’t fearful like I was and is one of the bravest people I know. He feels guilt when he does something wrong, not thinking everything he does is bad like I did. And his relationship with shame is much healthier than mine, and he can also feel dignity and positive self-esteem.
It’s not perfect, and we’re continuing to equip ourselves with the knowledge and tools we need to continue to develop a healthy relationship with these feelings in ourselves and him. But I see such a difference in him compared to what it was like for me growing up, and seeing that difference gives me hope that I can continue to make changes for myself, too.
The other day, I was driving my son to music camp. The camp was at the same place where he takes his drum lessons but, rather than private lessons, the camp groups the kids into bands that perform at the end of the week.
When I asked my son if he liked the band experience, I expected his response to involve the difference between lessons and performing or what it is like to play with other musicians. Instead, his response centered around wondering if he would get on the Wall of Fame that the school had of previous students.
I wasn’t entirely surprised by his response. Very often, his goals involve a championship. When we talk about hockey, he wants his name to be on the Stanley Cup. When we play Fortnite, he wants to be on the leaderboard or have his own skin like the influencers have. He talks about subscribers and likes for his Twitch feed and YouTube channel.
As a kid, I remember being young and obsessed with getting my initials on every video game I touched to leave my mark on everyone who would play the game after me. At one point, my initials filled the high score screen of a game called Mr. Do that I played every day while waiting for the school bus.
I played basketball in the driveway and imagined the next shot was a buzzer-beater to win the championship, and I tossed balls in the air and pretended that I faced a full count and needed a hit to win the game. Creating the ultimate clutch scenario and delivering is the dream of many would-be heroes, even those of us who were not destined for sports greatness. It added drama to a sport or game that I loved to play.
I’ve heard interviews with professional athletes who had the same dreams, except they focused on achieving them. Even at a young age, they would spend hours working on their game, taking slap shots, making free throws, or swinging a bat. They aimed to become a professional athlete and help a team win a championship by delivering in that clutch moment.
Whether it’s video games, sports, or music, that desire to be the best can be a great motivator. But what happens when achieving that dream becomes the bar? What if whether a dream is achieved becomes the only measure of worth?
I love that my son has big dreams. For everything he has been through and everything he struggles with daily, he could have just as easily become a victim of his situation and have no dreams at all. But I’m afraid that if he doesn’t achieve his dream, he will resent the experience rather than be proud of himself for what he did accomplish.
I realize those are my feelings and may not be his. It breaks my heart that his chances of playing in the NHL are minuscule, and because I’m disappointed for him, I’m expecting him to be disappointed, too. But my feelings are based on my frustration and anger at what his condition has taken from him, which probably results in a higher degree of disappointment, just like it results in a higher degree of admiration for what he can accomplish.
Ultimately, my job as his parent is to let him have his dreams and make it okay, whether he achieves them or not. My job is to instill in him the ability to be proud of himself for his accomplishments and to encourage him to love the experience, the sport, and the time he could do what he enjoys. It’s my job to show him that there is a sense of accomplishment in doing something and then working at it to improve and become the best you can be, even if it doesn’t come with a trophy or picture on a wall.
I’m a big believer in dreaming. If you don’t dream it, you can’t become it. – Magic Johnson
For a while, I’ve been thinking that Apple’s Parental Controls were poorly implemented. We would set the controls, and then within a few days or weeks, we would see them change.
As an engineer, I set out to troubleshoot the problem. At first, I thought it was because our son has two devices. Perhaps the changes weren’t propagating to one of them, and that device was corrupting the settings. But even after I ensured both devices matched, the setting would change again after a few days.
One day, my wife casually mentioned giving my son her phone because he needed to “check something.” That’s when we figured out he had convinced my wife to let him use her phone and was changing the settings.
Sneaky.
Once we figured that out, we sat him down and told him what we learned. We covered issues with trust, money (Apple’s refund policy for something like this is less than generous), responsibility, and consequences. We took away his devices for almost a week, and when he got them back, we didn’t encounter any issues.
For a while.
The other day, my son said, “Dad, I like your drawings.” I’ve been drawing on my iPad, which I leave downstairs in the living room. He knows my passcode but not the parental control code. We chatted about respecting people’s privacy and boundaries and not using my iPad without asking, and I left it at that.
A few days later, I discovered that the parental control settings had changed again. As I went in to fix all the settings, I realized that once you unlock the iPad, it didn’t require the parental code to turn off the parental controls. You can turn off the parental controls with the device’s passcode, which my son knew.
When my son saw my drawings on my iPad, he was on it to disable the parental control code. His mention of my drawings turned out to be his undoing,
Sneaky.
Controlling his impulses and urges is hard enough for him as a teenager. My son’s intellectual and emotional challenges mean that the process will take more time. We’ve been at this long enough to understand that it’s not a flip that we will switch; it’s a gradual undimming until the light is at its full brightness.
As we talked to him about these choices and the consequences, I felt conflicted. His ability to troubleshoot the problem he was facing and come up with multiple solutions is actually impressive. I know engineers with less tenacity and creativity. Using that ability to be sneaky and violate our rules, however, is the wrong expression of those skills.
Our job as parents is to help him use his power for good.
A few weeks ago, we went to three concerts in five days.
The first concert was REO Speedwagon and Train. What might seem like an odd mix was incredibly entertaining. My wife also has connections with both bands. When she was little, her family stayed with the lead singer of REO for a few months in California. My mother-in-law and the lead singer’s wife were friends, and when my wife’s family needed a place to stay, they landed in the guest room of one of the hottest bands at the time. With Train, at a small show a few years ago, my wife found herself on stage singing with the band.
Wild.
The second concert was the following night. It was my wife’s band that she joined a few months back, and we’ve been lucky to see almost all of her shows. It’s an incredible feeling to see her back on stage where she belongs doing what she love and is so good at.
The third concert was Imagine Dragons. Our son has wanted to see them for years, but we missed their last show in Pennsylvania. This year, they released a new album and, with that, began a new tour. This tour’s first stop was across the river in New Jersey, so we got tickets as soon as they went on sale.
My son counted down the months, then weeks, then days, and finally hours until the show. The day before, he wrote a letter to the band that he asked me to send to them.
The day of the concert, we agreed to a game plan that would start as soon as we walked into the venue:
Go to the merchandise table and get t-shirts.
Put on t-shirts.
Get food.
Sit down.
Eat.
Rock out.
We breezed through the first three steps and sat in our seats as the crew was changing over the stage after the opening band. The venue was packed with amazing energy, and every time one of the screens turned on, there was a surge of excitement until we collectively realized it was another commercial.
Finally, the lights went down. The screens lit up with an image from the new album “Loom” and a recorded poem played over the speakers.
Through distant lens, I see your shrouded form It carries there through some fervent storm Its promise neither wilt nor rapture bloom But only that it will not fade It looms…
My son spent the first part of the show with his phone in his hand, trying to capture every moment as the band performed. I could see him taking in the experience as he sang at the top of his lungs. It was as if the band did the show just for our son, playing all of his favorite songs.
I love watching him be so engaged and happy. With all his struggles, past and present, I am grateful that we can give him experiences like this. The looming surgery reminds me not to take the time we have for granted. As too many people know in this community, it can all end too soon.
Of all the concerts I have seen, this was one of my favorites. Not just for the band and their performance but for the joy I saw on my son’s face. It was made even more special that we experienced it with our expanded family member, who was attending one of her first concerts. Watching the two of them sing and dance for the entire show was worth the price of admission.
