Parenting techniques

I am not a parent. So many people would no doubt say that I have therefore no authority to comment on parenting, as it’s all very different when you have your own child. But I don’t care about that.

At times my parents tried to use various techniques on me, some gave them more power over me, some less. They all helped to fuck me up more.

As I read the latest techniques going around I know it will be the same for those parents using them, some will feel the techniques are helping them with their children, some not, and all will be helping to further fuck up their children.

What I do want to point out is that if any sort of technique or controlling discipline is required, then the parent has already gone way too far over the line. Their child is already way too fucked up. And the parents are way too fucked up from their early childhood being in a position to even consider using such things.

The whole idea of ‘good parenting’, using endless tips and tools, endless suggestions, endless ways to try and get what you want being the parent, only reflects all I am talking about in my posts: that we don’t love our children truly, that we only parent for control and power using our children to gain it, and all because we were made to feel so powerless by our parents. It all simply reflects the negative condition we’ve all had imposed, one way or another, on us.

Perfect loving parents will have no need to use a technique. They will simply parent with their feelings. And as their feelings will be a result of their living true, then they will always do perfectly what is needed ensuring their child will only ever feel fully loved by them.

To approach parenting from the point of view of having to work out the best or better ways of doing it with your mind is doing exactly what you’re parents have forced you to do – go against your feelings using your mind to control and dominate yourself and others. And this can only be self-rejecting, unfeeling and unloving, that which you are imposing on your child.

What I want to try and show is that the problem is much larger than trying to impose a couple of good helpful parenting techniques on your child all so you can get on and achieve all you believe is good in your life, all so you can have a more ‘loving’ and ‘harmonious’ relationship with your child. However, if this is what you want, then why not. But it’s not better parenting, it will still be fucking up your child, only in a different way. It will still be only adding to the damage already done, even if it seems like on the surface things are going along a lot smoother.

I want to point out that parenting as we know it is wrong, meaning it has an adverse and unloving affect upon the child. How we do ANY of it is wrong. And it’s all wrong because we’re doing it within self-denying negative states of being. And it’s this negative condition that we have to heal, and until we do, we’ll only be forever going around in circles, forever coming up with yet more ‘better’ ways to parent.

It happens all the time

The child is the innocent one.

And yet the child gets blamed for making the parent feel bad. But it’s the parent that is making the child feel bad that causes the child to react making the parent angry.

So the innocent child, often minding it’s own business, is made to feel bad. Naturally it reacts to this only to bring more anger, criticism and unlovingness down upon itself making it feel even worse.

It’s a vicious circle, and a bad pattern to have established within you. For when it does you can’t help yourself doing things to make someone angry with you all so you can keep feeling bad. It’s such a horrible and terrible feeling of powerlessness, to know you’re doing it, and to know you can’t stop doing it. That the negative attention is all you will get, it’s all you can get, and all because it’s all you did get.

You’ve got to be a parent!

Why?

You’ve got to have kids.

Why?

Your life will feel incomplete if you don’t have kids.

Why?

You don’t know what you’re missing out on.

Really?

Everyone has children, it’s what you do.

Apparently.

It’s the great love, the love you get from your children and the love you give to them – that’s what it’s all about.

Is it?

But if you don’t have children you won’t feel fulfilled, you won’t have any purpose in life.

Oh well.

You can’t not have children – everyone does it.

So it would seem.

And if you don’t have children everything would end.

Great!

There’s something wrong with you if you don’t have children.

Hmm.

Why aren’t you having children!?

Because I want no part of the fantasy, that called – BEING A LOVING PARENT.

Be responsible for your own feelings.

The parent is full of repressed childhood feelings. The child pushes its parents buttons making the parent feel bad. The parent feels all sorts of bad feelings most of which it denies and won’t allow itself to feel. So what does it do? Instead of allowing itself to feel bad, it comes down hard on its child, making its child stop doing what it’s doing, all so it will no longer feel bad.

The child makes the parent feel bad so then the parent crunches it. The parent lies to its child saying all sorts of meaningless things telling its child why it can’t be as it wants to be.

