F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems (2015)

chapter eight

fuck parenthood

Depending on the day, the child, and where the bail is set, parenthood can either feel like the most worthwhile thing we do or the worst mistake of our lives. Either way, it’s certainly not guaranteed to make us happy or give us good results for year after year of hard work. It isn’t just about the circle of life, but also the fundamental suck of life—that it’s relentlessly unfair—and the best efforts at parenting can still result in a baby that grows up to be an illiterate toilet goblin.

It doesn’t help that the major causes of horribly difficult kids, from genes to brain wiring, are due to parents but also completely out of their hands. The only way parents can control the traits they pass down to their kids is by using birth control, but after that, all bets are off.

That means parents always feel that their kid’s issues are their fault, even when there’s nothing they can do. If you want to have a child in order to have a beautiful, permanent experience, just get a tattoo of a dolphin riding a unicorn over a manatee. It will always be with you, stay exactly the way you made it, and bring you and the world joy without ever crashing your car or getting a stupid tattoo of its own.

So before you freak out about your parenting mistakes and make things worse by trying to figure out and solve problems that can’t actually be solved, stop and ask yourself how much control you really have. Your goal, as a parent, isn’t to solve your problem with a child; it’s to figure out what’s solvable, so neither you nor your child has to go crazy.

The way to figure out what you can solve as a parent, of course, is to try everything and see what succeeds. Then, instead of trying again and again, accept your helplessness, keep up morale, and hope it’s just a stage and not the birth of Hitler II.

Respect the parent who solves problems, but reserve your highest honors for the parent whose kids are problems but finds the courage to keep going and accept them anyway. And remember, being a good parent doesn’t mean you should worship parenthood; it’s worthwhile, but it’s frequently an affliction, as you will often tell your children during their lives, that’s not fair.

Not Ruining Your Baby

People like to say that childbirth is a miracle, but to paraphrase the late comedian Bill Hicks, having a baby is as much of a miracle as eating food and then passing a turd. It’s a basic biological function, not the parting of a raging sea with a wooden staff.

Perhaps it’s that kind of “miraculous” thinking that puts an insane amount of pressure on so many new parents during their child’s early years. They obsess over every decision involving their personal baby Jesus, from what preschool waiting list to get on to whether or not they’ll expose their child to the evils of TV to the precise plan for how they’re going to bring their miraculous creation into the world (in a bathtub/yurt, with no drugs/extra pain, with a midwife/chorus of handmaidens, etc.).

There’s obviously a good side to getting obsessed about the healthy development of babies and children; fetuses and newborns are vulnerable, and the first few years of development have a big impact on a child’s life. Parents who worry more about doing things right are probably going to have healthier children who develop a wider range of skills. Parents who worry too much, however, are going to make themselves and their miracle crazy.

That’s because, in spite of modern medicine and new knowledge about child development, neither parents nor doctors nor the world’s most in-demand holistic midwives have that much control over the strengths, weaknesses, and many potential illnesses that a child brings into the world with its genes.

The fact that we feel increasingly responsible does not mean that we have correspondingly greater powers over the outcome, just a few more tricks for heading off certain disasters. So whether you’re responding to instinct or culture, don’t let yourself feel totally responsible for what happens to your baby.

Instead of operating in panic mode, do smart research. Read all the books that you think will help (namely the ones with practical advice that are written by experts, not celebrities who happen to be fertile), talk to all the parents you respect, and reflect on what you think did and didn’t work for you as a kid.

Parents have to make lots of decisions that may impact their kids, from minor (whether to name their kid Aiden, Jayden, or Kayden) to major (how to proceed if your child gets sick and the treatment can’t be provided in gummy form). If you can calmly assess each choice’s risk versus benefit, instead of immediately freaking out because the wrong decision could turn your child into a sea monster, you’ll make your job as a parent, as well as your kid’s life, much easier and even enjoyable.

If you’ve got the resources, go ahead and buy the best stroller, the finest dairy cow to ensure the most organic milk, the fluffiest sleep sack that will give your little one the sweetest dreams. Just remind yourself periodically that conception and early development are particularly susceptible to bad luck, and that your power to prevent it, no matter what stroller you wasted thousands of dollars on, is limited.

Give yourself credit not for producing a healthy baby but for doing your best to promote health in a chaotic world, and give yourself extra credit when things don’t go well in spite of your best efforts. Childbirth may not be a miracle, but successfully raising a healthy child, despite what the universe throws at you, always is.

Here is what parents wish they had to ensure healthy development, but don’t:

✵ A molecular condom that could protect your infant from all genetic disasters

✵ A giant, plastic bubble that ensures the world’s safest, risk-free pregnancy

✵ A spouse who’s also a Zen master

✵ A technique for delivering a child in the time it takes and with the risk required to eat a Cinnabon

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To make sure fetuses are healthy

✵ To make delivery a positive, safe, and sublime experience

✵ To make sure breastfeeding goes well

✵ To develop a positive bond with a baby right away

✵ To ensure normal development

Here are three examples:

There’s nothing I take more seriously than my baby’s health, and I know how important it is to breastfeed, but for reasons neither my doctor nor I can seem to explain or remedy, my breast milk just will not come in properly. I spent two agonizing weeks trying, during which time I was in pain and my daughter was continually wailing for food, but eventually I had to give in and start feeding her formula. I know I’m doing what’s necessary, but I can’t stop worrying about the harm I’m doing her immune system (and maybe her brain, who knows?) by not giving her the breast milk she needs. It doesn’t help that all the other moms I know react to my decision with barely concealed disgust, as if I were a war criminal or something. I can’t escape feeling like I’ve failed as a parent before I’ve even started. My goal is not to feel like the worst mother in the world every time I think of what I’ve exposed her to.

I love my husband and we both really want kids, but I can’t stop thinking about the problems I may be creating by having waited until I’m thirty-five, and then choosing a nerdy, fifty-year-old academic researcher to be the father. The risk, of course, is that between our ages and careers (we’re both PhDs), the chances are very high that any child we have will be somewhere on the autism spectrum. I’d like to think I’d be able to rise to the challenge of having a kid with special needs, but I’d feel horribly guilty for purposely bringing a kid into the world who’d have to suffer through a difficult life. My goal is to stop being paralyzed about having kids (and what issues they may have) and decide what to do.

Right after my son was born, we discovered that he has cerebral palsy that affects his right leg. So far there have been no signs of mental impairment, but I see how much harder he has to work on crawling and walking than his big sister ever did. I wonder if I somehow did something to give him this handicap and I promise myself I will do everything in my power to make sure he never feels different and gets all the help he needs. He’s starting kindergarten, so we moved to a school district that has more resources for special needs students, even though we can’t really afford the taxes, and the teachers know I’m ready to march in with an advocate and lawyer if I feel he’s not accommodated properly. My wife says I’m ignoring my other kid and making my son feel worse, but she’s missing the point. My goal is to make sure this problem will never, ever hold him back.

