🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
The thing about being able to form permanent habits in a few weeks is apparently an urban myth. The real number is closer to 1 year.
I don't think I've ever managed to maintain anything for as long as a year without it already being a habit to begin with.
If it takes a year to form a new habit, I don't see how I'm ever going to manage to introduce any new habits at all. I get tired of doing things repeatedly way sooner than that.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
I suspect I'm unusually resistant to forming new habits. There are certain essential habits that my mother tried to teach me as a kid that never really stuck.
My mother.
Maybe that was the problem. I looked up to my father, not my mother, and he didn't have those habits internalised either. She was trying to teach me to be better than my father. If my father had been strict about it, that would've made an impression.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
The problem with my mother was that she'd threaten consequences but never come through on them, so I didn't listen to her. The most important woman a young boy interacts with is his mother, so if she's too soft on him, the boy will project that characteristic onto women in general, and he'll struggle to take them seriously. Dad was far more intimidating, but mostly stayed out of the child rearing. This means that I didn't have any strong parental figures and could mostly do what I wanted to.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
It also means that no one was there to instill any sense of discipline in me. Dad didn't give two hoots about my room being messy, and as we've already established, mom wasn't a threat, so I never developed a habit of keeping my place clean, and this is a consistent pattern across every area across my entire childhood. My parents barely created any structure around me. That's why I have such a hard time creating structure around myself and existing within societal structures.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
I always knew that my parents had a dysfunctional relationship but it never really dawned on me how damaging this was to their child rearing. They never worked together to create structure around their kids. My mother has said on several occasions that dad mostly wanted children just to prove that he could. He always avoided the hard part of child rearing and didn't support my mother in her efforts at all.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
I once told my sister that I wish my parents would've been stricter, and that I'd be stricter to my kids if I ever had them. Her response was "Poor kids!".
At the time, I didn't know precisely why I felt this way, except that I seemed to be lacking discipline and couldn't explain why.
Now that these pieces have fallen in place, the conclusion is that my sister's been perpetuating the same lack of structure to her kids, and doesn't see the problem or its origin.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
Your opinions about what good or normal parenting is are basically determined by how your parents raised you. Their idea of normalcy shapes your idea of normalcy well into adulthood, and unless you have some kind of revelation, that's going to stick with you until the day you die.
I still don't know how I'm going to instill the things in myself that my parents never did. It's a shame that I was disqualified for mandatory millitary service on medical grounds. Maybe that would've helped me.
🇳🇴 Thor — backup account
This turns my ideas of authority versus independence on its head.
All along, I thought that refusing to submit to authority would teach me independence. As it turns out, you need authority in early childhood in order to be able to be your own boss later in life. Or it could turn you into a mindless slave to the system. Perhaps I would not view it in such a way if I was raised with more firmness, so this is very hypothetical and self-referential.
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