Allowing the children to be satellites

I had a fascinating conversation with Sid the other day. He was recalling growing up in a well educated Southern family. As a child he remembered one thing crystal clear: the children where not the center of attention in family life.

Two models for family life: either the children are the center with the parent’s as the satellites, or vice versa. The parents are the center and the children are the satellites. While I most often observe the former, I believe having the children take up the role of satellite is healthier for everyone involved.

As Jung pointed out, the un-lived life of the parents gets projected in the children. When parents are obsessed with the children they avoid the challenge of their own individuation and fail to model the sometimes difficult (OK, often difficult), transitions of mid and later life. And the children are burdened with the unrealistic and unrealized development tasks that flow through to them.

It clearly wasn’t the norm for the children to occupy this role throughout history. What do you think has happened?

Hillary

Poignant post and reminiscent of the wisdom of The Continuum Concept. We are always the center of our own Universe and allowing anyone else to hold that center magnetism throws the whole system out of sync. The child is also the center of his/her Universe, but there is a natural magnetism and symbiotic relationship between parent and child and I believe when they are small in this big world they prefer to be the satellites. The best we can do for our children is to live our best life. If we are constantly finding alignment within ourselves there will be no worry for our children because they will have had learned the most important lesson.

The way I look at it is as two separate, interrelated universes in a healthy, symbiotic relationship revolving around each other, taking turn leading and following.

<abbr>Hillary´s last blog post..Family Dinner</abbr>

Screwed Up Texan

I believe that we need to create a delicate role balance with our children. What works best for me is being the authority figure and yet also letting them make decisions on their own while at the same time reminding them what the consequences will be. I respect my children, but at the same time they respect me, because I am older and I have experienced more than they have in life. It takes just once to get burned by the cookie sheet after they've been warned to let the cookies cool off. They learn respect when they dont do their homework and as a consequence they dont get to go to their friend's house and play. My children are still very young, but, as a parent, my goals are to guide my children towards making good decisions on their own, teach my children respect for their elders (so many different facets here), and help my children acheive individuality and independence.

<abbr>Screwed Up Texan´s last blog post..Screwed Up: Road Trip</abbr>

Lindsay

I completely agree that the latter, children as satellites, is healthier for all involved, (with the proviso that there is some flexibility built-in). I see no value in returning to the Victorian mores of children being seen but not heard.
Having tended to follow the cultural norms and be the satellite around my kids, magnified by single-parenting, I'm currently building launch pads for them to become the satellites.
How else will they discover their own strengths, and develop the means for that discovery when they need it in their own adult lives?

ccseed

Hey TDukes,
Fascinating reflection and I agree with your sense of the child becoming an extension if they are placed as central concern. I think we intuitively know this collectively with some of the horror news items in the past decade with child beauty queens, etc. In those tales I often wonder, where would these parents be without the child? It's living vicariously taken to an extreme.

Need the satellites know we are watching?

tdukes

It occurs to me that when we "imagine" children as the center of our world and center our concerns and activities around them to the extent that you are speaking of, we in fact are not relating to the child as an "other." They become an extension of our own psyches and are later saddled with the internalized realization that they were mirrors for us and not mirrored by us. Consequently, they do not have an embodied sense of who they are, they were not the "twinkle" in our eyes but simply an extension of ourselves.

Modeling our parenting is, I think, a complex process. As we stand on the Earth we sometimes see the satellite as it orbits around us. It twinkles as it reflects the sun. However, that satellite is far removed from what is going on down here … I wonder, does it realize that we see it? Does it know that it exists?

<abbr>tdukes´s last blog post..Leadership: Wisdom of an Aging Warrior</abbr>