It’s hard to describe to people what most mental illnesses feel like, but if you want to understand how severe anxiety feels, become responsible for an infant.

Not only are these creatures completely dependent on you for every basic need, but they also demand constant attention and will prevent you from taking care of your own basic needs. They might grow, but your sense of duty does not shrink proportionately.

Unfortunately, most major problems threatening a child’s safety and development can’t be prevented or corrected, even by the most attentive parent in the world. Holding yourself responsible will potentially exhaust you, put an unbearable strain on your marriage, and turn you into the thing you fear most, a bad parent.

That’s why parenting is the ultimate walk-a-fine-line job, requiring you to knock yourself out only for the big-deal threats and truly curable problems, while ignoring the multitude of terrible things you can do nothing about. That way, you can go out, make a living, and not actually go nuts for real.

From the moment you start thinking about pregnancy, you enter a world of worries and magical ideas about controlling the creation and production of a perfect, safe baby. Of course, it’s the supreme importance of that task, together with its impossibility, that drives everyone into a frenzy of fear and guilt.

Yes, breastfeeding helps, as does good nutrition, avoiding alcohol, and delivering within close range of good medical care. However, the scientifically proven benefits of these behaviors help a little some of the time, rather than guaranteeing a good result all of the time. Besides, there are always ways to salvage benefit and reduce risk when the solution you most desire is not possible. Indeed, making adjustments and compromises is what parenting is about.

Instead of seeing yourself as a soldier protecting your baby from pain and pathogens at any cost, be a manager who has to assess the relative benefit, risk, and affordability of many different options. You never have enough time and money to do everything, so get used to feeling as if you’re making compromises you’re not entirely confident about while other people seem to be doing it better.

And by the way, there will always be other people, mostly mothers, with strong opinions. Due to their evangelical nature, it’s best to view them as the kind of religious solicitors that go door to door; when they start to preach breastfeeding and brimstone, just be polite, keep them at a distance, and lock the door behind them.

Assuming you’ve thought through your options and done your best with what you’ve got, stand by your choices, particularly when something goes wrong, as it sometimes does. Never judge yourself by how well your baby is doing, but rather by how well you’re able to manage when your resources aren’t what you want them to be.

Don’t get scared by possible genetic risks until you’ve assessed them carefully. Newspapers always simplify cause and effect by taking a complicated study and turning it into a headline designed to scare the shit out of everyone over thirty-five. Read on, and consult experts to find out whether the risk is raised by 2 percent or 100 percent.

Remember, there are benefits to being older, geekier parents; the fact that you are old, smart, and have lots in common can make you better parents and partners. Your intellectual genes are more likely to give you a smart kid than they are to cause autism, and a smart kid is valuable, not just to you but to the universe. Instead of letting fear get you to think of nothing but worst-case scenarios, remember that parenthood requires us all to accept bad-gene risks while hoping that good-gene benefits will prevail.

If something does go wrong, like cerebral palsy, parental dedication can make a huge difference—for good, bad, or both. Stories about total parental obsession triumphing over ignorance, nay-saying, and bad advice always make for good TV movies and segments on newsmagazine shows.

Unfortunately, this kind of obsession makes for bad experiences for your spouse, other kids, and anyone who might be trying to help. If you are absolutely determined to completely normalize the life of a disabled child, you will exhaust your family’s material and emotional resources without achieving your goal.

Learn as much as you can about your child’s disability and decide for yourself what treatments and remedial programs are worth pursuing. If they don’t work, however, or if they cost too much for the likely benefit, don’t get obsessed or hold yourself responsible for finding an answer. Accepting your limits and conserving resources for future needs is part of being a good parent. It won’t give you a good feeling, but tough decisions rarely do. Instead, it will allow you to focus on other stuff, like just having fun with your kid.

A good parent is vigilant, ready to work hard, and willing to make sacrifices for his or her baby’s health. A great parent, however, can bear the anxiety of choosing between various sacrifices, knowing that bad outcomes can result from good choices, and that kids are vulnerable to many bad outcomes that no parent controls. If you choose acceptance over anxiety, both you and your child will have a better chance of survival.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t (always) have:

✵ A trouble-free pregnancy and delivery

✵ A perfect, happy baby

✵ Good genetic luck

✵ Sufficient resources

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Avoid pregnancy until you have the resources you feel you need

✵ Reduce the risk of problem pregnancies and deliveries to a level you can accept

✵ Make sacrifices when you believe they’re worthwhile and cost-effective

✵ Negotiate management differences between spouses

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Assess the resources (money, time, partnership) you’ll need to raise kids before having them

✵ Avoid having kids if you don’t have those resources, and plan for ways to obtain them

✵ Educate yourself about possible health and development problems and the benefits and costs of methods for managing them

✵ Don’t expect to find answers that don’t have costs and risks

✵ Learn to make compromises and don’t expect to feel good about them

✵ Give yourself credit for making tough choices, regardless of how they turn out

Your Script

Here’s what to tell yourself/your spouse about pregnancy, delivery, and child development.

Dear [Self/Person Who Should Be Doing More or Hasn’t Been Doing Enough or Is Probably Judging Me for Not Doing the Right Thing]:

I feel like I can’t possibly do enough to compensate for [our bad genes/stress-induced fetal damage/my baby turning into a serial killer], but I know I’ve got a good partner and we’ve put together a good team with reasonable plans for [pregnancy/delivery/schooling/long-term psychotherapy]. I think we’ve got a good chance of [synonym for “not fucking up”], given horrible uncertainties.

Good Parent vs. Overprotective Parent vs. Bad Parent

Stopping Constant Parent/Child Conflict

Misunderstandings with strangers—be they fellow drivers just trying to survive a lane closing, supermarket patrons struggling to find one stupid open register, or even coworkers who just want to know who’s stealing their Lean Cuisines out of the fridge—are annoying yet understandable. After all, it’s easy to miscommunicate or misunderstand someone you’ve never met whose intentions you have no reason to trust.

That’s why, when you find yourself in perpetual conflict with your own child, it’s both baffling and heartbreaking. Your kid isn’t a jerk in an SUV trying to cut you off but a human you cocreated whom you’ve known since she was preborn.

You feel like your connection to your child, and the effort you put into parenting your child, should make such rifts impossible. If parents can’t resolve conflict with a child, they assume there’s something they’ve failed to do as parents, whether it’s to communicate, instill the proper values, or express enough approval or disapproval.

