Category Archives: therapy in session

The strength of not giving a damn

We have all been asked of this quiz question before:

What Super Power do you wish you had?

I still don’t know what my answer should be.

Flying?

Mind control?

Teleporting?

“The ability to eat as much as I want without gaining any weight”. Yeah. That’s what I am thinking right at this moment.

You all know The Bloggess. She of the power of turning everything into a hilarious nature. Really. We should send her to the frontline, protected inside an armor car of course, and give her a microphone. She has the Super Power of turning people into a howling, thigh-slapping, LMAOROTF, Dionysian mass. And believe me: I normally do not like touching my own thighs. Except one thigh would always inadvertently touching the other, but that cannot be helped. I sometimes would get mind-clarifying, “Come to Jesus” moments when I read her blog. It ain’t all fluff.

A line I heard from the video embedded in one of her posts still haunts me till this day:

“I have the intellectual confidence to appear stupid sometimes.”


THIS, is one of the best quotes I have learned in my whole life. Now, please repeat it with me:

“I have the intellectual confidence to appear stupid sometimes.”

 

I believe, by internalizing this line, we can all be liberated from self-consciousness and self-censorship. I believe this will be especially helpful for women climbing the corporate ladder, especially if the work place is predominantly male.

At first I thought that men are so good at “chiming in” and “making their points” at any meeting because they somehow were privy to this secret. Nah. Based on my years of ethnographic study of the male species in the corporate jungle, I believe that they are so good at “speaking up” because, unlike women who are often self-reflexive, most men never even consider the possibility that what comes out of their mouth may just be flat out the stupidest thing someone has ever heard of. See, they never apologize before they speak. The strength of not giving a damn. THAT is the Super Power I would like to have.


Today’s BOGO special:

In addition to the quote above that can serve as an awesomely witty throw-away remark when someone suggests that you are intelligence-challenged, AFTER you sucker punch them of course, here is another motto for you to use in your role as Truth Seeker:

We are entitled to our own opinions; we’re not entitled to our own facts. Al Franken

You never know what’s going to remind you of your childhood…

My mom and dad called last Friday. Actually my mom did. Mom’s always the one that calls. And she always calls around 9 pm when it is the absolutely most friggin’ chaotic in the house. And she always pleads innocence saying she cannot figure out the time difference. And she always asks, “Have you eaten yet?” even after I tell her “It is 9 pm here. Ma!”

“It is cold there now, right? It is freezing here.” My mom says. Every single time during the winter. Did I tell you that they live in Taiwan? A sub-tropical island? The temperature in Taipei was supposed to reach 69 °F that day (as opposed to 36 °F here in Chicago and actually considered to be warm since it is finally above friggin’ freezing…)

“Ma. Sigh. You do know that the weather there has nothing to do with the weather here, right?” I could not bite my tongue and just let this one go.

“But it is really cold here. I bet it feels colder here.” My mom is a “last-worder” too: that’s probably where I got it. Between my husband and myself, my kids are doomed both nature- and nurture-wise. “Do you want to talk to your dad? Oh wait. Your dad wants to talk to you. Actually, he asked me to call you.”

Pleasantly surprised since my dad never wanted to talk to me on the phone, not that he loves me less but because he’s a man, I screamed, “Ba!” (The Chinese word for “Dad”) when my mom handed him the receiver. At 80, my dad is hard of hearing nowadays.

“Have you eaten yet?” He said, without a beat.

Sigh. “Yes. I have.”

“Is it snowing in Chicago because it is really cold here.”

Sigh. “Actually it is warmer today because it is above freezing.”

“Really? That’s something.”

“So… what’s going on? What are you doing today?” I know better than to expect my 80-year-old father to tell me something exciting in his plan for the day.

“Nothing. Just watching TV…. You haven’t called home for a long time. Is your husband still out of the country?”

“Yeah. He’s in Spain this time.”

“That’s what I thought when you didn’t call home for a long time. You must be very busy with the kids then.”

As if on cue, my oldest came to stand by my side and whispered loudly, “Mom. Mom. Mom!”

I glared at him and pressed my point finger to my lips. Ignoring my gesture, he continued,

“Mom! My gum hurts because my tooth here,” he proceeded to open his mouth with both hands so I could see better, “See? It is coming out. My tooth! My gum hurts!”

