The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

This is from Jeanette, and it's on parenting.

Hi, Dr. Kenner. My daughter has been living with her significant other, Mark, for nearly 10 years. Mark has an 18-year-old son from a previous marriage. Basically, this son quit school at the age of 16 and has been in his room ever since, playing video games. In the custody arrangement, the boy would stay at his mother’s home for one week and then his dad’s. When he quit school, though, he also quit that arrangement. Notice who’s making the decision here? The kid—this 16-year-old kid made the decision. Now he’s 18. He quit that arrangement as he did not like the rules that were in place in his mother’s home. I think maybe he better go back to his mother’s. The boy has a friend or two but rarely leaves the house, shows no interest in driving or being out like other 18-year-olds, and does nothing to help out in the house. It’s even hard to get him to shower frequently.

Okay, your gut response. Here’s the question: My question is this—what can be done with a boy like this? Mark does have a medical disability called Marfan Syndrome—M-A-R-F-A-N Syndrome. I’ll tell you what that is in a minute—which does prevent him from strongly disciplining his son. Mark worries about his son’s future, but the tension between Mark and my daughter is escalating daily, and of course, the boy is not being prepared for his own future. Any thoughts you can provide would be appreciated. —Jeanette.

So, Jeanette, I had to look up Marfan Syndrome because I didn’t know what it was, and I looked at pictures of it. It’s a very unusual disorder. Anyone listening, just Google “Marfan Syndrome images,” and you can see that people can be extremely tall. They have very, very, very unusually long limbs, flexible joints where you can bend your thumb backward. They can have problems internally with their heart, their bones, their joints, their eyes, and maybe their lungs, skin, and nervous system. Interestingly, this Marfan Syndrome doesn’t affect intelligence. But imagine you’re a dad looking very peculiar, I mean, with arms that are one and a half times longer than a normal dad’s arms. I don’t know if that’s part of the situation—if he’s just very embarrassed, or he’s worried about himself, or I don’t know, or that he went through a divorce. I don’t know if there’s something going on there, a separation anyway, with his mother. I don’t know if they were married before. So, it’s a very, very sad situation, and it sounds like Mark, number one, even with Marfan Syndrome, could use a toolbox of parenting skills to help draw his son out or to help himself understand why his son is unwilling or unable to do anything. He’s got to be able to guide his son differently.

It doesn’t mean he needs strong discipline. Because, you know, if he said to this son, “Get the heck out of your room,” the son—the son knows what the father’s like, and they would fall back into the same old patterns. I think he would rebel even more. Or who knows what would happen? You’ve got a very depressed kid. Obviously, this is not a happy kid you’re describing. And perhaps your daughter could use those skills too, you know? And basically, guess what? Parenting skills are. Fundamentally, parenting skills are no different than communication skills, and if your daughter and Mark, her significant other, are getting really upset about this son and having a lot of arguments, they need good communication skills. They certainly could get it. You could go to my website, DrKenner.com, and look up books that I have. I even have a book on romance that I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke. It’s called The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion and Reason. We have a whole section on communication skills. And by the way, “selfish”—I always have to say this—doesn’t mean mean and rotten. It means self-esteem, self-valuing, self-nurturing for both people, and then you cherish one another.

So the questions I have, thinking of it from the kid’s perspective, are: is he very embarrassed by dad? Is he afraid to go out? Is he afraid to bring people into the house and introduce them to his father because his father might look a little gangly or awkward, or a lot awkward? You know, is that a problem? Does he need—does the son need skills to cope with his dad’s disfigurement, his disability? Or does the son just feel like a failure? Maybe, you know, the divorce happened, dad moved on, mom might have moved on, and he just feels like a failure. Kids going through divorce can feel like a failure for a multitude of reasons. So, you need to draw that out of him or have a counselor, you know, get him counseling so that they can draw that out of him.

Is he trying to break up the relationship between your daughter and Mark? I mean, he’s been there for two years. He’s obviously depressed. Is he trying to break up the relationship? And it sounds like, if he is, he might be succeeding. So what can Mark do? What can your daughter do? I would recommend, at a minimum, counseling as the first choice. But if they can’t do that, there are books—Between Parent and Teenager, this is an older book, but it’s got tremendous advice by Haim G. Ginott. You can find it at my website, DrKenner.com. Also, How to Talk So Teens Will Listen by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. They give some very good tips on how to deal with a child’s resistance. You could also just Google that—how to deal with a child’s resistance.

Your daughter is in a tough place because this is a potential relationship breaker, as you know. And if she could read our book—the one I mentioned earlier, The Selfish Path to Romance, or you can get it on Amazon. We have a whole section on making your relationship work, on communication skills, and we have a section on parting ways if you cease being soulmates. This is very sad all around, and I think the saddest part is that if your daughter and Mark are truly in love, to have this kid come between them, that’s just tragic. Mark needs to know how to set limits and boundaries, and maybe the kid needs to go back to his mom’s house. I don’t know how feasible that is; of course, I don’t know the context, but that’s something to consider.

So think about you and your relationship with your kids. I’m talking to—not just to Jeanette, but now I’m talking to you. Do you have a good relationship with your kids? Can you look back and say, you know, “I brought them up well”? Or are there some bumps in the road? Or are there cut-offs, emotional cut-offs, where you don’t talk to your kids at all and you wonder why you ever had them because they were just a pain in the butt?

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner: Yes, because you won’t conform, they hate you for the greatness of your achievement. They hate you for your integrity. They hate you because they know they can neither corrupt you nor rule you. They won’t let you survive. That’s pretty poignant. That’s from The Fountainhead, and the character Dominique is speaking to Howard Roark.

Do you have anybody in your life who hates you? You just sense that they hate you—not because you lied, cheated, or stole something, or that you’ve got bad character, drink, or do drugs—but because you’re good, because you’re ambitious, because you’re successful, because you take risks—psychological risks to better your life—and they don’t do that. It could be a sibling. Many times, one sibling is ambitious, and the other one just tries to pull them down. “You think you’re so great, don’t you? What do you know?” You know, that type of banter back and forth, which isn’t very playful.

So if you have anybody who is envious of you in your life, you need to know how to defend yourself. And that’s one of the many topics we talk about on my show. It’s called The Rational Basis of Happiness, and it’s about how to psychologically protect yourself—what is psychological self-defense. I gave a whole course on that. How do you protect yourself from people who want to tear you down because of the good in you? You can give some thought to that, and I’m sure that you’ve dealt with it and come up with some solutions.

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Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and Dr. Edwin Locke:

One way to actively and respectfully listen to your partner is to check for misunderstandings. When your partner finishes talking, briefly summarize what you heard, then add, “Did I hear you correctly?” and repeat their words. You want to explore inconsistencies. “You say you’re okay, but you seem so disappointed. What’s really on your mind?” Ask for specific examples if your partner uses vague language. If your partner says, “You never do anything right,” you can follow up with, “Something specific I did must really be bothering you. Tell me what it is.”

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon.com.