Unfortunately, however, we often don’t know why certain kids are in constant conflict with their parents; frequently, parents who are obviously competent and who get along well with their other kids have lots of trouble with one. Some kids are more irritable by nature, or experience mood disorders. Other kids just see the world differently and can’t be the kind of person their parents want.

If you’re caught in a prolonged conflict with your child, get professional advice and ask yourself whether there’s anything you can do better as a parent. In many cases, however, there’s nothing wrong with your parenting; there’s just something about your child that is hard to accept and understand, and impossible to change.

If that’s the case, you may still have a great kid, but not necessarily one you can talk to easily, spontaneously, and without anger and inner reservations. After all the good work you’ve done as a parent, that’s hardly fair, but that’s life.

Good parenting can’t necessarily solve or prevent conflict, but a good parent can manage it for the sake of a long-term relationship, so he can keep the child in his life, whether or not they sometimes feel like incompatible strangers to each other.

Here are solutions to parent-child conflicts that you’d like but can’t have:

✵ A kid who always says just what you were about to say

✵ A temperament that isn’t a little too much like your kid’s (but yours is better, of course)

✵ A spouse who is better at finding an answer than a source of blame, especially since it’s usually you

✵ A way of addressing your child’s grievances that doesn’t create further grievances to bicker over

Among the wishes parents express about their conflicts with kids are:

✵ To find a sweeter carrot or a bigger stick

✵ To reach a common understanding of right and wrong behavior

✵ To agree on priorities and loyalties

✵ To not put one another on edge

Here are three examples:

Back before her puberty, my daughter was a cheerful kid who got along well with everyone in the family and didn’t hate to be in my presence. The second the hormones hit, however, she became unhappy, superficial, and perpetually antagonistic. Her grades are failing, she’s obsessed with boys, and she responds to even the most polite question or suggestion with a truckful of attitude and the need to start an argument. I’m completely losing my mind. I don’t know if this is my fault or if it’s just a phase, but if we can’t stop battling soon, neither one of us is going to survive to see her graduate high school. My goal is to stop the perpetual fighting.

I’m not too happy with the direction my sixteen-year-old son is going in, and I have no choice but to let him know it. He avoids studying, doesn’t care about homework, spends all his time working on his horrible car, and says he really doesn’t want to go to college. I expect more from him and have let him know it—I hate to see him make so many foolish choices that he’s going to live to regret—but all it seems to do is lead to bickering and resentment with him and worry and sadness with my wife. My goal is to point my son in a better direction while not arguing with him all the time.

I never had a moment of conflict with my son until he married his wife a year ago, and since then, we agree on nothing. His wife is impossible, doesn’t like to spend time with my husband and me, and tells our son we’ve been a bad influence on him somehow. He doesn’t necessarily agree with her, but he doesn’t stand up to her and tends to go along with what she wants. The things she’s said about us are awful, but he won’t ask her to apologize, so we avoid her, but then we seldom see him. When we do see him, he tries to get us to be nicer to her, but we honestly don’t know how since she’s the one who goes after us. My goal is stop the bickering and restore the good relationship we once had with my son.

Once you’ve tried to do everything in your power to get along better with your kid—attempts at being more understanding; good cop/bad cop with your spouse; advice from shrinks, friends, and books (why, hello!); attempts at being less understanding—it’s time to concede that you are actually powerless and figure out how you’re going to deal with it.

If a hormonal shift has turned your little girl into a giant terror, check to make sure your child isn’t dangerously depressed, because, for teens especially, anger is depression’s most obvious symptom. There are many depression questionnaires online, but they’re all based on asking straightforward, commonsense questions (about mood, negative thoughts, suicidal impulses, etc.) and not about being subjected to secret pressures, losses, or trauma.

If, regardless of her answers to you or questionnaires, you think she might be depressed, get her evaluated by a mental health professional. If you don’t believe her answers, or get none, the big question changes from whether she’s depressed to whether she’s suicidal. Take her to an emergency room, regardless of her objections, if you have any doubts about her safety.

Keep in mind that parents are in the best position, potentially, to investigate and sort out the causes of an outburst of irritability or possible depression because you have the best insider access and knowledge. Unless your kid is much more likely to talk to a nice shrink than to you, the shrink has much less to work with than you do.

If there’s no issue for the child to talk about (either with you or a shrink), no hormone to be treated by a pediatrician (thyroid or otherwise), and no depression to be addressed with a psychiatrist, then the diagnosis is adolescence, for which the only possible cure is time.

Then all you can do is grit your teeth, set limits on really bad behavior, and mourn the loss of the nice kid you used to know, hoping that she’ll return someday, and if she doesn’t, hope she finds a spouse who is totally immune to moodiness and willing to take her off your hands. Meanwhile, respect yourself for being patient and tolerant when you have your own sorrow (and bratty door slamming) to deal with.

If you are sad about the kind of person your child is turning out to be, try to be objective about their strengths and not to confuse the chasm between who they are and your expectations with potential weaknesses or faults. Nonacademic children growing up in an intellectual family, for example, will tend to feel like failures, even if they’re talented at sports or art. That’s why it’s important to find a way to value your kids for who they are, even if they’re nothing like you.

Yes, it’s worthwhile looking for learning disabilities and ways of using a child’s strengths to overcome obstacles. Kids who are good with cars, for instance, often have superior visual-spatial skills that may not be reflected in their ability with words or numbers. If good tutoring, including whatever you and other adults in the family can provide, doesn’t work, however, your bigger goal is acceptance, not academic performance.

Don’t downplay the value of learning, but encourage your child by reminding him that many people learn more effectively after they leave school because their brains learn better by doing, not by sitting and reading. As long as he’s found something he’s good at and loves to do (and that thing is legal, nonaddictive, and can lead to a paycheck), then there’s no reason to torture your family by trying to talk him out of it.

Meanwhile, keep your disappointment to yourself. If you want to bring out the best in your child, you don’t have to force yourself to love him for who he is, but you do have to act as if you do, and stay positive. If you want to prevent conflict from dragging you both down, then it’s time to give up whatever plan for him you had in mind.

If conflict arises from competing loyalties and commitments, asserting your right as family leader to determine priorities will probably backfire. You may be right, for instance, to resent the mean, unjustified, disruptive influence of a child’s spouse. The cliché is that mothers-in-law are evil, but many begin their reign of terror by being a pain to their husband’s parents (and maybe also their parents, as well as any human in earshot).

Once you’ve done your best to eliminate misunderstanding and establish a better relationship with this spouse, however, you have to face the fact, if strife continues, that it’s beyond your control, your expectations must change, and expressing your real feelings is bound to push your son away from you and into his wife’s insane arms.

