What obstacle do I see that interferes with parenting? Interferes with giving thought to learning how to parent more reasonably?
Unhappiness.
What kind of unhappiness do many of us feel? Maybe we're not where we would like to be financially, or on the career ladder. Maybe we're having trouble communicating with our spouse, and it's taking a toll on us. Maybe we're "settling" somewhere in our existence that is eating at us. Maybe we're angry, or feeling helpless.
When I was a step-parent in my first marriage, I was unhappy with my job, I changed careers, then I met my first wife and changed back. For my first eight years of parenting, I was in law enforcement. I think cops have an unusually hard time leaving the job at the office. The rate of alcoholism and divorce is among the highest for this career. They bring the necessities for survival home with them, the gun and the attitude. I was hard-headed and believed I was always right. Some remarkable men and women pull off civilized parenting under those conditions, but more cops are unnecessarily harsh with their kids than the general parent populace. But I'm talking here to parents who suspect or know that they want better communication with their spouse or with their kids.
We all hear that the most important thing in any relationship is communication. We could have gotten that test question right ever since high school. Did I think that I was a communicator? You bet. Why did I think I had the skills? Because I could speak clearly in complete sentences. What more was there to it? But why did I have communication problems with my first wife? She was a teacher. She spoke clearly in complete sentences all day. That marriage sounds like the perfect match. Two serious, educated talkers. What could go wrong?
Issues. Baggage we bring into our adult life and our relationships. Every one of us has had some collection of parents and role models that influenced us. We developed expectations about how to do things right. We may have developed ways of being that allowed us get what we wanted from a withholding world. We have many habits that we don't even know about ourselves. And every set of parents had different life mentors, who influenced them in different ways. A simple example is "proper" procedure for family Christmas gift opening. "It's proper to get the whole family together on Christmas morning and open the gifts one at a time."
"No, it isn't. Everyone gets to open one gift on Christmas eve...."
No, You're wrong! Everyone opens all their gifts all at once on Christmas eve..."
"Nuh-uh! Mom or dad passes out the gifts one at a time..." And so on.
But much more charged issues can revolve around issues like, can a wife smile at the grocery checkout clerk, or can dad stay out for a drink without calling home to say he'll be late? Does a child being late home from school require a spanking? How tolerant should family members be about lying? If alcoholism plagued parents, and inconsistency was the order of the child's life, that grown kid may have a problem identifying normality. Strangely, people with hard upbringings find each other. They seem to find comfort in the company of a similarly challenged grown-up. Comfort doesn't mean they are happy.
I'm speaking of a "comfort zone" that includes negative behaviors that are familiar to the partner--they've seen it in their own lives. Lying, cheating, trying to explain away bad behavior with fast talking or displays of anger, maybe even hitting.
Identifying and modifying some of these issues will be helpful in making a couple happier with each other, and will make fertile ground for happiness and reasonableness in the home they are creating. I believe I was an example of a resistant-to-education parent. I was certain that what I "knew" about life and relationships was "the Truth." This attitude is a prescription for unhappiness, unreasonableness, and never-ending family conflict. How can this be repaired
Make everyone aware that they have some expectations for how life, marriage, career, child-rearing and adulthood in general should go. And no one else has the exact same expectations. Yours are not necessarily right, and neither are anyone else's. So let's learn to talk about what is up for us and to hear what is up for others. Without judgement, acknowledge the differences and get help to build a collaborative team framework at allows happiness for all involved.
More to come
