Accepting your child as it is – not always easy when the offspring is stuck in a defiant phase, is developing into a rebellious teenager, or shows a trait that you don't like at all. Can you still do it?
"I don't like my child" – does that even exist?
Parents are very normal people who are sometimes in a bad mood, sometimes unfair and impatient, and are bored to death when they have to play car quartet. Parents have all kinds of feelings, and one of them is actually unconditional love. But in between, like everyone else, they know the whole spectrum from anger and panic to frustration and simple being disturbed.
That connects them with their children. As is well known, they are not angels, but throw themselves roaring on the floor when they do not get a new Wii game. They're always losing something, and when asked to do the right thing, they'll say, "Do it yourself." They're stubborn, impulsive, and thoughtless. They drive you crazy with their constant, "I don't know," "It's not fair." "," I don't care "," Everyone else is allowed ". Sometimes they lie and steal and beat other children. They disappoint their parents, abuse their trust and are ungrateful. Only a Zen master at the highest level of enlightenment becomes feel nothing but limitless love, respect, openness, kindness and compassion.
Psychologists therefore recommend not focusing on the child, but on their behavior. Not to think (or even to say): "I don't like my child", but rather: "I don't like the way my child behaves." Fortunately, most parents take this advice to heart. Nevertheless: through their behavior, children influence the feelings of their parents, just as, conversely, their feelings influence them. When it comes to love, the other person's behavior always matters. Even if that other person is only two years old.
How parents can deal with ambivalent feelings
"Nobody can love another person 24 hours a day!"
This does not mean that children should behave as parents expect them to. So that it would be very easy to love her. Nor does it mean questioning the unique bond between parents and children. It's about realizing that no one is in a position to love another person unconditionally 24 hours a day and to treat everything they do and don't do with kindness and forbearance, no matter how small and helpless they may be .
It is completely normal for parents to freak out because their child is clogging the toilet with rolls of paper for the third time in a row. In such moments you don't love your child – one feeling always ignores the other. That's why you can't imagine that you just felt the fierce desire to spank your gold piece, which is now so lovingly cuddling with your little sister on the sofa.
"Feelings are not static. That is why love is always possible anew. In a minute, in the next hour and sometimes the next day," says the British psychologist Rozsika Parker. When you become aware of this, the feelings flow and the fear that you are unable to love your child disappears into thin air.
"Because children are very emotional beings, parents always move between the poles of love and aversion. That is not bad, it sharpens the senses and deepens relationships," writes the author of the book "Torn in Two". Her thesis: If parents admit their sometimes ambivalent feelings, they can see their child with greater clarity, better recognize what is going on between them and themselves, and what it needs. On the other hand, if negative feelings are tabooed, repressed or denied, they have the unpleasant quality of breaking out elsewhere.
This shows up in overreactions to actually harmless slip-ups. In an overly critical and subliminally hostile attitude that only shows mistakes and deficits. In constant overconcern to assure yourself that the more than understandable desire to briefly get rid of your difficult child in order to recharge your batteries does not exist.
Children don't just want to be loved all the time, they want you to see them, interact with them and otherwise endure the rough edges, quirks of their little personalities. Sometimes with humor and kind indulgence, sometimes with a "get out of my way for a moment before I burst". All feelings, even the unspeakable ones, are normal and natural. And when you combine the less good with the good feelings, this unique bond is tied that can withstand all storms.
Can you always accept your child as it is?
Do you also know this feeling of liking your child less for a moment – because they had a fit of rage at the supermarket checkout, knocked another child or displayed a quality that you actually dislike in other people? Or do you manage to always just accept and love your child the way they are?
This article originally appeared on Eltern.de.