Instead of trying to win your child back to your side, or protesting the loss of trust, stop expecting the usual easy communication and happy participation in family life you always hoped for. Instead, accept your loss and prevent it from getting worse by treating criticism and boycotts diplomatically, as differences that you’re always willing to tolerate, even if you often disagree.

The more outrageous the criticism you receive, the less reason to take it to heart. Yes, it hurts to hear it from your child’s lips, but that’s the nature of his or her marriage, not the nature of your relationship or a reflection on your job as a parent. A good parent can have a child who chooses a crappy spouse, a decision over which you have no control.

If you’re too quick to express yourself with your kids when you’re hurt or angry, and your openness makes you a welcome addition to any poker game, learn how to keep your mouth shut and assess the reasons for conflict with your child. Sometimes you’ll find a solution, but more often you’ll find the causes of friction are due to outside forces that require the skills of a good lawyer, hostage negotiator, or magician, but not a good parent. At that point, it’s time to accept that conflict, along with the need to manage and endure it, is now just a part of the family.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ The kid you used to know

✵ Your old authority, trust, and shared values

✵ Freedom to speak spontaneously without stirring up misunderstanding

✵ Spontaneous friendliness rather than careful feeling management

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Learn not to respond to small provocations

✵ Set limits when necessary, while smiling

✵ Blame no one for the undeserved painfulness of your relationship

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Try everything you and others have thought about to ease conflict and reduce misunderstanding

✵ Accept unavoidable conflict, even if you have to live with it for years

✵ Set limits when necessary, without letting legitimate disappointment and moral disapproval make them negative or pessimistic

✵ Find strengths in disappointing differences

✵ Don’t attack differences in values or loyalties that you can’t change

✵ Respect rather than lament the extra effort this parenting requires

Your Script

Here’s what to tell your child/yourself when you’re unable to talk freely without quarreling.

Dear [Self/Dearest, Impossible Child],

I can’t listen to your [sweet voice/provocative arguments/dumb excuses] without wondering whether you’re [thinking this through/brought up by someone else/part of an elaborate prank], but I know you process information in your own [flawed/deranged/unique] way, and that a degree of [misunderstanding/conflict/loathing] is unavoidable. I will work hard to avoid [nasty statements/bitter regrets/the temptation to abandon you in a Walmart parking lot] and stay positive while we get through this difficult [antonym for “love fest”] together.

Raising a Jerk

When you see a toddler having an epic tantrum in the airport, or a teenage girl on the street with her tush hanging out of her shorts, or even a college guy outside of a bar having a tantrum that would rival the toddler’s, it’s tempting to wonder what kind of parents would let humans turn out this way.

The irony, of course, is that they might be the good kind of parents. They just have the wrong (or just young, stupid, or drunk) kind of kid.

Logic may dictate that good work yields good results, but in the world of parenting, the logic of cause and effect is often nonexistent. Being truly deserving of a “World’s Best Mommy” mug doesn’t guarantee that you’ll wind up with a respectful, friendly relationship with good kids, just a new vessel for your coffee.

Of course, if your kid is turning out badly, there’s much that can be done to attempt to reverse course. You have power to limit some bad behaviors and reward good ones, provide incentives to keep busy, and give him or her good coaching. These methods are often helpful at getting a kid back on track or, at the very least, keeping him out of jail.

When good interventions don’t work, however, don’t assume that either your parenting or your kid’s will is to blame. It may seem like your child chooses to be bad or make “bad decisions,” but more likely, there’s something wrong inside of him, and you, the school, and the therapists, from the bleeding hearts to the tough-love types, just don’t have the answer.

Maybe time, hard knocks, and neurodevelopment will help in the end, but for the time being, the situation, like your kid, is out of your control and unpleasant to be around.

There’s a certain freedom in knowing that, despite the lack of results, you’ve done your best. At that point, you don’t have to repeat treatments that haven’t worked, protective sacrifices that aren’t effective, or efforts that expose your family to harm for no good reason. Now you can use your helplessness to be more helpful, knowing you’re managing any parent’s worst nightmare while feeling secure that you’re not the nightmare parent behind it all.

Here’s what should be shaping your kid’s character, but isn’t:

✵ Your own good example, perfect religious school attendance, and residency in a neighborhood with impeccable lawns

✵ All those vegetables, vitamins, and SAT books you made him consume

✵ A shit-your-pants scared-straight experience that involves not just prisoners but angry bears and hypnosis

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To understand what went wrong

✵ To figure out how to improve their parenting in order to improve their child

✵ To change a child’s choices

✵ To get help, treatment, a rescue (as if there was help that was likely to be helpful)

✵ To reach, inspire, and motivate with better ideals

Here are three examples:

I’ve lost all confidence in my sixteen-year-old son and none of the teachers or counselors at his school has been able to get through to him or get him off the path of flunking out. He steals anything in this house he can get his hands on so he can get money to buy drugs, and then insists he didn’t do it. If the drugs weren’t dangerous enough, he once passed out while making mac and cheese and almost burned the house down. He also took out the car without permission and crashed it into a tree in our driveway. We don’t have the money to send him to a therapeutic boarding school, and insurance sure won’t cover it, so we’re helpless to watch him suffer and we suffer along with him. My goal is to figure out how to help him before he really hurts himself or, God forbid, someone else.

After the fifth time my teen daughter was caught stealing from the same store, they decided to press charges, and I can’t blame them. No matter how hard my wife and I try to get through to her about her shoplifting—lectures, punishment, rage—nothing seems to work. We sent her to therapy, but that was also useless. She just insists that she can’t help herself. Now her stealing has gotten her a court date, but I know she’s not going to show up unless my wife and I force her into the car and take her there, which is time I have to take off work, which is time I need since I have no idea how we’re going to pay for a lawyer. My goal is to help her avoid getting convicted and having a record, then figure out how to get her to stop stealing ever again.

From the time my son was little, he’s always had anger problems, and he’s been in therapy off and on since he was five. He can be a charming, loving guy, but when something goes wrong, his eyes just go dark and he rages like he’s possessed. Afterward, he’s very sorry and ashamed, but he still really sees his anger as the fault of whoever upset him. He’s gotten arrested a couple of times for bar fights, but our lawyer was able to get the charges down to a fine and probation. We were relieved when he got married last year because it seemed like he’d finally grown up and calmed down, but now his wife is beginning to look scared and I’ve spotted a couple bruises. My goal is for my wife and me to figure out how to help him control himself before he really hurts her or anyone else and ruins his life.

When you know or care for someone who’s falling into bad habits (addiction, uncontrolled anger, an intense new fitness routine), getting them help is never easy. When that troubled someone is your child, figuring out how to help him becomes nearly impossible, or about as hard as he’ll find getting clean, calm, or away from CrossFit.