I turned my back towards him. He did not give up and came around to the other side, “So I need to go see a dentist…”

“Dad. Hold on. Just a sec.” I switched to English to deal with the dental crisis that was not, “Can’t you see I am on the phone with my parents? We’ll talk about this later.”

As if he did not hear what I just said, he switched to a brand new subject, “Mom, we need to pick up my new glasses!”

“I will. Tomorrow! I need to bring you with when we pick up your glasses…” I gritted my teeth.

All this time, Mr. Monk was on the floor pouring sugar into a bowl so he could make crystals according to the science book that he got last November. He never showed interest in the darn book until I was on the phone. Now he was next to me as well,

“Mom. What is a saucer?… Is it this?” He pulled out the biggest pot to show me, making a loud clattering noise.

“NO! That is NOT a saucer. And why do you need a saucer NOW for god’s sake?!” I raised my voice.

Seriously. They were quietly reading at the kitchen table before the phone rang. It just seems that EVERY TIME when I am on the phone, all of a sudden they have urgent information to share, questions to ask, emergencies to deal with. The sky is falling! We need your attention NOW!

I could hear my dad on the other side of the phone line: “It sounds like your children need you. I just want to hear you voice. We’ll talk later.”

“No. Dad!” He hung up before I could protest further. I frantically tried to dial my parents’ phone number. I am not making this up: in order to call my folks, I need to dial 22 friggin’ numbers. That’s right. 22. After the third try, the call finally went through.

“Mom. Is dad there? Could I talk to him?”

“He hung up on you, didn’t he? That man. He always does that. I told him to give me the phone and he said you were busy! Here he is.”

“Dad. You didn’t have to hang up!”

“But you are busy. You should go tend to the children.”

Exasperated now. “No. They can wait. They are not babies any more. They need to learn to be respectful!”

Of course, all this was said in Chinese so my children did not get any benefits from this lecture which explained why at this exact moment, at the same time, my oldest decided to play on a laptop that ran out of power and was struggling to get the power cord out from behind a desk at the risk of toppling everything that was sitting on the desk, and my youngest decided to pour sugar solution (sugar:water 6:1) from a sauce pot into a shallow saucer.

I watched all of it unfold in slow motion, and I could feel myself boiling. I did not even bother to cover the receiver as I exploded.

“WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I AM TALKING TO MY PARENTS? HOW OFTEN DO I GET TO TALK TO THEM? I AM ONLY ON THE PHONE FOR FIVE MINUTES! DID ANYBODY BLEED? IS ANYBODY DYING? NO? THEN DON’T INTERRUPT ME! NOTHING IS THAT URGENT! Go to your rooms NOW! No. Don’t touch anything. Leave that on the floor. Just GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

Switching to Chinese, “I am back. Dad, what were you saying?” I was expecting him to give me another lecture about being more lady-like.

“Whoa. You sounded just like my mother when we were little.” My dad commented.

My grandmother had 14 children. I have never met her, and my dad has not told me much about his mother, that is, he has never really reminisced about his childhood. When I was around, I was too young to ask these questions; now that I am old enough, I am not around enough.

Not sure whether this was something I should defend myself against, I defended my grandmother instead. “Well. There were so many of you. If she did not yell like that, she probably could not keep all of you in check.”

“That’s what I said. You sounded just like my mother.” He chuckled.  “That really reminds me of when I was a kid. We lived on a farm so she could yell like that without disturbing the neighbors.”

Maybe I was just imagining things, but he sounded like he had tears in his eyes when he said again, so quietly this time as if he weren’t talking to me,

“Wow. This really brings back childhood memories.”

Know thyself. Be thyself.

It is 2:03 am. I am all of a sudden wide awake.

Note to self: Listening to PRI Selected Shorts podcasts while cleaning the house is a sure way that your mind will become overactive and that you will have trouble falling asleep.

I will pay for this indulgence: lying down on my Therapy Couch and talking to you all, my imaginary friends, (I am going to start calling you Soren Lorensen I think…) soon since I have a 6:30 am flight to catch and I have not packed yet. Coming here has clearly become a serious addiction. I carry this urge at my throat to write something down all day long. I am afraid to open my mouth lest a scream may come out.

