File this under “Hindsight is at least better than total blindness”.

Looking back I wrongly believed in a peculiar lassez-faire pirate style of parenting, personal responsibility and self governance. I also apparently modeled a pirate ship type of democratic socialism with an ADHD driven authoritarian leadership (myself). In a way the ship’s motto was “do as you choose but you better figure out what works and what doesn’t and dont be surprised if the Pirate Captain eventually focuses enough to see what you’re doing or worse what you are hiding and lying about and then gets really pissed off and blows his stack”.

Of course, my unique parenting approach was warped by my own sheltered suburban upbringing of wealth (like real pirate Captain William Kidd) and clueless entitlement mixed with a 1960’s bred pseudo-hippie’s condescending view about my decidedly non-pirate Jewish parents including their more traditional values, mood driven methods of discipline and tendency to hover, judge and try to control me. In hindsight they really didn’t do any of that once I went to college but it sounded good to my “Pampered Rebel Without A Cause” self narrative. Regardless, my free-wheeling ADHD preference for living life last minute, unplanned and mostly by trial and error (versus silly things like planning ahead, being organized and seeking professional consultation when needed) combined with a far more insidious subconscious agenda of “maybe somebody else (like my parents) will just do this or that for me or actually help me pay for it” twisted thought process and “entitlement much?” mindset.

This absence of strong personal values and core beliefs about accountability, healthy independence, and sense of responsibility later morphed into the aforementioned divorced Dad with an inconsistent pirate parenting approach but with its own set of mixed messages that on the surface seemed like all fun and games and treasure hunts occasionally punctuated by “what the fuck!!? why the frickin’ hell did u do THAT??” or “what the fuck why the holy hell haven’t you taken care of that yet !!??”. To make matters worse after my ex wife died this also included reflexive over functioning, over-doing , and “rescue parenting” based on my deep love and equally deep anxiety, fear and guilt about my childrens collective trauma related to my contentious and combative divorce followed by them losing their mother soon after to Stage 4 lung cancer….not to mention all my emotional baggage and accumulated “pain body” of loss, hurt, guilt, frustration/anger and still untreated psychological trauma going as far back as Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Time Machine can take you in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Together all those factors and individual ingredient represented a dysfunctional recipe for family enmeshment, codependency and a general lack of clear boundaries that likely blurred and blunted my three sons (insert black and white photo of Fred McMurray on LSD here) autonomy, individual identity and healthy separation/individuation as well as undermined my late in ballgame efforts to promote clear and reasonable expectations of age-appropriate accountability, rules, responsibility and prosocial behavior. Finally, the damaged ghost ship I presided over also ended up blurring my own sense of “deservingness”meaning feeling truly deserving of longterm happiness and self respect including my right to assert myself and my individual needs, wants and desires , set limits with others and be willing and able to say, “No absolutely not!” to many things and to many other people besides my children and to do so with consistency, confidence, love, healthy reasoning and positive intention and with no sword, musket or pirate ship in sight.