Parents and grown up children

disagreement, denial, accusations, loss of values, suspicions, isolation, offences, rejection, fear, alienation, running after each other and from each other, freedom and solitude, rights and duties, the choice, the responsibility, contribution to one’s own life, ups and downs… Who is accountable for all this? Am I? Or are they?

This is the incomplete list of problems mentioned by grownup people while speaking about their relationship with their parents, or parents speaking about their grownup children. However, in spite of despair they all hope and believe that they may still achieve peace, love and harmony.

Children against their parents

Why do we try to find the justification for our failures in our parents and their attitude to us? Can’t we see, that by ascribing the blame to them we refuse to acknowledge that these are our difficulties, problems and puzzles and when we give them up we give up our lives?

It is certainly interesting to find out what we “inherited from our ancestors”: our appearance, personal qualities, ethical and moral norms, values, habits. However, it is up to us to decide how to use all that. We can use these potentialities instinctively or we can study them and decide which of them we need to change or develop. It depends on our goals, circumstances, situations and our relationship with others. It follows that only we are responsible for making choices in our lives. So, why should we hold our parents responsible for our actions?

When you realize that you can rely on what you have learnt from your parents and at the same time come up with something new, something that is only yours, your life becomes more exciting. Of course it is not easy to answer for all your deeds and people often evade responsibility. There is a saying: “you must reap what you have sown”, but, whatever fruits we reap, good or bad, belong to us and nobody else. While we are glad to have good luck and success, why should we not admit that our failures are the difficulties which make us stronger? Indeed, when we make efforts to overcome those difficulties we can achieve real success.

Maybe our parents really have nothing to do with our lives?

Then a seditious thought appears: if it is our choice, which of our achievements and failures should we claim credit for and which of them should we ascribe to our parents? And why don’t we celebrate our success together with our parents instead of complaining and blaming them for our failures? Celebrations are far more enjoyable than battles, pain and suffering, are not they?

Parents of grown up children

Think of the first time when you saw yourself as a parent: mother or father. Who did you picture first, yourself or your child? What was your child like?

When thinking about their children most people imagine babies or young children. However, children grow up and become adults. Have you ever thought about being a parent of grown up men and women aged about 30, 40 or 50? When I ask my visitors such a question they smile awkwardly. No, we do not seem to have prepared for being the parents of grownup people.

Thinking about ourselves as parents we imagine how we will caress and spoil them, how we will bring them up, protect them and do everything our mothers and fathers did for us, together with what they write in clever books about the upbringing of children. But where to find books about maintaining relations with our children when they have already grown up and maybe have children or even grandchildren of their own?

It is strange that setting ourselves the task to “bring up the next generation” we do not think about the results we will yield: establishing “adult to adult” relationship with the people who will always remain our children.

It is a heavy burden indeed to bring up children without criticizing them and warning them about the possible failures. When we were children our parents always used to point out our faults and make us correct our mistakes. Good grades at school were taken for granted, which means that it was considered normal to be a good student and we wereexpected to be good. For that reason our efforts were never appreciated or praised. Now I cannot help wondering how it is possible to gear up for success and achievements when you live in constant fear of failure.

Only with time do we understand that if we criticize our children when they are small they will treat us the same way when they grow up. It is exactly as the saying goes: “As the call, so the echo”. Why do you expect gratitude and appreciation from those whom you criticize? How will our children learn to be thankful and to appreciate us if they only get rebukes from us?

It turns out that respect, gratitude and appreciation need to be taught, but before we teach our children, we should learn how to respect, appreciate and be thankful ourselves. But who can we learn this from?

From our children! We should teach them and they will teach us in return. If we change our attitude they will do the same. But someone has to start. Since we have lived longer and have more responsibility than our children we are expected to do that. However, it is not so easy to give up our old beliefs! We need the help from our children, but how to ask for help? We are parents, and we should be demanding, not asking.

