Children and Parents, Importance of Self

Something’s been bugging me like a sharp pebble in a shoe: it’s that generally in western society we don’t seem to believe adults are as  important as children.  It’s as if there isn’t enough importance to go around for everybody.   But it shows that we don’t really have any respect for the individual, just for their age.  Because once the child grows up, bam! It’s not important any more.  There’s nothing true about this ridiculous belief, it’s just a myth, and the more we perpetuate it, the more we imprison ourselves and our children.

 Because the thing is, adults who can’t respect that their own needs are important – and who can’t give themselves permission to meet them – can’t truthfully respect those of their children.  They try – very hard and admirably – but they fail, because their unmet needs compete with their children’s.  It’s impossible to prevent.  The parent can suppress their own needs, because they believe they shouldn’t have them, but the frustrated energy keeps on being generated inside.   And it has to find an outlet.  It either gets directed at the child or inwards and the parent becomes depressed.  Which affects the child.

Regardless of our age, that part of us which isn’t being acknowledged won’t die, it won’t stay silent.  It keeps crying out but what about me.   It can’t even be anaesthetized for ever – and not without enormous cost, which will eventually force itself upon us.  And whether we want it to or not, anger gets generated when our needs aren’t met.   That’s one of the things about being human that we have no power over.

So a dualism starts being created where the spoken message is “I love you and you’re the most important creature in the family” but the unspoken one is I hate you, you're annoying me, you're a nuisance, you’re stopping me from having my life, you’re ungrateful, after everything I do for you, what’s wrong with you? Resentment, frustration, guilt - all of it gets dumped on the child.  When there’s that kind of double-message, life gets very unsafe for children.  Because both messages come across loud and clear to them, and in fact the unspoken one is actually more real.  The child knows the anger and believes he/she deserves it.

Most parents intend to do the right thing.  But intention isn’t what impacts on children.  Our parents’ intention wasn’t what impacted on us as children.  Their emotional reality, the truth of what they could and couldn’t do for themselves; their entitlement, their vision, their beliefs,  what they actually were and weren’t doing - that’s what impacted on us.  It’s what formed our self esteem and taught us how to live life.   How many of us have spent years and years trying to unpack all of that!

Actually, I think it’s the human condition.  Our parents were at the mercy of their parents’ unresolved issues, as every generation is.  The sins of the father…  Sin, by the way, being an old archery term meaning “to m miss the mark”.  All the morality and threat of punishment that has been loaded onto the word is very far from the original meaning.  It had no judgment in it originally.  Just plain fact.  Oh, look, I missed the bulls eye.  Right, what must I correct so I get closer next time?

If we want the children of our society to be as important as we say we do, we have to accept that we’re as valuable – and vulnerable - as they are, that value isn’t about age, it’s about every single individual on the planet.  We have to listen to our own inner needs and meet them.  If we don’t know how to do it, we have find a way to learn.  Otherwise the children take the fall.  Much as we say they’re more important than we are, much as we try with everything we have to make that a reality, they actually become secondary to our own adult frustrated needs and our own refusal to face the truth of them.

But it's also no use when parents judge and dump on themselves, either.  Because parenting's incredibly hard.  So is growing up.  If we don't want our children to grow up judging themselves for the things they don't get right, we have to not judge ourselves when we don't get it right either!   Harsh cruel judgment versus acceptance and forgiveness - it's a no brainer.   Mmmm, imagine a life without that kind of judgment (from ourselves or from others) which crucifies; what bliss it would be.

Nobody’s bad.  We’ve all just got a few things to learn – the whole human race.  How to stop judging ourselves, and start listening better, start respecting ourselves and our needs.   How to listen with love to the small child in us that cries out but what about me?  Everybody’s important.  Not because of age, role, talent, intelligence, looks or race.  But because of our individual spirit, for which we deserve to be cherished from before conception, through birth until death and beyond.  Every nano-second of the way.

My child, my self.  We have equal value, different roles.  I can protect and nurture you and cherish you and your most precious individuality and spirit because I can cherish my own.