“Parents who overprotect their children run the risk of harming them,” says family therapist Serge Efez. He is convinced that the idea of “compulsory family happiness for all” that has captured the civilized world is fraught with many dangers.
Sociological surveys in most countries of the world show that marital and family happiness is again becoming the main value in modern society. In today’s unstable world, everyone is trying to find for themselves something permanent, reliable, independent of external circumstances. That is why many of us perceive the family as a refuge, a safe haven, with which we pin all our hopes, and above all the hope for happiness. As a result, it is the family that often becomes a source of disappointment, resentment and internal dissatisfaction – after all, expectations are never fully justified.
Family therapist Serge Efez argues that the conventional wisdom that family life must necessarily bring us only pleasant emotions often makes our relationships with loved ones too complex and contradictory, and also overloads them with excessive emotions. And the first, as usual, children feel it.
Psychologies: It is generally accepted that a happy child is, first of all, a child who is loved. Do you agree?
Serge Efez: Not really. Happy is not only a beloved child. Love is the fuel for the engine, the necessary emotional basis for revealing the child’s personality, but relationships in the family should not begin and end with it. Gently embracing, watching your favorite show on TV or whispering affectionate words into each other’s ears – all this is beautiful and important, but cannot serve as an end in itself for education. The life of modern society is very dynamic, and the family is no exception – it inevitably moves along with society. The role of the parent in this regard is to help the child get involved in life outside the family and learn to navigate this turbulent stream.
If we do not allow him to get his own bruises and bumps, if we constantly insure and restrain him, he will never learn to be independent. But in consultations, I increasingly have to meet children who have suffered from excessive parental love.
How can one suffer from an excess of love?
Well, imagine, for example, such a situation. Parents are crazy about their baby, they completely project their inner world onto the world of the child and cannot imagine their happiness without his happiness. As a result, the child develops a feeling of anxiety. It is difficult for him to understand himself, to distinguish his own emotions from those of his parents, he cannot figure out what belongs to him and what belongs to mom, dad or the whole family as a whole. When this child grows up, it will be very difficult for him to leave the parental nest and find the spiritual strength in himself in order to start living his own, separate life.
Together, but not together
“The modern ideal of marital relations prescribes us both complete interpenetration and equally complete autonomy and self-sufficiency,” Serge Efez believes. As a consequence, so many couples today feel frustrated that they are unable to realize this brilliant ideal within their own family. The ability of a person to live his own life, to enter into close relationships with other people, without losing at the same time a sense of his own separateness from them and clearly aware of his priorities, the largest American family psychotherapist Murray Bowen associated with the concept of “differentiation”. The higher our level of differentiation, the more flexible, freer and more harmonious we become, the easier it is for us to adapt to stress and solve our problems. According to this approach, people enter into marriage with approximately the same level of differentiation. If it is low for partners, the development of their child will be distorted, his level of adaptability will fall, and when he grows up, it will be very difficult for him to start living his life. If there are several children in the family, they have a chance to increase this level: usually the influence of parents affects one child more strongly, which gives the rest a chance to change the situation and learn to live independently, without waiting for constant approval and love from others. Sometimes this “honorary” role shifts from one to another, and then each child has the time and energy to become a more “differentiated” adult.
VITA MALYGINA
However, many psychologists and psychiatrists believe that true love for a child largely insures parents against mistakes in relations with him …
The perception of the child as a wonderful, gifted creature, which should not be limited in anything, so as not to damage its development, originated in the early 70s of the last century. Later, it was brought almost to the point of absurdity, and therefore today many parents find themselves hostages of a constant sense of guilt: after all, in the real, and not the ideal world, it is, alas, impossible to continuously fulfill all the whims of the child. Here, let’s say, such an example. The little boy is acting up: he certainly wants to try the cake intended for dessert before dinner. The temptation to give in to him is very great: as a father, I understand how much he wants this, I feel how he will be delighted with my consent and what pleasure his joy will give me myself. However, in fact, at this moment I replace his desire with mine.
Why is it so difficult for an adult to stop transferring his feelings and desires to the personality of a child?
It is very difficult to draw a line between yourself and your children. First of all, because by doing this, we risk causing them dislike and irritation. “I hate you!” – angrily throws us a son or daughter, causing this acute pain. We recall our own experience: we ourselves were children, sometimes we happened to hate our parents, and now we are categorically not ready to relive this situation on the other side of the barricades. Therefore, we restrain ourselves to the last of our strength, suppressing negative feelings towards the child and trying to conform to the idyllic image of the family cultivated in today’s society. Take any movie intended for family viewing: always in the foreground in it is love – a positive factor that fights and successfully copes with hatred – a negative factor. In fact, there is no irreconcilable antagonism between love and hate – they are just two sides of the same coin.
Does this mean that when helping a child to realize himself, one should come to terms with the fact that he cannot always be happy?
“NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE NOT A DISEASE AND THEREFORE YOU SHOULD NOT BE WORRIED IF A CHILD ACCIDENTALLY CATCHES THEM.”
Quite right. You need to say goodbye to the dream of perfection and stop feeling guilty about it. It should not be assumed that our parental duty is to protect the child from anxieties, sorrows and disappointments at any cost. There is no life without them, and our children will inevitably face them. Another thing is that we can help them cope with these problems. To be near the child at a difficult moment, to support him when he needs it – this is the parental mission. Moving into the past, these experiences will become an invaluable part of his life experience. And protecting children from all trials is just as wrong as adding new ones to them.
So you think that a sad child is just as normal and natural as a joyful child?
Of course. Negative emotions are not a disease, and therefore there is no need to worry that the child does not catch them. Sadness, resentment, pain of loss are natural human feelings. Listen to your child, try to understand his feelings, but do not try to live for him. An excess of care makes a person defenseless against possible adversity, weaning him from listening to his inner voice. As a result, he will either suffer from an incorrect self-esteem, constantly seek and not find emotional protection from someone, or begin to assert himself, suppressing others and ignoring their feelings. In both cases, such an adult is dependent and vulnerable. By the way, a curious detail: the symptoms that occur with an overabundance of love are exactly the same as those that appear with its lack. In other words, like all powerful drugs, love has a double effect: taken in the right proportion, it can work wonders, but deviation both upward and downward threatens serious problems.