PARENTING PLUS: Don’t allow familiarity to breed contempt
MANY OF the parents who come to me to seek help are worried. They are scared about what their son or daughter is doing and the impact it is having on them personally, their family or sometimes society at large.
However, underlying a lot of their outwardly expressed concern is, also, a deep-rooted anger. Central to that anger is resentment. Many parents feel resentment towards their children.
In essence, resentment is a perception of unfairness for not getting the expected help, recognition, appreciation, consideration, praise, reward, or affection.
It is easy to see how resentment towards your children can build. We may feel we are forever giving to our children and receiving nothing in return.
But we expect a return.
So we begin to categorise them as selfish, unhelpful, disrespectful, bold, thoughtless, destructive, oppositional, disagreeable and more.
We rarely resent just one thing about them. Indeed, the nature of it is that resentments build on each other to the point that our expectation of someone disappointing us becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.
Resentment exists in all relationships, because even the best relationships cannot be fair all the time. In families, the trouble comes when resentment blocks natural compassion for our children.
In healthy parent-child relationships, compassion (ie caring about the discomfort or distress of our children with a motivation to help) outweighs resentment.
When resentment begins to overwhelm compassion, it begins a destructive cycle where we look for things to resent, as protection from disappointment.
At that point it starts a downward spiral of irritability, impatience, restlessness, bickering, cold shoulders, stonewalling, angry outbursts, and, at an extreme level, emotional abuse.
You all know the old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt”. In my opinion, what this saying recognises is that as we come to know somebody else, the potential to resent them or their behaviour increases.
I am not suggesting that all of our hurt, anger and resentment is unjustified. For sure, our children will push us to the pins of our respective collars. What is most important is what we do when we feel pushed in this way by them.
Sometimes our experience is one of powerlessness. We can’t seem to influence, control or redirect their behaviour, their attitudes or their treatment of us.
In response to this powerlessness, we can often try to exert greater power and control. But this route inevitably causes greater hurt, greater conflict and even more fractured relationships with our children.
What we need to do more often, I believe, is to forgive and to forget. To get to that stage we might have to look after some of our own needs first.
At times, we might need to heal ourselves and forgive ourselves before we can be ready to forgive others.
Generally, forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge.
Forgiveness can lead to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for our children whom we believe have hurt us.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we deny our child’s responsibility for hurting us and it doesn’t minimise or justify the wrong, when wrong was done. We can forgive our children without excusing their behaviour towards to us.
Forgiving them means we are less likely to hold onto bitterness, grudges and resentment.
If we can allow the positive things about our children to come into balance with (or even outweigh) the negative things, then we may find we are less angry with them and have less reason to be worried about them.