I often panic when I am made aware of this since it feels so similar to Narcissism…

Someone very wise, probably wiser than Confucius since she is female (and Confucius was obviously not) and women rock because of our uterus, that I have had the privilege of meeting through this little patch of heaven I call my Therapy Couch (or hell on some bad days I won’t lie to you) told me that she could tell that “blogging is both a creative outlet and just outlet” for me.

She was right. When I first started doing this, I really did not expect anybody to come by and get into a conversation with me. I saw this as a different medium of talking to myself since I have been doing that inside my head for a long time. Why not? I simply jotted down whatever came to my mind. No self-censorship. And no editing either, to be very honest with you.

It felt like liberation from Facebook. From the potential for censure by family, friends, colleagues. It felt like liberation from Twitter. From the bondage of 140 characters. And it felt like the earth after rain. It felt good.

When I began to have supportive friends who stop by on a regular basis, to check me out and make sure that I am still operating in a socially acceptable manner, I was flattered yet incredulous. “Surely they have mistaken me for someone else, or something else.” With that self-congratulatory realization of “OMG I have fans” came the burden to please. Or at least, since I have no mental filter once my mouth starts running, the fear for offense. The desire to please everybody, nay, the compulsive need to please everybody is one of those soul-killers that I am trying to escape. I am afraid I may have lost my way.

At the risk of sounding like I am trying to recast myself as the cliche in I’ve Never Been to Me… I am getting back on my journey to understand myself better. The peeling of the onion. What is more important though, is that once I find myself, I really need to just be myself. Perhaps the being and the finding happen at the same time.

So…

Dear Soren Lorensen,

I hope you will stay. But if you outgrow me or the other way around, I wish you the very best.

As always, a pretentious rambling such as this will not be complete without a quotation from a famous, yet just a tad out there, writer. Preferably by e. e. cummings. Here it is.

To be yourself

The white flag goes up…

Remember the tagline of my blog? These posts are supposed to be my therapy sessions. Ranting about the demise of Thanksgiving and gloating about making shotgun Christmas ornament is not very healing. The following is one of my therapy sessions. I am getting on the coach now. You have been forewarned…

I am not quite sure about the whole Twitter and the blogging thing any more. First I have the follower counts to obsess about. Then I agonize over how few of the @’s I have been getting. Now there are the LISTS that scream “Popularity Contest” more than ever. The same with this blogging thing. I installed the WordPress Blog Stats plug-in. Now I get to watch the pot boil.

Don’t worry. I am not going to whine. Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die. There is actually a funny story I want to share with you. I want to explain why I am scared to death of popularity contest. Literally. Anxiety attack type of reactions. Chest closing down on me. Disorientation. Hard to breath kind of thing.

As soon as I sense that something is in essence a popularity contest, I never bother trying. I just give up. I am scared to death of popularity contest. I am also scared to death when I have friends. When people take a liking to me.

In short, I am afraid to disappoint.

I am not a shrink, but my guess is that you would be scared of popularity contest if you went through fourth grade through sixth grade with NOBODY in your class speaking to you. The entire three years… Silence. As if you were not even there.

No violin in the background. I will save you the drama and just list the facts:

  1. I was one of the popular kids in my class from first grade to third grade. I remember that because I remember being one of the first ones to be chosen whenever a game demanded such cruel device of pitching innocent children against each other.
  2. One day, out of the blue, during fourth grade, I noticed that nobody in my class would talk to me. They willfully ignored me. I was suddenly invisible to them.
  3. Since all the kids stayed in the same class throughout the remaining grades, this silent treatment lasted till I graduated from grade school.
  4. I thought about running away from home because my mother would not believe me. I was unable to convince my parents to transfer me to a different class or school.
  5. I started thinking about suicide early on because I had no idea how to end THAT. Please don’t be alarmed: When you believe in reincarnation, the thoughts of suicide do not carry the heavy concept of sin and ending.
  6. This childhood experience affects what I do, think, say from that point on.
  7. I still have nightmares about THAT.

This is actually a funny story. Well, what happened AFTER the grade school is. As the years went by, I would see some of my tormentors classmates in the senior high school we went to. Apparently there was going to be a class reunion the year we entered college.  “You are like the ugly duckling turning into a swan now.” Code for: you cleaned up good. Mind you: we all went to same-sex senior high schools so the person that said this to me was female. Would you like to go?

