I Chose What Type of Child I Was

[DISCLAIMER]

As far back as I can remember, following the divorce of my parents when I was three-years-old, my late mom frequently threatened to send me and my sisters to live a children’s home. It was clear that she lamented having us. Often, we’d go on car rides past the residential facility.

“One day,” my mom threatened, “I’m gonna drop y’all off and never come back!” One wonders why a Texas judge presiding over divorce proceedings of my black dad and white mom in the ‘70s reasoned that placing three children in the care of my mom was deemed a wise decision.

Accompanying threats of abandonment were violent and unpredictable episodes of abuse from which my older sister and I often sustained injury. Back then, I knew nothing of battered-child syndrome. Being slapped, punched, kicked, and spit upon was a usual Tuesday in our home.

By the time I was nine-years-old, my mom taught me how to properly cut my wrists for effective suicide completion. Self-deletion hadn’t previously entered my mind. Yet, my mom frequently reminded me of how she wished she would’ve aborted me as she pummeled me to the ground.

Whether due to nature, nurture, or other, I developed violent tendencies when in elementary school. If memory serves, it was either third or fourth grade when I first attempted murder (the crime of unlawfully and unjustifiably killing a person). Favorably, my siblings survived.

Halfway through my fifth grade year, alleging that I was a “sissy” who’d wind up being a “faggot,” my mom relented to my dad’s many requests to take custody of me. I flew alone from Amarillo, Texas to Aurora, Colorado, as I was relieved until my dad spoke on the ride home.

“Son,” he said, “you won’t have it easy, now that you’re living with me.” Easy? What part of altering the clothing I wore to school in an attempt to hide bruises and scratches was easy? Even when educators were made aware of abuse, was it easy that they simply chose to look away? No.

During the two years of living with my dad, his pattern of abuse was predictable. He’d come home from work – after having used city transit, because he lost his license due to intoxicated driving – and rationalize a reason for why I’d be physiologically and psychologically abused.

Moments when he was too high from marijuana were preferable to instances during which “rot gut” (Black Label Jack Daniel’s whiskey) was poured directly down his throat. Unlike my mom, whose violent outbursts were ravenously conducted, my dad used a different approach.

He apparently took joy and pleasure in methodically savoring each delectable moment of mental and emotional torture before building to a crescendo of explosive physical violence. Although I didn’t desire abuse from either my mom or dad, at least my dad’s actions were foreseeable.

If it was a workday, I was going to be abused. On non-working days, I could hide long enough to avoid my dad’s wrath. Therefore, I wasn’t pleased on the night my mom was put on speakerphone while I heard her using my custody as bargaining collateral for more child support.

Apparently, my mom’s usual scamming of local church congregations and social assistance organizations was wearing thin, as was her petty theft efforts. Yet, attempts to extort my working-class dad weren’t proving lucrative. Thus, she required that I be returned to her.

Within a relatively short timeframe following my return, I offered to remove my mom’s head from her neck during a violent episode of abuse regarding my older sister. I wasn’t merely threatening. Thereafter, my younger sister and I were finally sent to live in a children’s home.

There, I experienced institutionalization (an individual’s gradual adaptation to institutional life over a long period, especially when this is seen as rendering one passive, dependent, and generally unsuited to life outside the institution). Also, I became a model resident of the home.

Perhaps enchanted by the product of a token economy (in behavior therapy, a program, sometimes conducted in an institutional setting, in which desired behavior is reinforced by offering tokens that can be exchanged for special rewards), a family took me into their home.

I was a member of the same church congregation of which they were a part, as I resided with them from my sophomore year of high school to halfway through my senior year. Ostensibly, the institutionalized behavior that attracted them to me went extinct. Admittedly, I behaved poorly.

During the time I remained in their care, I befriended members of street gangs, I may or may not have frequently engaged in criminal activity—to presumably include additional attempted murders, and I exhibited behavior that some people understandably associate with psychopathy.

For the record, in adulthood, I’ve been examined by multiple psychologists, psychiatrists, and other clinicians. Not one has diagnosed me with antisocial personality disorder, because I don’t meet the criteria of this personality disorder. I’m not a psychopath. (Believe what you will.)

Nonetheless, I can comprehend how pathologizing behavior is a simpler approach to conceptualizing mental, emotional, and behavioral health (collectively “mental health”) than actually seeking to understand it. About such an attitude, I remain unbothered.

