＂Regretful Parents＂ Are Going VIRAL. Here's What I Think
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
208.08592
Summary
In this episode, I read from the subreddit "Regretfulparenting," a place where all sorts of parents express their feelings of regret about having kids. It's a depressing place to read, and one that I think many of us can relate to.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
You know, sometimes on this show, I like to read questions and quandaries from the clueless souls on the internet, especially Reddit, and try my best to provide them with a little bit of guidance.
00:00:09.260
And that was a plan, the plan that I had for this segment, but then my producer, McKenna, suggested that I go to the subreddit called Regretful Parents to find some fodder.
00:00:17.060
I did as she recommended, and I can report that it is one of the most depressing places I've ever encountered on the internet, which is obviously saying a lot.
00:00:24.320
Just post after post after post of parents who view their children as nothing but a burden.
00:00:28.100
And I thought, well, I'm not going to attempt to talk about this on the show. It's just, it's so bleak and so horrific.
00:00:35.120
But then I decided that maybe I might have a useful thing or two to say to these people.
00:00:38.880
Sadly, a sizable number of parents feel this way.
00:00:41.100
We like to think that, well, no one ever regrets having kids. Actually, they do.
00:00:44.740
And when that happens, it is a terrible thing. Terrible for the kids, most importantly.
00:00:48.780
So I'm going to start by reading a few of the posts or snippets of posts.
00:00:53.260
I hate mothering. I enjoy maybe 1% of it. It's given me misery on top of misery on top of pain every single day since she was born.
00:01:00.420
Giving birth was medieval torture. I don't like playing with her. I don't like talking to her.
00:01:04.720
I don't like taking her to the park. I can barely think about anything I enjoy with her.
00:01:57.260
I'm tired of this life. I'm the only one with them 24-7. I'm so sick of it.
00:02:05.420
My partner is useless. All he says is they're babies and something's wrong with me.
00:02:12.480
My daughter just turned five and I was already regretful about having her and having no love for her.
00:02:17.120
We treat her well and I say I love her and all that jazz.
00:02:21.300
But she has now been diagnosed with selective mutism,
00:02:23.620
which is a type of anxiety disorder where she can't speak in public or to anyone outside her immediate family.
00:02:28.820
Her teacher says she doesn't speak a word at school and her peers keep asking her why she doesn't talk.
00:02:32.740
I already hated life as a parent and now I have to deal with psychologist appointments.
00:02:38.600
These have mostly been mothers so far with these posts,
00:02:44.260
I'll read one of those just, you know, to be gallantarian about it.
00:02:46.820
Just day after day after day and it never ends and it never changes.
00:02:49.480
Incessant bickering, screaming, slapping, kicking, biting, fighting over every possible tiny goddamn little thing.
00:02:56.180
When all my attempts for diplomacy fail and I finally snap and yell at them to stop,
00:02:59.700
they act absolutely shocked and hurt by how mean dad is and it works.
00:03:03.440
I end up feeling terrible and apologizing to them and on and on and on it goes.
00:03:07.640
I don't understand how they seem to thrive in that level of dysfunction.
00:03:10.680
I know kids are dramatic and all, but I know I was never like that as a kid.
00:03:20.060
I don't understand hating your kid or most of what we just read there.
00:03:25.400
When you have, as we did, two sets of twins, six kids total, you experience frustration.
00:03:31.340
Our last set of twins were both colicky as infants.
00:03:36.960
you know that we dealt with about six months of constant crying,
00:03:40.300
morning, noon, and night from two babies while also having four other kids to take care of.
00:03:45.480
I'm not saying that that's the hardest parenting experience anyone's ever had,
00:03:48.200
but it's definitely not entry-level stuff that we were dealing with.
00:03:51.180
So I've been in the trenches and therefore I think I have some credibility
00:03:53.940
to say the things that I'm going to say to all of these people
00:03:57.480
and anyone who might find themselves relating to what I just read.
00:04:00.440
First, you know, a lot of parents who feel this level of anger and despair
00:04:05.400
to the point of actually regretting having kids,
00:04:07.440
it's at least partly because their kids are out of control and totally unruly.
00:04:11.740
The kids are running the house, bouncing off the walls, ruling the roost, and you're at wit's end.
00:04:16.040
Here's the good news about that, and it will sound like bad news, but it's actually good news,
00:04:22.980
Your kids are out of control because you are out of control.
00:04:25.800
And I don't mean that you're yelling and screaming and losing your temper,
00:04:29.060
But even when you have your temper in check, you're still being ruled by your emotions.
00:04:33.920
You are, I'm going to assume, angry, sullen, visibly overwhelmed, overcome by frustration.
00:04:40.660
Well, the problem is that your kids pick up on that.
00:04:43.060
And it's not just that they're imitating your lack of emotional regulation, though they are.
00:04:47.040
More importantly, they see that you are projecting a lack of control, a loss of command,
00:04:52.000
and they lose respect for you and your rules as a result.
