Adult Children Who Are Bogged Down in Anger at Their Parents

What is the healthier emotion, anger or compassion and forgiveness. Right! Compassion and forgiveness. If they are not yet in your emotional toolbox, this podcast is for YOU!

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Transcript

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Wow while you have all the radio dial up because I listen to land and welcome to because I said so the only podcast on the entire worldwide web where you will hear the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the unvarnished truth about psychology, the bogus science of psychology, and the mental health professions in general and the parenting train wreck. They have paused. Today's exciting episode is about adult children who carry around the burden of lots of anger toward their parents, adult children who carry around lots of anger toward their parents. We all know people like that. They want you to listen to their story. Yeah, well, that started that being the history of adult children being angry at their parents for real and imagined offenses of one sort or another begins in the 1960s. Now, before I go any further, please note that in the preceding sentence, I referenced real and imagined offenses of one sort or another. It would be downright stupid of me to imply that there is no such thing as an actual verifiable parental offence because there are the problem, however, is that nearly all of the adult children in question believe that their anger toward their parents is justified, that it concerns actual verifiable offenses. It is therefore difficult to impossible to tell which of the parental offenses in question are verifiable, and which are not. When an adult child is exaggerating, in other words, however unwittingly and when he or she is not exaggerating. Furthermore, the fact that a parental offense is not verifiable does not necessarily mean it didn't occur. In short, the topic of today's podcast is raw, the messy parts Part of the problem a good part, in fact, involves the fact that since the 1960s, the meanings of certain words that are germane to today's topic, have been dumbed down. Let me give you an example. I've had quite a number of adult individuals tell me that one or both of their parents were abusive toward them when they were growing up. So when I ask what specifically they mean by abusive, I often receive answers like, Well, my father spanked me with a belt on several occasions or my mother yelled at us constantly. So okay. I have no problem with spankings, per se but I agree that spankings with belts wouldn't paddle switches brushes into like, are inappropriate and can and often do qualify as abuse. And for those of you out there who have been led to believe that God says spanking should be administered with objects such as I just mentioned, he doesn't, period. That is not what is meant in the Bible by references to the quote from rod of discipline. That term is a biblical metaphor. It is not in reference to a concrete object. For more on that the interested listener can go to my most free Some book titled The Bible parenting code, an enigmatic title if there ever was one. The book is available on Amazon or my website at John roseman.com, where I have an entire chapter in the book that is not the website on the subject of spanking being spanked a few times in the belt, her paddle, however abuse, if that might be, you know, in the in the time limited sense of the term, okay, you received a spanking, it lasted 30 seconds, your father hit your rear end five times with a wooden paddle. Alright, I'll agree with you that constitutes abuse. But it is not, in and of itself. Sufficient reason for one to carry significant anger toward a parent or parents into one's adulthood. If fact that apparent made mistakes, even a lot of them means the parent was human. Human beings I don't know if you've noticed this or not. If you haven't, you need to pay greater attention to what's going on around you. Human beings make errors of judgment. Furthermore, parental errors of judgment have increased exponentially since the late 1960s, when American parents began consuming ding dong parenting advice from various ding dongs in the mental health professions. And for the benefit of you out there and listener land who might be tuning into this podcast for the first time. I am a psychologist by training and licensed when I talked about the parenting train wreck, that advice from psychologists and other mental health professionals has caused, I absolutely unequivocally know what I'm talking about. I am absolutely convinced that the general frustration and stress experienced by today's parents, especially mothers, is due in large part to the very bad advice concerning the raising of children that has emanated from the mental health professional community communities since the late 1960s. For over, in other words, 50 years the latest example of that, being so called gentle parenting, gentle, gentle parenting folks. Now, let me go off on this for a second. You know, gentle parenting. What the mental health professions have done over the last 50 years 50 years ago, they came up with a progressive, radically new parenting paradigm