Post
by abcrystcats » February 25th, 2006, 7:14 pm
I still have to disagree with your sense of guilt about going away. Soozen's too.
My father was ALWAYS on the road. He was a salesman. He went away for a week or two weeks, then he came back for a few days or a week, then he was off again. He went to every state in the union, every province and territory in Canada and plenty of places outside the U.S. including South America and behind the Iron Curtain, so when I say he was AWAY, I mean it. He was AWAY. He did most of this travel while we were growing up, and only filled in one Canadian province after I became an adult.
Furthermore, we MOVED a lot. Maybe not as much as military personnel are moved, but much more than we would have liked. It was stressful for me as a child, growing up like that, and it must have been equally hard on my two brothers.
There were times when we felt neglected by him, and like he didn't love us enough to spend real time with us.
When he was home, he worked LONG days at the office, usually had at least a half hour's commute one way to work, and arrived home somewhere between TIRED and EXHAUSTED. Still, he tried to be a good parent when he was home. Although he definitely could have done a better job, he cared and he tried. I'm sure you care and you try, too.
My point in all this is that my brothers and I didn't grow up to be addicts because our dad wasn't home. Drug experimentation among me and my siblings has been very conservative. I've been, by far, the worst, and I never developed a drug habit. Alcohol .... that's another story, but that didn't become a problem until I hit my late thirties and it was a direct result of another sad event, NOT my parents, necessarily. As for my two brothers, one has never even smoked pot, and his idea of drinking is having one beer. The other can get boozed up when he feels like it, and has smoked pot, but hasn't done that since high school.
So, once again, I'm saying, Knip, don't blame yourself for being away. You are doing what you HAVE to do, if your son doesn't see that or admit it now, he will later on.
If you want to blame something, blame the addictive tendency and perhaps the permissiveness of your house.
I deeply regret laying that guilt trip on my dad when we were growing up. He made it possible for us to live the life we were living. He worked like a slave, and sometimes he still had time to play with his children. He made a point of doing that. But kids just don't know how hard it all is. It's hard enough just to be an adult. Raising children and giving your family everything they need is an enormous responsibility.
Give yourself a break. You're a caring father, that's quite obvious.
