It’s natural for humans to look outside of themselves for reasons when they can no longer control their emotions. Husbands blame wives, bosses blame subordinates, teachers blame students and parents blame their kids. If it wasn’t for the other they would be smiling clones of Lord Buddha. A fallacy most people live under.
I meet many such people. Let me be more specific — parents.
Parents who think that the only reason they lose their temper is because their child makes them. They are angry because their child forgot his lunch box at home for the third time in the week, lost his expensive new sneakers during PE, forgot to do his homework or does not wake up on time without continuous nagging.
Parents are perfect human beings made imperfect only by the tiny beings they bring forth into the world. Their emotional outbursts are always justified because of the problems created by the children.
But they forget they are the adult with complete control of how they think, feel and act — caveat being the behaviour and actions of their child. It is only when they come face to face with their child’s fallacies that their divinity is shaken to its core.
I lost count of the number of such parents who bring their child into coaching because their son or daughter lacks confidence, cannot focus on his tasks, stopped confiding in them or does not speak up in class. No doubt, some of the kids truly need help with developing these life skills. But a lot of them suffer due to the parents’ mismanagement of their own unresolved emotional baggage.
A mother recently brought her young teen daughter to me, citing lack of focus and low self-confidence as issues. After listening to the mother I realised how impatient and overwhelmed she herself was and needed help more than her child. Being a working mother she was continuously on the edge, lacked time for herself and had unrealistic expectations from her teen who herself was in a crucial physical and mental developmental phase.
Thankfully this mother was open to suggestion and realised how much negative baggage she had let go of, how it was impacting not only her relationship with her daughter but more importantly how it was negatively influencing her daughter’s relationship with herself. The mother felt more positive and in control of her feelings and actions, leading her to be a better listener to her young daughter and significantly improving their relationship.
Later when I asked the daughter of the mother’s transformation, it was heartening to hear this: “I am able to focus more on my school work because I am not surrounded by this feeling that I am doing this wrong. I feel more confident about anything I do. Even for the smallest things I know that I can do it and I will do it”.
She said her mother had completely stopped shouting and lost her cool only on rare occasions. This is the result of a parent realising that maybe – just maybe – they could be contributing to their child’s misdemeanors and if they could accept that and work on themselves, their child will transform automatically.
— Sunaina Vohra is a certified Youth and Family Life Coach at Athena Life Coaching in Dubai. For more information log on to athenalifecoaching.com or call 056-1399033. This is an interactive column on parenting skills and child behaviour. If you have a query, write to tabloid@gulfnews.com