That’s because even though you feel that you’re ultimately responsible for this person and their well-being, your actual power to help has limits. Meanwhile, you’ll feel a limitless amount of pain if you can’t get your child the right help and he ends up shuffled off to jail, into foster care, or off this mortal coil.

Then your pain is compounded by the fact that the person you feel totally responsible for saving is acting like a petulant, selfish, combative garbage monster from hell; aka, the human you want to help the least. If nothing works, however, good parents must sometimes accept the possibility that, despite worthy attempts, bad behavior and rotten character aren’t going to change any time soon.

At that point, you must acknowledge your inability to protect your child from the consequences of his actions and do what you can to protect yourself and others without giving up any values, love, and willingness to help when new opportunities arise. Unfortunately, the simplest and easiest conclusion is also the hardest to come to terms with.

If a kid’s behavior threatens a family’s safety, and intensive treatments, like hospitalization and moderate-risk medication, haven’t made a difference, parents may do more harm than good by seeking better treatment and not giving first priority to protecting their family. Parents often say they’d take a bullet for their kids, but you shouldn’t be willing to take one from them.

Spell out what you consider dangerous, unacceptable behavior that may, at least temporarily, force you to withdraw your welcome. Find out what your child’s residential options are, given his or her age and the availability of public resources controlled by schools, courts, child protective services, state mental health services, and homeless shelters. Get advice and, hopefully, cooperation from local police.

Make a plan without letting guilt, fear, or a global sense of responsibility force you to compromise or blaming yourself, your child, or others for what he’s doing and what he’s become. If you can’t protect your child from bad behaviors, limit the damage.

If a parent’s prior attempts to defend, intervene, and treat a child’s repeated criminal behavior have been unable to protect that child from doing something to get a record as an adult, a good parent may decide it’s better to let the full weight of the law fall where it may.

While you might feel like such a parent would have to be heartless, the fact is, good parents don’t always have good options, especially when all the best ones haven’t worked. When you can’t help your kid and she won’t help herself, letting life do its own cruel teaching is all you have left. There’s no better way to let your child know that responsibility for managing bad behavior—if it can be managed—belongs with her than to make clear it doesn’t rest with you or other helpers.

Be sympathetic as you talk about how hard it is to control bad habits, and how hard jail might be. If your child blames you for abandonment, reassure her that you’ll never stop caring or trying to help. The most important thing right now, however, is not to avoid fears of abandonment but to stop being a thief who can’t stay out of trouble.

A violent adult kid is your worst-case scenario, and can happen in spite of many years of therapy, medication trials, and legal interventions. It’s a parent’s job not just to get their child access to any and every possible treatment but to be realistic and not cling to false hope about the therapeutic potential of interventions that have already proven ineffective. Instead of searching for more help or a deeper sharing, accept the risk of violence as unavoidable and decide how it should be managed.

If you feel threatened, avoid confrontation, refuse contact, and request help from the police as necessary. If you think the risk of violence is escalating, either against you or anyone else, ask yourself whether a brief stay in a hospital will restore calm or whether jail would be better.

Refuse to listen to your child’s pain if it’s used to justify violent behavior, and don’t talk about what will make him feel better. His feelings are not all that important compared to what will happen if violence gets out of control; if your son is acting like a monster, you can’t put protecting the monster ahead of protecting everyone around him who’s now in danger.

Regardless of good parenting and all the help in the world, some kids can’t stop acting like bad people and doing bad things that are dangerous to themselves, their families, and others. Parents who understand and accept when treatment and good loving can’t help are better able to protect their families and the out-of-control child, even when the threat is from the out-of-control child. Your responsibility to save your child may feel endless, but in reality, it ends when your options do.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ An explanation of what went wrong and why

✵ An assurance that treatment, if done right, will help

✵ A technique that will allow you to control your child’s dangerous behavior

✵ A safety net for your child that doesn’t require you to create one for yourself

✵ A way to keep your child’s record clean without sullying the lives of others

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Learn enough about helpful interventions to know when there’s nothing else left to try

✵ Fight undeserved feelings of blame and responsibility

✵ Balance your responsibility to keep your family safe against your responsibility to rescue a child

✵ Accept helplessness now without ever giving up hope for the future

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Find out everything you can about treatments, interventions, and sources of funding

✵ With your partner, decide how much risk you can tolerate at home, including harm to your child, family, and others

✵ Take desperate measures if necessary, weighing the risk of treatment against what will happen otherwise

✵ Without sounding helpless, declare yourself helpless when you see no new intervention that will help

✵ Limit your responsibility for managing unsafe situations while trying to pass responsibility to those with the resources

Your Script

Here’s what to say about your child’s persistently dangerous behavior.

Dear Child [you can show this to your friends/therapist/probation officer],

I can’t help feeling that you could stop [drugging/lying/stealing my jewelry] while dragging your family into endless debt to [bail bondsmen/therapists/lawyers/injured victims] but I’ve watched you respond to [come-to-Jesus/come-to-Krishna/go to hell/thirty days of twelve-step/prayer/hexes] and nothing is working. I know we’ve done our best and I believe you have also, but you can’t stay home if you [steal/sell drugs/punch]. I can’t provide you with another place to stay, but I’ll try to help you find alternatives, like [list places; e.g., “not this house”]. In the long run, I hope you’ll become a strong, honest person and that’s what matters most. Good luck.

Stages of Child Development: When Your Child Is Likely to Be a Huge Asshole to You

Living with a Learning Disability

When kids respond to a difficult request by insisting they can’t do what’s being asked of them, the common response from teachers, parents, the saleswoman at Gymboree who’s just about to lose her patience is something like “Can’t, or won’t?” It’s a painless way to nudge kids into seeing that they might be giving up too soon, before they actually give something their best shot (or get down off the rack of Easter dresses).

The can’t/won’t question can get tricky, however, when it’s posited to kids who won’t do their homework, focus in class, or generally apply themselves in school. Not every kid with learning problems has a disability, but the ones who really do can’t do the work as easily as everyone else, as much as both they and their parents wish it weren’t so.

You can’t blame parents for trying to push harder when kids don’t learn; it’s their job to see that their kids survive and flourish, and don’t end up spending the next thirty years living in the basement. When it looks like learning won’t happen but basement life will, parents get desperate, and pushing is the first instinct, starting with themselves and their kids before moving on to the teachers, principals, and therapists.

Unfortunately, however, there are many obstacles to learning that can’t be overcome by any of these people, even if they’re working their hardest. A child’s lack of inner resources may block progress and require understanding, while external resources may be limited in ways that parents and school systems can’t help. Even if treatment is readily accessible, it may have only limited benefit.

