Learning to be a parent requires great diligence. The alternative is the nightmare being lived by this 8-year-old porn addict and his parents.
Timestamps:
00:00 A father asks Greg for help with a 12-year-old who has been a porn addict since he was 8.
02:00 Therapy doesn't address PCSD so it doesn't help this problem.
03:26 Where parents fail: don't feel loved enough to be confident and give up when the child resists consequences.
05:18 Don't quit.
Transcript:
One day I spoke with a man who said, “My wife and I are bewildered. We do not know what to do about our son, Sean. He is twelve years old, and he’s been completely addicted to porn for more than four years now. He doesn’t do his schoolwork. He doesn’t listen to us. He lies to us all the time. He steals from us. He’s lost our trust in him.”
Me to everyone: Parents simply are not prepared for problems like this. An EIGHT-year-old child who is already a porn addict? The solution is not complicated, but it requires parents who feel loved themselves, who have been taught how to parent, and who are capable of being consistent in loving and teaching their child. Those are big requirements.
Father: My wife and I watched the introduction to the Parenting Training, and then Chapter Zero—the one about whining and loving and teaching. We’ve never heard anything like it before. Not ever, not after reading books and articles, not after taking him to therapy.
“You are completely right. The problem really is that I wasn’t loved by my parents. My childhood was filled with anger and controlling.
“My wife wasn’t loved either, so neither of us knew how to love Sean. We saw problems in his behavior early on, but we didn’t know what to do, and now his life is completely out of control. And we feel helpless. We take him to therapy, but it’s making no difference.
Me to everyone: Therapy simply does not work for kids like this. Why? Because the therapist has NO idea what PCSD even is. They don’t know what Real Love is. They were never unconditionally loved themselves.
So there is NO possibility they could explain to the parents how to truly love the children, nor could they (the therapists) possibly love the child. The child is doomed. Some of these kids even get put on medications, which make everything more complicated and worse.
Where Parents Fail
Me to Father: I’m not telling you what to do here. The solution is simple but requires considerable work on your part first. I DO want to ask you a question or two: Have you simply removed all electronic devices from him? Everything? Phone, computers, everything?
Father sounded deeply discouraged when he said, “We tried that a couple of times, but he went crazy, breaking things, screaming. We had to make it stop. There was nothing we could do but give him his computer and phone back.”
Me to everyone: And this is where parents fail. They know something needs to be done. But (1) they don’t feel loved enough themselves to be confident in loving and teaching their child, and (2) they give up the instant the child resists what absolutely needs to be done.
They put their child’s temporary, superficial, and pathetic comfort ahead of saving their child’s LIFE.
Their unwillingness to tolerate some discomfort now GUARANTEES their child’s continued pain, much worse pain, and being crippled for the rest of his life.
We cannot avoid our responsibilities as parents without destroying our children.
Parents, we have to pay attention. Severe pain and disability for a lifetime begin with such small things, and if we don’t know what to do, the PAIN underlying those “small things” WILL grow, and the weeds spread like a fire, and the garden is choked out, to the point where even trying to pull the weeds becomes nearly impossible, and if we try, we pull up the good plants too, and it’s a real mess.
EVERY big fire begins with something small. Every cancer begins with a single neoplastic cell. Every death from a viral infection begins with a handful of incredibly tiny particles that begin to multiply and kill everything around them.
You’re watching this video right now because you’re willing at least to begin. Do not quit. Do not hesitate to tell other parents that there is a solution.
Learning to be a parent requires great diligence, but you can do it. The alternative is some variation on the nightmare being lived by this twelve-year-old porn addict, Sean, and his parents.