that with the help of the mainstream media, they sold to the American public. This parenting paradigm created more problems that parents in any generation in any culture, at any time in history have ever had before with the raising of children. And people began to smell the RAF fairly quickly and began rejecting the new paradigm. So what did the mental health professions do? They renamed it and they have renamed it now four or five times over the last 5055 years. But it's always the same. It doesn't matter whether it's called you know, collaborative parenting, gentle parenting, it's all the same. It's all the same. All they do is change the name as if a rose by some other name is no longer a rose when in fact it is a rose. No matter what you call it. In this case, it's a very stinky rose. Gentle parenting folks if you've been sucked into that, con con CLM it's a scam. If you've been sucked into it, get yourself out of it. I don't care how many friends And you lose as a consequence. The important people, here are your children. This is not going to advance their future citizenship, let me assure you. Anyway, I absolutely know what I'm talking about when I talk about the parenting train wreck caused by psychologists and other mental health professionals, beginning in the last beginning in the late 1960s. And ongoing. So I talked about stress. Yeah. Was my mother stressed out? No, she was not stressed out. Did I present problems? Yeah, I presented my share of problems to her. You know, I was a somewhat mischievous child. And children were mischievous back then. I didn't know any children who were defiant. I didn't know eight or nine year old children who were screaming at their parents when they didn't get their way. I mean, the worst thing that people in my children children in my generation did when we were kids, we tried to get away with stuff we knew we shouldn't be doing, and hope that our parents wouldn't find out about it, which they usually did anyway. Okay, so my mother just and she was a single parent for most of the first seven years of my life. My mother just handle that stuff. You know, she just handled it. She never yelled, she never spanked single parent for most of the first seven years of my life at work, went to college. And taught me at a very early age, what my place was in my place was not at the center of attention. And she taught me in fact that she occupied the center of my attention. What a radical notion the parent occupies the center of the child's attention. Absolutely. You the parent, or the teacher, you are the mentor, you're the instructor. Your child is the students. Your child needs to be paying attention to you. And that's that's not an on off switch, ladies and gentlemen. It's not like the child's oh, I need to pay attention now. No, either children understand intuitively, it's their job to pay attention to you. Or they understand intuitively because of your behavior, that it is your job to pay attention to and do things for them. And if a child comes to the intuitive conclusion, and they do around age three, they come to one conclusion or the other. If they come to the intuitive conclusion, that it is your job to pay attention and do things for them. You are going to have the discipline problems have a major sort of this what's going on in American culture today, folks, I'm off on somewhat of a tangent here. But this is what's been going on since the late 1960s. I was there in graduate school when this myth, the children needed a lot of attention. And a guy named Thomas Gordon psychologists to guess were from California. Came out with a book in which he maintained families needed to be child centered. That children needed a lot of constant attention. So discipline the discipline of children subsequently went to hell in a handbasket. Because the entire mental health profession professional community took up Thomas Gordon's mantra, family should be child centered. And today's family 55 years later, is guess what? child centered? And guess what? Children are no longer just mischievous. Which you can count on especially for boys from boys. Children are defiant. Disrespectful. They're they're obnoxious. Have you noticed that? I mean, let's call the proverbial spade a spade it there is a there are a disproportionate number of children today who are just down right obnoxious, which is what you become when you are a child and you are the center of attention. So, you know, the worse the discipline of children has become, the worse the behavior of children has become, the more frustrating and stressful parenting has become. And it is axiomatic that the more stress a parent experiences in the course of executing the relatively simple job of raising a child to responsible adulthood, the more mistakes the parent is going to make. So, back to this whole issue of you know, I was abused. You know, I was abused because my my mother screamed at us all the time. Okay? Well being yelled at by a parent, it doesn't mean anything about the child necessarily. In all likelihood, it means that the parent isn't emotionally suited to being a parent. The fact that a parent has emotional problems doesn't justify being angry at that parent. It justifies being compassionate