We've Got a WINNER!
Got a serious one here. Tough subject because it can cause some serious lifetime danage to some kiddies, and it often begins so subtly, even innocently. Sincere parents are ALMOST ALWAYS unaware that this is occurring. We refer here to one or both parents choosing a.... Favorite Child.
Ever wonder why Only-Children are such insufferably arrogant people? In large part, it is because the Parents have made a decision to limit their reproduction to one child "so that we can concentrate our love" on this precious gem. You know, "if we have more than one, our nourishing 'love' gets diluted". Yeah, Doc calls this Hippie Horseshit, It stems from the idea that "our focused Parenting, our concentrated love" will create a Master Race type kid, i.e. the beneficiary of super-empowering, success-producing, genius-endowing child powers that everyone will just love to pieces "just like we do." And besides, "We are doing our part to salvage the diminishing resources of an overpopulated world." Or so the theory goes. Buy a Prius, have only one child.
Makes you want to vomit.
The moment little Junior pops out of the womb, the vows begin. "I'm going to be the best Mommy (Daddy) ever-n-EVER!" All of your best Parenting techniques and stratagems are infused into this hapless First-child -- my father was too harsh, I will use patience and love instead; my mother was soooo deferential to my father, so I will instill EMPOWERMENT in my little girl-Angel. Love, reason, detailed explanations, patience, and toss in lots and lots of sweet smiles and "I love you's" and 'poof', you've jettisoned eons of parenting know-how, and invented a whole new Human institution: PRODUCTION OF THE BRAT THAT NOBODY LIKES!
No spanking, no clear commands, no disapproving expressions, no raised voice, no corrections, no manners, no courtesy, no consideration for the needs of others. A purrrr-fect Narcissist, thank you very much.
The engineering of The Perfect Child inevitably leads to a selfish, self-centered brat of a kid who grows to arrogant adult, grossing everyone out, except for his blinded, but loving, parents. Another Climate-change Prozac babe, or a Peter Pan Man, basically. It seems that the Parent's A-game, that concentrated effort at perfect love-mold parenting, is missing a critical element. That missing secret sauce is ....wait for it......that's right, HUMILITY!
You are first, say the new parents, our precious newborn. You are our darling infant. You are our amazzzzzzing taahd-dler. You're the smartest kid in your Kindergarten class. You are endowed with physical, intellectual and personality gifts reserved only for The Gods! It is little wonder then why this coddled, pampered, superior Being grows with the proverbial nose up in the air,
There are various permutations of The Favored Child. Let us list them, and then address them all with detail. 1) Only Child, as discussed; 2) First Child; 3) Mommy's favorite; 4) BOTH Mommy and Daddy's Favorite; and the 5) Ugly Duckling Child. We are talking mostly the male children so most of our references here will be "he or him." The "why" males, is a complex subject, irrelevant to solutions soooo,,,,,,baby steps, shall we?
Harm occurs with less frequency and intensity in the First-Child, a sort of temporary Only-Child. Often, the subsequent appearance of additional children in the brood, dissipates the full-force of the love campaign, and this helps to mature the less "focused" parents. The full-court-press love infusion is relaxed, and time constraints and less focus can often right the Parenting ship to a more common sense approach. The kiddos cannot all get that laser-beam attention and 'love', and boy is that a good thing!
As more children are produced, all of the "perfect love" is necessarily divided up. Thus, the second, third, etc, children can breathe a little more freely, and aren't quite as smothered with your very best parenting techniques and "perfect love." If you have two or three kids they will usually be somewhat LESS obnoxious than the brutally arrogant Only-Child, even if you insist on ineffective Modern Parenting. So, there's that "bonus', I guess.
But the primordial ooze sometimes germinates into THE ONE. That dreaded monster that emerges in a litter of kids, who becomes GODZILLA. Or...."The Fly"?:
Strangely enough, even in this Feminist Hear Me Roar era, this evolving monster tends to be a male child. We call this catastrophe, 'gulp', THE FAVORED CHILD
The most obnoxious of the FAVORED Child variant, is the MOMMY-favored sub-variant. A male infused with Mommy-obsession is truly a grotesque sight. This variant inspires adjectives like Soy-boy, Metro, Chipilón, and Peter Pan. They grow to display all of the WORST traits of the feminine; as well as the WORST traits of the masculine. Their feminine traits are perverted caricatures of female strengths. Nurturing becomes fetish; compassion becomes obsession; deference becomes passive-aggression -- all of the DNA-endowed traits that make a Woman the perfect Home Maker, make Mommy-Godzilla-Child into a lacquered-fingernail, woman ABUSER. That's right -- and even forgetting the feminine "charms" of this Mommy-Boy, it is the contempt they harbor for their Mommy, honed over years of DISRESPECT for her, that lead to the real horrors of this unfortunate creature. They cannot be Leaders, they wilt in the tense Fourth Quarter of The Big Game; they fail at relationships and marriage(s); they beat their women; they virtue-signal their importance in every way. They flit from job to job. They never grow up and often become......
