Q: My former husband has a bad habit of shooting himself in the foot just when things are starting to look good.
When he and I were married, we would have what looked like an exceptional crop year but then he would charge off into some kind of a dumb decision and what was supposed to be a bonus ended up being a liability, or another tough year. Twice he nearly lost our farm.
I thought that when my former husband and I separated I would be rid of that stuff, but not so.
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Apparently, our oldest son is taking after his father. Given some success he will shoot himself in the foot until he ultimately fails, just like his dad does.
He came home the other day with some super marks in math, which was great, but then he decided that he must be some kind of a mathematical whiz kid so he quit doing his homework. Now he is close to failing his favourite subject.
Our son is 15 years old. I think that I still have some time to work with him, and to be honest, I do not think that I could live with myself if I did not do something to try to help our son overcome his father’s tendency to shoot himself in the foot whenever he is successful. I am open — do you have any ideas for me?
A: Your best bet is to make an appointment with a cognitive behavioural psychologist and get her to help your son regulate his emotional preface to life.
The problem is not success. Both your son and his father can have all the successes in the world they want without further incident.
The problem is those little exciting emotions that go along with success.
Your son and his dad need to learn to appreciate good feelings while at the same time remembering that we are more likely to be successful when we check our emotions, properly think out our challenges and use our intellectual abilities to figure out where we go next. There is no magic to any of this, it just takes practice.
Why don’t you try dusting off that collection of jigsaw puzzles you have stored away in a closet somewhere and putting them to good use with your son. The two of you can work on various puzzles together. But here is the trick. You have to impose some self-discipline into the exercise. Set your stove timer to 20 minutes. When you and your son are working on a puzzle you cannot work for anything less than 20 minutes and you cannot go over 20 minutes.
It sounds easy, but it isn’t. You are going to be tempted to put just one more little piece into place. You are going to be tempted because putting that one piece into place will feel good, just like it felt good when you put the last piece into place. The problem is that the drive to get more good feelings by breaking your own rules and searching for another piece to put into place is kind of what happens when you shoot yourself in the foot. In both instances, the jigsaw puzzle and your foot, you are falling victim to your feelings and that is what you are trying to stop. You are going to have to learn to stop when the buzzer goes, even if you are embellishing a good feeling.
This is going to take time. But if you and your son work on it, he will one day figure out that reacting to his emotional impulse is not always the most useful strategy he can follow in life and by taking a few moments to think things out, he will avoid those personal tragedies in which his father appears to be caught.
