I was watching The Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 9.  In the episode, Ramsey loses his battle with Jon Snow and loses his Castle.  Sansa Stark (who is married to him and mistreated by him) gets her revenge.  Ramsey is an evil man.  He tortures and kills people.  He feeds people to his dogs.  He is cocky and will do what he needs to do to get what he wants (like kill his father).  When he loses the battle he is beaten unconscious by Jon Snow, he wakes up tied to a chair in the dog kennel and Sansa is standing outside the kennel and looking in.  There are big dogs in there with an appetite for meat and Ramsey had been starving them for a week with the expectation of feeding the prisoners he would have captured to them, had he won the battle.  Now he was there and the dog’s cages were open.  To make a long story short, he said the dogs were loyal to him and they ended up mauling/eating him because they were starving (a direct result of Ramsey’s actions).  Now a person who has been following the series would think to themselves “He got what he deserved.  He’s pure evil!”  I, on the other hand, thought of my son.  Without even reveling in the mauling of this evil character, I immediately internalized and saw myself as Ramsey and my son, Jason, as Sansa.  I thought about how karma caught up with Ramsey and how karma may catch up with me.  No, I don’t torture my son.  But I am strict with him and at times controlling.

Raising a child is a long process.  We have to understand what makes what makes them tick.  From there it’s a question of teaching them and motivating them.  Just like a baby in a mother’s womb, they must eventually come out. If left to their own devices, they would just eat junk food, watch TV, and play video games all day.  As a good parent, we have to ease them out of their world and prepare them to be responsible adults.  There are no guarantees.  I can be a good parent and they can grow up to be bad OR I can be a good parent that they grow up to be good.  I can be a bad parent and they can grow up to be bad OR I can be a bad parent and they can grow up to be bad.  There are no guarantees that they will be a good person.

There is a lot of trial and error when I teach my son.  A lot of good times and a lot of bad times.  I’ve lost my temper a lot times.  There are times when I get fed up with him and am intentionally mean to him.  There are times when he lies to me and I intentionally interrogate him and verbally back him into a corner were he has no choice but to confess.  It’s these times that scare me.  I see myself as Ramsey and my son as Sansa.  Karma is fair.  And since karma is fair, I will have to pay for those times where I was mean to my son or harsh on him. Regardless of how he grows up (good or bad).  BUT I also know I cannot learn without making mistakes and trying to change the way I think. I wish I could know the answer or have the magic method to raise a child, but I don’t.  I know there is a cost associated with the mistakes I make in raising my son and I accept the future consequences, but I also know that these mistakes will not be as many as they could have been had I not incorporated my dhamma practice into raising my son.  If I didn’t I could have ended up like Ramsey.