It is evolutionary fact that all human newborns have one overriding instinct. They must ingratiate themselves to Mommy and the Tribe, or else they were doomed. They needed to make themselves irresistible attention-magnates. Go to the Way-Back machine my Doubting Tomasinas, to the cave-man evolutionary days when Humans lived a nomadic hunting and gathering life. If a child did not smile pleasingly and reflexively while at the same time, cry for sufficient FOOD, the Cave-baby perished of starvation, disease, or abandonment. Yes, they would be left behind when the tribe had to move after eating all the nearby food in the area and shitting all over their encampment making it a smelly, barren sewer. During droughts, the Cave-baby was simply killed by the adult Males, who decided that Cave-Mommy did not have enough food to eat for milk production, and also care for Cave-Daddy as well. The earliest of population controls, eh?
Now, fast forward to the present-day American era of abundance. Evolutionary child DNA self-centered-ness can burst out in a highly negative manner if not suppressed by more civilized customs and instructions. If Mommy-Favorite grows with constant massaging of his ass-kissing/demand instincts, well my Google-Parents, you have a problem: A growing, arrogant, selfish, reckless, feckless, violent Man-child mess. What is so ironic is that many Parents, cannot identify their own errors, but are experts at identifying the brattiness of their friend's or relative's kids. "Tsk, tsk" on them, right? The Mommy-Favorite child cries "it was an accident" constantly. After acting-out in anger and violence, "I didn't mean to" is the oft repeated excuse. By the time this boy turns forty, he is still an annoying, careless, reckless, self-centered....BOY.
But at age forty, this "boy" has the muscles of a full-grown man. For Mommy, girfriends, wives and co-workers, 'OUCH!'
The MOMMY-DADDY Favored Child variant is even more damaged goods. For a variety of reasons, BOTH parents take a special 'shine' to this unfortunate. Favored children cause the entire family to become imbalanced, by the way, with the Sibs being victimized as well. No one, however is as victimized as the unlucky Favored One, by far. And even more so if BOTH Mommy and Daddy prescribe to his magnificence. Similarly, if they, for some reason, pity him (more on this later). Allow me to explain.
This Bi-Parent favoritism can stem from: 1) "Oh look, he looks just like Mommy (or Daddy)!"; 2) "He has blue eyes and blond hair, Yummy!"; 3) "He is endowed with soooo much pigment and Jet Black hair, just like Daddy!"; 4) "His smile, frown, laughter, gait, toes, etc, look just like mine!", or 5) "Finally, the Boy we always wanted. I mean, girls are OK, but after two, we really WANTED a boy!" There are other "Oh Boys!", I am certain, but our point is that once one of these takes hold, the PARENTING becomes a sub-conscious descent into making "the Perfect Child that Mommy and Daddy always dreamed of."
The Mommy-Daddy variety are tough to alter, once their sub-conscience solidifies at age 7-8. It can be done, but whoa! what an effort it takes. It requires first, that Mommy and Daddy RECOGNIZE their grievous parenting errors; and second, both Mommy and Daddy need to have a "come to Jesus" radical change in the parenting philosophy. They must "boot camp" the kid, break him down, and rebuild him. Little Adonis must be forced to change radically from "My shit don't stink" to a "May I be excused please?" type person. In addition this punitive (yes PUNITIVE) parenting must be severe enough to make an impact, while at the same time CONSISTENT AND PERSISTENT. No more dopey "time-outs", "you did wrong, but I love you's", and "say you're sorry's", with zero consequence, zero follow-up and zero effect. By the time the Mommy-Daddy variant is 7 years old, he knows he "can take anything they dish out standing on my head."
We'll revisit Solutions in a subsequent essay. You won't exactly be thrilled because (hint), child-rearing solutions require changes in the PARENTS. (Yes, your children are EXACTLY what you raised them to be, i.e. its your fault. No worries though, right? You are more than willing to do ANY AND ALL of the tough things needed to help your floundering PRECIOUS CHILD, que no?)
Finally, the most pitiful of the Favored Child cohort is the UGLY DUCKLING variant. Once this child is identified as "not quite up to snuff", (at least according to "our high standards"), the parenting path snowballs in the very same way as the Mommy-Daddy favorite, except IN REVERSE. This child is doomed to meet all of Mommy and/or Daddy's LOW expectations and legions of excuses. The unspoken horrors of this unfortunate baby are a dichotomy of, "you bet we love him as much as the others", while at the same time insuring his doom with Pity-Pot parenting. Actions always speak louder than words, right? OK, here you go:
1) baby is ugly (certain traits are unexpected -- "weird" ears, "funky" hair, fussy feeder, inconvenient crier etc, etc, you name it, a hugely "annoying" kid
2) baby is sickly. Nothing fatal, just a lot of Doctor visits (psst -- most for hysterical parent hand-holding)
3) baby "lags" siblings in physical milestones, leading to negative feedback loop, i,e, he's doing less, we expect less, so he DOES less.
