How To Give Your Child Something You Never Got

How To  Give Your Child Something You Never Got.....

I realized that it would be difficult to give your child something you never got way before I had children. But I didn’t understand the emotionality of that until I had my son. I worked with parents and children for years before I gave birth. I remember a parent telling me poignantly about how hard it was for her to buy her daughter a new coat. Money was not an issue, nor was the style or color of the coat. It was that she had only gotten “used” clothing as a child and would have been admonished severely for asking for a “new” coat. It would have been seen as asking for too much, even inappropriate. When her daughter requested a new coat, at first her mother bristled with the child’s seemingly materialistic, self indulgent attitude. Having the good sense to be reflective about her internal reaction, she discussed it with me and we discovered that her prickly response was about giving her daughter something she never had and was not “allowed” to ask for. Difficult, indeed. But, upon examination, there was nothing wrong with her daughter’s request. The mother could deny the request upon principle. Or she could reflect and see that it almost made her a bit envious to give her daughter something she never had. Or she could get to a bigger, stronger, wiser, kinder place and experience the joy of giving her daughter something that both she and her daughter wanted. Giving the coat to her daughter brought up in her that she, herself, as a young girl, was not wrong or bad for wanting something new, even if her parents tried to make her feel that way. Working together she and I got to see that sharing a need and vulnerability without judgement can increase closeness in a relationship regardless of the material  outcome.

It is everything we can do NOT to say, “Boy, when I was your age, I never would have expected, much less asked for, a new jacket just because I wanted a different color or style of jacket. We couldn’t afford that and we made due with what the Salvation Army had to offer.” The good old days, right? But you can see, can’t you, that this is a shaming response. Like our child is bad for wanting something. Or is it that we make them into greedy monsters because we had to suppress our own wants so much. And so we pass on the guilt for asking.

Being attuned does NOT mean giving in or lavishing our children with “things”. It does NOT mean let them rule the roost or get everything they want. Somehow it does seem that when they want something we don’t want to give them for whatever reason, be it materially or emotionally, that we make them wrong or bad or guilty or selfish. Perhaps this is to deflect our own guilt when we disappoint them, or to protect us from feeling inadequate, or to avoid our own deeper feelings of despair that we did not get what we needed as children. So instead of us being able to bear the child’s disappointment with regulated equanimity i.e. “I’m sorry you are disappointed, honey. I know how much you want that. But the answer is no”. We are tempted to respond with defensiveness and judgement i.e. “I can’t believe you are asking for that. You are always wanting something more! Seriously? It’s never enough for you”. What does this teach our child?

We are miscueing them to not ask via shame, teaching them to act like they don’t want something because it makes us (parents) uncomfortable. 

And what else is going on with this discomfort inside ourselves? I think the discomfort triggers our own sadness about not being attended to emotionally by our parents when we were small. Something we might not be immediately conscious of, but might be still operating.

 My son did not want to play soccer. I kept making him practice in the back yard with me, like I was encouraged to practice. He can’t be a quitter. Just get out there and practice. Yes, I pushed him, the way I was pushed. All I heard were excuses and I wanted to instill in him to keep at it, even when it was hard. I thought I could “will” him to be coordinated, never imagining that he might have sensory issues making this impossible. Then one day, I asked him why he could kick the ball with me in the back yard, but on the soccer field he was climbing the net and sometimes even sitting down picking daisies way in the back. He said, “With you, it is just you and me and you wouldn’t hurt me. But how would you like it if you were on the field and you saw 16 arms and legs come kicking at you and you knew that the ball could hit you in the stomach hard and knock the breath out of you?”  Whoa! That was a visual for me. I felt horrible and instantly got it that this child was terrified to be out there. And I was over-riding his fear and need for safety with my narcism....needing to have him be athletic and coordinated.....something I learned from my parents, but something he was not. What if I could have felt loved for just being who I was regardless of how I performed? Wow! Did I ever want my son to feel that. Loved for who he is, not for his performance. I took him out of soccer that week.

I needed to recognize who my son was in his own right. He was not like me or his father (both of us athletes in our childhood and adolescence). He was different and his needs were valuable and essential to who he was. Athleticism was not his deal. If I had not recognized that, I might not have been able to support him in becoming his own person. By the way, he is an incredible artist. Neither myself nor his father can even draw a good stick figure.

Most of the principles in this article/blog are from The Circle of Security Intervention book by Bert Powell, Glen Cooper, Kent Hoffman, and Bob Marvin. I was trained to do this parent intervention program a couple of yeas ago by Kent Hoffman and I am going to an advanced training next week. So more on this in April when I return.