Disneyland’s Dad and Spoiled Brat Son
I once witnessed what I could only describe as a father failing to become a father to his own son. Not because he never loved him, but because sometimes love without guidance can slowly ruin the person we love the most.
As I grew older, I began noticing something that made me think. The son slowly became a reflection of the father he once looked up to. The resemblance was never about their faces, but about the choices they made. The father had once been known as a man who chased freedom more than responsibility, a man who moved through life quickly, always wanting more but rarely staying long enough to build something stable. Years later, I saw pieces of that same restlessness in his own son.
Maybe the truth is, he never truly accepted the role of being a husband, nor the responsibility of being a father. He wanted the title, but not everything that came with it. Because being a father is more than giving a child everything they ask for. It is teaching discipline, responsibility, respect, and preparing them for a world that will not always be kind.
He had three children. Yet somehow, the one he loved the most became the one he protected the most. And perhaps that was where everything slowly began to fall apart. The son grew up receiving almost everything he wanted. Problems were solved before he could learn how to solve them himself. Hardships were removed before they could teach him anything. Little by little, he learned that someone else would always carry the weight for him, until one day life refused to do the same.
The father loved his son.
But he also ruined him.
Get human alterego’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I believe some reflections follow us until our last breath. The hardest one to accept is seeing ourselves in our own children. Because children often become the mirror parents refuse to look into.
When the consequences finally appeared, the father could not see his own reflection anymore. Instead, he blamed the mother. Sixteen years after the divorce, he still carried the same resentment, believing every mistake their son made belonged to her. Maybe blaming someone else was easier than admitting that he had also helped shape the person his son had become.
What hurt me most was not the failure itself, but the denial. The cruel words thrown toward the woman who had already carried enough. The pressure placed on her as though she alone was responsible for every wound, every mistake, every broken thing. Sometimes people speak from anger for so long that they forget how much damage their words leave behind.
We often think parenting is only about loving a child. But perhaps parenting is also knowing when to say no. Love without guidance can become indulgence. Protection without boundaries can become neglect. A child does not only need affection. A child also needs discipline, disappointment, consequences, and failure. Because one day their parents will no longer be there to carry the weight of the world for them.
Sometimes I wonder if the father ever realized that the child he kept trying to protect had become the very person he was never prepared to guide.
Maybe becoming a father is not the same as learning how to be one. Some men become fathers the day their child is born. But not every man chooses to become the father that child truly needs.
“A bad father has never a good son”