Or maybe it is also possible to ask…

The main fear of parents is that if they change, their children will not understand them, will criticize and reject them. So we say: “Why should we change, let our children change and we will keep the old ways for the rest of our lives”. As a result, when our children become adults and offer us new kind of relationships, expecting us to support them in their personal formation, we respond with apprehension and anxiety. In fact we hinder them more than we help them to develop. Meantime, following the laws of life, our children and we too grow up and change steadily. So the children are forced to move away from us or even get rid of us like dead matter – they just leave us getting as far as possible.

On the other hand, those parents who let themselves be glad at their children’s success always remain wanted and needed by them. So, one day they find out that their children have learnt many good things from them. Indeed, they can see their children using what they have learnt from parents openly, without any criticism and denial. In this light children’s own achievements, including those in the fields unknown to parents, become more obvious. Moreover, if children see that their parents are willing to hear about their achievements, they will gladly share with them.

Our children will become our Teachers if we agree to be their Students all our lives. Then the time will come when we will shift to adult-to-adult relations, where all members of the family exchange values and interests, enriching each other’s lives and the entire world around them.

Maybe we can start thinking positively about ourselves and our children, about their and our progress and achievements.

It is true however, that we could have started earlier. One might want to exclaim: “Why did not we understand that we had to think and live positively? Why could not we see that before?” At the same time we are still glad that we are finally on the right path and there is still time to change our lives and relationships.

Join us and you will do even better!

Duty, investment or a bottomless pit?

“Parents and teachers, in the first instance, are givers, while children and students are takers. Although parents also learn some things from their children, just as well as teachers learn from their students, this does not restore the balance, but only makes its absence less visible. However, parents were once children, and teachers were students. They pay their debt by passing on what they learnt from the previous generation to the next generation. And their children and students can do the same”[2 - Хеллингер Б. И в середине тебе станет легко. М., 2003. С. 26.].

But what does this “balance” mean? How is it measured? Is it really necessary? Do we speak about constant balance or the one we need to keep from time to time? Or, maybe we are misled by the original belief that maintenance of balance is impossible. What really matters is what the givers (teachers, parents) want to get in return, that is, what kind of reward they consider appropriate for the effort they make. However, things they give away and thing they get in return belong to different categories: in exchange for education, care, material support and security they want respect, gratitude, appreciation and remembrance, also the success of those for whose sake they took such efforts. In this respect parents rather make an investment that should bring the wellbeing of their children and maybe grandchildren, but not their own wellbeing. Well, when people give back what they have received they pay back their debts; on the other hand, when they use the invested capital in such way that it should make profit, they increase capital gains.

By imposing a debt on our children, which they pay by passing on what they received “to the next generation” we evoke the following response:

– Expressions of protest like “I owe you nothing” or “by bringing me up you just did your duty as parents”;

– A protest and the sense that their children are indebted to them: “I don’t want to make them feel they are obliged to me”, “I had responsibilities towards my parents, now my children have the same responsibilities towards me”, “My children should repay me for what I’ve done for them, just as their children should repay them, so they should present me with grandchildren – to show me that I have not lived in vain, and to pass on their own responsibilities to them” or “I don’t want children. What do I need them for, the spongers living at my expense, who will love no one but their own children?”

– The idea that being a parent means making your children responsible, so that they are “over head and ears in debt”, those debts increasing from the moment of their birth till the death of their parents. By giving birth to their own children your children get a chance to pass their responsibilities to them. But the question is what childless people should do. Can we say that they die without paying their debts? Who are they indebted to?

– A whole number of sacrifices: people, who give up the right to create and receive something for their own pleasure and to enjoy their own achievements, actually give up the right to recognize those achievements and enjoy their results in future. This leads to their failure to experience satisfaction and pleasure. “I have dedicated all my life to my children, I want nothing for myself”. This means neglecting one’s own self and life, which makes ones’ life pointless. And all those sacrifices are offered in order to bear maximum responsibility, which will later be handed down to one’s children.

