A Map of the Human Heart

OK, well that lasted about a week. I admit it. I overreacted to local conditions. So now I have decided to act on the best advice I got during my embarrasing hiatus which came in the form of a comment on my last post from someone I don't even know - Barbarina. And Barbarina is apparently Canadian so, great, now I have to revise my list again. At any rate, thanks, Barbarina.

So what was that all about? The thing is, if I told you then I'd be doing the same thing that got me into trouble in the first place. It's a problem as old as blogs themselves - or as Gouldie may soon realize, as old as written communication. Misunderstanding.

I wasn't aware that my blog was secret. I was pretty sure everyone in my family knew about it even though I know they never actually read it. Until last weekend. Last weekend the Child Formerly Know As The Self (C. F. Kats) decided to gorge herself on six months of the Empty Room. She didn't like her nickname. She didn't like that I implied that she needed to go see the slums or that she needed to intern with Gouldie. And I didn't realize it, but as the single official representative of the millions of teens in the United States, she is insulted when I mention teens in any context. So, after a few hours of catharsis in the wee hours of the morning, we reached an agreement wherein I would stop using the name and use a name of her choosing. I didn't even point out the irony that someone could read 63 posts containing valuable insight into family and friends and a parent's quasi-inner life (I would kill to read a blog my dad wrote in the 70s) and zero in on four or five sentences as an indictment of the whole enterprise and then complain that their nickname was Self. I won't go into anymore details there, but the end result was that by Sunday, it became apparent that no M*A*S*H unit was going to heal these wounds so I just figured it would be better to stop. So over the course of the weekend despite denial of such, the lamentations increased and I finally just pulled the plug because it wasn't worth the discord.

Because I always have to know the damnable why, I tried to explore the situation this week and figure out where the breakdown is. Starting with the obvious, no one likes to be humiliated and even though from my perspective I didn't write anything humiliating at all, it was to her and I acknowledge that and apologize for that. But as I pushed ahead and consulted Tex and Queen I realized the breakdown had to do with The Approval Syndrome. Apparently, and I was unaware of this, your children need your approval. I had no idea. The way it works is that you're supposed to say nice things to them and then it makes them feel good about themselves and then they build on that to become well-adjusted adults. But wait! There's more! Girls need lots and lots of this stuff and they need it from their dads! Constantly!

And therein lies the problem. I can't do that. If it even occurs to me to compliment someone, the words dissipate somewhere between the tip of my tongue and my lips. Like Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka trying to say "parents" or Rowan Atkinson's priest trying to say "St John" on Four Weddings and a Funeral. In my memory, I don't really remember needing a lot of approval as a kid. The way I figured it, if you behaved, you didn't get in trouble; if you did your school work, you got good grades. Not getting grounded and getting A's were sufficient approval for me. I didn't get a lot of praise. In fact when I became the first person in the recorded history of our clan to graduate from college, my folks were on the couch watching TV and I produced my diploma and said, "Well, I'm a college graduate. 3.98 GPA." Their reply was, "We knew you could do it."

So, not having learned to give approval and having a low threshold of need myself, I'm at a loss here. I see first hand how important it is because YHWH still talks about how 40 years ago she brought home a straight A report card and her dad said, "Couldn't you do any better than that?" I thought that was funny when I heard it, yet she has been scarred by this her whole life and it was a joke. So I have to figure this out obviously.

While struggling with why I can't give compliments, I was tempted to blameshift. Part of the problem, I reasoned, was that for awhile I rarely ever saw C. F. Kats and when I did it often involved her not completing a chore or just being generally difficult. I wasn't witnessing 'the good things'. So I couldn't be blamed for not approving that, right? But that situation has improved, so there goes that argument. Then, as if the omnious warning from the Ghost of YHWH's past or the Ghost of C.F. Kats' Present weren't enough, on Thursday night I got a visit from the Ghost of SGK's Future.

This kid has been approved of and praised from the beginning. In fact, she runs the risk of being a little egotistical. If that sounds contrary to what I've said above, it's only because she is much smaller and you can coo over babies without much difficulty. Well, anyway, Thursday night we were driving home from an event and she starts in insulting our new home. Never one to miss an opportunity for character development, I told her that she should be grateful for her home. She persisited in her comments and I said that I was going to make her sleep out in the backyard and that YHWH and I work really hard to provide our home and it hurts our feelings to hear her say those things. Before long she breaks into these deep sobs and says, "I'm afraid you're going to be happy when I'm dead." I know what you're thinking - it was manipulation, she was working me over - but no, this was pretty deeply felt. So years of approval can be undone with one stroke of disapproval.

So here's what I have learned: kids need approval; girls need mountains of approval; no amount of approval is enough.

So, until I can speak the words:
I'm am proud of C.F. Kats because:

She bravely strode into her new school without looking back.
She bravely wears any outfit she wants.
She bravely discloses alot to her parents.
She does the dishes without being told.
She watches her sister without being paid.
She watches her sister without complaining.
She is loyal to her friends.
She is willing to improve herself.
She is diligent about her school work.
She gets herself ready for school without being told.
She is willing to watch TV with an old fat guy in glasses.
She reads alot.
She cries alot.
She tries not to hurt other people's feelings.
She is active in her church.
She is a trooper.

I love her.

I'm Saint Fiacre and I approve of this message.