00:04:56.020
When a leader seems flustered, his followers become disturbed.
00:04:59.480
And if this state of being flustered continues or happens over and over again,
00:05:03.220
eventually they lose faith in his ability to lead.
00:05:05.380
People listening to my show know that I'm kind of a nerd about reading stories of explorers.
00:05:09.780
Sometimes in these stories, something that happens are mutinies.
00:05:13.440
And very often a mutiny happens because you've got a ship full of men in some uncharted part of the world.
00:05:18.900
And if the men on the ship, whose lives depend on the captain,
00:05:22.160
if they perceive that the captain doesn't know what he's doing, is afraid, is frustrated, indecisive,
00:05:29.100
overwhelmed by the responsibility that he has taken on,
00:05:32.500
if the men on the ship notice that, if they perceive it, they lose faith in his leadership.
00:05:38.400
So what's happening in some of these households is your kids are, it's a mutiny.
00:05:42.200
They're staging a mutiny, although their reasons behind it are mostly unconscious, for the kids anyway.
00:05:47.000
Now what makes this good news is that it's very fixable.
00:05:49.820
All you have to do is put on a convincing front, fake it till you make it.
00:05:53.840
As some very wise philosopher once said, project the appearance of being in control,
00:05:58.500
of being in command, of being unbothered, of being unflustered, happy, good humored.
00:06:05.800
And yes, it is a virtue to fake it in those cases.
00:06:08.120
This idea that we should never, you know, we need to be true to ourselves and be honest about our emotions.
00:06:13.200
In fact, you should be, you should not be honest about your emotions most of the time.
00:06:18.420
Like most of what you're feeling should not be known to the people around you.
00:06:23.940
And you combine that attitude or the appearance of that attitude with consistent guidelines,
00:06:28.660
clear rules, and clear consequences for breaking the rules,
00:06:30.840
and you'll no longer have this level of dysfunction in your home.
00:06:34.060
Your children will not be in a constant state of war with each other and you.
00:06:37.560
And you may be able to enjoy their company and your own life as a consequence.
00:06:41.900
Like many of you this summer, I intend to spend more time with my family,
00:06:44.520
getting outside, traveling, letting go of some of my routine.
00:06:46.980
But one routine I won't be letting go of is my prayer routine.
00:06:50.080
I'll continue my daily habit of prayer with Hallow, the number one prayer app in the world.
00:06:54.500
For the third year in a row, Hallow is having their wildly popular Saints in Seven Days Prayer Challenge,
00:06:59.300
where over the course of four weeks, you'll journey through the life of an incredible saint,
00:07:03.380
learning more about their faith, their story, and ultimately their surrender to the will of God in their life.
00:07:08.060
The challenge kicked off August 5th with Joe Mazzula, the coach of Celtics,
00:07:11.620
and Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes.
00:07:14.480
Then Rhea Wahlberg will lead meditations on the life of Saint Elizabeth Seton,
00:07:18.220
followed by Jonathan Rumi walking through the powerful story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe,
00:07:22.960
who sacrificed his own life for the life of another at Auschwitz.
00:07:25.480
Closing the series with Father David Michael Moses and blessed Pierre Giorgio Frassati,
00:07:30.720
Saints in Seven Days goes deep into the lesser-known parts of a saint's life
00:07:34.620
to show that while their journey to sainthood were filled with God's grace and glory,
00:07:39.040
they also included human struggle, great suffering, mistakes, and a profound need for God's mercy.
00:07:44.160
Hallow is truly transformative, and it will help you connect with your faith on a deeper level.
00:07:48.760
Download the Hallow app today at hallow.com slash mattwalsh.
00:07:51.540
hallow.com slash mattwalsh for an exclusive three-month free trial of all 10,000 prayers and meditations.
00:08:01.380
Happy people focus on the aspects of things that make them happy.
00:08:04.620
Unhappy people focus on the aspects that make them unhappy.
00:08:07.280
That seems so basic that it doesn't even need to be said,
00:08:09.800
but it's a basic thing that we often lose sight of, and this especially applies to parenting.
00:08:13.620
If you're an unhappy parent, it's because you're choosing to focus on all of the things
00:08:17.780
that you want to do but can't because you have kids,
00:08:21.200
and the things that you have to do but don't want to do.
00:08:23.440
For the people who wrote these laments that I just read,
00:08:29.000
All they can think about is the stuff they don't want to have to do but they have to do,
00:08:33.800
and the stuff that they would prefer to do but they can't do.
00:08:36.720
And so they're just whining all the time in their heads and now on Reddit,
00:08:46.300
Look, it's a choice that you have made to focus your attention on those things.
00:08:50.180
There are so many things in life you could focus on,
00:08:52.220
and you decided to focus on the fact that you can't travel to Europe or whatever.
00:08:57.940
You've decided to be miserable and wallow in your misery.