In any event, I finished my remaining high school year living with my sister and her husband who were houseparents at the children’s home in which I’d previously lived. So ends this relatively brief summation of my childhood. Now, I consider these matters when reading a book.

As Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is informed by Stoic philosophy, this blog entry is part of an ongoing series regarding a book entitled The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.

The authors quote ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated, “We like to say that we don’t get to choose our parents, that they were given by chance—yet we can truly choose whose children we’d like to be” (page 179). Factually speaking, I chose what type of child I was.

There’s a rhetorical game played within United States society by which people under the age of 18-years-old (i.e., minors, children, etc.) are deprived of personal agency, as well as personal responsibility and accountability (collectively “ownership”) regarding their actions.

Allow me to explain. Personal agency is a person’s ability to control one’s own reactions to activating events over which one has no significant influence, even when one’s response is limited by someone or something else. This is a matter of empowerment.

Unlike the dis-empowering notion that children are incompetent (lacking the qualities needed for effective action), personal agency acknowledges one’s capacity to make deliberate choices and act effectively to shape one’s own life, goals, and environment. Kids are remarkably capable.

While children are incapable of using impeccable judgment, I argue that adults are similarly flawed. None of us are perfect in this regard. Personal responsibility is defined as the quality or state of being responsible for oneself, such as a moral and ethical, legal, or mental accountability.

Here, “responsible” is defined as liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent, and being able to answer for one’s conduct and obligations—something, such as the demands of conscience or custom, that obligates one to a course of action.

Personal accountability is defined as the quality or state of being accountable, especially regarding an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. Here, “accountable” is defined as subject to giving an account—a statement explaining conduct.

When providing psychoeducational lessons on REBT, a psychotherapeutic modality which maintains that one preferably should acknowledge personal agency and take personal ownership in order to reduce self-disturbance, I lean heavily on self-empowerment.

Regarding the summation of my childhood, I don’t unhelpfully blame my late mom or my dad for how I behaved as a kid. I was capable of making appropriate and inappropriate decisions. It would be a matter of falsehood to suggest otherwise. Thus, I own how I acted as a minor.

Accurate to Seneca’s proposition, I didn’t choose my parents, who were perhaps given to me by chance—yet I chose what type of child I was. Moreover, I’ve chosen what type of son I’ve become as an adult. Associated with this topic, authors of The Daily Stoic state (page 179):

We are fortunate enough that some of the greatest men and women in history have recorded their wisdom (and folly) in books and journals. Many others have had their lives chronicled by a careful biographer—from Plutarch to Boswell to Robert Caro. The literature available at your average library amounts to millions of pages and thousands of years of knowledge, insight, and experience.

Herein, I’ve given information about how it is I came to be as I am. This isn’t a matter of vanity, as I suspect many people within the mental health field wouldn’t disclose that they threatened to decapitate their mom, or admit that they’d have followed through with the heinous threat.

There are few upsides to this disclosure. Yet, if someone reads this information and is able to be honest with oneself—admitting personal agency and ownership for childhood actions—then my efforts were worth it. In any case, authors of The Daily Stoic conclude (page 179):

Maybe your parents were poor role models, or you lacked a great mentor. Yet if we choose to, we can easily access the wisdom of those who came before us—those whom we aspire to be like.

We not only owe it to ourselves to seek out this hard-won knowledge, we owe it to the people who took the time to record their experiences to try to carry on the traditions and follow their examples—to be the promising children of these noble parents.

My mom and dad weren’t monsters for behaving as they did. They were merely fallible human beings. Equally, I’m not a psychopathic beast roaming throughout the Earth, going back and forth, looking for souls to devour—even though my mom sometimes rebuked me as a demon.

Was I a challenging child? Of course, I was. Were my parents who were purportedly subject to mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse throughout their childhoods capable of healthily rearing children of their own? Likely not. This is one reason the cycle of violence stops with me.

Unfortunately, people don’t choose the parents we inherit. Nevertheless, for the most part, we can choose what type of children we are. Furthermore, we can choose what type of adults we’ll be. I’ve made my choice and remain content with the outcome thus far. How about you?

If you’re looking for a provider who tries to work to help understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life—helping you to sharpen your critical thinking skills, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.

As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to try to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.

At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply trying to help you to feel better, I want to try to help you get better!

Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW

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Hollings, D. (2024, December 5). Reasoning. Hollings Therapy, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.hollingstherapy.com/post/reasoning

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