The child doesn’t understand its parents deceitful behaviour and only feels worse, the parent causing its own child’s bad feelings.

The parent doesn’t live responsibly with its own feelings – staying true to them, expressing them and seeking the truth of them.

And we say to our child ‘I love you’. And we make our child believe it is loved, that it lives in a loving family, when all around it is lies.

The parent lies to its child because it’s lying to itself – about how bad it feels.

The whole parent/child relationship is fucked. It’s no good, no matter how ‘loving’ the parent might be. It’s fucked because no one is being or allow to be true. No one in it is freely expressing all the feelings they feel.

And one day perhaps we’ll allow ourselves to admit, accept and then speak about this truth. One day the parent will be able to stay on its side, allowing itself to feel bad and not taking its fear and denial of its bad feelings out on its own child.

One day… maybe…

How can you love when you feel unloved?

You can’t. You can pretend you are loving, but it’s a lie.

If you feel unloved the last thing you can do is love. How can you when all you feel is that you want to be loved. You need love. You need it to make yourself feel good. You don’t feel loved, you don’t have love to give. If you are made to give something you don’t have; or if you believe you should give something you don’t have, you can only feel worse. How can you give something you don’t have? And how will trying to do that make you or the other person feel good and loved?

You grew up feeling unloved. You still ache within you to feel and be loved. You want to be loved more than anything. You do all sorts of things, have all sorts of relationships, trying to get love. You live in love deficit, it’s burning gaping hole deep within you, and you yearn to have it filled. Then you have children. But it’s not so you can give all your love to your children, it’s so you can take all the love your children are giving you. You have children to try and fulfil your love deficit. You can’t give them love, you don’t have any to give. You pretend you love them, pretend you give them love, but it’s all to hide your taking of their love from them. You desperately need love, and children, whilst they are young, are founts of it – that is, until having received no love from their love-denying parents and they too run of love to give.

You bring your children into the world to use them. To milk them of their love. And when they don’t give it, you feel very upset and angry with them, beating and yelling them into submission, so they will keep being how you want them to be; so they will keep giving you their love.

You as a parent are nothing more than a love-leech living off the love of your own children.

And then your children grow up and wonder why they feel so bad; why they feel so unloved. They look around desperately in their lives, just as you did, trying to get love from all sorts of things, nature and other people, all which fails to satisfy their great love need. Just as you feel unsatisfied in love.

And your children have their own children. And finally, for a few years at least, love is again readily available – unconditional and on tap. Love in the form of a pure, sweet, innocent giving child is freely flowing asking nothing of you. But then the well starts to dry up. Then what do you do? Then all you can do is pretend like hell; do what you’ve always done – pretend that you all live in a ‘loving and happy’ family.

And you wait… possibly the well might fill up again… when the great-grandchildren come.

Dancing bears of India

Put yourself in the bears place.

How can they be so cruel? To pierce the baby bears nose with a red hot iron needle, and then put a horrible coarse dirty rope through it, all so they can make the poor bear dance and do whatever they want it to do.

Why are we so cruel to animals? And why doesn’t everyone do something to stop it?

Big James read the brochure about the plight of the dancing bears in India, and Maddy couldn’t bear the fact that they are taken from their mother, who is killed, at only four weeks old – just tiny baby bear-cubs; kept in sacks and then have all sorts of cruel and terrible things done to them, all so the people can make them dance to try and get some money.

It’s not right. It’s not fair. Nothing, no one, not even an animal, should be made to suffer so cruelly – and to suffer so badly for the whole of ones life. To not be fed properly, to be kept in tiny rooms and cages, to always have that yucky rope up your nose and a tight painful muzzle strapped around your mouth and nose – it makes me want to cry.

I wish I could make the people stop doing it, but what can I do? Some good people are trying to help the bears and stop the cruelty, but it happens too much. Too many bears are suffering too much.

