You know what, I experience this all the time and sometimes I even do it myself!
Parents make their children responsible for all kinds of stuff that is really their own business!
And the funny thing is that most people mistaken what they are doing with taking responsibilities of being a parent. Let’s explore this a bit. A pretty common scenario: You are at a public place with your son. He is banging his toy car against the window while you are trying to make a shopping list. You ask him to please stop this behavior. What is your motivation behind this question and how would it sound?
Think about it! To my mind would come something of the following:
- The banging is really annoying you and getting on your nerves. It’s just too loud. ‘Please stop the banging. You are making my ears hurt and I have had such a headache all day already.’
- He could break the window, so you want him to be safe and not have to deal with a broken window. ‘Please stop the banging. You’ll break the glass and hurt yourself. I don’t want to deal with a visit to the hospital today and then the repair of the whole window.’
- He could be annoying to other people. ‘Look around! Everybody is looking at you! You are annoying to everybody, so please stop.’
- People could look at you and think that you are a bad parent if you don’t stop this naughty behavior. ‘Please stop the banging. It’s my responsibility as your parent to teach you what’s right and what’s wrong and banging the window is just wrong. So many things could happen and I need to make sure, you are safe and not annoying to anybody.’
- You don’t even ask him, but take matters into your own hands and take the car out of his hand, because you are determined that this needs to stop.
- ….
In 1. you are making him responsible for your wellbeing. This is a classic! You are not at all questioning what his needs or wants are, why he is doing it. It just annoys you and you want him to stop, so that you feel better. Nobody is responsible though for your wellbeing. What the child learns when you ask him is that he is responsible for your wellbeing and that’s a pretty big task to put on a child. He will grow up feeling responsible for other people’s feelings, trying to make everybody happy and you can probably imagine how this will play out… he will never feel totally fulfilled and happy, because it’s mission impossible that he is trying to accomplish.
In 2. you are telling him that something bad could happen. I mean, let’s give this another common sense thought. Windows don’t break tht easily, especially not if your child is young and is not banging on it like a maniac. He will learn though that he needs to be very careful, because this world is a dangerous place. The second thing that he will learn when you continues to bang and the glass does not break, is, that he can’t trust you. You told him the glass would break and it didn’t, so why would he listen to you next time when he is really doing something dangerous? A third learning is that he is not that important to you. You don’t want to deal with a visit to the hospital, you said. But what if he was really hurt? Would you not want him to be in good care? This can confuse little minds a lot.
In 3. you are making him responsible for everybody’s wellbeing. Same thing as in 1., he will grow up wanting to make it right for everybody. An additional factor is that you teach him to pay attention to what other people think about him. He learns that it’s more important to pay attention what other people want of him than listening to his own inner voice and paying attention to his needs. And of course, it’s just an assumption of what others want him to do. They haven’t even voiced any concerns or wishes for him to stop. You are just assuming this for him.
In 4. you are assuming that people are judging you. You are not confident in your choices of how to parent and are breaking down to your assumption of what society’s rules are for parenting your children. It might be the that you were raised a certain way and have the experiences of how ‘the older generation’ thinks or acts and judges, but inside you might want to parent your kid a different way. Still you might be conditioned by your own upbringing. Your child learns again that other people’s opinions count more than his own and also yours which lets him grow up by making assumptions how he should act complying to societal rules.
In 5. your child experiences that the power is with the stronger, older person and it’s ok to overpower people and get into their personal space. He also learns that he has no rights as the child. The parents rule him and he has to fight for his rights if he wants to make his opinion clear. He is not in power of his own personal space and his boundaries don’t count. He is not in charge of his own body. He will probably stop listen and at some point not be able to hear his inner voice. If he is lucky, he stays strong-minded and fights. These kids are going to be ‘difficult’ when they grow older. When they get stronger, they can actually overpower you with their strength. Your tactics will have to change from just grabbing stuff out of his hands to wanting to punish in other ways (like taking away privileges, grounding him, belittling him with words, …) when he is showing unwanted bahavior.
There would be so many more scenarios possible, but I want to just highlight these 5.
So, what can we do to leave our children in their own power and support them in getting their needs met while also taking care of our needs?
The first thing I suggest is connecting with your child and being very present with him. Your quest is to find out what his need really is. Why exactly is he banging his car against the window? None of the above examples includes this. All of them are about making him stop a behavior which is only the surface of the problem. So, if he is not just having fun banging to hear the bang, (most of the time) a child is trying to get attention. Maybe he is trying to get a dog’s attention that is walking by. Maybe he wants your attention, because you have been doing your own thing and he wants to check in with you. He might even do it, because he knows that you don’t like loud noises. Kids know how to push our buttons! They can be very manipulative, but the root is get their need met and that’s an ok reason in my opinion. It’s their way of communicating with us. His communication skills differ a lot, looking at different ages. Your toddler of course asks for your attention differently than your teenager.
It also depends a lot on how connected you two are. How much tust does your child have in your to take him seriously? Do you respect him for all he is and does? When kids don’t feel respected, they won’t respect your boundaries either.
I wrote a whole different blog post about the topic of respect. If you are interested, click here.
So, what I want to say with this post is that when we are not totally clear about who we are and what we want, we (mostly unconciously) give patterns that we’ve been stuck in to our children and they will have the same problems growing up that we encounter now.
As parents we need to be aware of what is driving our decisions. How do we want to parent and why are we treating our children in certain ways.
The really good part is that you will always know that there is a probem going on! You just need to watch your children closely! They are the direct mirrors of yourself and your doings.
When they show a behavior you are triggered by, als yourself, what exactly it is inside of you that is triggered.
Before you act and try to fix a behavior, get to the root! Are you doing something that is not aligned with your own truth? Kids know if you are not yourself and you are not living your own values. It means that your are trying to pass on something to them that is your own problem and not yours. What does your child really need? If you two work on fulfilling this need, you will have a great relationship with each other that is nurtured by authenticity, trust and love.
Please get in touch when this blog resonates with you or you have questions. I am very passionate about his topic and it’s something I support mothers with in my Free-your-Mama-Bear group and also in intensive 1:1 sessions. Connection to ourselves, to our own truth and to our children is everything!
With much love, Annika <3