Your Relationship With Your Kids Will Never Be Fair.
It can be beautiful, fun, peaceful and harmonious,
but fair… Not so much.
This is a source of much stress to many parents.
You Will Always Have To Do More
Emotional Work Than Your Kids.
At least for the first 20 years or so.
The reason for this is
when we meet our kids for the first time
we are already full of wounds, triggers
and layers upon layers
of emotional experiences.
On the other hand, they are in a pure state.
They do not have a lot of wounds
and trauma clouding their judgement.
Our job as parents is to nurture their inner emotional world
so they can grow up with at least a few less
inner wounds and trauma than we did.
Our Relationship Becomes More Complex As They Grow
As they grow they become more complex
emotional beings with their own thoughts,
opinions, perspective and will.
This adds to the variety of ways they can
press our buttons and suck our energy.
All of this is part of their emotional development.
Kids Have Emotional Purity, but not Emotional Maturity
Even though kids are emotionally quite pure
in their infancy they are not emotionally mature.
Emotional maturity is being able to experience
the full range of emotions and still being able
to choose our thoughts and actions.
We can choose to be swept away in our emotions
or we can choose to be rational and objective.
Young people don’t have this choice
in the same way we do
because they haven’t learned the skill.
Part of our responsibility as parents is
to teach them emotional maturity.
Modelling Emotional Maturity Requires a Lot of Inner Work
The primary way of doing this of course is by modeling it.
This is why the balance of emotional give and take
will never be fair between you and your kids.
You will always have to give much much more and
they will always take much much more.
At some point our kids mature to a level
where we are able to have a more
adult relationship with them.
When this happens the emotional
give and take can balance out.
In order for this to occur though
we have to be willing to take the lioness’s share
of the responsibility in the early years.
This means of course that we have to do
a tremendous amount of inner work.
Dealing With Our Own Triggers And Buttons
If when our buttons get pressed we
dump that emotional energy on our kids
we are not doing anybody a favour.
We have to learn to deal with our own inner stuff
in a way that doesn’t harm them.
If you can let go of seeking fairness
and instead seek harmony, connection,
communication and trust
you will find that the imbalance
in your relationship with your kids
will transform from a burden
into an honour and a joy.
