Controlling Parents – Reclaiming Unconditional Love

“How we feel about our kids isn’t as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.” Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting

“I don’t have any regrets.”

Some people make this remark, more often than not with an air of absolute certainty and self-sufficiency as if they belonged to an incredibly restricted circle of initiates to which you are but an alien. Oddly (or sadly), they don’t even have youth as an excuse for their claim.

We, normal human beings, have regrets (and yes, I use the old-fashioned word “normal”) about our parenting, relationships, career, education and whatnot because, try as we might, we make mistakes.

So, if we agree that parents are normal human beings, then we agree that, despite our genuine love and admirable intentions, there will be times when we let ourselves and our children down. Those who have been through demanding, exhausting, painful times know exactly what I’m talking about.  

What do we wish we had done differently?

Here’s a list of regrets, inexhaustive as it may be: acting in a too controlling, protective or permissive way, overpraising, overindulging or overscheduling our children, fighting their battles, expecting too much of them, dismissing their feelings, making decisions for them, disregarding their learning issues, criticizing or comparing them with others, not breastfeeding them, not providing clear boundaries, not spending enough time with them.   

For the time being, let’s focus on one of them: our controlling needs.

What do we want from our children, come hell or high water?

The answer is short and simple: listen and do as we tell them.  

What can our child do best?

The answer is also short and simple: push our buttons.

For instance, you may want them to do something as unsophisticated as their homework. You want them to do it well and fast, preferably by themselves. And they can’t or, preferably, won’t.  

Now, your patience lasts for about three seconds while such an internal monologue is unfolding:

 “Sweetheart, I see you’re slouching over the table, pouting and sulking and gnawing on your pencil, but here’s the thing: I’m not impressed. And I really, really don’t have time for your whims. They’re actually exhausting. You want to know why? Well, why don’t we recap my daily routine together, OK? So, I jump out of bed at 6 am, run between the kitchen where I prepare your breakfast and your bedroom where I wake you up for school (as gently as I can, so help me God) while you say, ‘no’ at least five times. I drink my coffee while still running between the living-room where I forgot the iron on and your bedroom where you’re still lying in bed, duvet over your head. I run again from my bedroom where I put on my dress, first time inside out, and the kitchen where you take your time scratching the plate with the fork. I put on my lipstick while you put on your school uniform, huffing and puffing. We miss the bus (again) and arrive late to school (again). I utter a muffled ‘sorry’ while trying to ignore your teacher’s grimace, then I run to work and have fun there in the company of many people, including a smarty-pants boss and some smug colleagues (you’ll see what I mean when you have a job). As soon as I get back home with three bags full of groceries, I cook dinner while I help you do your homework (our favorite time of the day). I clean the house, clean your scratched knees after you play football, clean your schoolbag after removing the half-eaten sandwich squashed in it. And, no, we cannot wait for your dad to have dinner together. He is working late, as usual, so you will probably see him again when you’re already tucked in bed or at the weekend (hallelujah!). Late at night, collapsed on the coach, I read two pages from A Room of One’s Own only to realize I’ve been dreaming the most beautiful dream: me sleeping like a log for a week.”

As your child doesn’t have a problem continuing to push your controlling need button, you might have another three-second interval when you focus on a “breathe in, breathe out” technique to calm your mind and body. Or a pep talk about you keeping your mouth shut and leaving the room to vent. Or a future scenario of you and your child sitting down and having a calm, compassionate conversation in which you ask questions like, “What’s going on with you? How are you feeling? What do you need? How can I help you?” while he/she is opening up to you and you hug each other at the end.

Lamentably, nothing works.

We simply lose it. We may lose it badly.

And we will throw our child into a cascade of emotions: they will feel rejected, scared, misunderstood, insecure, confused, sad, lost, anxious, hopeless, guilty, ashamed.

Above all else, they will feel unloved.

They will either obey us or, especially in their teenage years, they will rebel against us: they will become argumentative, disobedient, engaging us in power struggles, withdrawing from family activities, academically weaker and weaker, losing motivation to stay in school. They may take up drinking, experiment with drugs, steal, get into fights – the severity of retaliation will be directly proportional to the severity of their drama.  

Unless we are a narcissist, we will feel emotionally and physically exhausted.  

In time, when we are at the end of our rope, we may unconsciously resort to a devastating punishment: the withdrawal of our love. Disastrously, due to our lack of self-awareness and adequate parenting skills, we imagine that our child will finally get our disciplinary message, that they will come to their senses.

For all I know, they won’t.

The more we pull back, the more we widen the emotional gap between us and them. With less and less affection, support and approval from us, the child will keep acting out – it’s essentially the only way they can cope with the agonizing pain of not feeling loved and with its underlying, terrifying fear they cannot possibly put their finger on: the fear of abandonment.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, children who are constantly treated like this are predisposed to anxiety, depression, a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of unworthiness and the fear of failure. According to Albert Kohn, “their adult relationships may be warped by a need to avoid attachment – perhaps because they live in dread of being abandoned all over again.”

