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From the moment of birth, each of us receives a “legacy” of family history. Learning to consciously accept this inheritance and yourself as part of your family is the first step to becoming yourself.
Our communication with the outside world begins very early. Long before the birth of an infant, its senses are capable of receiving information from outside. “The vestibular apparatus, which reacts to changes in the position of the head and body in space, begins to work in the embryo at 6 weeks, skin sensitivity appears at 10, hearing organs at 14 weeks. That is, from the fourth month after the moment of conception, the fetus feels what its mother feels, hears the voice of the father and distinguishes their mood, ”explains perinatal psychologist Galina Filippova. A person is born, and with the first touches, feeding, smiles, he, like a sponge, continues to absorb the emotions and feelings of people close to him – whether it is their sincere joy at the sight of a baby or hidden irritation.
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“Simultaneously with the birth, our “I” begins to form,” says psychoanalyst Tatyana Alavidze, “and this development process is endless. The mother, guessing the desires of the child, takes him in her arms, talks to him – this is how communication begins. And it is communication with another person that makes us human; our “I” begins to develop from the moment we come into contact with our parents.” A small child is absolutely dependent on adults, he cannot survive without a sense of security that close people give him. That is why he feels an instinctive vital need to belong to the family in which he was born: in order to feel protected, he is ready to share her fate – if necessary, even to the detriment of himself.
Live among your
- The child needs to feel part of his family. This feeling gives him a sense of security, for the sake of which he is ready to share everything with his family – both joys and hardships.
- Identification with parents. With devoted love, the child responds to any words and actions of the parents, adapting to the image that the family dictates to him.
- Growing up means learning to separate the bad from the good. To free your “I”, you should comprehend and discard the bad, alien that is in family history, keeping only the good, close in yourself.
Each of us has our own ideas about what a “happy child” is. “The best thing that adults can do for a child is to help him form a harmonious “I,” explains Tatyana Alavidze. – The idea of social and moral guidelines that he receives in the family will help to live in society; emotional stimuli – caress and tenderness, a taste for pleasure, for play – will influence the development of his sensitivity. And recognizing that he is a person and he has his own views will help to understand who he is, what he really wants and what he is capable of.
Creating an understanding and harmonious relationship is not easy. If parents grew up in a benevolent atmosphere, then they are likely to accept their children as they are, and they will feel in the “safe rear” all their lives. But if in childhood a person suffered from the inattention of his father and mother, then in relations with his children he will most likely reproduce the harsh style of relationships that he once experienced on himself.
STRIVING TO RECEIVE LOVE, A CHILD IS READY FOR A LOT: TO CAPTURE THE MOOD OF RELATIVES, TO ADAPT TO IT…
A child is born, and the relatives first of all seek to “recognize in him their own”: look, he is the spitting image of a father (grandfather, great-grandfather)! But if something in the baby’s appearance reminds family members of a relative that is not customary to talk about, then they are likely to remain silent. “And we don’t even know about such things as violence, dishonor, incest or betrayal, because the elders, as a rule, try to hide the “inconvenient” truth.” “When family members are happy that they are a family, the child feels it,” continues Tatyana Alavidze. – Of course, he wants to be loved by those people among whom he lives, and he is ready to do a lot for this: to capture the mood of his relatives and adapt to it in order to feel safe. The unconditional love that children have for their parents is based on children’s logic: to belong to a family means to be like those of whom it consists. Out of love, we take on other than our own worries and troubles.
Maxim, 43, works for a major airline. Prior to that, he did not stay long at any job, he constantly clashed with his superiors. The course of psychotherapy helped Maxim understand the scenario according to which he acted over and over again. He grew up with his grandparents, and his grandfather, who in the past held a large leadership position, constantly reprimanded him. As an adult, Maxim heard the “voice of his grandfather” in every boss and, in response, directed his aggression at him.
Tips for Parents
There are a few important things to keep in mind if we want to help our child build their own self.
- Set boundaries. If a child from childhood does not have clear ideas about “what is good and what is bad”, then his life will become like a crossroads clogged with cars without traffic lights and stop signs. The child will be easier to navigate in various life situations if he has an understanding of the framework.
- Tell the truth about the history of the family. The child may experience anxiety, thinking through and completing what the parents do not dare to tell him. As a result, he can withdraw and go into a fantasy world.
- Do not use a child to fill an emotional void. From childhood, a child tries to appropriate the love of a parent of the opposite sex. It is necessary to explain to him that mom also belongs to dad (and dad, respectively, to mom), and brother, and grandmother. If this rule is not learned, then it will be difficult for the child to find his place in the family.
