The Battle of Peer Dependency: Chapters One and Two - Part Two

Parenting is hard. 

Don't get me wrong; I've loved my son fiercely since I was pregnant with him.  Watching Spawn grow and develop is a mindblowing privilege.  I feel so proud when he gets a new milestone because I know how much effort has gone into that new skill.

Parenting is hard nevertheless. 

My biggest challenge is trying to balance what I think my son needs in terms of unstructured play time - like he's doing right now with his cars, animals and a small garbage can where he keeps his treasures - and fitting structured repetition of skills he needs according to therapists.   The longer story is that my parents were told in the early 1980's that normal development for me and my twin sister required constant structured interactions with my parents.  Because of that combined with my natural personality, I've always been an overachiever who feels pressure to be doing something worthwhile all the time.  I see a lot of my natural drive and anxiety in my son - so I hope that making sure he doesn't feel pressure to be working on something 24/7 might make his struggles with perfectionism easier.

I bring this up because all parents have moments where they question themselves.   I do question myself sometimes; I find myself wondering if my son's delays would be less if I did 4 hours of therapy a day with him instead of a hour.  In my case, I remind myself that hypotonic CP is a real diagnosis my son has and that any lingering feelings I have that his delays are due to not enough parent stimulation are misplaced guilt feelings on my part.

Marina Sears in "The Battle of Peer Dependency" has moments where she asks very canny and insightful questions about her own motives in being excessively controlling in her children's lives:

Even more devastating was the idea that they might never trust Christ as the Lord of their lives. Where are my motives pure? Was I more concerned with the final outcome for their lives, or was I concerned for my reputation? What would people think of my God and me if I have a rebellious child? These were very difficult questions and fears to conquer. What I didn't see was that I was allowing Satan the ability to work in my children's lives to accomplish the very things I feared. (pg. 24)

Most of her questions have very unusual comparisons.  I find it very unfortunate for Mrs. Sears that she can't bring herself to ponder what some of these questions mean. 

The normal worry about children's salvation is phrased as "will my kids be saved or will I lose them when they die?".  That's a sad, but completely balanced worry in an evangelical household.   "Will my kids be saved or will our family look bad?" by comparison means that Mrs. Sears on some unconscious level is more worried that her family will look bad than losing her children to hell!  That's a telling glimpse into how strongly Mrs. Sears needs her life to be a shining example of God's Whatever rather than simply living her life by her Christian beliefs and letting the rest of the world decide what they will based on her life.

The next question amuses me because Marina Sears sets up a forced teaming situation involving God.  If she had said "What would people think of me if I have a rebellious child?", the level of self-centeredness in the question would be blindingly obvious to readers.   That question also leads to the rather pat answer of "People would think you have a rebellious child" - but I realize that a Good Christian Widow Who God Has Blessed (TM) would have to face the usual gossip mill about having a teenager who acts like a teenager - and she doesn't want to do that.    Throwing God in the question makes the question seem deep, relevant, and meaningful on a surface level - but it's pretty daft on examination.   I imagine a Worldly Person finally making up their mind to be saved - but they find out that Marina Sears has a teenager who is rebelling! - and that person decides not to be saved because God.   More broadly, tossing God into that question shows that Marina Sears uses petty power plays to control her kids.    "You want to spend time with your friends?  God doesn't want that that and I'm just doing what God wants!" 

These were important questions - but instead of thinking about them - Mrs. Sears decided that any questions must be due to Satan.   "You want to spend time with your friends?  God doesn't want that - BUT SATAN DOES!  Who do you want to follow - God or Satan?"

Sounds like a miserable place to grow up.

But don't worry - blaming peer dependency for family issues took the heat off the kids and what miserable specimens of Christians they were:

For five years I struggled with peer dependency, not understanding what it was. I thought if Dave would just have more character or love God and his family more, the struggle would disappear. God ultimately took us through a 7 and 1/2 year time frame would you use to shape and mold a very unique, amazing, young man who desires Christ to be the Lord of his life. (pg. 25-26)

Teenagers are annoying as all get out.  Many of them are simply difficult to live with between the hormones, the desire for independence and the connected desire to not do mundane chores or other duties that are beneath their newly found status as a person who should be treated as an adult. 

I say this as someone who chose to work with classrooms filled with extra-rebellious teenagers - and I really enjoyed my students.

Yes, teenagers are annoying - but adults should be mature and self-aware enough to roll with the teenagers in their lives.  After all, I remember telling my friends that "no one really understood me!" when I was around 14.  As my husband jokes, the feeling passes but the bad poetry created from teenage angst lasts forever! I remember being continually irritated by my parents - and that's with parents who were pretty relaxed. 

Instead of managing her own feelings, Mrs. Sears blames her son.  The frustrations and irritations of living with Dave as a teenager are due to Dave's imperfections as a person rather than the natural outgrowth of a developmental stage.  The failures that Mrs. Sears assigns to her son are especially caustic; he has a bad character and lacks love for God/family.   I've worked with 600 teenage students conservatively as a teacher in an alternative education system.  Of those teenagers, I've had around 6 who had severe, pervasive and frightening issues surrounding morality - what I would loosely refer to 'character'.   The remaining 595 students had well-formed moral characters; they simply had the normal human struggles to do the right thing (like do classwork, use kind words, don't spread gossip) rather than the wrong thing.  Similarly, those 595 teens loved their families even while driving their parents and siblings completely bonkers at time.  The only ones who showed conditional love towards their families were the same kids who had pervasive, dangerous issues surrounding behavior - and point-blank - those kids had psychological issues that needed highly supervised treatment. 

I bring that up because if Dave was showing signs of full-blown psychopathy he wouldn't have been magically cured in 7.5 years of Mrs. Sears working on him. 

No, Dave was a normal kid who had the audacity of not wanting to do everything with his family to the exclusion of everyone else in the world.

And really - who could blame him?