Oct24
Children Don’t Exist for Parents
I think most of us don’t know that. If you look at it worldwide, children are often seen as social security benefits. Depending on the customs of the land, that’s the reason why girls are devalued in parts of the world. They grow up to serve their husband’s families, so having a girl child is like investing in something that will have no return. Children are there to serve their parents.
But even in more progressive countries, that claim to value human rights and the individual, children don’t seem to rate. There’s a lot of lip service, but the bottom line is we have so many expectations on our children that have more to do with us than them.
There are a lot of good parents - in every country. And I do believe most parents want what’s best for their child, but too many, even with best intentions, have difficulty seeing their children as separate beings. And then there are those who don’t want what’s best for their child. They aren’t capable of caring for anyone, including their children, more than themselves.
To these parents, children have come to serve them, not so much as social security, but as image security. A lot of children live to reflect back to their parents what their parents need to believe about themselves.
But that’s our jobs as parents. We’re supposed to be the mirrors to our children. We’re supposed to reflect back to them what they’re thinking and feeling, to validate who they are so they can develop a sense of identity, to see them so they know they exist and matter.
They’re not supposed to do that for us. That’s role reversal, and it happens way too often.
I know a father who resents having to take his daughter to school on “his time” with her, and often doesn’t, a mother who calls her high school daughter in the middle of class to cry on her shoulder because of marital strife, a grandparent who insists on having her grandchild, not when she truly wants to have her, but only when its inconvenient for the parents. And if she can’t wrest that child away from the parents at that time, then she won’t see her grandchild, at all.
There are issues that each adult obviously has to deal with. Children should be kept out of it, and if any of these adults would stop one moment and step out of themselves, they could see - the evidence would be self explanatory, that their behavior is harmful and selfish.
It’s frustrating. But it’s even sadder, when relationships become strained and children no longer want to be participate in these unhealthy dynamics. And then the adults wonder why, looking for someone to blame for their fallout.
Children have so much to offer, but as children. Not as the answer to our needs. We are responsible for their welfare, their education, their well-being. Children depend on us to take care of them, not the other way around. We, as adults, need to have our adult needs met by other adults.
Let the children be children. They don’t exist for you. When they become adults, they will be as responsible to you as the principles they live by, but until then, we as adults, need to take care of them, and not expect it to be the other way around.