When you, your child, and education and treatment professionals are doing their best and you still push harder, things get worse. Kids hate school and lie about what they’re (not) doing. Teachers know you think they’re failing and find faults of yours to blame. Your sense of failure will envelop the entire team. That’s okay if it’s your fantasy football team, but not so hot for a team that includes your real child and isn’t easily fixed with imaginary trades and call-ups.

So don’t overfocus on any single obstacle to learning or, like federal politicians, assume that results will always improve if good teachers just do their work. Instead, assess what can and can’t be changed, without letting fear shape your expectations. Be aware that there are many different ways for a child to learn, many opportunities to discover what works best, and many experiments you can do yourself, so that you’re not dependent on experts.

Encourage hard work and develop methods for giving kids focus, priorities, and incentives, but be prepared to look for problems that hard work, good parenting, and good teaching can’t necessarily overcome. Knowing what you can do is as important as knowing what your kid truly can’t, because then you can appreciate the good efforts people are making in a way that can and will make a difference.

Here is what you’d like to have (but don’t have) when your child is not learning:

✵ Bottomless funds for private schools, tutoring, and homework coaching

✵ A method for motivating your child without yelling, nagging, or tears

✵ Penalties for nonperformance that don’t wear you down more than they motivate your child

✵ “Teacher Whisperer” skills that engage educators and soothe them before they become defensive

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To figure out what’s really bothering a child and preventing learning

✵ To get better teaching/general help

✵ To amp up the pressure on a child and the school to get better results

✵ To improve a child’s attitude toward work and self-discipline

Here are three examples:

For as long as my kid has gotten homework assignments, she’s been an absolute pill about doing them. Otherwise, she’s very sweet and reasonable, but when dinner’s over and she knows it’s homework time, she starts avoiding it like her life depends on it. She tries to play video games, starts torturing her brothers, and has a tantrum if we tell her that enough is enough and it has to get done. I was hoping she’d grow out of it, but she’s eleven now and the tantrums are just getting worse. We’re sick of fighting, but she’ll go nowhere without an education, and we’re starting to wonder if this is part of her personality or part of a bigger issue. My goal is to get her to learn with less pain.

Since we discovered our son had learning disabilities two years ago, it’s been a huge struggle to figure out what kind of help he needs, let alone get him any real kind of assistance. I try talking to his teachers, but the ones who do respond seem to just get defensive or apathetic. I know that if we could afford private school or even live in a better school district, this wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s just not financially possible for us right now. I also can’t become a full-time advocate for him since I already have two jobs and three other kids. My goal is to get the help I need to get him the help he needs.

My son has severe learning disabilities, and while we’ve tried a handful of tutors, schools, and therapeutic approaches, none has really worked. His current school has had the most success, but at a recent parent/teacher meeting, they told us that they felt strongly that our son needs ADHD medication, which is the last thing my wife and I want to expose him to. Every parent knows that schools push those pills onto kids just to turn the students into quiet, addicted zombies and line big pharma’s pockets. My goal is to figure out how to help him learn while protecting him from having to take that poison.

Learning disability, like autism and erectile dysfunction, seems like a disorder that was invented in the last twenty years, is suddenly omnipresent, and is thus greeted with a great deal of skepticism.

In reality, the disorders were always there, but the diagnoses weren’t. Autism used to be lumped in with retardation, erectile dysfunction was considered an acceptable step on the march to the grave, and kids with learning disabilities were labeled willful, lazy, and just plain stupid. It might seem like there are more ADHD kids than ever before, but there are also more ways to help them.

For parents, finding out their kid has a learning disability is a mixed bag; on the one hand, you now know that your kid isn’t being a pain in the ass on purpose, but on the other, you have to face the reality of having a kid who’s sick, or at least not normal, and may require treatment that can be difficult, expensive, and iffy.

Once the diagnosis is handed down, however, you have to swallow your disappointment and panic and make some concrete, adult choices. Before you can do that, of course, you have to know what your choices are.

If a child fights homework with avoidance and tantrums, you don’t need an official diagnosis before taking steps to improve the problem. Start by doing your own homework to bone up on behavior management. When homework time arrives, don’t overexplain. Link meaningful consequences to easily observable behaviors, and enforce them without negative emotion.

If that doesn’t work, review what you know about the way your child learns. Look for distractibility and problems following directions, remembering stories, or being able to understand their meaning. Ask teachers what subjects are easier to teach and what techniques seem to work. Finally, if the answers you’re getting point in one likely direction, get testing for learning disabilities.

In the meantime, don’t assume your child doesn’t want to learn and never doubt the value of your own efforts as long as you’re able to keep your frustration from becoming personal and negative.

If a learning disability is diagnosed but the school has little to offer, find out if advocacy will get you more. Hire a good tutor if you can, for at least a few hours, and observe carefully to see what works. Then see whether you can use those techniques yourself or find someone at school or a nonprofit who is responsive and willing to help.

Even though you have reason to feel angry at being underserved, making the teachers feel appreciated will get you a lot further than making them feel guilty and defensive. Get a lawyer willing to take on a worthy cause pro bono and fight for more services if you think it will help, but don’t let teachers feel you don’t value their efforts, even if you don’t. Your goal is to motivate them positively, regardless of whether you like them or respect their work.

Try not to blame yourself or the school system for lacking resources, because those issues are outside your control. Instead, keep looking for ideas you can borrow, respect yourself for persisting, and stay hopeful that a maturing nervous system will allow your child to do better next year.

If lowest risk—nonmedical—interventions don’t work, never feel obliged to try any medical treatment that you, as a parent, regard as too dangerous. On the other hand, it’s your job to examine risk carefully and objectively before you decide, and not let fear or rumor affect your decision.

Learning problems don’t automatically condemn kids to low self-esteem and low-paying jobs, but they carry that possibility, and parents are best able to assess that likelihood for their own kids. If you think your child is losing confidence and picking up bad friends and behaviors, despite attempts at nonmedical treatments, then that’s the risk of not doing anything. If you think that probability is high, then it’s worth intervening in ways that are not perfectly safe, but carry less danger than doing nothing at all.

Stimulant medication is riskier than nonmedical interventions for learning problems, but it’s not hard for parents to check out that chance, which is very low, and to stop the medications quickly if they think they’re harmful or ineffective. Don’t pay too much attention to recommendations or rumors; no one knows in advance whether stimulants will help your child, and you won’t know 100 percent how effective they are unless you try them out.

In the end, you’re the best judge of how badly your child needs a trial of stimulant, how risky that treatment is, and after a couple days of watching what it does, of whether it works well enough to continue. Parents always tell their kids to do things that are necessary, no matter how scary or difficult they seem, and this is an opportunity to set an example.

