Getting Real About Parenting....

I’ve been reflecting a lot of late about why parents are so unloving and cruel to their own children.  I’ve also been reflecting a lot about why God enables us the free will to hurt our children.  After all, what choice does the child have with regard to the environment it is born into?  Who is there to protect the child against something over which it has no control?  Why did God allow my parents to be unloving to me?

I suppose the first question is, what constitutes hurt?  This is how I see it – any projection of annoyance or anger, verbally abusing or chastising, belittling, humiliating, yelling, physical abuse (smacking). Or let me put it this way – any feeling towards a child that is not a projection of love.

Let’s establish some basic principles.  The expression or projection of anger towards another is simply a refusal on our part to feel what something that is being triggered within us.  No-one outside of ourselves is responsible for us getting angry, they are simply a trigger.  Now our anger simply overlies a fear that we don’t want to feel, and our fear overlies a level of grief that we don’t currently want to feel.

We are unloving to our children, simply because we don’t want to feel our own feelings.

I’ve attached a link to a video, showing the physical abuse of a child, which the father feels is fully justified.  Thanks Fiona (www.vibrantfamilies.com) for posting this for others to find.  This man takes his abuse to the physical level, but reflect on the times when you have been this angry with your children, as the emotional projection at them is also damaging.  Ask yourself if you really think God wants you to parent this way.  Would you  treat your pet this way?  Would you treat someone elses child this way?  If you did this to a random person walking down the street, you would be arrested and charges with assault.  Why then does a different standard seem to apply for a parent and their own child?

http://www.vibrantfamilies.com/?p=688

  

Take an honest look into the eyes of your child, and see the fear that is there for them when you are angry with them.  They have no understanding what is happening to them.  As far as they are concerned they were just going about their business, and all of a sudden, they have this big, angry person in front of them getting angry, maybe yelling and worse, physically harming them.  Put yourself in their shoes, and it is not hard to imagine the terror that they must be feeling at that moment.

If you feel angry, be angry, but go somewhere else to do it.  If you want to yell at something, yell at something, but yell at something that won’t be hurt by it. Note I said something, not someone.  If you want to hit something, hit something, but hit something other than the precious gift you helped to bring into this world.

There is much, much more to say about parenting, and particularly parenting from Gods perspective, but that will be another day.

Take Care

Justin

Wanting My Mum

Why is it, that we so desperately want our mum?  I’m not talking physically needing her to be close by, but more the feelings that we got from our mum when we were kids.  Even as adults, well after we have left the nest, we are constantly searching for someone to provide those feelings that our mum projected onto us as a kid.

Generally speaking, growing up as kids, it was our mum that was there for us.  From the time that we are born we are reliant on our mum for a good while to nurture and support us.  For the most part, our mums fed us, washed us, dressed us, fixed our pains, read us stories, listened to our complaints about what our siblings had done to us, among many other things. 

We see this person, as our example of what a woman should be, what a woman should do, and what a woman should provide for us.

Holy shit!!   I’ve only really started to understand this recently.

I have found it very difficult at times to connect with my partner, and there have been many times when I have been angry with her about things.  But I couldn’t figure out why I was angry, and a lot of the time I didn’t even realise I was being angry.  And so I started praying about this “God, Why is it that I get angry?  I never used to get this angry with my previous partner.  What is the difference between the two?”

And so through some realisations, I now see that I WANT MY MUM!  My current partner is nothing like my mum, and also doesn’t have any desire to be my mum.  My previous partner was exactly the same as my mum, which is why we never argued.  This is why I get angry with my partner, because she doesn’t engage in giving me those ‘Mum’ feelings that the little boy inside of me is still craving. 

I’m also realising that I judge every woman in the universe, based around how much she is like my mum.  Now I am starting to have some serious issues with this, because I am judging, and projecting, and being unloving to someone else because they don’t live up to my expectations. 

But what if the expectations that I have, the ones that my mum instilled in me are false?  For example, I never really had to be responsible for myself growing up, as mum pretty much did everything for me.  Hence this is what I perceive all woman should do for me.  The problem arises when I start to get angry at those women who don’t do what I want them to do, that is, they don’t do what mum would do.  If I am being angry at someone, then it is me that has the issue, not them.  Just because someone doesn’t want to make me dinner, or see the same movie that I want to see, or even worse listen to me babble on about what a crap day I’ve had, that doesn’t mean that they are in the wrong or are being unloving or nasty to me.  If I’m angry, I have the problem, and it is up to me to figure out why?

The why is pretty clear.  How do we feel when something that we have had for so long is taken away from us?  We feel that if someone doesn’t give us what we want, then they are being unloving to us.  The truth is, we are demanding from another person that they must satisfy our emotional cravings.  This is unloving, but it is unloving from the perspective that it is us that is being unloving for having the demand.

I realise now that I need to grow up. I need to start living my life free of the emotional demand and expectation I place on women.  They are not my servants, they are not here to be my surrogate mother, and I must stop treating them with such demand.

Personally, I have just started this process of working through the emotional reasons I place such demands on woman, and I’ll let you know how it goes.  At present I find it quite disturbing, how much I want someone to be like my mum. 

Ponder this question for a bit “ Do I want to have a soulmate relationship with my perfect partner, or do I just want to live with my mum?”

Take Care

Justin