Have you experience that you think you have done everything for your children but still they are miles apart from you ? You feel you have given all the love for your children and yet you feel they do not have love for you. Simply because they do things that you don't want. Then you are in a power struggle with your children.
Parents who love their children, but children who don' t feel love - how can this be ? Families who live and work together , who want more than anything to be happy together but who spend most of their time in conflict, struggling against each other - why does this happen ? Does family life have to be this way ? Although it may seem so at times, the real answer is no. Families will always have problems and difficulties . Yes , there will be stress and pain but there is overriding joy and fun and loving feelings for both parents and children. How can this happen ?
Who are parents ? Who are children ?
In the beginning, parents are people who are in love with each other especially at the time a child is conceived . For the mother to be, positive thoughts likely include a sense of fulfillment. The father, on the other hand, probably a sense of accomplishment. Some parents that because they are adults , they have more dignity and worth than their children. When these beliefs gets the upper hand, the children feels less important , and that doesn't feel good
Other parents , whether or not they realize it, operate under the assumption that their children are more valuable than they are. In these cases, the children assume the status of royalty. This puts parents in an awkward position, however, because even though they have the education and experience , their children have the power . Still other families vacillate between these two extremes , which doesn't work either, because in times of conflicts parents and siblings jockey for position and every one feels uncomfortable until a temporary truce is made.
What are children ?
They are just young people .They are human beings just like adults ; they are separate entities , not merely extension of their fathers and mothers . They are not possessions or subjects. As human beings , they are equal in value .
Children are born open, accepting, with a natural ability to give and receive love. They're very much in touch with what they want and feel and have a natural desire to grow and learn and love.
Our understanding of human relationship has evolved greatly over the centuries, but the concept that children are equal is still difficult for many adults to accept for several reasons . First, people often believe that equality means that children are the same as adults . Of course, they are not . Adults are more educated , experienced and have developed a sense of responsibility.
There's another reason adults resist the idea of children's equality : they confuse equality with freedom , thinking it means children have unlimited freedom and therefore are entitled to behave in any way they choose. That's not what equality means. After all, adults don't get to do those things either.
Equality does mean that children are entitled to the same dignity and respect as adults. Their needs are just as important . Also - this is very important - their feelings are just as valid.
Many parents are unaware that they devalue their children's feelings but the children know - or at least feel - the effects of their parents beliefs.
To fully understand how significant or valid children's feelings are , adults would do well to reflect on their own childhood . When you were growing up how important were your feelings ? And how did you feel when your parents did not take you seriously or even told you to stop feeling your feelings . You probably were angry or sad and very likely you felt alienated and alone . Certainly you did not feel respected and love.
Of course, parents really do want to be loving to their children , just as much as children want to feel loved. However, when behavior toward a child is unloving , whether or not a parents feels love for that child , the child feels unloved . And successfully handling conflict in the family is the key to a family life that has evolved from being a survival unit to a relationship between people which foster the growth of every family member and promises love and fun and joy for each other as individual and as a group.
What do you really want for your children ? For your family ?
The application for your families is clear: parents need to take time to reflect on goals for their families . No one would think of running a business without setting goals, but amazingly few parents take the time to do this for their families.
If you write your thoughts , the results might surprise you. Money , vacation , a nice home - these are desirables for the family. For children - get good grades, be a good athlete . But in an exercise where you would be asked to prioritize these things along with time .Others such as health , self esteem, caring for each other, the materials goods, educational and athletic achievement - fell surprisingly far down the line. It is even more revealing to note that most of our parenting problem center around conflicts over low priority goals. These conflicts are obstacles to achieving our highest priority goals. So what's the point ? Families need to take stocks or they are likely to end up where they are headed - achieving low priority goals at the expense of the things they consider the most important in life.
So what do you really want for your family ? To feel close to each other , comfortable and caring, to enjoy each other and have fun together - these are at least some of the priceless qualities which make life rich and meaningful.
A New Look At Old Ideas
When things don't go the way they want , most people just try harder , doing the same things they've been doing that haven't been working. The results are usually disastrous , whether in family relations , other's personal relations or even in business. Three things cause this repeating behavior: the persistent hope that trying harder will eventually mean success; ignorance of any other way of going about getting what they want; and the fear of trying something new.
Whether acting out of hope , ignorance or fear, parents do know that when the old ways don't work, life can become unbearably painful at that point they are usually willing to change. Others become willing to change when they recognize the difference between the way their family operates now and the way it could be - less stressful, happier , more satisfying.
Power struggles are rooted in the fear of being open to vulnerable feelings . Older children fear being wrong and therefore unloved and rejected, Second children develop a passively resistant personality due to their relationship with an older sibling . The older sibling 's approval is very important to younger siblings. Parents are often more controlling with the first born child and less rigid with subsequent children. First born expressing a large dose of control often becomes very parental with the second born.
The fears of being controlled and losing oneself and of losing love are the reasons that keep power struggle going. Children may pick on their siblings as a way of getting back at their parents for trying to control them. Kids know that their parents get upset by their battles and their fighting often reflects an unconscious desire to do to the parent what the parent is doing to them. If a child is neglected , fighting with siblings maybe a way to get parent's attention. The instigator of a power struggle may be expressing anger at his/her siblings for getting more of the parent's attention.
So how do we handle power struggles ??????
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