Beloved children leave home easily

...

Development lines of long romantic relationships or marriages can be completely different and unpredictable. Only some of these people will become parents and introduce an additional form of love into their lives, which often changes all domains of life, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes for a chaotic combination of one and the other. Many social and religious communities consider this a central aspect of life, and individuals suffer if this opportunity is denied to them for any reason.

Some lucky people experience the beginning of parenthood as a euphoric experience, overflowing with love and tenderness, an opportunity for a new beginning, hope and inspiration, a special form of connection that they believe they feel with a "liter of meat" that sleeps fourteen hours a day and is almost completely speechless at the beginning. Connections with the past and ancestors, the world and justice, the gods and transcendence, and within the couple itself, everything is suddenly present in full force, amid the chaos of sleepless nights, learning how to change diapers, sometimes acutely painful (attempts) to breastfeed and the wisdom brought by countless advice, contradictory as well as well-intentioned.

Although this is completely out of control for each specific parenting couple, it is scientifically easy to explain. If there is an unquestionable knowledge in psychology, it is the fact that, evolutionarily speaking, human parenting is the most difficult and responsible job in the world. We are born so helpless, unable to do for ourselves even one thing important for survival - to move, to search for food and water, to escape or attack, to warm up or to cool down - all of which we need many times every day. If you try to imagine the life of an average parent just ten thousand years ago, when there were no antibiotics, diapers, hot water, kindergartens or pediatricians, and cold, rain, hunger, infections, various beasts with sharp teeth or claws threatened from all sides, I believe you will immediately understand how much easier it would be for you to survive without a few kilograms of heavy weight that is more difficult to fight and run with, with which you have to share the little food gathered or caught, which crying can attract danger.

A BABY'S SMILE AS A NATURAL DRUG

There is no surprise in the fact that such a helpless animal species can only survive if parents are induced to love and care for their babies. And, indeed, the indicators that this is happening are everywhere in our lives. The process of conceiving a new life begins with an activity that most people consider perhaps the greatest source of pleasure and it is difficult to resist it even when they know that it can lead to an exhausting pregnancy, extremely painful childbirth and demanding upbringing. Babies are "designed" to be beautiful (or at least "cute") to us, with disproportionately large heads compared to the rest of the body, huge faces and eyes. For many adults, any baby's smile is irresistible, but you won't trade yours for any other, among other things, because it's "lucky" that it looks like you, and because of that, you feel an extra level of connection. Today, neuroscience confirms the psychoanalytic observation that parents, especially mothers, are "wired" for the baby's signals and its well-being: deep in the brain, your baby's smile causes a wave of happiness and the desire to repeat it (activates the so-called reward system, identical to some types of drugs), and you instantly distinguish a baby's cry from all others in the world and it brings you a unique discomfort. Although the process is often idealized, a good part of the "maternal instinct" is actually to quickly create a kind of addiction to the "natural cocaine" that the brain secretes when it receives information that the baby is fine (smiles) and will most likely survive.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD IN THE PARENT'S FACE

But this, of course, is far from all that parenthood brings. Very early, already in the first half of the first year, babies start to play and "draw" adults into that game. From that moment, well, in most cases, until the child goes to school, those games can be an endless source of laughter and joy for adults, who, by definition, have become adults by hiding somewhere the capacity for imaginative playfulness. In this same place is one of the most important forms of parental responsibility: no child can play if the parent does not provide him with a safe space - actually predictability and repeatability - within which he will feel that he can completely lose himself in imagining worlds, characters and events. There are the beginnings of a type of parent favored by adolescents - the invisible ones.

The most important thing that parents can give their children is sensitivity in perceiving their needs and desires. No one will be able to fulfill everything and one should not burden oneself with ideals in that area. But big errors in accurate perception, projections of one's own expectations or ambitions, blindness to children's expressions, say, anger, or excessive self-absorption, due to excessive stress, depression or drunkenness, can be fatal to further development. It's not just a matter of offering fresh water to someone who is hungry, metaphorically speaking.

