Sometimes parents begin to communicate with the child as with a friend. And they do not understand that by doing so they cause him pain, with which there is nowhere to go, no one to turn to.
The world is changing, but we don’t always notice it because we change with it. For example, the boundaries between childhood and adulthood are blurred. Neil Postman, a media culture researcher at the University of Chicago, called it «the disappearance of childhood.»*
The family is losing its hierarchical structure. Thanks to television and the Internet, children have access to the same information as their parents, and often better navigate it. Parental experience is of little use to children, because parents were children in an irretrievably bygone reality.
Now it is customary to be “friends” with children: parents want to know everything about the life of a child and are ready to share with him the realities of their lives. And in adulthood, what just does not happen!
Mom tells her daughter about how dad hurts her. She pours her heart out like a friend. Can cry, scold dad. Dad went on vacation with his son, and there Aunt Masha joined them. Dad asked mom not to say anything. We’re friends. Son watches dad’s secret day after day.
Parents quarrel, and both turn to the child to judge them. Sometimes they even ask a question of questions: “Should we get a divorce or not?” I’m not talking about all sorts of tough cases when a child is sent to a drunk parent, because it is this child who can pacify him.
Usually children accept the conditions of such «friendship». Parents are happy about this — and in vain. In the information field, there really is no longer a division into children and adults: if we take “high science” out of the brackets, then the average child is smart enough to understand the news, watch “movies for everyone”, chat on the Internet, and play. Here he differs little from an adult.
The child is emotionally dependent on mom and dad. He is strongly attached to them, and to both equally
Not so in the emotional field. The child is emotionally dependent on mom and dad. He is strongly attached to them, and to both equally, despite the fact that he can spend more time with someone. They are his family, his pack, his first love.
Until the child has left the parental home, has not gained the experience of his own close relationships and, most importantly, until he has become emotionally mature and independent, he cannot reasonably and detachedly, “in a friendly way”, perceive what is happening between mom and dad.
Adults live longer, experience emotions for different reasons longer, have more opportunities to think about and discuss them. The experience of experiences allows them to better cope with conflicting feelings. The child has much less emotional experience. There are experiences that children cannot comprehend and put on the right shelf in their spiritual space.
Strong fear, humiliation, anger, pity is difficult to endure alone. Namely, these feelings the child experiences when adults “reward” him with their emotional world. He is scared when the prospect of a family breakup arises. He is angry when secrets are imposed on him, he understands that he is being used, shielded by him from the other parent.
When a child receives such feelings from the outside world, parents can help him cope: stand up for him, tell him how to make peace, regret and sympathize, finally. But if they themselves are the cause of children’s suffering, then one should not expect help from them. Maybe the emotional life is the last one where the adult is still an adult and not an adult child.
* N. Postman «The Disappearance of Childhood». Random House, 1994.