In contrast to preparing amends for my wife, I had my children's input. I talked to my daughter and son about the process while completing their list. In addition to items I recalled, my childrens' lists included behaviors they remembered being hurtful:

  • Spanking you severely for punishment so hard that my hand hurt.

  • Isolating you in your room for punishment.

  • Calling you rude and obnoxious names when I was angry at you (e.g. "slut").

  • Leaving you in your bed to cry in the early evening when we lived in Cool Valley.

  • Making you attend Sunday school at the First Unitarian church in Chicago where you screamed your head off.

  • Making you attend art classes at the Biltmore Art Museum.

  • Saying derogatory things about the friends you ran around with.

  • Having sexual thoughts about you when you were a teenager.

  • Taking your mother's side in disagreements you had with her.

  • Nagging you about attending classes at Miami Dade.

  • Making you attend first grade at the Montessori school.

  • Insisting that you go and stick it out at the New York state camp.

  • Requiring that you and your brother sit together in the back seat on long trips.

  • Following my beliefs only in setting guidelines for raising you.

  • Not calling an ambulance to take you to the hospital when you took all those pills.

  • Spending too much time with my work and not enough leisure time with you in father daughter activities.

  • Insisting that you take part in family activities after you were out on your own with your own friends.

  • Looking down on people you considered friends (e.g. Belinda).

  • Making you go to sleep away camp or visiting relatives instead of taking family vacations to places (e.g. Washington, DC).

  • Role modeled being to hard on myself so that you learned to expect to much of yourself so that you get tension headaches.

  • Making you watch mother cry when you had done something that upset her.

  • Trying to get you to take part in more school activities.

  • Making you take part in family discussions especially when I was being calm and you were angry.

  • Waiting until the morning to talk with you about your coming in late at night (e.g. saying to you "We will talk about this in the morning.").

  • Telling you one of the reasons the reason you couldn't stay out late was because mother couldn't go to sleep until you got home.

  • Making you take a quiet time for study or otherwise each day.

  • Restricting you to watching TV programs that you had outgrown and otherwise restricting your TV privileges.

  • Making you work out a contract with me about your financial support tied to school with Rod Jackson.

  • "Nagging" you about your school work and life style to the point that you didn't call home that often.

  • Making you go to school on skip days when most of the other student's parents turned their heads the other way.


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