00:09:00.540
And you could stay there forever, wallowing in it if you want.
00:09:03.820
And then you'll be unhappy and miserable your whole life.
00:09:06.380
In the process, you'll alienate everybody around you.
00:09:08.800
Your kids will grow to resent you and want nothing to do with you.
00:09:11.840
And then they'll get older and they'll be adults and they won't be as difficult anymore.
00:09:15.400
And you're going to want to have a relationship with them at that point
00:09:18.020
because it's easy now because they're out of the house.
00:09:21.360
And you're going to want to see the grandkids because grandkids are easy.
00:09:24.000
But your kids are not going to want to have that relationship.
00:09:26.520
And you're going to spend the rest of your life feeling victimized.
00:09:33.380
You did the bare minimum their whole childhood.
00:09:39.200
But you had a bad attitude about it the entire time.
00:09:41.760
You made the home just an excruciating environment for them to live in.
00:09:47.540
Why the hell would they want a relationship with you?
00:09:54.180
The only person who can choose otherwise is you.
00:09:56.220
The only person who can fix the problem is you.
00:10:02.600
Now, I've never felt like I regretted being a parent, nor have I ever had feelings of hatred
00:10:09.280
But I have experienced anger, frustration, sadness as a parent.
00:10:13.700
I have thrown plenty of pity parties for myself, like any parent does, because my parenting
00:10:18.840
duties require me to do stuff I don't want to do and don't allow me to do the stuff that
00:10:26.780
And I found that the way out of it is pretty simple.
00:10:35.340
So here's a relatable example, one that is, you know, millions of parents encounter something
00:10:40.800
So I get home from work most days, around 5.30 or 6.
00:10:44.380
Contrary to popular opinion, I actually work long days.
00:10:55.700
A lot of people sit in traffic for longer, but still, 45 minutes in traffic.
00:10:58.640
And then I come home to a house full of kids who are talkative and needy and wanting
00:11:03.420
So every time I walk in the door every day, I have a choice to make.
00:11:10.400
It's so distinct that it may as well be two different doors I'm walking.
00:11:14.400
There's the happy door or the annoyed, overwhelmed, sad door.
00:11:19.120
I'm either a stressed out, sad sack forced to come home to a noisy house with a bunch of
00:11:23.700
needy kids who won't give me a chance to decompress, damn it.
00:11:26.840
Or I'm an incredibly blessed man, privileged to come home each night to a lively,
00:11:32.360
home full of fun, rambunctious children and a wife who loves me.
00:11:39.240
And the thing is, when I walk in the door, the environment, what I'm walking into is the
00:11:43.600
It is entirely up to me how I choose to perceive it.
00:11:47.340
And if I choose the sad, miserable door, I have no one to blame but myself.
00:11:51.220
My third point, and this goes to really, this is advice, universal advice for everybody.
00:12:01.300
And I know everybody says that we have to vent.
00:12:03.900
We have to release our tension in the form of these self-pitying, overly dramatic big
00:12:13.120
Forums like this Reddit forum, they should not exist.
00:12:17.040
Having a place to anonymously voice your darkest and most unspeakable emotions and thoughts
00:12:21.860
in order to then be assured by other anonymous people that it's totally normal to feel that
00:12:26.680
way and to be encouraged in your basest impulses and most dysfunctional modes of thought is
00:12:34.840
There was one post, her young son is about to be his birthday, and she's not happy about
00:12:41.140
Which again, it's like, okay, so you're not excited about his birthday.
00:12:48.380
But one of the pieces of advice was, well, on the day of his birthday party, just leave
00:13:05.540
Abandon your child on their birthday because you're sad?
00:13:10.340
And the reason that you get it is because the people that are there leaving comments,
00:13:13.560
they are not encouraging you or trying to reassure you.
00:13:19.840
They have these awful thoughts and feelings about their own family and their children,
00:13:24.180
and they're trying to find a place where other people are saying the same things so
00:13:28.140
that they can tell themselves it's not so terrible to feel this way.
00:13:44.540
The level of anger expressed by most of these people is wrong.
00:13:48.920
Having this kind of disdain for your family is wrong.
00:13:52.440
Venting this kind of stuff doesn't get it off your chest.
00:13:55.340
You know, it's not like opening a window in the bathroom to air out the smell.
00:14:01.780
All it does is make the flame grow and spread until it's completely out of control.
00:14:06.820
And next thing, your whole life is set on fire.
00:14:14.360
It's not okay to feel that way about your children.
00:14:25.760
So sure, go talk to a therapist if you can find a good one.
00:14:36.320
But after all the talking, it comes back to you.
00:14:40.160
You owe it to your child to give him your love.
00:14:43.700
In fact, you owe it to your family to be happy.
00:14:51.740
And right now, you're making a choice that is destroying you and your family.
00:14:54.780
And it will continue to until you stop making it.