How Can That Be?

Logically I know what a kid needs. I had 5 of them.

Each an individual. They have had their struggles. I, as their dad, intuitively knew what to do when they needed me to know and/or do something. I was present. I was loving. I was a good dad to them.

Come to find out those are the exact same skills I will have to employ on myself, somehow.

But the strange thing to me is… how can I know what to do for my kids and have those skills… BUT still be mentally and emotionally stuck in my head and heart at the age of 11???

How does that even work?

Another strange thing… I’ve been having good conversations with my youngest son, who is in his early twenty’s and is developmentally right where he is supposed to be… and when we talk I’ve been noticing I DEFAULT to coach mode… and I can make him see the point we are working towards… usually it means I can give him a life experience I’ve had that lines up with where he WILL BE shortly, sometimes that week, and he has the advantage of seeing the experience coming, can apply the shared knowledge we talked about, and comes away having his own experience where he is present enough in the moment to SEE the knowledge and both experiences come together for his betterment.

Weird. I can’t do that for myself. Or I don’t feel like I do that for myself. I feel stuck. I feel like a big faker.

I’ve noticed a personal characteristic in other men that makes them seem more like real men to me… seriousness.

To me, the men I consider to be mature, seem to be more serious… than I am, or feel that I am.

I feel like “I never get to have any fun”, but now what I think I mean to say is, “I never got to have any fun.”

I have memories, clear memories, all the way back to when I was 3 years old.

And I have very clear memories from when I was 9 and 11. Memories that I now know, are attached directly to my broken heart, and those are the ages when my LOGICAL brain kicked in.

At 9 I remember saying to myself, “This isn’t right”, as I looked around our house after one of our chaotic dust ups.

And then at 11 the memory was set, I can still feel the cold glass of the screen door on my nose, when I was looking out the glass, after having waited all day for my dad to take me fishing, he promised he would, but my mom had to walk outside and argue with him about me.

That’s when it broke. My dad DIDN’T WANT to take me fishing, my mom had to make him take me, that hurt, still does I guess.

“Piaget theorized children between the ages of 7 and 11 are in the Concrete Operational Stage of cognitive development. In this stage, a child’s thinking becomes more logical, organized, and concrete. They are leaving the Preoperational stage, which is more egocentric. Though their thinking is more logical, they can also be relatively rigid and struggle with abstract concepts.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-culture/202107/what-loki-has-say-about-arrested-development

“Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called “genetic epistemology”. Piaget placed great importance on the education of children.” Wikipedia

“The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This stage begins around age 2, as children start to talk, and lasts until approximately age 7. 1 During this stage, children begin to engage in symbolic play and learn to manipulate symbols.” https://www.verywellmind.com/preoperational-stage-of-cognitive-development-2795461

I’ve learned that I also “stop growing” with skills and abilities.

I say, about myself, that… “I have all of the Basic 101’s down pat”.

Take shooting a gun.

Even a BB gun.

I am safe, and I can hit whatever pop can you throw out there, with whatever firearm you hand me, if they shoot straight… on the first try… if they don’t shoot straight… I am an expert at using Kentucky Windage to drop it in the ten ring.

But I couldn’t explain to you how or why I can do that, or even explain how different scopes or apertures work.

I just… pull up, breathe, and BANG!

So, to move forward and through my personal growth, I’m going to work with what I already have, and try to go to the next level of knowledge on a few key life issues like… FEELINGS, FINANCES, and FIREARMS.

One person I found, who has helped me define my struggle… https://drjonicewebb.com/

She wrote, “People can overcome the effects of childhood emotional neglect. One strategy is to give themselves what their parents did not.”

I think I have been neglecting to spend time with “Little Dave” myself. Ignoring him. Not validating him. NOT knowing HOW to help him… just standing there… seeing the gap… but not filling it.

The bible relays the instance of God looking for someone to stand in the gap.

I can see “my personal gap”, as a man it’s my duty to help those I see who are hurting, or who need help, matter of fact, at the post office today I gave a young man some help who was loading a car onto a car trailer for the first time, he wasn’t familiar with the use of a ‘come-along’ winch, he was in for a long day if me and another old-timer hadn’t offered up some help, helping… it’s kinda what I do.

So if I can help a complete stranger who needs help, I need to man up and help “Little Dave”, now that some of those chains that were holding him back have been discarded.