Do-It-Yourself Psychotherapy by Martin Shepard

Author:Martin Shepard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504028561
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

9. PARENTS

Learning to accept your parents as people in their own right—different and distinct from you—is a task that poses difficulties for quite a large number of people. There should be nothing surprising in all of this, for we all have one very good historical reason—our childhoods.

The infant is born into a world in which he is, literally, part of his mother. Without her to comfort, clothe, feed and shelter him, he could not survive. During childhood little girls and boys still depend greatly on their parents. They have not yet acquired the skills necessary to provide for and sustain themselves. This is a time one learns certain ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’. You learn how to count and how to read, how to cook and how to sew, how to hammer and how to saw. And you learn not to swallow iodine, not to put a fork in the electrical socket and not to cross a street unless you look to make sure there is no traffic approaching.

Typically the child’s contract with the parent is one in which they accept the dependent role in return for the favours/protection/guidance/and support received from them. There are, of course, dissatisfactions. Children prefer taking things out to play with more than they do putting them away. They want to do and try things they see grown-ups doing and resent it when the adults say ‘No’. They may want to come and go more freely than parents are ready to allow. And children would rather watch television than do their homework or practise the piano.

Adolescence marks the years during which relatively accepting and ‘sweet’ children become adults in their own right. Following the sexual maturation of puberty, adolescents typically reject the dependent contracts that, as children, they had with their parents. It is a period of much storm and strife, both in the inner life of the adolescents and in their relationships to their parents. Opposition/confrontation/argumentation are a natural part of the process as the adolescent seeks to break away and find his or her own adulthood. If it is accomplished smoothly, and the adolescent truly feels adult, they come to accept their parents as they would other adults. If they share common interests and if the parents accept the young person as an adult (not only as their child), they may remain close. If their interests are not similar and/or if the parents cannot transcend their roles as parents, there is a polite distance—as any adult would have with people who are on different wavelengths. This second alternative is a more common outcome of maturation.

What I have described thus far is ‘normal’ maturation. Many individuals, no matter how old they are, never make it, psychologically speaking, past either childhood or adolescence when it comes to relating to their parents. Those stuck in the childhood phase remain overly docile and dependent. Those stuck in adolescence relate to their parents in a perpetually rebellious and ill-tempered way.

Given the cultural roles males and females are assigned (males presumably

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