Of course, as needing therapy as I am, I went. I was curious. I wanted answers. I of course also wanted to show that I turned out ok. Despite everything. Somehow I also managed to charm.

On the long bus ride home, the man-child sitting next to me was very obviously smitten. I have been wondering for six years why they all treated me like shit, actually, worse than that, like NOTHING, back then, but I was also lucid enough to have guessed that probably nobody else remembered THAT but me. I took my one chance and gingerly brought THAT up.

“Do you remember when in grade school, none of you talked to me for three years?”

“Huh. Oh. Yeah. You still remember THAT?”

I proceeded to describe in simple terms how it felt to be me in those years. I was looking out the window when I spoke. The last thing I wanted to see was the expression that proved my suspicion that none of my sufferings were real to anybody else, that I might as well have imagined them. Soon I heard sobbing. I turned and saw tears streaming down his cheeks. Then came the Confession of the Century that I was not expecting:

“It was ME!”

“Huh?”

“It was me that told everybody to stop talking to you.”

Then I remembered that we were best buddies in the third grade. I recalled watching him hogging the Pacman machine until the store owner came out to give him his coin back. I even recalled going to his house and playing with him and his younger brother, and his mother saying, “Come back again soon!”

“… why?”

“Hmm. I guess because I liked you.” More sobbing. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know it was so difficult for you.”

“There. There. It’s ok. I am ok now.” I ended up having to console him.

The truth of course was: I was not ok.

Later, through college years, he wrote me several love letters. I did open them but could never bring myself to read them.

Hi. My name is L. I am forty years old and I still have nightmares about my friends not talking to me. In my nightmares we are all still 10 years old.

Day 5 of NaBloPoMo: When in doubt, talk about phobias…

I suck. It is only the fifth day of National Blog Posting Month and I am already wanting to quit. Life and work seem to have a way of getting into the way of daily blogging…

I am totally kidding up there.  Blogging should be a supplement to life: a conduit to reflect on life and stuff.  It should not become a substitute for life. Blah blah blah. Oh, who am I kidding?  Blogging now consumes my free thinking hours.  I agonize over what I should blabber about throughout the day.  That is why the whole NaBloPoMo is very stressful for me.  I seem to have a pathological desire to run away when there is something expected of me.  How did I ever finish school?!  More importantly, how did I manage to raise two children?!

Ok.  Phobias.  The real ones.  The irrational fear of something to the extent that you cannot function normally.  I will talk first, and then you join in with yours, ok?

I have a couple of fears that are definitely irrational, but fortunately, neither interferes with my ability to function in a civilized society:

1. Frogs. I kid you not.

Like many ladies, I am not fond of squirmy things such as snakes, worms, earth worms, silk worms, caterpillars.  As a matter of fact, I am dastardly afraid of earth worms and silk worms.  I cannot stare at them for longer than 5 seconds before I am absolutely convinced that I have hives breaking out all over my body.  Silk worms especially bring back traumatic childhood memories:

For some reason, many Chinese schools make it mandatory sometime during grade school for children to raise silk worms and observe them turning into cocoons.  (Hey, it is one of the 5000-year cultural heritage that we get to talk about over and over again.  We will remind you whenver the opportunity presents itself that, WE INVENTED SILK.. ) When it was my class’ turn to keep the silk worms in the classroom, I did not want to go to school for several weeks. One day when the teacher FORCED me to pick one up, I broke down into hysterical screaming. Soon red spots started appearing on my arms and my neck.  Can anyone say “psychosomatic”?

But I digress.  I meant to talk about frogs.  Frogs are something else.

I cannot even look at them in the pictures.  Posters.  On TV.  On the computer monitor.  Nope.  My breath will quicken and my heart beat will start speeding up.

I believe I made my husband swear on his life that he will never never ever threaten me with frogs for any reason.  I wonder whether he has forgotten his oath.  I need to administer a Spanish Inquisition on him as soon as I am done here.

The funny thing is, I actually loved playing with frogs when I was in kindergarten. I remember catching frogs in the rice field bordering the edge of my school (yes, stereotypes aside, there were indeed rice fields behind the kindergarten…) and throwing them at the boys.  One day, we read the book “The Princess and the Frog”.  The long passage where the Princess describes how disgusting the frog is left such an unshakable impression on me that, I believe, I internalized the fear deep inside my psyche.  From that day on, I cannot stand being in the same room with a frog.  Even if it is in captivity.

