Parental Tasks

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It is impossible to give something to another

what you don’t have!

In this article, I want to reflect on the role of parents in the lives of children. I will try to briefly answer the following questions below, so as not to turn the article into a voluminous book:

What is the role of parents for children?

What are parenting tasks?

What happens if parents fail their parenting?

What are the consequences of such failures for children?

As a whole, the parenting function seems to me to be metaphorically in the form of a booster rocket carrying a child into an orbit - the orbit of his life.

The tasks of the parents are varied and tied to the stages of the child's development. I will offer my vision of these tasks, based on my therapeutic and parenting experience.

The main tasks of parents:

These tasks are complementary to those of the child. The task of the parents is to create conditions for the needs of the child, while the task of the child is to take advantage of these conditions to realize their needs.

If the parents are capable and they are doing well in a pair, then they are able to solve the problems facing them, they want to do it. And the child sequentially from task to task, as by steps, gradually grows up, simultaneously moving away from his parents and leaving for adulthood. If this does not happen, then it turns out is fixed on an unsolved problem of development and in his subsequent life tries to solve it obsessively. To do this, he uses either the same parental figures, or their substitutes - partners in marriage, creating a complementary relationship. I have written about this many times. For example. here Complementary marriage … etc. For example, a child did not solve the first development problem “The world is not safe” and then the lion's share of his energy is spent on solving it and little of it remains for ensuring contact with the world - cognition of the world, oneself and others.

PARENTAL AND MOTHER'S TASKS

The child has a mother and a father. This is the basic condition for its development.

The second condition for its successful development is that there must be a relationship between them. They must be a couple.

However, this is not always the case. Some of the parents may be absent. The parent may be absent both physically and mentally. And here, as anyone is lucky.

Parents pump up the child with the energy of love, the energy of life, which will be very useful to him in the future. Much depends on the extent to which the parents themselves at one time solved their development tasks.

Therefore, to the question: When should parents go to therapy? I would answer this way: if parents want to provide good conditions for the development of the child, then first they need to solve their developmental problems, work through their unfinished tasks. Otherwise, there is no way to pass on something to children, even with a very strong desire. For example, an anxious mother will not be able to create conditions for her child to solve the problem of safety. Or, say, a parent who is not able to love and accept himself unconditionally will love the child conditionally, without creating a basis for stable self-esteem. The general idea here is as follows - it is impossible to give to another what you do not have!

In many ways, paternal and maternal tasks in the development of a child are similar, especially in the early stages, but later they become more and more specific, while leaving the possibility of their interchange.

In psychotherapy there is an idea that the mother is about life, the father is about the law. The mother is the image of the world, the father is the mode of action in it. The mother's task is to love the child, feed him, accept him, the father's task is to teach the rules and maintain boundaries. And evaluate. The father's love is more conditional, while the mother's love is unconditional.

All of the above is rather arbitrary. Because, firstly, everything depends on the stage of development. So, at the first stage of development, when it comes to safety, there is no mom and no dad. More precisely, there is no dad as such. Dad is not needed here, however … If there is a dad here, it is a second mom … Or any of the parents who can provide the child's need for safety as much as possible. Most often it is still a mother, and then the task of the father is to support the mother.

Very often fathers get pierced at this stage. Here a great burden falls on the mother. She is forced to sacrifice herself - giving up for some time a number of her identities - professional, female, marital, etc. And this is not surprising. At this stage, she has to give the child a lot in order to launch all the vital mechanisms of his development in him. This takes a lot of her energy and then the father's task is to support the mother. The mother pumps up the child with her energy, supports him, contains his emotions and she accumulates a large number of the child's affects, she is overwhelmed with them and she needs to do something about it, and then the father's job is to be the mother's container.

Having a child in the family is a serious challenge for parents. Each of the parents falls into their own developmental trauma, if any, and because of this they are often unable to fulfill their parenting functions.

What parental punctures can be at this age?

For father this period is also difficult, associated with serious trials. He has to forget about his male needs for a while. This cannot be done by an infantile, psychologically immature and weak partner, unable to support the mother. Such a father can compete for the love of his wife with a child, be the second child in the family, he may not be included in the issues of raising a child …

In the first period, and in the next two, mother and father are completely replaceable. Differentiation in tasks appears at the stage of the appearance of the Other in the child's picture of the world. The appearance of the father is very important here. Thanks to this, the child has the opportunity to distinguish the father as different, as different from the mother. Here the father has his own special tasks. Moreover, they will differ from the sex of the child. The father behaves differently with his son and daughter. In relation to his daughter, the father shows more unconditional love, and in relation to his son - conditional. A completely different picture is observed in the specifics of the relationship between mothers and sons and daughters. The mother, as a rule, loves her son unconditionally, and her daughter conditionally. And this is no coincidence. The father must introduce his son into the world of men, tell and teach him the rules of organizing this world, the mother's task is to acquaint the daughter with the world of women and teach him the rules of life in it. And in these tasks it is difficult for them to replace.

Therefore, it is very important that at some stage of development, mom and dad diverge in their functions, thereby creating the conditions for the child to live both unconditional and conditional love and form personal and social identity. Teach him to live in these polarities and harmoniously combine them in himself.

Difficulties can arise in the situation of an incomplete family, when the opposite tasks fall on one parent: he must demonstrate both the ability to unconditionally love and accept the child and evaluate him. In such a situation, a child develops internal confusion and the inability to form a holistic image of his I.

At the fifth stage, the stage of separation, the parents' task is to release the child into the world.

Parents here inevitably encounter difficult experiences, described in psychology as empty nest syndrome … It is very important here that the parents are not only as parents, but as a couple. If there is a mutual attraction-attraction in the parental couple, then it is easier for them to let go of the children. If this is not the case, then the child can stick with the parents (parent) to himself, so as not to meet with each other (with himself).

The process of separation is even more difficult when the parent is raising the child alone. All the energy of parental love is directed to the child, creating a situation of dependence. Such a child, having become physically an adult, remains pathologically attached to the parent and cannot create a healthy relationship with a partner.

So, the unresolved tasks of the parents are transferred to the children and become the tasks of the child.

It is important to solve our development tasks in a timely manner, not to replicate these unresolved tasks, passing them on from generation to generation. And for this, thank God, there is therapy - the place where you can find them and work them out.