Maddy says the bears make her feel so bad, because they remind her of how cruelly she was treated by her parents. They hit her a lot, like the men hit the bears with their sticks. Maddy felt caged in, and was harshly controlled with no freedom of her own; none of her own life to do whatever she wanted to do it, always being made to do what her parents said. The bears being treated so badly greatly upsets her, she wants to go to India to help free them, but I hope she doesn’t go, for what will Big James and me do without her?

Seeing the pictures of the poor lovely friendly bears makes us all feel so bad. So many bad things are done to such nice kind animals. So many bad things are done to children.

And it makes sense that we hurt animals because we hurt our children, and all because we – as Maddy and Big James tell me – are hurting ourselves. I don’t want to hurt myself, or anyone, or any animal. I want everyone to live free. Yes, that’s what I want.

I’m not old enough to do anything to help the poor dancing bears in India (and they’ve nearly all been freed), although Maddy and Big James did send a little money; but if you can help, you can go here www.hsi.org.au so the rest of the dancing bears can be rescued and live free in the special sanctuaries for them without any horrible rope up their nose.

Put yourself … in your child’s place

Childhood repression and parenting

Put yourself in your child’s place.

“My feet are cold!”

“Well go and get some socks james – put your shoes on. Go on, don’t just sit there, if your feet are cold, go and put your shoes and socks on. It’s bad sitting around with cold feet, you’ll likely catch a chill, so hurry up, go on, do it now!”

But I don’t want to do it now. I want to sit and finish my bread and peanut butter, then I’ll do it.

Why can’t I just say what I feel, and do what I want to do? Why can’t she leave me alone – stop telling me what to do all the time? Does she think I’m an absolute moron and don’t know I can put shoes and socks on? Why doesn’t she just wait and see what I do? And if she wonders why I’m not doing anything about it, then ask me, not just take over and order me around. She’s always taking over having to be the boss of everything.

I feel so anxious. Every time I open my mouth I am told to do something, all when I don’t want to do it. I wish I didn’t speak, but if I don’t say anything, then I get told to speak!

Why can’t she be nice to me? Listen to what I say and just empathize with me, leaving me to my life. I just want to say my feet are cold so I can get some sympathy from her. And with her love and care of me, I would feel good, better, and I’d be able to sit a little longer with my cold feet while I finish off my afternoon snack. Then I’ll go and attend to my feet.

I wish she would leave me alone and stop interfering all the time. I don’t want to get into trouble for having cold feet, and saying so; and I don’t want to have shoes and socks on yet, I like my feet being bare. I don’t want to feel worse than my cold feet are making me feel. I don’t want to feel like I don’t matter and my feet are more important than me.

Jake’s mother, when he said he had cold feet the other day, didn’t tell him what to do, she even offered to get his shoes and socks for him! I wish my Gran was like his mother and would do the same.

Jake’s mother isn’t always telling him what to do and making him do it when he doesn’t want to. She doesn’t interfere in his life. She lets him live it and be just how he wants to be. She doesn’t think he’d catch a cold if his feet are cold. She knows he’s old enough and quite capable of looking after himself. She doesn’t treat him like a dumbo, like he doesn’t know anything. She’d let Jake have cold feet all day long if he wanted them, and she likes him telling her what he’s feeling. She doesn’t see that feeling bad about something like having cold feet is bad. It’s just having cold feet. And having cold feet isn’t going to kill you. And so what if it does, you die and go to heaven. What’s so bad about that?

Put yourself  … in your child’s place

I am Crying

The little boy over the road is crying. He was crying when it was early and just getting light. He was crying a few hours later. And now, another hour later, he is crying again. And I know he will cry again during the day, because that’s what happens most days.

And this little toddler lives in a normal family, there is nothing unusual. I too lived in a normal family. I too cried most days. Only I no longer remember. But I did, how could I not, having grown up in a normal family.

I listen to him crying… he makes me feel like crying… but I am already crying… I have never stopped.

Tame the Wild Beast!

Yes, that’s right, that’s what you’ve got to do. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. They’ll be little renegades – devils – always causing you problems, so tame them while they are young – and the earlier the better.

When they are bad, isolate them. You don’t need to hit them – although you can do that too, as sometimes you have to when there simply isn’t any other way – just reject them. Put them in another room and don’t let them have dinner or their next meal, make them feel deprived of something, that usually does the trick.

