Treating parents just as parents can be the best and the only respect some children can give.
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The topic on which this article is written may sound strange to you. Some of you might not get the gist of it, and I hope that you never have to go through the ignominy of being treated just as a parent. Although in my opinion, if you ever get treated in such a way, you probably deserve it. Yes you heard me right, you probably deserve it and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Be abashed!
Yes, it sounds insane- treating parents as parents. Everyone does that, right? … Wrong! Very few do that. Reckon the time when you were young trying to grab everyone’s attention by bursting your lungs because you were just that cocky? That’s the time when we start to bond with our parents too, unconsciously of course. As we grow up, we start to share our feelings, our experiences with them. That’s how we all build emotions towards our parents and start to not look at them just as parents, but as our confidante too. They become like our friends, only with more attachment. But everything in life is a two way street and if anything is one way, seldom does anyone like it.
A one way street in parenting, at any stage, leads to toxic parenting which further leads to the worst thing a parent can hear from a grown up child,
“I want you out of my life, you are toxic.”
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Those words complementarily affect both psyches. The choice may be the healthiest decision for the child, but it is always detrimental to the parents and inflicts a deep psychological wound which all but spells a death sentence of the relationship.
Sharing emotions and creating attachment to the parents is not only the duty of the child but also that of the parent(s). Attachment is done mostly during pre-adolescent and anything thereafter is likely false enchantment. There is no use modeling the clay once the dough has been baked. It’s something that some parents don’t get, a mistake for which they can pay for the rest of their lives.
There is nothing wrong with such children when they have no attachment emotionally towards their parents.
The problem does not lie within them but within the parents. Parenting is an art and though none of us can be perfect at it, there is a difference between screwing up while providing healthy love and presiding over a psychologically damaging childhood that necessitates a lifetime of healing. The first step towards this healing is removing all the emotional bonds and attachment.
I have seen parents criticizing and pathologize-ing their children.
My own parents were no better. Those constant abhorring remarks, the name callings, and their impulsive reactions were detrimental to my childhood. My confidence took a huge hit and frankly it downplayed me a lot of times. Gaining all that confidence once you lose it at an early age is never easy, as I found out the hard way. Yes, they always wanted the best for me, but I wish they had wanted the “happiest” for me. Yet, they didn’t have any formula to get the optimum union of happy and the best in their parenting decisions. However, what such parents do, and my parents did, is alienate the child. A bridge is created that is meant to be broken. It’s something that many parents realize after the crumbling of the bridge, but there is nothing much anyone can do once lives are destroyed by the rubble. Life goes on.
The only way we can respect such parents is by treating them just as parents.
So, if you treat your parents just like parents, know that there is nothing wrong with you. It was them, it always was. They brought it upon themselves, the most they deserve is to be treated just as parents.
Photo: amira_a/Flickr
Brilliant article, Mr. Singhai. I feel so much better after read it when analyzing my relationship with my parents. Too many parents never really had a bridge let along bother to build a bridge with their kids in the first place.