It is upon this last variant that brainwashed parents foist so much modern cultural nonsense. In Old Times, even if a child was FATALLY ILL, the Old-School parent would "put on a brave face so as to not frighten little Billy". Despite the hardships, parents would continue to emphasize virtues like courage, courtesy, respect and stoicism. Today, Parents act like Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" with every little insignificant BOO-BOO!
You begin to regard this sub-human with pity, one of the most damaging human emotions. You sigh when you talk to others about him; you dress him with ill-fitting clothes; you never even consider a haircut, even at age 66; you fail to notice his unkempt appearance, shoes in-reverse, and poor grooming. You are blasé about teaching him how to self-dress, brush his teeth, and comb his his hair. You allow him to pee himself and smell like Pee-Pee boy all the time. He is never told that eating his boogers is impolite. Kids start to make fun of him, and pre-school puts him in the "special" table, and NO ONE EVER NOTICES THAT THIS BOY IS NORMAL, AND THAT HE IS BEING TAUGHT TO BE THE CRIPPLED KID.
Ugly-boy takes on the role he is being taught, and learns to get advantages over sibs and classmates for such "handicaps'. He is not required to do chores, pick up his mess, be courteous, do his homework, or even GO TO SCHOOL. He lands in the office of THE THERAPIST, and his demise quickly accelerates. He begins to comprehend that he is indeed defective, deep inside, and so begins to ACT defective, all the while being careful to nurture his enablers, so that someone will always pity him and clean up after his mess, even to the SEVENTH DECADE OF LIFE. Remember, we are not talking about genetic defects like Down's and Kleinfelter's disease, or cancer. No, no, this is PARENT-INDUCED SUGGESTIVE PSYCHOSOMATIZATION AND RUINATION..... and simply because Little Billy's ears looked funny at age 2 months!
The sickly Ugly-Duckling variants include those kids that have some type of recurring "health" problems that Mommy is obsessed with, non fatal, and from a Doc's point of view, insignificant. To the overbearing Modern Parent, however, having a cold, a fever, a skin rash or a knee boo-boo can be a Five Alarm Fire, particularly if they recur more than once. OMG! "I have a sickly child!" The child is pampered, medicated, and held in Mommy's arms so tightly that the poor lad can't breathe! Regular visits to the doc, urgent care and GOOGLE, further finish-off this poor sicko who soon faces a lifetime of psychological dependence on actually being ill. After all, this was always a tried and true way to get Mommy's attention, ice cream, an extra candy, and cuddle-time. His siblings could only dream of such favoritism.
Too often, Mommy obsesses so profoundly over Junior's "illness(s)", that Junior becomes an expert in suggestion, saying just the right things to the expectant Doctor. The Doctor launches extensive work-ups always under the concerned, furrowed brow of overbearing Mommy. The "weak" child becomes so sophisticated in this fakery that by Teen years he can feign legitimate illness expertly, even turning an alcohol or drug-induced weekend hangover into an "advantage." "Too sick to get up for School Mom" says the Monday morning lush. These hangovers can be used by the cunning "weak" Teen to even deceive his pitying and gullible parents into extraordinary measures, with specialists, experimental medications, and even medical conferences. No kidding, I have personal knowledge of these Family Munchausens! This sickly boy is now in his forties, and his parents still have not a clue that he is actually an alcoholic. (Better to have an incurable auto-immune disease, or better yet, several autoimmune diseases than to be an alcoholic!).
The Sickly variant becomes a cunning Gollum indeed. Weak of mind, pathetic character, and overall LOSER mentality, while at the same time, luring all those around him to participate in this charade -- school excuses, PE excuses, job excuses-- all leading to a perpetual Patient, dependent on Mommy, wife, and government forever, but always obnoxious, selfish, sociopathic, and psychosomatic. A real beauty!
We have briefly, and unintelligently touched on Parental-Child Favoritism. Variants include 1) Only-child, 2) First Child, 3) Mommy-favorite, 4) Mommy-Daddy Favorite, and 5) The Ugly Duckling, Usually, male children are the unfortunate victims of this horrible parenting. Girls tend to be infected globally with Feminism, so it is not necessary to favor one girl or the other. They are ALL bathed in this putrid sewer. But you have got a BIG problem if you have got a Favorite-Boy in the house. They populate the prisons.
Think for just a moment, about the abject LIFETIME MISERY these victims of poor parenting suffer. "Most people live lives of quiet desperation," is so true, for sure. But that desperate Boy-Man IS NOT SO QUIET. You parents are producing this horror show. Stop it! Get off Google, and go talk to your HEALTHY grandmother. Read some etiquette books written before 1950. The modern shit is shit. You always virtue signal in crowds that "I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MY CHILDREN", right? And, lighten up. Consider the following Old School humor;
And keep this in mind. There is an apparent lack of humility in these opinions, fair enough. But remember, I am not addressing you as Doc-Pop, or Doc-Suegro, or Doc-Grampa. These are the opinions of the Doc-Doc.
------- DOC
