Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Confirming, as Jung and Montefoschi say, that there is an evolution of the Self or of the Being that indistinctly goes through anybody, coming from the profound and having nothing to do with the ego, it’s sprouting an interesting psychological movement among women, and I believe (hope so) among men also.

Women not particularly educated and who never have done a therapy or analysis before, women who live in some kind of subdued condition to their husband (physical, economical, mental and/or emotional), that is, women representing the traditional role of mothers and wives, with its insecurity, vulnerability and feeling of Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s be straightforward: bad dads and bad mom do exist. Nobody would like to have them, very few admit having them, but that’s reality. Generating a child doesn’t automatically make the parents better people than what they were before. It must be stressed that dads and moms are people, exactly like your neighbor, your colleague and your enemy. People.
Read the rest of this entry »

My daughter finished today her math program. In five months, she did the entire sixth grade, and got an A.

Only seven months ago she felt sick and drowsy when entered the course, read the directions, and gave a look at the lessons. She literally felt dizzy and refused to continue. I didn’t force her for her panic was authentic. Read the rest of this entry »

You gave them life, you gave them food. They learned how to walk, eat and speak. You think you’ve got them, you believe there are an open book, and more, your own property.

One day they talk, you say “nonsense”. They get mad. You don’t pay attention at them. They shout that you don’t understand anything. You punish them.

They have problems at school, and stick to bad companies. You wonder where you went wrong. In the meantime you punish them, again. They don’t trust you. You don’t trust them.

You think you knew your child. You knew nothing.

A bunch of your genes is in them, you can read their bodies and recognize grandma, your brother and yourself. But when you two talk different language come out from the same mouth grandpa gave to you and your child. They have your eyes, tough brown determined eyes. You want to tame them. They have your same not tamable style. You threaten them. They have to bow their head for now, but inside, they lift it up and get ready. Year after year they work their way out of your boundaries. They hate you.

You’ve lost your child.

We are in the XXI century. It’s time for parents to wake up. Don’t take your child for granted. As they are growing, move your attention from the physical aspect of your parenting activities to the psychological dimension of your relationship with them. Become intelligent. Become sensitive. Open your heart, for once and for real.

Too many children lack the experience of their parent’s real attention and listening skills. The parents’ eyes that look at them aren’t really with them, their ears may listen to them but do not really understand them. Tired people, who often enough play the game of authority with their children and do abuse of their power.

Children change quickly, they are continuously discovering themselves. You cannot maintain what you understood about them yesterday as your manual to deal with them tomorrow. Look closely and pay attention to nuances, small adjustments, sharpening thoughts and deepening feelings. Observe how an invisible sculptor is modeling your child’s personality. Be amazed and modestly try to contribute. They do need help. Even a sound NO is a great contribution when in harmony with the soul’s movements towards its plenitude.

However, if you act as if you were never really surprised by your child, you are actually cutting off their chance to know something new about themselves. You are teaching them to disbelieve their souls and inspiring low self esteem.

No wonder if in a couple or more years, under the reinforcement of quick hormonal and emotional changes, children get strong enough to cry out their dissatisfaction. The volcano inside erupts dragging with it the underlying issues that have been silently boiling for years.

It’s time for them to become adults, but how if the roots of their personality were cut off and substituted by trite labels and boring common sense? You took away their originality. You didn’t allow them to discover who the heck they are, thus they feel lost. On top of that,  they’re in pain by confusedly sense a guilt shadow over their head, because although they love you they also, in some place deep inside them, hate you.

Adolescents are egocentric. They have a very good reason to be so, although we may not understand. We criticize them and blame their oddity. They are exaggerate, insensitive, and get on our nerves. What was peaceful between us only a few months ago, suddenly it is not, and they react as if we were pushing and bothering them about the same things that were accepted before. As parents we definitely need a lot of patience, tons of patience. This time in our parenting journey seems to be much worse than waking up several times a night.

What happened to our adorable child? Where is the one we knew? We may feel lost and sad, for the fun is over. Being a parent is hard work, but after a certain amount of years, we overcome the toughest part and learn how to deal with the situation. When we are finally enjoying the job, feel comfortable and know the tricks, that’s when the game chances. All of a sudden (it takes time, but not enough for us to process the information) that sweet relation with our offspring becomes sweet and sour, sometimes more sour than sweet and it is when we may get disheartened. If the fun is over and the sweetness too, what does it remain for us? An dissatisfied young person easy to argue with? Who wants that job anymore?

In the name of love and of all the pictures of the past we can look at, let’s think about it. Adolescence is a complicated time in one’s life.

Adolescence is a second birth. The child finds herself overwhelmed by changes, physical as well as psychological, which she simply can’t handle, she can even understand what the heck is going on. It’s too much in too short time. Not only that, these changes are most of them real challenges that throw the young adolescent into the world‘s arm. In childhood, the challenges happened in the family environment, even schools are under family supervision. It was all about family, dealing with it, knowing each other, growing safe and strong, learning about to speak, write, relate.

