LEARNING TO BE A PARENT

When we decide to have children we feel such hope and such illusion. We imagine with wonder at the miracle it will be to bring a new being into this world. We usually think that we will know it all, and that we can trust in our instincts. This feeling that all will be perfect is common to the vast majority of new parents.

 It also happens that very soon we begin to feel anxious with the responsibility, with the awkwardness of not feeling capable of understand what is happening to this little tiny being who only knows to express herself/himself by crying when something is uncomfortable or hurting. We wish that time passes quickly and the baby begins to talk and be able to communicate what is hurting or give expression to what his/her needs are.

When the child grows a little more, and other difficulties appear, again we think that when he grows a bit more everything will become easier. And so we continue, waiting for the moment when we will not feel anxiety about our child. But experience shows that the child will be our daughter/son until the end of our days, and we will continue to feel anxieties and incapacities because we were neither educated nor trained to be a mother or a father. We see ourselves without the skills for this big task and we have to improvise, invent and learn to be parents.

We have forgotten how we felt when we were kids, and we bring into adulthood many learned belief systems and ideas which we want to impose upon our children… this sense of authority gives us a false sense of inner calm, but does little for our children.

Many times, we as parents forget to observe our kids carefully and discover the magic of communication through attentive listening, through tenderness and eye-to-eye contact, being able to see the deepness of being, recognizing how different this person in front of us is, even though she/he is our own child.

Young children need to feel that their parents are present and aware of their needs, of being capable of taking care and guiding them while they still don't know where to go… being also aware that “authoritarianism crushes and permissiveness drowns.” Children need to be shown a solid and respectful attitude which allows them to trust in their parent's capacity to guide their lives while they are still small. The parents lead the way, giving orientation, but do not carry the children on their backs, nor become a slave to the children's desires.

Sometimes we choose the option to be too permissive, forgetting to set limitations and give clear references, thinking that the best is to be a “friend” to our child, supposing that in this way we will be closer to him. But, the truth is that a child needs a mother and a father as clear references, who give the child support and confront them with reality. Friends she/he will find in life on their own.

As each new generation of parents try to avoid repeating their own parents´ mistakes and abuses, there are some who are too "understanding" with their kids and dedicate all their attention to them, but at the same time are too weak and insecure to occupy the hierarchic position that corresponds to their role as parents, incapable of respecting themselves and to affirm their own needs before their children's whims and desires.

Other parents, too involved with their professional lives don't have time for their children, they are absent parents who try to compensate for this lack of presence and attention with gifts, money and excessive permissiveness. Their children grow up with loneliness and a false sense of liberty, without a frame of reference and a lack of affective human contact.

At times the difficulties with the children have to do with hidden feelings, neither expressed nor recognized, coupled with poor communication between the parents, and with double messages that are transmitted to the kids by the mother and father. Mother and father have to become aware of the importance of the unanimity of criteria within the couple toward their children in order to allow them to grow up balanced and confident in themselves.

This leads to the need for spaces of reflection by the mother and father, to be able to explore difficulties and find alternatives that allow the exercise of a motherhood and a fatherhood centered in their hearts, supported by a flexible and thoughtful reason, seeking a transformation in their home where their child may feel loved, understood and with the possibility of developing her/his potential.

Parents need to see their own limitations, disconnect from their guilt, and connect with themselves and with their own loving and respectful capacities towards their children.

Experience has shown us just how much parents are looking for the means to communicate with their own children, but we see that they get lost within their own pre-conceived ideas that are carried with them from their families of origin. They grow up with illusions and often hope to build their own families on a different basis, often in opposition to the ones they lived in during own childhood and adolescence. Very soon they become aware of their limitations and incapacities, all the while trying to maintain the parent role. They frequently lose themselves as they consciously or unconsciously repeat the same behaviors and attitudes that have repressed their own spontaneity and capacity to freely express themselves during their own development.

This chain of events is being perpetuated generation after generation.

Globally speaking, we are now going through a critical moment in time where the power of a few is generating violence, tension, disconnection, impotence, and isolation for the vast majority of humanity.

In order for it to become possible for our children to brake away from this “status quo”, it is very important for us as parents to question our own conditioned values and ideas, allowing our hearts to be opened with humility and sincerity, and thus giving the next generation the example they need to grow up connected to their own strength and inner truth which may facilitate the transformation of this destructive reality in which we are now living.

Besides the relation between parents and children, another issue that is more and more frequently seen is that of separated parents, which in turn constitutes new families.

This situation influences the development of the children, for the separation of their parents in itself provokes many difficulties for parents and children alike. On one hand there are the parents with their own conflicts, generating contradictory messages to their children, and on the other hand these parent's guilt and resulting desire to compensate generates confusion on many different levels for the children. Further, when new partners and new children (from the new partner or half-siblings) the children (or adolescents) from the original family need to adapt to the new and changing environment, and very seldom do they have the needed space, time or capacity to understand the enormous amount of emotions that are felt. They feel compelled to live this new situation generating many problems and difficulties, which generally are not taken into account, or only superficially and symptomatically dealt with.

The theme of the relation between parents and children is complex and at the same time it is fundamental in order to give the new generation real possibilities for transformation and evolution.

Suzana Stroke

(transcription of the introduction of a workshop for parents at Interser Gestalt, Madrid, 2006).

 

 

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Suzana Strokededicates herself, among other activities,to the almost impossible,but always possible couple relationship

 

She says:

 

When we look for a partner to share our life, we also bring along our expectations (usually unconscious) of what the other should be so as to fulfill our childish "holes" and our adolescent dreams. Very rarely does a couple relationship turn out to be a mature one. We usually talk different languages, the communication is difficult, and we become full of dissatisfaction, frustration and demands. But when love sustains the relation it is possible to begin again on a more real basis, without fantasies and with clarity of what the relation means and how we can contribute to accomplish a "life together" -- transforming the relation in a school where learning and mutual growth is possible.

In a 20 hours intensive workshop Suzana leads a "cleaning of the present" (which continuously reflects past issues) and then she will go more deeply in the understanding of what it means to live as a couple, and what a precious opportunity this represents to engage in an "interpersonal yoga" from which one may expect fruits beyond comfort, pleasure and mundane conveniences.

Suzana has as her main motivation the promotion of healthy relationships, beginning by their origins (with parents), following with family relations in general, with the couple, with the kids, with friends, at the professional level, with oneself and with our own spirituality.

Our historic time is chaotic, violent and absurdly unfair. To be alert as well as loving is a big challenge. We need to know our truth very deeply, and from there on, be able to transmit a better world to the future generations.

We are constantly complaining and finding someone to blame or to be responsible for our frustrations or failures. Truth essentially shows the need to be honest, sincere and to assume responsibility of our actions, thoughts and feelings.

We need each other, and to be able to achieve a clean relationship it is very important to want the well-being of the other as much as our own, to know how to put oneself in the place of the other, have patience, and build bridges of communication that allow mutual nourishment to each individual's development. The immediate consequence will be the evolving development of the relationship itself.

 

The capacity to trust, to open our hearts to compassion, to forgive, to stand together, be responsible and live as a complete human being in harmony is the personal outcome.