Power Corrupts

Why does it take so long to see something is wrong?

I had known for some time that there was a problem with my parenting. That something was amiss seemed to be clear enough. So why then did I persist in my style of parenting? I have thought about this, and meditated seriously on it, over and over again. I even visited multiple psychologists about it. I've had many different thoughts and received varying advice from friends and professionals, yet none of it seemed to affect the actual results of my parenting. I have come to the following conclusion in two ways described by Hemingway, gradually then suddenly. When my son was born, I was imbued with a lot of power, and power corrupts. 

It had never really occurred to me that parenting is a skill to be developed. I had the idea--from somewhere, who knows--that I would be a good dad, naturally. Somehow I would just know what to do and everything would be grand. Why? Because I'm smart, diligent, and wanted very badly to be a good dad. And that's enough, right?

When the reality of parenting collided with this fantasy of parenting, my first instinct was to assert more control. I wanted to create a certain household reality, one by the way I hadn't clearly defined in my own mind. If our circumstances didn't meet that vision, then I would assert myself more the next time. This could take the form of a system of punishment or reward, but it was always defined and implemented by me. It was extremely frustrating because surely the whole family would benefit if everyone would just go along with my plan. In hindsight I can see that my authority as a parent, not well-defined or limited, had warped my way of interacting with both my wife and my son, i.e. I had become more and more corrupt as a result. 

This corruption has taken multiple forms. First, it distorts my view of what is really going on. It is very hard to cede power so I interpret situations so that the solution is more authority, not less. One of the results of this was, unfortunately, to blame my son. I was a good dad. Things were not going well. Ergo, the problem must be with him. It's not quite so simple but generally that is the belief that seemed to be lurking beneath. My wife would sometimes say when my son and I would clash, "You're the adult, he's just a child. You have to be the one to meet him where he is." Intellectually, I knew this, but my reply to her was usually something, "I know. I know. I have to be the one to change, to mold my parenting to meet him....but he started it." I could examine where I was going wrong but my solutions were like the coyote chasing the roadrunner, more elaborate systems of authority, but no real investigation into the foundations of my beliefs.

There was also a lot of fear underlying my parenting. Everything was high stakes. If I let him get away with this transgression today, what will happen when he's an adult? In my better times I would have patience to parent him, to teach rather than to criticize, but this never seemed to last long enough to become the dominant paradigm. Every time I would move toward a more egalitarian model, I would feel an irresistible pressure to assert control. Imagine driving with eyes closed. I could close my eyes for a second, but no more, lest we crash! 

I read books about parenting "strong-willed children" and books on how to work with "hard-way learners," which is ironic, considering I am more the hard-way learner than he. This is a hallmark of the control model, however, since it's easy to attribute to another those very qualities present in myself, i.e. any resistance to my authority is his way of asserting his own, which can't be permitted in a zero-sum game. We would joke sometimes about our little Cool Hand Luke, but I couldn't see that I was the warden from the eponymous movie. One of the psychologists suggested that part of our family problem was that our household had a power imbalance, that our son had usurped too much of the authority. The way forward was for everyone to regain their appropriate level. Naturally, this idea quite appealed to me, for what it meant to me was to assert more authority and power until he could be brought to heel. Again, this is perhaps too simplistic. Certainly this is not how I framed it in my own head. 

Returning to the original question, it seems that the better question is why did it take so long to diagnose the problem correctly (assuming I have). The answer seems to me to be that it's because power corrupts the way I see situations and relationships, making it nearly impossible to distinguish the truth of things, and that power is hard to cede. These reinforce one another in a feedback loop. Unless there is something to disrupt the loop, it continues and strengthens (like those novelty finger cuff traps).

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