Contrary Personality Disorder

I do not like to be told what to do. Perhaps that sound a little juvenile and perhaps it is, still this is who I am.

Example 1: As a child my parents would come into my room at night and tuck me in. Kiss me good night, say I love you and turn out the light. I was so completely frustrated by this, every night. I felt that forcing one into a ritual of saying I love you and kissing and hugging is horrible. I felt that if you say I love you when you are told to say I love you it doesn’t really mean I love you. It is just a silly ritual.

Example 2: Again as a child. Every night at dinner we were required to say thank you to my mom and tell her how much we enjoyed our meal. Again I felt that being forced to say thank you made the thank you insincere and therefore false.

Example 3: I have been trying to convince my family that we should eat dinner at the dinning room table. Instead we eat dinner on the couch watching TV. For years I have been trying. Whenever I serve dinner at the table I get so much rebellion from Jeff and Mandy that I have given up the fight. Last week someone told Jeff it was eat dinner with your family day, so he suggested we eat at the table, because someone else told him to do it. Jeff and Mandy were so excited to participate in the day thing. Me, not so much. I don’t want some day to tell me when and where to eat my dinner. Even though technically I want the family to eat dinner at the table I don’t want them to do it because of some day, I want them to do eat at the table when I suggested we eat at the table.

I have always been this way. I don’t like to do what I am told I am supposed to do. It makes me itchy and I just want to find a compelling reason not to do all the supposed tos. I have always been this way and always will be. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with Jeff, where I tell him, I really wanted to do X but now I cannot because you told me to do X. Sorry.

When Mandy was born, she did not have this contrary personality disorder. Mandy likes to give presents on Christmas, she loves the rituals of good night kisses, of saying thank you Mommy dinner is delicious. Mandy thrives with boundaries and supposed tos. There are a vast array of other personality traits which Mandy possesses which are quite similar to mine but not this one. I thought for the longest time that the reason I am so contrary is due to the icky bits of my childhood, before I was removed from my biological family and adopted. I thought I was broken, or as Jeff says, that I just had “Issues”. I bought into the theory that our personality and choices are a result of how we are raised and how our parents treat us.

And then there was Lily. Sweet little Miss Lily has my Contrary Personality Disorder. She doesn’t like to do anything anyone tells her to do, ever. She is an extremely sweet, kind, happy person – but don’t tell her to do something or she will oppose you with the force of a thousand suns, doesn’t matter if it is something she wants to do, she would rather die a thousand deaths than do the supposed tos. Yeah Lily!

For this reason and others since Lily has come into our lives I have changed my perception of the amount of influence parenting has on a child’s personality. I used to think that a person was a product of their environment, now I am not sure how much of an influence I believe environment has. It has become apparent to me that biology or DNA is also very much responsible for our personality. But, the thing I think makes us who we are most is choice. I may have a DNA based urge to rebel but I can choose my behavior. I may have personality traits which are the result of my childhood but I have the capacity to choose my behavior. Anyways, it is freeing to feel that I am not broken, and freeing in raising Lily & Mandy to realize that every little thing I do and say isn’t going to determine who they will eventually become.