Nate Moore

Student ID # 1309386

Self Reflection Paper #1

The Experience: My son coming to live with me at the age of 15 years old and the failure of not being
able to birth a relationship we both had always wanted.

Type of Interference: Psychological Noise

How my background played a role: I was raised with two brothers in a very difficult and rough
environment as a child. I grew up without my biological father in the home, and a step father who was a
Police Officer, however my step father did not take too much of an interested in raising three boys who
were not his own. During my time growing up I did not encounter the father-son relationship that most
boys seek after, therefore forcing me to experience life during my years growing up as a series of live
and learn experiences. After leaving home at the age of 17, I sought after everything I had always been
yearning for, a family. I joined the military, started life and decided that the girl I had been in love with
for four years throughout high school was the one I needed. So, like most young people do that are in
love I made a rash decision and agreed with her that we should have kids. Shortly there after we
brought my son DeMarcus and my daughter Alexia into the world. However, over the next few years we
both slowly realized that we were way to young to understand what we were doing. Needless to say
our relationship did not last much longer after that. In 1995 we decided to break up the relationship
and go our separate ways. During that same year, my children's mother decided she was moving out of
state with our children. With myself being in the military I could do nothing but let them go. I had no
option in moving, so I made the best of the situation and grew through it. For the next 12 years, as I
watched my children grow from a distance, I had slowly become the father to my son and daughter that
I had been so angry at my whole life, I had become who my father was to me.

In 2008 after 12 years of separation I finally had another chance to build a relationship with my children.
My son being 15 years old and my daughter being 12 years old had contacted me because my son
wanted to come live in my home. After analyzing the situation, I had slowly grown to the understanding
that my son and his mother's relationship had been in turmoil for years, however I was not prepared for
what lied ahead. Shortly thereafter, I moved my son to California and bought a new home. For the next
six months we had plenty of time to bond. We did all of the things I had always been wanting for myself
to be able to do with my father. But the closer I got to my son, I began to see changes in him that were
becoming very irrational and sometimes violent. We went through our phases of parent-child
arguments that were the cause of nothing else other than disobedience, and eventually we hit a dead
end. Both of us had enough. My son expressed to me that he was so angry at his mother all these years
for everything she had put him through that he did not know how to deal with the fact that he had his
dad again. During the course of the next month, we continued to have our struggles, many times ending
in law enforcement being involved in correcting his behaviour and finally him making a decision to move
back to his mothers home. That was a sad time for me, because I had yearned deeply to be able to give
to my son the relationship I never had. So once again, I had to learn to grow through I and wait my next
opportunity to close another door in my lifes chapter of dissapointments.

Why did it happen? It happened because I was not able to see through my sons pain and hurt enough to
alleviate some of the pressures of life for him.

What if anything could I have done to correct it? I could not have done much to correct the feelings my
son had. I myself was learning and growing so much having this new relationship I had always wanted
and he was seeking someone in the place of a father that would understand his pain at the same time.
We were growing too much equally in different ways the mentally we were not able to break down the
walls and find a way through it.