and forgiving. I mean, you know, our it's unfortunate that children grow up. Some children grow up with people who are not emotionally suited to being parents. But that does not justify those children when they become adults. Carrying around a backpack full of anger. I mean, I say to those people, pardon me, if you'd see you grow up. You know, you're the parent in question wasn't emotionally suited to being a parent. The question now becomes, are you emotionally suited to be to being an adult? Grow up. The fact that your mother or your father or both had emotional problems that did not suit them to being good parents does not justify being angry. It justifies if you are an authentic adult, being compassionate, and forgiving. Let me give you a personal example here. I don't tell the story very often. My mother was a great parent. She was a single parent for most of the first seven years of my life. My life began with my father, being in the in the United States Army. The Korean War just started. He was sent to Korea in a non combat capacity, leaving my mother and I at Fort story, Virginia. While my father was gone, overseas, my mother, she initiated divorce proceedings. So I was like two and a half years old. You know, I didn't know what was going on. And I really had no morbid curiosity about it at all. For whatever reasons, my mother divorced my father. And I was about like I said, two and a half, maybe three years old. My mother and I moved back to the family home Charleston, South Carolina. We moved into a home and the historic district, south of Broad Street if you've ever been there, it's really Tony today, folks in the late 40s, early 50s. It was rundown falling apart, and it was the cheapest place to live. Many of those grand homes were carved up into apartments and returning GIs, they married their high school sweethearts, and they began raising families in the historic district. And there were hundreds of kids in this storage district. There are hardly any today. There's there were hundreds of men, we ran in packs. And so my mother worked she went to college and Under the course of all that she met her second husband, and married her second husband, when I was about two months short of my seventh birthday. My mother's second marriage was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. It was unhappy. It was tumultuous. It was a disaster. And after my mother's second marriage, this lovely funny woman began to develop serious emotional problems. And I mean serious problems that plagued her until her second husband, a man who was highly intelligent. He had two PhDs in the medical sciences, but had the emotional capacity of a cucumber passed away. My mother's emotional and marital problems resulted for me, your host, in a roller coaster ride of a childhood that no child should experience? Am I angry about that? No, I'm not. When I was a young adult, I realized probably the best decision I ever made, I realized that anger toward my mother or my stepfather, whom I often call the troll. You know, it's just a, it's my name for him. It doesn't reflect any anger at all. It's just my name, he was a troll. I realized that anger toward either of them would be counterproductive to my goal of enjoying the good life, of being a responsible husband, a responsible citizen or responsible parent of making the most of the talents God had given me. And so on and so forth. And so I made a conscious decision when I was in my late teens, early 20s, to not be angry at my mother and stepfather. And so I'm not angry. When I think of my mother and stepfather, I'm sad. I'm greatly sad, but I'm not sad for me. I'm sad for them. They were damaged people. They didn't know how to be anything but damage. So I'm sad for them. But I'm not angry. And folks, let me explain to people describe their childhoods to me sometimes, you know, they they are trying to convince me in these descriptions, that they had an awful childhood. And I listened, I listened politely. I listened graciously. But let me tell you 99 out of 100 times, I could tell a worse story. And it wouldn't be imagined. It would be real, a worse story. But they were damaged people. They didn't know how to be anything but damage. And so I'm sad for them. But I'm not angry. Even when they were acting out their damage. My mother and stepfather taught me valuable things. In fact, if not for my damaged mother, and my even more damaged stepfather, I would not have been able to do what I have done and I'm doing in my career. I understand what proper parenting is all about. Because their parenting was hardly ever proper. Let me say that, again. I understand what proper parenting is all about. Because their parenting was hardly ever proper. But even though it was improper. It caused me to learn very valuable things concerning how to be a husband. How to be a father, how to be a responsible member of my community, or responsible citizen of the United States that taught me valuable things. And one of the things I've taken away from my childhood, tumultuous roller coaster ride of a childhood, is that whether one is angry at one's parents or not, is often if not usually a matter of choice. Yeah, we hear that word a lot in culture today and it's somewhat