Learning problems often make kids, parents, and teachers feel helpless and disrespected, but there’s a certain hope in knowing that these issues arise from diagnosable problems, not the kids themselves, and that we now search for beneficial therapies instead of writing kids off or trying to redeem their wicked ways.

Good parenting and teaching may not always be effective at overcoming learning problems, but they’re a start, and if you can keep trying without blaming yourself or others, then learning problems won’t stop you and your kid from having a normal relationship.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ The ability to pick your child’s teacher, school, coach, future, etc.

✵ Obedience from your child, teacher, school, etc.

✵ Confidence in your child’s truthfulness regarding their schoolwork

✵ A total lack of anger and bitterness when your child lies and breaks promises about schoolwork

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Define your approach to learning problems in terms of trying hard and staying positive, not necessarily getting good results

✵ Not let your desire for better learning performance get in the way of a positive, accepting relationship with your child

✵ Not let a failure to learn imply that you, your child, or your relationship is a failure

✵ Keep looking for the things your child can’t do, or is weak at doing, so as to find new tools for getting stronger (other than just willpower and obedience)

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Develop good measures for daily work performance and incentivize them with limits on bad behavior that don’t exhaust or punish you more than your child

✵ Provide assistance with homework, scheduling, and good habit building

✵ If structure and limits aren’t enough, keep looking for other causes of learning problems, such as subtle cognitive impairments, depression, anxiety, and relationship issues

✵ Read up on learning disabilities, review what you know from helping with homework, and draw up your own list of strengths and weaknesses while looking for patterns

✵ Pick teachers’ brains while helping them to feel less ineffective

✵ Focus on what you value about your child, aside from his/her ability to perform at school

Your Script

Here’s what to say to yourself, your child, and other concerned educators and relatives about his/her inability to learn.

Dear [Child/Spouse/Entire Team of Teachers, Tutors, Therapists, and Advice-Giving In-Laws],

I often feel that [you/my child/the bane of my existence] doesn’t want to [learn/do homework/do anything other than fuck up with other fuckups], but I know that your [disorder/attention span/brain, which you inherited from my jailed brother] makes it hard. I truly believe it’s worth trying to keep you [in school and learning/busy and out of trouble/focused and off the pole], and that we have assembled a great team of [teachers/therapists/drill sergeants] who are eager to help you when you aren’t doing [synonym for “everything but what you’re supposed to do”]. We won’t give up on trying to help, but we will also try to accept you the way you are.

Quick Diagnostic: Is Your Kid ADHD, Bad, or Just Lazy?

Rebuilding Divorce-Damaged Parenting

It’s part of our parenting instinct to create harmony in the families we’re responsible for, no matter what the sacrifice, be it gritting our teeth through tasks we don’t enjoy, doing things the other guy’s way, and attending get-togethers with people we don’t like and who don’t like us but with whom we happen to share DNA.

All the while, we’re working hard to keep sarcastic, negative thoughts inside, where they won’t cause hurt or start a feud that future generations will inherit. A good parent develops lots of diplomatic skills and takes pride in maintaining the pax parentis.

Part of what divorce does, unfortunately, is directly disrupt not just these parental instincts but your child’s expectations. By not keeping the family together, you’re potentially disappointing everyone, and violating some credo in Latin.

It’s natural then that divorced parents, particularly the nice ones who aren’t bitter and nasty, feel responsible for conflict, enmity, divided loyalties, and lingering resentment. However, they can’t control the bitterness of an ex, the resentment of hurt children with divided loyalties, and the impact of conflict on their pocketbooks, legal status, and new relationships. As much as you want to give peace a chance, everybody else just wants to give you a piece of their mind.

That’s why the most important thing to do postdivorce, aside from getting a new haircut and blowtorching the ring off your finger, is to accept the fact that your parenting role may be changed and damaged in ways that are not your fault or responsibility, even though, again and again, there’s someone to tell you the opposite and blame you for ruining the marriage, their lives, the known universe, etc.

If you try too hard to meet your expectations of normal parenting after a divorce, you’re more likely to withdraw, feel defeated, or overreact when it turns out to be impossible. As a result, you say something nasty or try so hard to be nice that you become a total pushover and wind up weakening your ability to be a good parent.

If you’re willing to accept bitter estrangement without taking it personally or feeling obliged to make it right, there are many more ways to avoid mistakes and build a new, solid foundation. Your old plan for peace may no longer be applicable, but with new boundaries come new opportunities for negotiation; just ask any teenagers who share a bedroom.

You may not be able to parent as effectively as you’d wish, but you can still offer good parenting that you can be proud of under conditions that you believe are good for your child and new partnership. Even if you don’t know when your new family will stop trying to punish you and one another, you can lead them toward peace with the same amount of compromise and discomfort that any family would have.

Here is what you’d like to have (but don’t have) to neutralize the poison of postdivorce relationships:

✵ A reset button that comes with your divorce agreement and wipes out memories of insults and injuries

✵ The perfect words to break through the wall of suspicion and mistrust and get people to work together again

✵ A powerful court-mandated moderator who stops people from acting badly

✵ A guarantee that, no matter what you and your ex decide, your children will love you and not be scarred for life

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To stop their spouse from making unfair claims and allegations

✵ To get their child to see they had good reasons to leave

✵ To stop their child from acting like a jerk with them or their new partner

✵ To get their partner to stop leaning over backward for her kids

Here are three examples:

My new wife is good with kids, and she’s not particularly negative about my ten-year-old son from my first marriage, but he loathed her before he even met her, and being around her just made him even more hateful. I think it’s partly because he blames her for the divorce (even though I didn’t even meet her until long after the divorce was final) and the fact that I’ll never get back together with his mother. In the meantime, he’s unbelievably rude to her and says he doesn’t want to visit me when she’s around. My goal is to make their relationship work so it doesn’t interfere with my being his father.

My wife and I weren’t getting along for a long time, so when she told me it was over and I had to move out, I just did what she said because I didn’t want to fight her anymore. Unfortunately, she must have assumed I would come back, because after I left, she became even angrier and began blaming me for everything, which is why my kids now hate me. They used to have a great relationship with me, but now they blame me for the divorce and ruining their mother’s life. They’re rude and act like I’m their jailer when I have custody; everything I do annoys them and they’re counting the seconds until they can go home, even though I bend over backward until my head scrapes the ground. My goal is to get back a positive relationship, but I don’t know how.

