I just watched about 3/4 of Lisa Ling's Our America - Extreme Parenting. It reminded me a little of my take away from Jonathon Franzen's book, The Corrections: as parents we often try to 'correct' for how we perceive our folks messed up with us. At some point along our developmental path, we become determined not to make the same mistakes they made.
In fact, this is the premise of a new TV show, called I Hate My Teenage Daughter on Fox. It's about two moms who had been bullied as young teens, but who 'parented' their own girls into becoming just the types of girls who tortured them when they were younger. Ugh. Sounds awful.
Anyway - for better or for worse, much of the reputation of psychotherapy is that it will lead clients to eventually blame their parents for something. For example, if your parents were very lax about education and expectations regarding grades, you might grow up to think, "they didn't push me hard enough. I wasn't challenged enough. I'm not going to make that mistake with my kids. My kids will be challenged to meet high expectation set by me. They will be successful. They will reach their potential." Or maybe you had a parent who really favored one of your siblings. You might think, "I will be totally fair with my kids. Each will be offered the same opportunities as the other. They will get the same number of hugs. They will have equal chores. No one will feel slighted."
Maybe it sounds crazy, but I've made a connection between this approach to raising children and some of what I learned working in hospice: we have less control than we think. Case in point - I remember the sisters in my neighborhood growing up who weren't allowed to watch TV and always had to eat the crusts of their bread. They didn't turn out much different than the rest of us as far as I know. Conversely, I know another good friend of mine who was raised in a pretty lax household compared to mine (Beatles poster on the dining room wall - Gasp!) and he went to undergraduate and grad school in the Ivy League.
I'm not saying there is a direct correlation. I am saying there is NOT a direct correlation. Our kids are born with many innate traits, which we can support and love and nurture. I've also read and wrote a little about the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a book that was published about a year ago. The author, a mom/professor, advocates the "Chinese Way" of raising children. Very structured and disciplined. She goes on to say one daughter was able to bend to this discipline and another rebelled against it.
What I'd like to propose is that if we have some aspect of raising our kids that we are really digging in our heels on, like anything, it's good to look at it a little closer to make sure we're really doing what we want to do. It's worth looking at whether we are seeing the child in front of us, or seeing our own selves as a kid. If we're seeing only ourselves and the hurt we felt, it might be that we are trying to get our own needs met through our kids. Talk about needing therapy later.
In raising our children, I am in no way advocating an all laissez-faire approach all the time. I'm just saying that in raising children, like in all things, we usually have more choices than we think and less control than we imagine.
Here's how I'm dealing with all that you write about in this post: I acknowledge my parent's method of parenting with the realization that it was mostly good and ALWAYS was the best they could do. I hope my adult children do the same for me. I forgave myself in these regards years ago. It's my belief that all of us turned out to be happy and productive. May it always be so.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me those Beatles-parents were on the right track: "All You Need is Love." ;-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, every kid is so different. I think what you say in your last two paragraphs is very important. We will never heal from our own stuff and self-actualize if we are reliving it through our children. Likewise, we are no kind of role models caught in our stuff for eternity.