overused. But in my case, it's the proper word whether one is Angry at one's parents are not is often, if not usually a matter of choice. I'm not going to get into the weeds of my turbulent childhood much more than I already have. But let me assure you, the listener that if I chose to be angry, I have quite a lot to be angry about more than most folks who are angry at their parents, in fact, but I'm not angry. And I'm not angry, because I realized, early in my adulthood, that anger was a choice. It was not inevitable to the manner in which I was raised, it was a choice. And I made the right choice. And it was perhaps the best choice I've ever made. It's factual for me to say that I did not have good parenting role models. Along those lines, a number of people through the years of my life as a parenting expert, have told me they don't know how to be proper parents because they didn't have good role models. My stock response to that is, quote, so because your parents were not good role models. You must know the difference between good parenting and not so good parenting, right? Can we repeat that? So because your parents were not good role models? You must know the difference between good parenting and not so good parenting, right? The person in question stares at me for a few seconds like a deer in the proverbial headlights. And then says, I hear what you're saying. John, you're saying that if I know my parents had lots of faults, I have no excuse to have lots of faults. Bingo, you win the lottery. Let me tell you folks, my generation was the first generation of American children to be encouraged to be angry at their parents for being imperfect. The encouragement in question came from the usual suspects, psychologists and other mental health professionals, most of whom qualify as ding dongs who don't know what they're talking about? Here's what I'm talking about. You go see a mental health professional for personal issues of one sort or another? What's the first question? Said professional will ask? What is the first question? You sit down in the couch or the chair across from this psychologist? What's the first question he asks? Right? He asked. Tell me about your childhood. Or he asked. Tell me about your parents. Okay, that question reflects the very mistaken belief that any problems and adult has can be traced back to his or her childhood. And more specifically, parenting dysfunctions of one sort or another. In short, the theory behind that question is that parenting produces the person. I can disprove that theory in two sentences. Sentence number one, we all know good people who were raised badly. Sentence number two, we all know bad people who were raised by good people. Bang, the theory that parenting produces the person is destroyed in two sentences. Bad people are bad because their parents were bad. They're bad because they made and continue to make bad choices. And good people are good because their parents were good. They're good people because they made good choices. How a person is right is to certainly going to influence his life. But folks, parenting is not deterministic. Those two sentences proved it. Parenting is an influence. But back to the question mental health professionals ask right off the bat. Tell me about your childhood or tell me about your parents. No matter how the person answers the question, it is almost guaranteed that the therapist is going to help the individual construct a personal soap opera that's what I call it. Concerning his parents that will supposedly explain all of his or her problems. The soap opera and question cast the person in question is a victim and the person's parents have as villains of one sort or another. By the way, that is precisely how I was taught to think, in graduate school. And exactly what I was taught to do. I was taught to believe that parenting was deterministic when it is not. And I just proved that in two sentences. Mental health professionals help people construct personal soap operas. The soap operas in question are unhealthy, they bog people down in their problems. The only way to resolve problems from one's childhood is to let them go. To realize that human beings make mistakes and have compassion and forgiveness, compassion and forgiveness wonderful things, human capacities and human capacities only. Okay, that's a wrap. Thanks for joining me for yet another exciting episode of because I said so. The only podcast on the entire world wide web where you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the unvarnished truth about the mental health professions in America and the damage they have done to children and families. Check out my substack@substack.com and check out my primary website of parent guru.com. Or you can go to John rosemond.com or go back and forth. If truth is what you're after truth is what I'm going to give you. Sometimes by the way, the truth is discomforting. So always keep in mind as they say who is they? I don't know. No pain. No game. Okay, folks, see you next week by the way the song that's now playing are coming up. I wrote it melts me singing in one of my alter egos. Louisiana blues man a bozo a beaucoup. See you next week. In the meantime, keep on rockin in the free world