| Perfectly imperfect: How children see their parents |
By: Tara J. DeRosa, Columnist, “A Child’s Internal World”
On 2/10/06
Last Saturday evening, I finally got around to watching “I am Sam” – the 2001 movie about a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his young daughter. At the risk of exposing myself to extreme cyber-ridicule, I confess that I cried – okay, sobbed – while watching this child so admire her father.
| "Children who are clothed and fed but never loved cannot return the feeling because they do not understand it." |
A father that no one else thought was good enough. Throughout the movie, she insists that this limited man is all she needs. She says it again and again, and when no one listens, she climbs out her bedroom window and walks to his room in the night.
As a parent, I have always struggled against the yoke of perfectionism. It is an almost daily battle to stop beating myself up long enough to hear my son say, “Mommy, you are the best. I love you all the way to the Milky Way and back.” I dread those teenage years when he is sure to demote me to village idiot. I know I am not alone. I know that parents out there feel constantly overwhelmed by this task of parenthood; that while we are straining to appear put together, organized and sane, we are, inside, trying to shush that voice reminding us that we are never going to be good enough.
As our children get older, they add their own echoes to our internal voice. They do it with eye rolls, with shrugs, and with hateful phrases that make us wonder why we didn’t just get a cat. Indeed, I see glimpses of it already when my own son covers his ears when I sing or complains that my homemade macaroni and cheese is not as good as the boxed kind. But it was this movie that served as a reminder that, instances of abuse and neglect aside, we are just what our children need. And even when we aren’t, they love us anyway.
There is a courtroom scene in the movie when cold-blooded lawyer Rita Harrison speaks to the daunting task of parenthood – insisting that all parents have moments when the task seems so monumental that we feel – in her words – retarded. Isn’t it all relative – the way our children see us? How the smartest among us feel clueless; how those with no formal “parent training” show moments of genius?
What is it that makes our children love us so, even when we make mistakes so heinous that we think they will never forgive us – when we are scarcely able to forgive ourselves?
Everyone has a theory – from biologists who explain that this love is born of dependence, to sociologists who cite centuries of training and tradition. Whatever the theory, nearly everyone agrees that this connection is not a simple accident of birth. Is it not true that our children are our mirrors, that in loving them as we do we become their first teachers in the intangible miracle of loving another person? Perhaps it is because, to them, we are the world, even when they want nothing to do with us.
This is why we stay, even when they say they hate us. If we gave birth to them, we are their first connection, their first breath, and their first sight through fuzzy eyes. If we became their parents later on, we are the person who saved them; the one who showed them what life is like when someone truly loves you enough to stick around.
A decade ago, “Attachment Disorder” began getting a lot of media attention, mostly the result of horrible stories about orphans being left alone for days on end, in bare cribs with bottles propped against them. Children with this disorder cannot love. Why?
Experts disagree on the origin – some say early deprivation changes brain chemistry; others say it is strictly behavioral. Underlying the theories is this universal assumption: These children fail to love because they were never taught how.
Children who are clothed and fed but never loved cannot return the feeling because they do not understand it. On the flip side, children who are fiercely loved cannot help but love another because they do not understand life without it.
Many of us know this intuitively; and if we don’t, listening to our child will remind us. In spite of this knowledge, we second-guess ourselves. We let the experts tell us we shouldn’t follow our instincts; our in-laws explain away what we know to be true; our peers insist that what works for their child will work with yours.
In falling prey to these influences, we rob our children of what they most long for – our genuine, authentic self. So, if you do nothing else today, do this: Put down the parenting book. Stop reading this column. Turn off the computer. Go, and look into your child’s eyes. Or, if he is at that age where he cannot help but look away, wait until he is asleep and gaze into his face. Remember the first time you laid eyes on him.
The first time your breath commingled with his. Even if you have to do it in silence, remind him, and yourself, what it means to love a child. In doing so, you will help him to remember what it is like to be totally loved. You will help yourself to remember that your child loves you whether you get the job, bake the cookies, or remember every word from that book on talking to teenagers.
Slow down. Hold still. You are just what your children need. Stop trying to show them you are perfect. They know you aren’t, and, here’s the kicker, they love you anyway.
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