Words...

It took my brain less than a faction of a second to realize that the words leaving my lips would haunt me for the rest of my life.  In anger, sometimes I have said things that I have come to deeply regret.  Being a nerd at heart, I envision a time in the future where moments like this can be avoided by implanting in my brain a "don't be a dumb ass" filter that is automatically activated when my anger rises above a certain level...that would be so cool!  Unfortunately, in the meantime I must create a semi-effective filter myself utilizing the tough lessons I have learned in my life by the consequences of my words.  You would think that at my not so tender age, and taking into account the so many times that I have screwed up, that by now my self created filter would be amazingly effective, yet I am here to testify that I am very much still work in progress.

One thing led to another and as his anger increased, so did mine.  A simple question about whether he had done his homework or not, somehow eventually led to screaming on both sides, and unfortunately in the end turned into a physical confrontation.  He had just started high school at the time, and because of my separation I took advantage of not being able to purchase a home yet to rent a place in a more desirable school district.  A better school or environment does not necessarily mean that your children are in the "right" place, but that was still a lesson I was starting to learn at the time.  It only took a few weeks before the novelty of the new school wore off, and the reality of not feeling that he was in the right place kicked in.  I can see now, in retrospect, how ignorant I was to think that he could adapt to this drastic change when in reality "adapting to change" had always been his greatest challenge.  Top it all off with his parents, me and my now ex-wife, going through the motion of a divorce, and you can probably see the impending train crash clearer than I could at the time.

My parenting instincts took over during the challenging moment, and my reaction to his defiant behavior was to take away something that he cared about in order to gain some leverage.  I walked over and demanded he hand over his iPod as a punishment, to which I was immediatelly confronted with physical opposition.  It was at that moment that I escalated the situation by trying to take it by force.  Soon I found myself in a physical struggle, and even though I overpowered him and was able to win the battle, the war was far but over.  The rage in his eyes was obvious and for the first time as a parent I felt fear.  The verbal abuse from his side grew exponentially hurtful and obviously out of control.  He ran to the kitchen of the two bedroom apartment, open a drawer, and reached for a knife.  My adrenaline raised to never before expected levels while arguing with my son and I lunged at him and took him down by overpowering him, removing the weapon from his hands and then pinning him on the floor while keeping an obviously painful grip on his hair.  He threatened some more while being overpowered by me...I threatened to defend myself and also call the police if he would not stop instantly...and when I finally let go thinking it was all over, he raised himself from the floor reached for a dining room chair, tilted it over and brought his entire body weight on top of its fragile legs tearing it into many pieces.  In retrospect, considering the level of anger and danger of the moment, we were blessed that nothing more than a chair and some headphones were destroyed in the process.

I take pride of thinking that both my son and I are intelligent individuals, yet it took more than just a few of these terrible incidents for me to realize that we both needed professional help to be able to avoid these kinds of encounters.  At the moment, as much as I had already learned that my son had issues that made him very different from other kids, I still wanted to believe that if I was a tough dad, an enforcer, and did not give into his out of control behavior, that sooner or later I could fix what was broken.  What I did not realize at the time was that much of my own behavior factored in significantly as a trigger to his anger and outbursts.  If I sat down and described every one of the times in which we went down this scary path, I think I would need to take a sedative first, since just the memories of these painful moments trigger in me levels of anxiety that I do not wish to experience again.  I can only imagine how they must feel for my son too.  Sooner or later we are going to have to deal with these memories and try to find a way to turn the lessons to our advantage without the second hand effect of their emotional triggers.  I actually look forward to doing this since I believe it will bring us both a great deal of peace.

Violence comes in more flavors than one.  Somehow I am cursed with the ability to trigger a cornucopia of violent behavior in my son.  Interestingly, he does the same to me, making me reach deep inside my basic survival instincts and say and do things that I would never consider saying or doing under normal circumstances.  This obviously is a sign that it is not just my son that has anger issues, but I myself am most definitely work in progress keeping my demons at bay.  To know me as a friend might be extremely deceptive, since unless the right buttons are pushed, I am simply not an aggressive individual.  For example, cutting me off on the freeway would never trigger an angry response on my part.  In fact, I am not one to yell at a stranger, maybe because I don't see the point of it.  However, if I find myself being hurt at an emotional and personal level, many times I have found myself lashing out in return even though in a much less physical manner than my teenage son.  Words, though, can be just as hurtful as knives, even if I do not yell them out.  It is almost as if I could compare showing a knife in an angry gesture to saying something mean and hurtful.  Even though I might not lunge at my opponent with a sharp weapon, the fact that I reveal it is threatening enough.  Certain things that I might say in anger happen to have the same effect, turning the moment into one much worse than it has to be in the first place.

Even though in those days we set out to deal with my son's confrontational issues based on a weak diagnosis of my son having a condition called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, the outcome eventually benefited us both immensely.  Forcing ourselves to accept the fact that we needed to learn to control the level to which we could allow ourselves to be angry by avoiding certain triggers, made us realize that we both could do so much more on each other's ends to bring us to a better place.  Even though it took us a while to get significantly better at this task, the results are outstandingly impressive and effective.  Unfortunately we both are probably going to need to re-visit some of the words that were said during our difficult times in order to heal some of the wounds caused by our verbal attacks.  I say unfortunately because I truly wish it was just as simple as saying that it is all water under the bridge, but I know better to assume that his love for me as a son could ever be as powerful as my love to him as a father.  I care for him so much, that I am easily self-convinced that at his age those mistakes can all be washed away with love.  However, my mistakes are an entirely different beast.  At some point he really will need to know that I am truly sorry for some of the things that were said on my part in anger.  I should of been the bigger man, the adult, the good example.  This is why it is crucial for me to eventually find the proper moment in his life to bring with me a bucket of humility to try to wash away some of damage I might of caused.  It is not about giving in, or being weak, and much less about relinquishing parental authority.  In fact, not once should I do any of the above if I ever want to retain his respect.  However, there is a great lesson to be learned by my son from him hearing me say that some of the words that I once said were only words in anger and not the reality of my heart.  The lesson would be that a good father makes sure his kids know that he can be a better man.  After all, if I am trying to set a good example, what better example than picking the right words to say I am sorry.

Dad