As Kohn explains, love withdrawal can be used in other ways and with different levels of intensity:

“A parent may announce bluntly, ‘I don’t love you when you act that way’ or ‘When you do things like that, I don’t even want to be around you.’ Some parents withdraw their love by simply refusing to respond to a child – that is, by making a point of ignoring him. They may not say it out loud, but the message they’re sending is pretty clear: ‘If you do things I don’t like, I won’t pay any attention to you. I’ll pretend you’re not even here. If you want me to acknowledge you again, you’d better obey me.’ ” 

It’s a paradox, isn’t it? In the name of love we mean well and we do harm to our children and to ourselves. In the name of love we want to mold our children into who we think they should be. In the name of love we want our children to obey us because we know better. Because we say so. In the name of love we almost completely lose sight of them – their feelings, thoughts, needs, intentions, desires, aspirations, hopes.

Kohn warns us that it’s not just the child’s behavior that matters, it’s the child who behaves in a certain way:

 “Children are not pets to be trained, nor are they computers, programmed to respond predictably to an input. They act this way rather than that for many different reasons, some of which may be hard to tease apart. But we can’t just ignore those reasons and respond only to the effects (that is, the behaviors). Indeed, each of those reasons probably calls for a completely different course of action.”  

What can we, parents, do?

First and foremost, we can stop and ask ourselves an incredibly powerful and equally disturbing question (rephrased from Parents Who Love Too Much):

Is our love helping or hurting our child?

It’s so hard to bite the bullet. But, you see, we have to. And we’ll know the answer.

We can, of course, start getting advice and feedback from reliable people, read holistic parenting books, take parenting courses. When a fresh, healthy perspective is reflected in our behaviour and attitude towards our child, they will start flourishing.

The best course of action is, I believe, working with a therapist. It’s crucial for us to make sense of our life starting from our childhood experiences since, unbeknownst to us, there may be hurt running deep.

I can consider at least two explanations for the pain we are invisibly carrying into adulthood.

The controlling parenting style has been passed on from one generation to another; the chances are that the more we go back in time, the more draconic measures authority figures must have used (unlike us, our grandparents and great-grandparents went thorough wars, famine, displacement, and who knows what other terrible events). No wonder that we are likely to replicate the same negative pattern we “inherited” as, dismally, this is the one we’re familiar with.  

Also, as children, we may have realized on an unconscious level that we couldn’t depend on our weak or absent parents for genuine protection and guidance. As psychotherapist and author Imi Lo explains, from this position of vulnerability, in order to face challenges, we had to brace up in an insecure, tricky, even perilous world, turning ourselves into the powerful figures we had been strongly missing. Since we have been able to rely only on our “sense of invincibility,” we protect it at all costs. This is why, in order to reinforce our authority, we expect submission from the others and we get “extremely defensive and reactive to anything that threatens our sense of control.”

With a deepening understanding of ourselves, of our life narrative, we will have to face two core questions:

If I find it so difficult to show unconditional love to my own child, do I really love myself? Do I really find myself worthy of love?

Good luck answering these questions.

What do our children want from us?

They want with all their heart and soul to be loved unconditionally.

They don’t know about our childhood traumas and how dysfunctional our own family was. And, honestly, why would they care about that?  

It’s not our children’s job to sort us out.

It’s our job.

Here’s an excellent reminder from Ashley Stuck:

“Close your eyes for a moment and let yourself see the faces of your children. Remember their first steps, their first words, their first explorations of their world. Most parents discover that in remembering those cherished moments of life with children, they also connect with their truest self as parents – the wisdom, the compassion, the courage, the heart it takes to devote your time and energy to another human being. It is that indescribable feeling – the thing that we call love, that gives you the power to make the everyday choices, some of them so difficult, that guide your children safely on their journey through life.”

In my mind’s eye, I see my children when they were very young: happy and perfect in every way. I remember myself loving them unconditionally and receiving unconditional love in return.

Is there a more beautiful bond under the sun?   

Yet, somewhere and somehow along the way, I have sometimes (or often?) forgotten what they truly want and deserve.

I have forgotten they are my gifts.

I do hope that when my three children, now young adults, become parents, they will do their best to show their children a love without conditions, without strings attached. And when they, as parents, make mistakes, which they will, I hope they will remember they are normal human beings who can learn and change and grow.

Normal human beings who also want and deserve to be understood and forgiven.

Just like their mother and father.  

Resources:

Parents Who Love Too Much, Jane Nelsen and Cheryl Erwin

Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn

“Controlling Parents Trauma,”Imi Lo,https://eggshelltherapy.com/paranoid-controlling-parents/

“Controlling Parents: 21 Signs & How to Deal with Them,” Ashley Stuck,   https://www.choosingtherapy.com/controlling-parents/