In childhood, world means family. Home and mom are the two most important concepts. By Mother, I mean the maternal features of one’s personality: protection, nurturing, and safety as a warm welcoming place. Like the earth, the maternal aspects of the human personality allow a seed to break up and let the fragile plant grow. The Mother is the soil with its minerals and nutrients for the plant to develop. Mother is embrace, rescue, comprehension, acceptance, faith, credibility. It’s the garden well cared that sustains the young human life. We grow up on Mother’s soil, arms and support.

Then, the Mother’s garden opens up and comes adolescence, which is like entering the valley of life among rough winds, far horizons and the solitary vastness of the world. Body and mind undergo a fast paced and turbulent time of transformation, whose end no one can foresee. This is scary. References can be lost, which would be a tragedy, for they are our roots. But, on the other hand, they are not enough anymore. As adolescents we need more, and feel embarrassed about that. It seems to be discarding our past and with it our parents.

At the same time, as adolescent we feel terribly uncomfortable towards the world. Suddenly it’s like having all the flashlight on us. Suddenly we realize about us, our body, its strange reactions and growth, any tiny imperfection is amplified by our eyes and it’s like everybody is watching our flaws. One feels like hiding oneself, disappearing. Disguised in strange fashion trends, adolescents try to find a niche to rest and process the intense transformation they are going through.

Who am I? Where am I coming from? Where am I going to? Those are the underlying questions, existential, profound and necessary questions. People might never find and answer to them. Adolescence is the first time those questions slap our faces and wake us up.

This is the time for the Father to break the scene and bring light. Truth is that adolescence is under the paternal star. Positive, creative and non patriarchal paternal leadership is urgently needed.

The paternal features of human personality give orientation and guidance, allow to build the bridge that connects childhood with adulthood. The Father is the engineer and the philosopher. His presence, example, loving embrace and firm guide should sustain the structure for the construction of a clear personality. The Father’s figure gives confidence and strength despite the challenges, the bruises and the tears. The Father has a goal in mind and finds the means to get there. He is literally the light the guide his children through the turmoil of adolescence.

Where are the fathers of the adolescents we see around? Where is their light? Not discipline, rules and silly rigid mentality adolescents need, but something they can respect, that can break through their confusion and questions and make them stop, realize, feel and think. They need real Men they can believe in, who do not impose or mold, but help grow. Men who don’t manipulate or frighten but are like lighthouses holding tight the tempests their children undergo. This is paternal love.

One of the first things the feminist movement questioned was women’s chaining to the four domestic walls. They wanted to work outside, acquire a profession, make money and be autonomous. Some say that the movement for women’s liberation was the major event in the XX century.

Gender roles moved to the accused side of society and were, finally, disputed: everyone wanted the main role, the man’s. Equality of rights is an unquestionable value, an unstoppable achievement in the history of human consciousness. We all agree that women cannot and shall not be chained to the house. But the revolution is not finish.

Who does take care of the house then?

The space we live in has a greater meaning than just being a roof over our heads, the comfort of a couch in front of the TV, a dinner table and a soft bed. Home is the physical ambiance in which we build our identity. It’s at home that a person in her beginning of life finds the conditions to flourish (or not). Home is the backdrop over which we create the people we are and want to be. A home’s atmosphere reflects the personality of the people who inhabit it, as well as the work they do, the relations they have, and the choice they make.

Nowadays, many times homes look abandoned. They are occupied but heartless. Expensive or cheap furniture doesn’t make any difference, neither being small or big houses. Televisions and refrigerators, square yards and art pieces may decorate it and supply it with foods and diversions. But no soul.

A home’s soul gains life through the hands that take care of it. It comes from the love blown in through dedication and physical work. A magic happens when we put our productive energy in what we do, things acquire a kind of light and looking at them we breathe snuggling and gratitude feelings. They become inviting, they nurture. The heart acknowledge these things by instinct.

The shelter a home offers nourish our dreams and bodies. The home quietness feed our soul and renew our energies, allowing to slow down the tension, getting ready for a new day. The house cleaning supports the dignity of living, promotes self-esteem and self-value. The house order organizes our thoughts, helping to select and distinguish, stimulating mental clarity. Finally, the house silence restore tired bodies and minds, caressing ears and hearts.

This is so true that who feels bad about himself can’t appreciate his own company and is not able to take care of his own home. Who, whose ghosts cry out loud in his own inner ear, can’t stand the home’s silence, using TV, guests and agitation to muffle the captive heart.

