"You're right, I'm the worst mom ever. This will give you another thing to tell your future therapist," you say to your daughter. While kidding -- at least halfway -- the modern parent is beginning to see therapy in their child's future as inevitable, a necessary part of being a mentally healthy adult. In these tough economic times parents are struggling to keep up with the college tuition fund. Imagine thinking you need to start the therapy fund as well!
Parents today worry about so many decisions, about how everything they say is some kind of deal breaker guaranteed to send their kid straight to a shrink's couch. It's as if parents are keeping a running tab of what each "mistake" might cost in future therapy bills:
Forgetting to pick up the kid at a birthday party: $1,000
Letting the child cry because the sleep advice book told you to: $2,500
Bringing store-bought cookies to the school bake sale: $600
Then there are the really "big-ticket" items: divorce, mom going back to work, not noticing the kid had a learning disability until second grade, etc. These things are what you think will screw your kids up.
But here's some priceless advice: You are worrying about the wrong things.
So many of us use worry as some kind of amulet. "If I don't have any control in this situation, worrying will at least give me the illusion that I'm at least doing something." But here's the thing about worry: It grates on us. It makes us weary, irritable and more likely to engage in parenting behaviors that are not aligned with our values.
You can spend thousands of dollars on therapy, spas, organic essential oils, self-help podcasts and herbal supplements, and still walk in the door and scream at your kids when you trip over a toy left in the middle of the floor.
Parents looking for a healthy state of mind for their children should look no farther than the bathroom mirror. Some recommendations:
Accept the now. Let go of the thought that you should be somewhere else. Feeling guilty and crappy and ashamed of where you are in your life is not a good motivator, for anyone. No matter what you think, beating up on yourself is not going to help you or your kids.
Stop the cover-up. What often gets lawbreakers into the most trouble is not the crime -- it's the cover-up. The problem isn't what we think, what we feel and who we are, the problem is all the things we do to try to cover these things up.
Realize our actions have a ripple effect. Let's say you insist on cleaning up your house before anyone comes over. You then create the belief for someone else that he or she is the only one who lives in a messy house. The same is true in life: If you only believe that you can let people "in" when you're perfect, you're never going to let people in.
Think about how this must affect your parenting. When you're yelling at the kids because things are a mess, are you genuinely yelling at them because this will teach a valuable life lesson, or are you yelling at them because you are worrying what others will think of you?
We're often not seeing the world (or our kids) as it is but rather how we ourselves are. We need to understand how we all have our own distorted way of seeing things and start wearing the right corrective "glasses" to help us see ourselves and our kids more clearly. When we accept who we really are we are able to accept who are children really are.
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Mike Robbins: The Power of Desire Without Attachment
1st memory of mommy is of her smacking me in the face so hard that my lips split and started bleeding...because I couldn't find her hairbrush.
Mom kicking me out of her house (and then changing her mind as I tried to leave with my dad) when I was 7 years old, for "loving my father too much", meaning that I "couldn't love her"; for that matter, chalk up my dad leaving me with her that day.
Being subjected to hours-long, screaming interrogations by our mother every time her and our dad fought while we were at his house (this happened frequently).
Being screamed at by mother (She really could pull off a Mommy Dearest impersonation on her bad days...) about how she hated me and wanted me to die, and then came the punches. There's no fun like trying to sweep up broken glass (oh yeah, she threw a pyrex oven dish at me too while screaming) when you're so scared you can scarcely hold a broom because of the shaking.
Memories of hearing my sister scream in terror as mother beat her "within an inch of her life" (mother's words), for ridiculously minor things, like not having her room clean.
Being a passenger while dad was driving drunk...good times
What's the bill going to be for that, lol?
I retired almost 3 years ago and moved to a quaint cobblestone village in Mexico, which, among other charms, has delightfully cheerful and well-behaved children. That is the norm here. Their upbringing is full of love and affection from extended family, much closer bonds with parents, much earlier learning of responsibility and survival, and a generally much more cheerful culture. All US parents should take a trip to Mexico, hang out in the village plaza, and see how it's done! Sorry, space limitations prevent me from elaborating. Bottom line - american parents are generally clueless, which is why they have so many problems with their children.