During a breakthrough with a technically minded client involving mapping the debilitating steps of OCD into a flow chart to mimic a domestic hot water system, he appeared increasingly enthusiastic.
These moments, when someone who might have struggled for so long, arrives at a point of clarity, are a gift. I observe but I’m no longer a part of it. I may have been a guide or a conduit, but now the process takes on a life of its own and becomes his.
As my client talks excitedly about the metaphorical plumbing, he uses a depth of knowledge and expertise that leaves me trailing in his wake.
‘I’ll take your word for that because I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I say.
‘Really? You’ll be in trouble if you ever have a problem with your hot water tank,’ he laughs.
I decide not to tell him that I don’t think I have a hot water tank, although I’m not completely sure.
My ignorance around matters of practical home repair reminds me of an argument with my wife many years ago when she pithily said to me, ‘There’s more to running a house than making dinner.’
While this is undoubtedly true, it is the only part of running a house that I’m good at, unless you count moderately difficult computer-related issues.
My father could never do anything practical either and I quickly became conscious of how much other kids were learning from their dads that I wasn’t getting.
This knowledge gap had two distinct impacts on me. First, it led to a deep repository of self-loathing and criticism whenever I messed up a rudimentary task. Second, it later made me worry about the legacy I was passing on to my children.
Myopically focused on what I couldn’t do, I lost sight of my capabilities and ignored the hypocritical aspects of myself that preached one thing while routinely doing something else.
‘Travel broadens the mind. Take every opportunity you can’, my father would regularly say to me growing up.
Apart from whatever forays he made in the war, of which he never spoke, I am certain my father never travelled anywhere for leisure, not even twenty miles across the channel to France.
But there were also aspects of life on which he never offered any advice. Music, words, and numbers were all topics for which his enthusiasm was impossible to ignore, so it can’t be a coincidence that I too embrace all three despite his never outwardly encouraging me to do so.
Children, amongst their many other qualities, can spot incongruence from a distance, even though they’ll probably say nothing about it.
There are many times I’ve worked with couples who spend most evenings figuratively ‘knocking eight bells out of one another’ only to try and convince me that, ‘the children don’t know we’re having difficulties, we’re good at keeping it from them.’ Yeah, right.
If you grew up with warring parents, you’ll be familiar with the thick air that hung in the house after an argument, even if it ended long before you arrived home. You’ll also probably have learned to be fearful of conflict having never seen it resolved well if at all.
You might also, at around the same time, have heard one of your parents advise you, ‘Never go to bed on an argument’, a statement they are really making to themselves, but one they cannot find the strength to heed.
I’m quite sure I have not been immune to this sort of inadvertent duplicity in parenting my children, although I’ve become more congruent over the years, consciously providing explanations of my reality rather than trying to sell an obscure truth contradicted by my actions.
There’s a price to pay for telling children one thing while demonstrating another, and it’s usually paid by them.
If you tell your kids that everything is fine in your marriage when it isn’t, or that they should drink water or eat an apple when they feel hungry while you scoff a family size bag of crisps on the sofa, don’t be surprised if they grow up questioning their own perceptions.
That’s right, you might be gaslighting your kids.
It can also create in them a conflict between trusting words above actions or the other way around. When they’re adults, this might manifest as,
Hyper-vigilance in relationships, always looking for the non-existent hidden meanings behind words.
Difficulty trusting verbal expressions of love or positive feedback.
Developing a tendency to ‘test’ relationships to see if actions are in line with words, a neediness which, ironically, often results in their managing to break, with their unshakeable doubt, what was previously sound.
People-pleasing, difficulty in making decisions, imposter syndrome, trouble speaking openly, and a tendency toward emotional detachment to reduce the risk of getting hurt can all be consequences of receiving contradictory messages from caregivers in childhood.
So if you thought that telling your children to limit their screen time while you’re texting away furiously at the breakfast table was harmless, you might need to reconsider.
Paradoxically inherent is perhaps the desire to be a perfect parent. Constantly reminding children of the beliefs and values that you want to instill in them while simultaneously being poked in the ribs by failings you feel you can ill-afford to show in a kind of ‘it’s too late for me but I can still save you’ scenario.
Most valuable of all to children though, is seeing their parents as imperfect, doing their best, fucking stuff up, but trying to improve where they can.
There is a crucial difference between getting stuck in behavioural patterns that we tell our children to avoid, versus modeling and acknowledging ways to work through our struggles. The likely consequence of such humility is that children recognise growth as a constant and achieveable objective which is best pursued from a base of imperfection.
For my part, I have been all-in when it comes to showing my children how faulty I am, but I hope I’ve done a reasonable job at demonstrating a desire to grow.
When I got tired of corporate life, I left and became an evangelist for charting one’s own path, retraining as a psychotherapist and spending an inordinate proportion of my time walking with dogs in the countryside and having naps at times when other people are in meetings saturated with PowerPoint.
I’m not sure what impact it had on my son because he now works in the City, although I don’t think it was a rebellion to my yearning for a simple life. I think he just quite likes having some money, which is fair enough.
Regardless of what my children do professionally, I am definitely modelling the prioritisation of contentment which might be the best I can offer.
I often think about what my children will take from me through their lives then, recently, an odd thing happened that seemed to appear without warning.
If there is a constant in the way my children will think of me, it is the connection between me and the kitchen, which, now I’m thinking about it, is exactly the way I think of my mother.
I’ve cooked for them and with them all of their lives, it’s been a central pillar of family life, and I hoped that one day something of my love for cookery would rub off on them.
One day, out of nowhere a few weeks before Christmas, my daughter said,
‘Can you teach me how to bake sourdough bread?’
I tried to contain my excitement.
‘Yes, sure,’ I replied, certain that nothing would come of what would prove to be a passing phase.
Then, a week or so later, my son FaceTimed and asked me if I could talk him through jointing a chicken and making a stock.
I nearly spat out my tea.
We sat together, virtually, him in his kitchen while we cooked together and he put together his first homemade stock.
I imagine my pride was similar to that I’ll feel one day if I become a grandfather.
A couple of days after our online cooking lesson my son sent me a picture of a Ramen he’d made from scratch, using his own chicken stock.
As for my daughter, she’s knocking out several loaves a week, all of which look amazing and taste as good.
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