Small children discover both the world and themselves in their parent's face. Starting at about the eighth month, every dilemma is solved by observing whether the mother is smiling or scared, and then her reaction is imitated, since the little child does not know what he wants for breakfast, nor who is dangerous, nor where this discomfort in the stomach comes from, nor why the beard is playing and the drops of water are running down the cheeks. The one who brings the world closer to him, internal as well as external, can do so with more or less precision in recognizing questions, which often remain unanswered, but also love and curiosity for those worlds themselves, which can have far-reaching consequences for the enthusiasm that the child should develop during his development. Ancient wisdom says that a true son can only be known in the absence of his father, and this is only possible if he is "armed" from early childhood with unquestionable love, encouragement and support in attempts to become independent.

THE FORMATION OF PERSONALITY

The precision of parental perception is also important because it indicates respect for the child's personality, which it deserves because some peculiarities exist from the earliest days. Children of the same parents can be dramatically different, and neither has to follow their wishes. That is why it is necessary to provide them with what they need, not what we would like or what someone teaches us that they need. There are few things in life as touching as the opportunity to "first-hand" observe the emergence and development of a new personality, so we should not hinder that process with our expectations. Parenthood is the only relationship in which you want to be worse than someone over time in everything, so even at the very beginning, you should not forget the hope that the child will develop independence, overcome us and fulfill the Hilandarian one "thanks to the disobedience of the son to the father and the obedience of the father to the son".

Parental love must be combined with discipline, imparting a value system, strictness and even punishment. The situation is paradoxical and difficult to navigate, since most adults consider the child's well-being more important than their own and at the same time they have to limit the amount of "Nutela" to that same beloved child who is screaming and does not understand the idea of ​​the future, let alone diabetes. But without discipline, there will never be a personality structure that can handle frustration, recognize love and "transform" it into valuable inner contents, so the parent must keep long-term goals in mind, no matter how irrelevant they may be to the child, but also unimaginable.

OVERWHELMED LOVE

Not only are there challenges to parental love, but the world is unfortunately full of relationships where it is, to some extent or completely, absent. Unwanted pregnancies are still common, and even some adults do not know enough about contraception, there are irreparably bad parents and centers for social work can deprive them of the right to decide about their children, and problems can also be of a social nature, such as poverty or refugees. Some decide, for conscious and/or unconscious reasons, that they do not want to have children, which is not a problem in itself, because life can be enriched by various other contents, but the real challenge can be old age without grandchildren. The biggest problem is elsewhere. Clinical experience confirms the old psychoanalytic idea that every child must be greeted with unconditional love and tenderness, and that the fate of unwanted children, even if only one parent had doubts, dilemmas or hidden intentions, is painful and often filled with lifelong problems, so some authors write that psychotherapy is a kind of "adoption" of insufficiently loved children, who even in adulthood feel a void where love should have been "stored".

The death of a parent is a terrible loss and it is not clear how anyone could prepare for it emotionally, as if it is always a "hit under the belt". Especially if the relationship between parent and child was filled with ambivalence, that death brings an intense experience of loss, additional identification, long forgiveness. The death of a child is considered the most terrible loss, the most brutal source of stress, and most people do not even dare to try to imagine it.

It is sad to think of adults who do not enjoy their parenthood, since nothing in the world heals as effectively as the directness of the love of small children who, unless trauma or neglect forces them to do so, have neither choice nor restraint in seeking and expressing the feeling that the relationship with their parents is the center of their world. That is why the biggest challenge for parental love is the moment when they start preparing each of their children to leave, that is, when those children really leave not only geographically but also psychologically. It is often written about the "empty nest family", where adolescents or young adults have moved out of their parents' home, but research shows that parents play a key role only until the child's eighth year (when it is taken over by peers, and today by social networks), i.e. shortly after the child has their first child. Despite all the weaknesses of the human race, children in today's world just go, and they have probably always longed for that possibility. And good parents should be happy when their children leave easily, when their love lives on in their children permanently but invisibly. Like psychotherapists, parents can only be satisfied when they become redundant.

The author is a psychologist