Читать книгу Parents and grown up children - Natalia Manukhina - Страница 9

Parents are the first to notice that their children are behaving like adults. Seeing this they either accept the fact or ignore it. They can encourage their children to become adults or can make fun of them and humiliate them. Parents sometimes demand from their children to behave like adults, but refuse to face the reality when their children announce that they are already grownups. Parents find it especially difficult to admit that their children are adults when those begin to confront them.

As for children, insisting that their adulthood should be recognized, they often refuse to behave like adults towards their parents and other adults. Influenced by the attitude of their parents and other older people they do not always appreciate their being adults. So they seem to try to remain the children of their parents forever.

Hence, we get a “triple paradox” (a unity and conflict of opposite desires). For their part children make the following demands:

– Parents have to accept the fact that I have grown up and I am ready to live separately from my family;

– I need to be sure that “parents will be always there” for me, to guide me and ensure my safety “as I am growing up”;

– I need to know that I keep my place in the family hierarchy: I remain the child of my parents.

The “children’s paradox” is backed up by the respective “parents’ paradox”:

– To support children as they grow up and develop, and play the role of a “mature parent” letting the children live separately from the family;

– Be responsible for all and any actions of the children as creators and organizers of the atmosphere, environment and facilities enjoyed by them;

– Show to the children that they want to preserve their own and their children’s positions within the system and get their approval too. Parents can obtain support on this from other family members and friends.

In order to maintain balance which, on the one hand, allows everybody to keep their structural places and functions within the system, and on the other hand, ensure continuous growth and development, mutual relations should change depending on the situation. For example, in case of a dialogue involving the exchange of opinions and achievements both parents and children need to recognize “adults” in each other, which will enable them to communicate on equal terms. These are horizontal relations. The relations where they retain their family statuses (of a parent and a child) will be vertical in any circumstances (within and outside the family). However, it seems more natural to both parents and children to have vertical relations most of the time, because that is more like the initial, natural order of their lives and the structure of their families.