Looking back I erroneously believed in a peculiar lassez-faire style of parenting, personal responsibility and self governance as well as a pirate ship type of democratic socialism along with a highly disorganized ADHD driven authoritarian leadership (me). In a way the general 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 what you are hiding and lying about and then gets really pissed off and blows his stack”.

Of course, my unique single parenting approach was warped by my own suburban childhood of relative wealth (like pirate Captain William Kidd) and unconscious entitlement/privilege mixed with a Baby Boomer 1960’s hippie-esque biased view about my non- pirate Jewish parents and their traditional values, discipline and (as I saw it) propensity to judge and control me. By contrast my much more free-wheeling natural preference for living life last minute, unplanned and mostly by trial and error (versus planning ahead, being organized and seeking paid 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” subconscious thought process and unconscious mindset.

This contradiction of values and lack of coherent core beliefs about personal accountability, independence, and sense of responsibility later morphed into a divorced single Dad with an inconsistent ADHD pirate parenting approach with its own contradictory messages that looked superficially on the one surface 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 over-functioning and over-doing “rescue parenting” behavior based on my deep love and equally deep fear and guilt about my childrens shared trauma related to my combative and contentious divorce from Rona and then losing their mother soon after to Stage 4 lung cancer….along with all my untreated emotional baggage and accumulated “pain body” of personal loss, hurt, guilt, frustration/anger and unhealed psychological trauma.

All of the above was a highly dysfunctional recipe for enmeshment, codependency and a general lack of boundaries that no doubt 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 adult behavior. Finally the damaged ghost ship I presided over also ended up blurring my own sense of deserving happiness and right to assert myself, my limits and my individual needs including being able to say, “No absolutely not!” to many things and to many people besides my children and doing so with consistency, self-confidence, love, healthy reasoning and positive intention.