Looking back I erroneously believed in a peculiar lassez-faire style of parenting, personal responsibility and self governance. I also apparently modeled a pirate ship sort of democratic socialism along with an ADHD driven authoritarian leadership (me). In a way the general ship’s motto was “do as you choose but you better realize what works and what doesn’t and dont be surprised if the Pirate Captain eventually focuses enough to notice what you are doing that doesn’t work or even 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 suburban childhood of relative wealth (like real pirate Captain William Kidd) and clueless sense of entitlement mixed with a 1960’s hippie-esque Baby Boomer’s prejudiced view about my decidedly non-pirate Jewish parents and their traditional values, methods of discipline and (as I saw it) excessive tendency to judge and control me. By contrast my more free-wheeling preference for living life last minute, unplanned and mostly by trial and error (versus planning ahead, being organized and seeking professional consultation when needed) combined with a “maybe somebody else (like my parents) will just do it for me and/or help me pay for it” thought process and unconscious mindset.

This contradiction of personal values and lack of clear and coherent core beliefs about accountability, healthy independence, and sense of responsibility later morphed into the aforementioned divorced Dad with an inconsistent ADHD pirate parenting approach with its own set of mixed messages that on the surface seemed like “it’s all fun and games and treasure hunts” punctuated by “what the fuck? why the frickin’ hell did u do that??” or “what the fuck why haven’t you taken care of that yet !!??”. To make matters worse this also included reflexive overfunctioning and over-doing “rescue parenting” based on my deep love and equally deep anxiety, fear and guilt about my childrens shared trauma related to my contentious and combative divorce followed by them losing their mother soon after to Stage 4 lung cancer….along with all my emotional baggage and accumulated “pain body” of loss, hurt, guilt, frustration/anger and still untreated psychological trauma.

All of the above represented a highly dysfunctional recipe for family enmeshment, codependency and a general lack of boundaries that likely blurred and blunted their individual identity formation and healthy separation/individuation as well as undermined my efforts to promote clear and reasonable expectations of age-appropriate rules, reasonable responsibility and prosocial behavior. Finally, the damaged ghost ship I presided over also ended up blurring my own sense of feeling truly deserving of longterm happiness including my right to assert myself, set limits with others and be able to say, “No absolutely not!” to many things and to many people besides my children and to do so with consistency, confidence, love, healthy reasoning and positive intention.