Wanna guess whether I will go see Disney’s upcoming The Princess and the Frog?

(I am SO grateful I have only boys for this matter. I am not suggesting that boys should not see Princess movies. If I had a daughter, I would really NEED her to watch this DISNEY movie featuring an African American PRINCESS, despite all the controversies already surrounding it, and I would really want to watch it with her; I would have been caught in a bind then since I don’t think I can sit through 90 minutes in the dark with gigantic frogs projected on the screen…  But of course, I digress again…)


2. White Milk. For real.

I cannot bring myself to put my mouth to a glass of white milk.  Everybody told me it tastes like nothing.  At least skim milk does.

“It tastes just like water.”

Uh huh.

The reason why it is categorized as a phobia is because I otherwise have no problem drinking chocolate milk, even the home-made one that does not taste chocolate-y at all (’cause I am too cheap to add a lot of chocolate sauce!)  I can also drink strawberry-flavored milk, apple-flavored milk, fruity-flavored milk.  I just can. not. put that thing to my mouth when it is white.  I don’t know how to explain it.

“Would you drink white milk if someone offered you a million dollars?”  My husband once asked me, out of exasperation.  And I did give it some thoughts.  I even slept on it.

No.  The answer is no.  At least right now when the question is only hypothetical.  Then my answer is a hypothetical no.

Coda: What did I say about google? Google is your friend. Yours. Not mine. On a whim, I googled Frog + Milk. Although I did see entries as interesting as Frog Milkshake, as a fitting conclusion to my rambling, I found something called Amazon Milk Frog. I am attaching a picture of it here for your scientific education because I am generous like that. As for me? I need to go take Benadryl because I am absolutely convinced I have hives breaking out all over my body!

Amazon Milk Frog

My arch nemesis: Look at his smirk...

p.s. If Robert Redford ever offers me $1 million dollars to sleep with him?  You bet ya I would.  In a heart beat.  Naturally, I did not offer this extra bit of information to my husband.  He would not be able to trust me again if we ever meet Robert Redford some day…

p.p.s. Is Robert Redford still alive?  And if I have to ask this question, perhaps I should Not be so enthusiastic when he propositions to me…

p.p.p.s.  Whew.  Turns out he is still alive.  And looking darn good…

Robert Redford

For a 73-year-old…  Darn.  I wish he had propositioned to me 16 years ago right after he propositioned to Demi Moore…  Too late now, Mr. Redford.  Eat your heart out!

p.p.p.p.s. Dear Mr. Redford, you are fine.  Please still proposition me and the answer is yes.  I only wish that your buddy Mr. Newman were still alive since he was the one I really had the hots for.  The more faithful a man is to his wife, the more desirable he becomes. I hope you have learned this from watching your friend.

Sorry mommy can’t come to the school, but don’t grow up and murder people ok?

I was reading the article about the so-called Craigslist Killer, Philip Markoff, in Vanity Fair, and like almost everybody, I wanted to find out, perchance through this detailed article, WHY?! Stories like this, a bright young man from a well-to-do family with a seemingly normal upbringing make people especially anxious.  If you cannot explain WHY, if the answer turns out to be a shrug of the shoulders, Well, something just snapped and he just did, then the world becomes too random for us to feel reassured.

The reporter set out to find the answers.  To reassure the readers.

Markoff’s parents were divorced.  That of course does not set him apart in this day and age.  But… how about what follows next?

“No one I spoke to in the small community remembered Markoff’s parents or step-parents participating in activities at his school or showing up very often at the local Community Activity Center, where he excelled in youth bowling leagues.”

When I read this, I was all like, WTF?!

It is not enough that I am constantly neurotic about providing my kids with as “normal” environment as I could possibly muster, being a full-time working train-commuting mother with a 9-to-5-only-if-I-say-I-give-up-of-ever-being-taken-seriously-and-why-don’t-you-just-quit-then-what-about-my-own-person-and-my-own-identity job, so now I have to worry about them growing up and becoming a crazed killer because I cannot attend their activities at school??!!