- Do not convey your anxieties to him. Do not share with children the details of all our experiences. They will be helped by accessible and objective information about what is happening, and not at all by our adult fears.
E.K.
Family Message Baggage
The self-image arises in the child gradually and is based on his own experience of successes and defeats, on the opinions of peers. But it also depends on how parents see it: their remarks, instructions, and even random phrases form the child’s idea of himself. And often he has to get along with the image of himself, which is formed by his father and mother. “Parental perceptions are not necessarily wrong, but usually incomplete,” says transactional analyst Marina Petrovskaya. – Many have heard from relatives: “If you were the same as your brother!”; “What do you want, you don’t have the ability to do mathematics…” or “Nothing good will come of you!” Such peremptory phrases, when repeated regularly, turn into prophecies. The child, due to his weakness and desire to please his parents, often unconsciously submits to the parental attitude and directs his energy to the implementation of a life project that is not his own.
“When dreams of a “perfect child” haunt parents, they harass their son or daughter with constant comparisons with other children (“Seryozha is already reading, but he is a year younger than you!”), says Alexander Chernikov. “But the real achievements of the child are treated with disdain, and he loses faith in himself.” So parents become an indirect reason that the child ceases to think and feel independently and it is increasingly difficult for him to achieve success.
Childhood is a time of submission to parents; adolescence is a period of self-affirmation. Torn between parental demands and the desire to defend his “I”, a teenager is looking for new opportunities for self-expression – trying on new roles in the company of friends or imitating his favorite singer, athlete, TV star. “In order to meet our real self,” explains Marina Petrovskaya, “you need to deal with the ideas about the world that were instilled in us in the family. Do I think they are fair? Do they help me? Do I perceive them as my own, or have they suppressed something else in me that is truly mine? Otherwise, the burden of parental instructions will affect us all our lives, interfering with feelings, actions, desires …
WE REJOY OUR SIMILARITY WITH PARENTS WHEN WE STOP BUILDING LIFE DEPENDING ON THEIR OPINIONS AND WISHES.
The path to the adult “I”
44-year-old Elena has always believed that her mother loves her less than her older brother. “And then I decided to become noticeable – I made a career, I earn a lot of money. But my personal life did not work out. Perhaps the fact is that I built my life thinking that my mother did not love me, but in fact she loves me – in the way she knows how. Now I am working with a psychotherapist, learning to abstract from how others perceive me, including my own mother.
“Each of us goes through the stages of idealization of parents and disappointment in them,” says Tatyana Alavidze. – As a result, we are left with the feeling that the parents, alas, are not perfect, but, in fact, they are not bad guys. Then we can rejoice in the fact that we are like our parents – both externally and partly internally, especially when we stop building our lives depending on their desires and opinions. Recognizing in ourselves both similarity with parents and dissimilarity to them, we recognize ourselves anew.
It is important to learn to separate the external (even parental) view of what we are from knowing ourselves “from the inside” – and so part with unnecessary hereditary traits, while retaining the positive ones. Having found and accepted our adult self, we understand that we still love our family, but are ready to go our own way. We will gradually free ourselves from prescriptions, expectations and life scenarios repeated from generation to generation. It is very important to believe that we are striving to “live our life, and not the life of our parents, grandparents or the deceased brother, whom we, without suspecting it, “replaced”, writes the French psychotherapist Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger in the book Ancestral Syndrome. The complex bonds between generations can be seen, felt, or partly foreseen. But most often we do not talk about them, and they remain an unconscious, unspoken and secret part of our lives. Nevertheless, we are able to identify these connections and formulate our own desires so that our life corresponds to what we want from it, our true aspirations, and not to what others desire for us and for us.
try different things
How to help a son or daughter find something that will be interesting to him? Often, parents do not allow the child to prove himself, sending him to a music school when he dreams of building model ships. The reason for this may be the unfulfilled childhood dream of one of the parents, the prestige of the lesson or the success of the older child, which, in the opinion of the parents, the younger should repeat. “We need to give the child the opportunity not to realize the dream of his parents, not to compete with the elder on his field, but to find something of his own, where he will be himself, and not someone else’s repetition,” says psychologist Elena Silina. – If he doesn’t like the studio or section you offer, take him to others, ask about what he would like to do. Children should be given the opportunity to try as many different options as possible in order to find themselves and determine what they are really interested in.
Jeanne Sergeeva