Then, when they are resigned to their fate and completely apologetic, that’s when you’ve got them where you want them. Then introduce the reward. It can be a bargain of sorts; food; some affection works wonders; something that pleases them, all to reinforce their dependance on you, and at the same time, affirming without doubt in their little minds, who is the boss.

And before you know it they are doing what you want, behaving how you want them to, being the darling little angels they are.

Shocking parenting

Another little child crying in the supermarket. The noise threatens to lift the roof off. How can someone so small make such a big noise? What is happening to him? Why is he crying like that? What has been done to him?

He’s older than I thought, but about as miserable looking as I would have imagined. His mother is ignoring him, just continuing on with her shopping looking at the shelves while he screams. Other people are looking around wondering what’s going on, and possibly thinking what should they do to help. An older lady passing tries to console him and gives sympathy to his mother. The two women give each other that knowing look. It’s them against him. It was one against him – his own mother, but now it’s two. And of course it’s all his fault. It’s always the child’s fault – isn’t it? Yes, we all know that, particularly those people who are angry with the crying, nerve-testing screaming – why doesn’t he shut up for god’s sake? Some people might blame her, but I guess it would be only a few.

I blame her. I hate her. Can’t she see what she’s doing to her child? How can she be a mother and yet do what she is doing to him? She is making him cry and scream like that. He’s not doing it for the fun of it. It’s ALL her fault. It has to be, he’s too young to know about such things. But such women probably think that they are never too young, they are always trying to get their way, have things they shouldn’t have, always trying to put one over their parents. The poor parents, gee, what a bum deal it is being a parent.

It’s as if being a parent was forced on them. I can’t see any enjoyment in it for her. It looks like a battle, and I know they’ve been battling ever since he was conceived. It was always going to be her verses him, she didn’t want him for himself – only for herself. So he has had to fit in with her, and if he doesn’t then there is hell to pay. And we’re all listening to that hell. And that is what he is objecting to. It’s all her way, it’s always her way, and yet she would probably say the opposite. She is doing all a good loving mother can do – what else can she do? She being such a good loving mother.

Loving? Ha! What’s so loving about how she is treating him? What’s so loving about how he is being made to feel? And she can’t see it. She’s blind to how she is really treating him. I can see it. And I can see that other mother with her three little children and how differently she treats them, and how they are all happy and enjoying their time together, but not him.

He’s terribly alone, scared, feeling desperately unwanted – rejected and unloved by his own mother. And the worst part is this is not his first time feeling such things, many times he would have felt them. And he is not alone. Just about every time we go to the supermarket there is a child like him. But such children don’t know each other, they only feel so very very alone.

No one loves them, no one cares about them, no one makes them feel wanted. They can’t have a life, not one they want to live their way. They have to put themselves aside, give up and submit to the greater power. They have to accept they feel powerless and then turn into false people putting on a false front trying not to show the world how pathetic they feel.

His crying goes on and on. How long can a little person cry for? I don’t hate her anymore. She’s fucked, he’s being fucked up by her, and what the hell – we’re all fucked in some way. Those happy children in the other aisle will probably be going through their hell, throwing their tantrums, later in the day or tomorrow. Does any child escape from the torture?

I didn’t. I am him; he is me. I was treated the same way. I was there all for my mother, nothing was for me, although she always told me it was all for me. But I never felt it was, and those feelings don’t lie. I know what he’s feeling because that was how I was made to feel. But I had forgotten all those bad feelings, repressed them, blocked them out of my life. But they all came back as I started to heal my childhood repression.

I’m that little boy. He’s not alone, only he doesn’t know it yet. But knowing others have suffered like you have doesn’t do anything for you – not when your in it, not when your deep in your pain. Not when you’re deep in your pain of not feeling loved, and only feeling hurt from being rejected.

Growing up, forming in life feeling rejected and unwanted – unloved – so many times is not good for your self-esteem, nervous system or anything else. No one wants to feel fucked. I know I sure don’t.