I love my husband, but I didn’t realize until we married that he can’t say no to his bratty kids from his first marriage. I never expected them to like me (and they’re out of the house, so thankfully, they don’t have to), but I was determined to be patient and get to know them. What bothers me is that he’s so totally responsive to their needs, whether they want him to cancel lots of plans, arbitrarily change the date of a visit, or give them extra money (outside of the generous divorce agreement), so that it negatively affects our life together. I get mad at them, but I know it’s really his fault for letting them walk all over him. My goal is to get him to stop being such a wuss about his kids before it destroys our marriage.

If a team is only as strong as its weakest member, then a divorced team is only as amicable as its angriest ex. One partner can do her best to tolerate the kids’ multiple loyalties and create stability in a new home, but if a former spouse or kids are bad-mouthing her, the settlement, or the new partner, then working for the best will lose out to the person acting the worst.

That’s when divorce-surviving parents must accept chronic anger and potentially nasty behavior as part of the package, at least in the short term, if they are to retain their confidence and manage their new family successfully. If at least one person involved can’t hold their shit together, then the family won’t hold together, either.

Most kids like their parents’ new spouses as much as they like shots, liver, and standardized tests, so if you can’t stop your child from hating your new partner, don’t be surprised, don’t take it personally, and don’t get too defensive, even if your new partner has no reason to like your child, and it shows. You can offer your sympathy, but any decent stepparent understands that it’s a difficult adjustment for everyone involved.

Certainly, you can try to hear your kid out and give him a chance to talk about his resentment with a shrink if you think it will be constructive and not just a chance to bitch and fuel hatred. If treatment, mediation, and understanding don’t work, however, accept the fact that their relationship is both terrible and out of your control. You can have them both in your life, but only if you create rules for good behavior, enforce them with your child, and encourage them with your new spouse. Buy yourself a striped shirt, because you’re going to be a ref.

Create simple rules for respectful behavior, similar to what would apply in school if child and teacher didn’t like each other but had to work together, and spell out your penalties. Rules include answering questions politely, not being rude, and not refusing reasonable requests. Enforce them without negative feeling. Buy a whistle if necessary.

You can’t make the nastiness stop, but you can be confident in your belief that, the more they both avoid negative feelings and treat each other decently, the sooner they will be happier in their new home. Besides, if they both bristle under your authority, then they’ll at least have something to build common ground on.

If you’re the target of your child’s divorce rage and the usual interventions aren’t working, don’t bend over backward or get defensive. Presumably you had good reasons to divorce and you made a settlement with your ex that you believe is fair. Trying too hard to appease or defend yourself makes you seem guilty for doing something wrong (like staying married to someone who hates you).

Your interest in your child hasn’t changed and your insistence on visitation is not to control your child’s loyalty but to do your job as a parent. So again, spell out a positive moral vision. It’s right for you to share the job of caring for and guiding your child, even if your child doesn’t like you (and even if you don’t like your child). You can make life better, provide a good place to live, and do good things together.

While it’s hard to live and work with family when you’re not getting along, it’s important in life to learn how to move forward when feelings are negative. In the long run, negative feelings often fade if you’re working well together and feel like you’re growing and getting somewhere. Just having confidence that things can get better is enough to create actual improvement.

Share your justified disappointment and anger with friends or a shrink, but not with your child; any obvious negative feelings toward your kid will just justify his negative feelings toward you. Parenting includes many thankless tasks, even when the parents aren’t divorced, and providing reasonable parenting under tense conditions is one of them.

If the fallout of divorce isn’t just persistent anger but also the way a parent’s pushover tendencies can leave his new partner out in the cold, then there’s no solution for you, the new partner, unless the pushover parent sees the problem.

Yes, you should ask a shrink or some other respected, neutral party to confirm your impression and validate your needs. Then, together, you can deliver a positively toned warning to the bad-boundaried parent and ask him whether he sees any reason to change.

As the new partner, don’t spend too much time talking about your anger or apologize for feeling needy if you think your needs are reasonable and unmet. Otherwise, your overly reactive spouse will try to make you feel better by giving you a little more attention and love, perpetuating the problem instead of admitting that there’s a problem in the first place. Instead, urge your spouse to learn to say no, not just to make you happy, but to become a stronger parent.

Make specific suggestions about limits that need to be set and positive ways for announcing them, describing the benefits in terms of less-spoiled kids and a happier partnership. Then sit back and assess progress by what happens, not by what’s promised in order to soothe your worries away.

Parenting is always a team sport, even if the marriage ends, but divorce can cause problems that neither you nor your teammates may ever be able to resolve. If, however, you’re careful to take responsibility for nothing more than offering good parenting, and you’re willing to tolerate persistent conflict and hostility, you can be proud of the job you’re doing as a parent, even if it seems like a losing game.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ The ability to get your postdivorce family to act reasonably

✵ An end to being held responsible for major family unhappiness

✵ Kids who don’t feel they have a right and obligation to punish you and/or your new spouse

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ To offer and provide good parenting, regardless of nastiness

✵ To put limits on bad behavior after figuring out what it’s really about and trying to be understanding

✵ To be a good parent of a kid who claims to be a political prisoner in your home

✵ To find time to build a new partnership despite demanding, needy kids

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Accept and learn how to live with grievances after all the usual attempts to address them (patience, sympathy, understanding, shrink visits) haven’t worked

✵ Don’t take grievances personally or let them influence your management decisions

✵ Envision a positive goal for your parenting, even if your relationship with your child can’t feel positive

✵ Set limits on bad behavior, as distinct from bad feelings

✵ Respect the challenge you’re facing and your achievement in persisting

Your Script

Here’s what to say to kids and current and ex-family members who can’t stop fighting with you or one another after a divorce.

Dear [Child/Ex/New Partner/Innocent Bystanders/Busy Lawyers and Therapists],

I can understand how divorce sparked a [conflict/blood feud/personal hatred], but at this point I don’t think continued [talk/mediation/airing of grievances] will improve the [synonym for “shit show”]. I’m going to see my [kids/new partner/ex-dog] within whatever agreement the court authorizes, and I will be patient and avoid [small battles/pissing contests/smashing windshields], both with my kids and my ex. I will not, however, let any major bad behavior happen without trying to prevent it from [happening/erupting/getting the neighbor to call the cops] again. I believe I can provide a good, secure home and be a good parent in spite of anger and unhappiness.

There are many positive ways to manage parenting problems, but most require you to keep your cool, which is almost impossible if you feel totally responsible, which, for the first twentyish years, you legally are. Dedicate the same amount of time to developing your child’s skills and potential as you do to meditating on the things that you and your child can’t accomplish and shouldn’t feel responsible for. Then teach your child how to do the same. Whether or not you can raise a kid you can be proud of, take pride in tolerating what you can’t change and doing the best with what you’ve both got.