Thank you indeed for sending me off to the grandest guilt trip a mother could have ever taken.  I may never come back from this one.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Just keep on telling yourself that…

I am under duress at work…  I am a certified procrastinator for important projects.  I will be obsessed with it, can’t stop thinking about it, being kept awake at night worried about it, but feel at the same time utterly powerless.  It is like end of term at school with multiple papers due all over again…  The fear of failure sometimes gets too overwhelming.

I found myself humming inside my head the songs from Mary Poppins on Broadway while I plowed along on my presentation…  First up is, what else?

.

.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

.

.

Then I move on to….  “Anything Can Happen (If You Let It)”

Anything can happen if you let it

Sometimes things are difficult

But you can bet it doesn’t have to be some…


.

Just what I need to hear right now…  The following always gives me the goosebumps:

If you reach for the stars
All you get are the stars
But we’ve found a whole new spin
If you reach for the heavens
You get the stars thrown in

.

.

The last one is currently my “theme song”.  I am sharing with you my secret right now…  It is what gets me going on some of these days when I am so almost convinced that I suck at everything…  I just hum it as I go along with the motions until, miraculously,

.

I Am Practically Perfect!

.

(Watch from 1:03)

Nothing cures narcissistic self-pity better than a rabid case of road rage OR how I found reality

After Starbucks, which seemed to be closing since even the cops outside were leaving, I continued to wander in the night. Blasting Sarah Betten’s Scream, I mindless drove first on 53 N, which turned out to be a stupid move since it goes nowhere and ended even before the end of the album.

I turned around and moved onto 90 E, downtown Chicago here I come!

Sarah started singing

I used to know how to change the world
I lie awake at night and envy that girl.

This got me going. For the first time on this fucking crazy shitty day tears came. Flood gate. Cliche always true. I sobbed uncontrollably. Fuck fucking fuck. I am not going to be anybody ever am I ? I will never be truly happy will I ?

All of a sudden, traffic stopped. What the fuck? It is 12:30 AM!? And I was sandwiched between giant trailertrucks. In one second, road rage took over the sobbing ruminating mess. Proustian stream of consciousness self-narration is not a match for

Get out of my way you fucking brute

As I passed by the truck who cut in front of me right before the lane ended. I got in front of him just in time being THIS close to the orange cones because I drive a tiny car.

Yeah! Reality!

I did drive all the way downtown, enjoyed the moment when you get to the end of Ohio facing Sears Tower. I always love that 5 second stretch. Then I turned the other direction.

Thank goodness for highway oasis. 24/7. Otherwise wayward mothers like myself would have nowhere to go…

I could in theory check in a hotel. But I would cross some sort of line, wouldn’t I?

Wandering in the night I am just the insane me…

How I got a girl night out OR I walked out of the house Part III

“You are an asshole.” I yelled into the phone before I hung up. Because nothing gives me more pleasure and later more regret by having the last word, NOW!

When I got home with CHILD, husb was sitting in the comfy chair reading a comic book. Looking very relaxed. Which irks me more than anything since I can’t remember the last time I ever relax at home. I am such a bitch.

I looked over, he was giving me a finger!

“What is your problem?”

CHILD looked in his direction, he smiled and said, “Hey! Nothing.”

Then said, “Maybe you should leave now. Don’t come home. Since you don’t want to be home.”

After ignoring him and giving CHILD a banana, I thought to myself,

“Hey, he’s offering to watch CHILD!!”

So I grabbed my semi packed bag (I travel for work quite often) and a change of clothes, all the while thinking,

“Ok. I am going to do this now. What do I bring? Where do I go?”

How does one walk out of one’s house?

How do you walk out on your children?

“A hotel? I can Hotwire it maybe?”

I remembered that I have some free tickets from when I got bumped.

“New York?”

I remembered that I have NO family in this frigging country.

All these happened fast in less than 5 minutes.

While I was rummaging for the tickets, I found some discount gift cards for Aveda from Costco. Maybe I’ll go get a facial?!

In denial.

Big time. Since before I left aveda, I made an appointment for a massage next Friday for husb for Father’s Day.

God. I am completely insane and unstable…

This is how I got a GIRL night out, notice there is no S…

Tis 10:30 pm. Starbucks open past midnight because this one is where the cool people hang out… Maybe I will go catch a movie or two…

Parents behaving badly. Parenthood never guarantees maturity, does it?