When we have children in the house these issues are screaming. Children need a home for sure. But a safe place is still not a home, if so, we would call home a vault. Home must also be relaxing, welcoming and organized, so that children can open up their eyes over the world and themselves following their own rhythms, having the chance to see and discover, to understand and grow. Noise and diversion at any cost are born from the agony of confused and restless adults, unable to deal with quietness and silence, acceptable only by who is master of himself. Many activities, parties and uproars are in fact easy ways to avert the attention, hiding and distracting one’s mind in order not to think and feel.

Being run over and without understanding, children grow up thinking that this is the normal way of living, and loose the track of their own inner path. They may look they are having fun and even ask for more mess, but only because are became addicted to it. To know if they are really well, it’s enough to take a look at how many times they get sick, how they are in school, if they are “spoiled” and  cantankerous, if they can’t entertain themselves and need a ready activity coming from the outside. Exactly as a baby plant becomes stronger in a protected and quiet place of our garden, human babies develop when they have the external environmental conditions that allow their flourishing as well as their pruning.

Women, righteously, want to be more than housewives (or even the masters of the house). Therefore, it’s needed to define what to do with the house. If a man got tired of being the only provider and decided to simply abandon his job and to go to study Geophysics or Space Technology, he would be considered an irresponsible. Because of “feminist prudery” women are not charged with the pending question of the house. This leads to neglecting and pretense. Nonetheless, as well as the man would have to discuss his new projects with his wife and/or put limits to his expenses, the woman will have first to solve her responsibility inside the home when she decides that she wants to work, study or pioneering a new professional path.

It’s up to them to educate their family to a fundamental issue: that mugs don’t levitate to the kitchen sink, that a plate after being used need to be washed, that beds don’t make themselves up, that the floor must be kept clean, and that many times a homemade food is better than a frozen or restaurant’s one. It’s up to them to start to “unspoil” the children who believe the world is like a infinite Disney World with no responsibility, limits and commitments. Instead of the pattern: electronic games, TV and sports, what about some domestic responsibility and teaching them what is to be part of a collectivity (the family)? It’s up to women to shake the consciousnesses and show that winning the resistance against domestic chores is rewarding, because no home is more appealing than the one loving and diligent hands took care of. And even when there is a cleaning lady who clean it for us, this doesn’t mean we don’t take care of our own things.

Women, couple and families’ malaise is revealed by the scrum and disarray of the houses and their rhythms, by loud voices and cries, by the shadows under the hyper and evasive children’s eyes, by the TV dominance, and the absence of real relationships. This picture denounces an upside-down home, and the uncompleted revolution. Would it be women’s fault? Not only. However, it’s up to them to light up the spark for the change of the family paradigm, and then it will benignly spread over the entire family.

We get pregnant and dream of the delights of motherhood. Romantic and cozy fantasies. The baby is cute and fills our hearts with amazing joy. It’s true that he also weep, there are diapers to change, and our sleep hours and freedom dramatically decrease. Even so, the baby’s eyes and smile, candid, unbiased open, without shadows, are a blessing, a fresh stream in the intense heat of our workday in a world more complicated than ever.

After the first time of enchantment, we realize that this same baby begins to grow. And something changes. He starts showing his personality. The baby’s loveliness now mingles with new aspects of his character, style, and preferences. Meanwhile, we parents, still intoxicated by that giant love and groggy for the many sleepless nights, plus the relentless rush of the daily routine, are divided between giving and not giving. Being and not being the parents we idealize.

Who is this baby who came to us? Who is this person with whom we are dealing with? Although we share genes with him, it doesn’t mean we know him. A leaning process should start, watching and observing to be able to embrace, and help to grow.

There are no parenting instruction manuals and the traditional pre-determined roles failed, or they are just outdated. In the past there was no television and family was a community of people, not just three or four of them packed in an isolated apartment or family house.

Today we praise the idea of “love”. But what does it mean to “love a child”? How do you make love happen?

We love our children and, by a kind of automatic impulse, tend to give them everything we had or had not in our own childhood. The child who lives within us is frequently still complaining and ads and TV appeal him greatly. Therefore we buy those stuff announced: to please our children, the ones we have and the one inside us. Now that we can spend money, let’s give them/us what we didn’t have and are sure our children want (or we make them want).

When our children oppose to our wishes, we try to calm them down accomplishing any immediate desire they might have. It’s an exchange of favors: you shut up and I give you candies, video games, cell, TV, car, etc. Pacifiers: leave me in peace. We are tired and want peace: one more reason to use the pacifier: today the mouth-shutter one, tomorrow the video game. We are disappointed with our own life: our child is led to fulfill our hidden desires. Or, otherwise, we are rude and authoritarians giving orders without explanations.

We don’t want our children to suffer, or, at least, we want to minimize the chances that this will occur. And that is why so meekly we consent to all their wishes?

When comes the part about giving them a sense of direction in life?