As a result we get a pit of debt filled up by many generations…

So what can we do to enjoy benefits instead of paying debts?

As babies we only use body language and make sounds in order to let others know what we want, but when we get old enough to speak, control our actions and develop conscious thinking, we quickly enter into negotiations. There are more and more situations when we have to ask for something, then we either get it or hear a refusal. If we get what we want we satisfy our needs immediately, while in case of refusal we seek other ways to achieve our goal.

The earlier parents start to “negotiate” with their children the more chances will they have to establish an equal relationship with them later. Such attitude will earn them the respect of their children at old age. In the same way, those who do not listen to their children will be ignored by them when they get old.

Meantime, recognition and acceptance of each other’s opinions does not mean agreement. On the contrary, it means being asked to express your opinion about the suggestions of your children. Then they will merely get the answer showing if you agree with them or are willing to comply with their requests. In case of disagreement or refusal they will have to find other means to get what they want.

In this way parents can either comply with children’s requests or turn them down. For instance, parents decide if they will: pay for their children’s education at the university; pay the expenses of their wedding party or holiday; or help them with advice how to find a new occupation or hobby. Parents’ refusal will give a child an incentive to:

– find the other source of funding;

– or continue negotiations with parents offering them to undertake particular obligations.

If parents and their children do not enter negotiations, their relationship is likely to suffer: they will start having conflicts with mutual accusations, or can even break up. This can lead both parents and children to question the importance of their relationship and the people involved in it, including their own selves. The life-giving relations will devalue, because the lives of those who gave birth and those who were born as a result of those relations will be devalued. They will be devalued as personalities and will be reduced to guilty debtors.

It is impossible to pay off one’s debts if you give money to someone else, instead of the person to whom you actually owe that money. Meanwhile, an invested capital is possible to accumulate and it can bring profit. A debt is a burden, while an investment is support.

Making an investment means placing one’s possessions at other person’s disposal on a contractual basis: at a certain interest, with the view of getting something valuable for the investor in future.

By making an investment the investor first of all receives approval and then the right to draw interest in any form and at any time s/he likes.

Thus, by investing money in a bank we get a card to draw our interest and a contract where terms and charges are mentioned.

The only difference between making a deposit with a bank and with one’s children is that parents make a lifelong investment in their children and cannot withdraw the full amount, except the interest.

However, parents don’t really need that. Making an investment in our children we hope to get “interest” from them at old age: attention, help, care or whatever we might need at that time and what they will be able to give us. I mentioned “give” and not “return”, because parents do not need nursing, feeding, rearing and teaching. Children receive all this from their parents when they are YOUNG. Then they do the same for their own children. This is the stage people undergo just once in their lives. The help that THE ELDERLY need is quite different as their demands are very different form the demands of children. There is only a formal likeness between them as both are physically weak and insecure. Nevertheless, that is an imaginary likeliness since children are not yet able to create anything, while the elderly are no longer able to use the things they have created. Children are the foundation where we invest money in order to receive our interest later. However, we cannot take it all, since the whole amount does not belong to us – our children create more and more things on their own. We should learn to distinguish between what is ours and what is theirs. This is the case when the principle “divide- and-rule” can be changed into “divide-and-use”.

So, parents want “interest”: the possibility to request and receive what they need at some particular time.

However, negotiations between parents and children are also a lifelong process. For that reason both sides can agree or refuse to satisfy each other’s requests; or they might not be able to fully satisfy them and might offer something else instead. Not having received what they want from their children parents can try to get that from other people. Thus, along with making investments in our children we are impelled to work hard, save money, make contributions to retirement and other funds, get involved in public life, donate for charity, maintain the existing relationships and establish relationships with new people.

We can also make an “investment” with the expectation of growing interest earnings. We invest in our children and get the interest that increases with the arrival of new generations and people who interact with them.