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My father thought (and still does) that we all need to learn to stand on our own two feet and the way to do that is to make us stand alone, right from the start.

If you fell over and it hurt he’d say “get up and do it again!” while laughing because that’s how you become strong, by learning that no one is going to help you up so you might as well get on with it.

He’d win at board games because he could (or he cheated) and it was important for us children to realise that we can’t always win, that life isn’t fair, that we have to work hard to get where we want. Nothing is going to be handed to us; we have to fight for everything.

When we went on walks and his legs were twice the length of us children that just meant that we had to learn to walk faster to keep up. He never slowed down for us. We either walked quickly or fell behind.

If I made a bad choice and then regretted it, he’d tell me it was my fault for making the wrong choice and I should have done what he said.

I feel sorry for these lessons that he learned as a child and the childhood that he had. I understood, certainly by the time I was a teenager, that he was doing the best he could with what he had. He was the best father he could be without dealing with any of his own stuff. I forgive him.

But…

It hurt. It still hurts. It didn’t foster independence, or develop confidence, or increase resilience. What it taught me was that I was on my own, always and forever. It was me against the world and that is scary as a child. It’s still scary.

As a parent I encourage my children, I support them. I spent years walking around the playground with my hands out to catch them if they fell while clambering over the equipment but encouraging them to try. The relief when they were old enough to run around without needing their hand holding is not to be over-estimated. I stood by them, while they gained confidence in their own physical ability. Confidence which enabled them to be increasingly independent, and meant that I could sit down in the playground with a book.

When we all went out with my parents my father would be shocked when I told him to slow down or wait for them. Every single time.

Childhood should be a sandbox where you can try out different ways of being, whether it’s clothes, games, musical tastes or choices of friends. You should be able to want to be a train driver one week and a dancer the next and it’s all OK. Shake the sandbox and have another go. Childhood should be about exploring who you are as well as learning a whole heap of other useful stuff. You can only explore who you are freely if you know that your parents are going to be there for you, regardless of the choices you make. Not that they’re going to be disappointed if you don’t want to be a doctor, or go to university or whatever it is.

I want my children to be strong, independent and capable young men. I want them to know they can talk to me about anything, no matter how embarrassing or disappointing. I want them to know that they can always come home and that they are always welcome. Mostly I think they know all this.

Then we come to 2son, autistic and struggling with his mental health. When his mental health drops so does mine. I said this in my last therapy session and we went down this particular rabbit hole. When he is feeling depressed, I want to help him. I want to help him go out and do things, to help him engage with other support. I want to be able to do the thing that gets him back on his feet again. And I can’t. There is no magic wand in my possession. So I feel miserable on his behalf, if not actually depressed as well as him. It doesn’t help.

I really want him to know that I will be there for him, no matter what state he is in. I’m always going to help him pick up the pieces. I don’t ever want him to feel that he has to do this all on his own. I don’t want him to feel the loneliness and isolation I felt as a child. I don’t want him to feel he has to do it all on his own.

I take on his emotional distress and I magnify it. I’m trying to consider all the options and alternatives so I can be ready to deal with them. I think of the longer term implications and worry about his future. I’m being driven by the desire to never appear as uncaring as my father, even thought that is nigh on impossible. I’m also trying to offer the perfect support, as if that is possible.

In summary (TL;DR), I am aware of the support that was missing from my parents and am worrying myself ill over offering exhaustive support to 2son to compensate for what I didn’t have.