Being a mother and a father is, first of all, to educate. Education is the incarnation of love that a child needs. It means donating our time, helping them to grow as we grow along. It‘s a supportive attention on the bases of respect and sincere curiosity about who is this child of ours. This love expressed through education is proactive and intelligent, because it includes the child’s entire personality but still follows a scale of values. Parents’ love must be selective, it teaches the child to discriminate, separating the wheat from the chaff.

What kind of beings we want to create? What are the true values that we adults follow? What is the code of ethics that as parents we adopt? These things should be thought about and made aware of. Parenting means constantly rethinking life. This is a responsibility acquired and required by having a child.

Parenting love is a courageous enterprise. Children need a direction to go (or do you prefer to the give this lead to the celebrities?). Yet not a rigid one, they need a star in the sky to follow and limits on Earth to hold them up. Boundaries are limits that give protection. Our “no” as parents should be aligned to the borders we want to set, and also aiming the horizon (the world view) we wish for them.

Security is not only a physical reality, it’s also a psychological one. Feeling safe means feeling understood and accepted, not only protected from material hazards. A child’s wellness implies being helped to understand the world and who she is. Nobody of us was born knowing it all. Childhood is the time to discover one’s own personality and mission in life. Who We Are. That’s a precious unique time. How to promote it? Giving space, warmth, time to think, quietness, acceptance, patience and respect. But also give some firm “no”.

The compass children need are the parents themselves. It’s a human compass. No words, lectures, books and good intentions can substitute the alive presence and example of the child’s two most important beings on Earth. Thus, parenting requires a self-knowledge process and the humility to undertake a journey to the better Ourselves.

Consequently, parenting leads to revising the wife and husband’s relationship. A child turns the two into three people who have to manage a life together. Many couples don’t survive the test. Others disguise their problems. Children detect lies as a radar picks up waves in the air. The truth may remain silent forever, but it will act in the child‘s behavior and issues. What is hidden is more powerful than what it’s transparent.

Unconditional love can handle troubled periods, not because it’s pure “sacrifice and suffer”, but because wise parents can say “no” and gently keep their own human needs and limits, giving one more example about how to survive in tough times. In the historical transition we are living, motherhood and fatherhood are no longer pre-established models. However, children continue needing solid and reliable references.

It’s sad to see the conditions of so many relationships called “marriage”. Loving in a fun time with no responsibilities is quite different than facing a daily life together, having a home to take care of, children and a future to create. The feeling that had united a woman to a man not always withstands this test.

Human beings are able to adapt and anything. Even an awful marriage can become a routine. But it still leaves deep marks in person’s life limiting what one can be, think and feel. Couple accept mutilation without thinking too much and use excuses, such as the “children”. Because of these creatures, women and men give up of themselves. They lie and keep going.

Of course, one cannot just quit any time he feels so. Sharing a life with somebody else is not simple and the individualistic impulses need to be held under control. The alchemy of a relation requires time to be processed. But how much? How long can one wait?

I believe that a person knows the truth in her heart. If she can’t grasp it, let’s measure her level of happiness. Is she flourishing? Does she feel accomplished or moving her way? Dependent bonds may impede awareness to cast light on one’s reality. Money and affection are the two idols people follow to keep chains. Many women still depend on a man to survive. Many man want to have somebody to warm up the bed for them. Illusions, though.

The major and more common of all lies is keeping a marriages in the name of the children. Let’s think for a moment.

How can a couple who see each other every boring day and does not understand each other create a serene ambience at home? How can a woman who feels repressed and not supported by her husband be a good mother? Is by any change being a mother different from being a woman? Can a person be an oppressed and unhappy woman and yet a comprehensive and loving mother? If you know somebody like show her to me. And how can an irritated and anguished man open his arms to his children at the end of a tiring day and having a real interaction with them, listening to and understanding them?

Children do love their parents, but this is not enough to make them happy. Adults need to learn that these little people live a huge process of development. Doesn’t a plant die if you water it too much? Or don’t water at all? And what about living in a constant stormy weather, with lightening and thunder, tense silences and killer stares?

Children face monsters and challenges every day just because of their growing process. Behind the façade, beyond Disney World and the foolish things they are filled with, those are people who are working their way in a not easy at all world. Their process include discover and understand themselves, and how to relate to the environment. They learn an enormous amount of contents of any kind in a very short period of time. Childhood and adolescence give birth to the person each of us will be.

Who has lived among fights and nonsense knows how much this is painful. The first symptoms will appear at school, and don’t blame the children.

Peace is needed but honesty is essential. An insincere couple cannot be true to their children. Lies support the family theater. Children, who are not stupid, sense that something is wrong, but because the mighty-adults say that “everything is OK.”, they doubt of their own feelings. They’ll start the so common inner dichotomy that splits what one really feels from what one is allowed to feel. And that’s how children learn to lie to themselves.

Parenting needs courage. Which means that if things are not working, you must look for help. Now.