Happy Friday. I hope this day and weekend bring you joy, success and happiness simultaneously.
One day I was speaking to my daughter, and I got very angry with her. I told her that she needs to be obedient. My daughter, the little angel, walked over to me, hugged and told me " I love you mommy. You are the best mom ever".
I cried.
Love is the strongest of any human emotion. We all need to be loved. We all need to love. But children need it so much more. Why? Because their foundation to be a loving, caring human being is being laid. The internal evolution of justice, to care about others, is established as children.
When I was a little girl, about seven (7) or eight (8), my mother brought some kittens home with her. I have no clue where she got them. I only know that most of my siblings as well as myself were so deliriously happy to have these adorable creatures spurting around our home. We were elated, our hearts were filled with joy and love.
So we consumed most of our free time, playing with these kittens. We had a swimming pool in the backyard. It was one of the swimming pools above ground. My father bought it for us.
Moreover, we would cavort with the kittens in a special area in the backyard. Keeping them away from the pool because we did not want anything to happen to our kittens.
My oldest brother did not have alot of love in him. In fact, for most of my childhood, I remember my dad taking us to "prisons" to visit with him. I vividly remember, when my brother was not in prison, my father would always "whip" him for something, he had done. My oldest brother was very cold and callous. I always speculated if he had any love in his heart.
Be that as it may, one day my younger sister and I came home from school. After we completed our homework, we went outside to play with our kittens. To our dismay, we could not find them, they were missing. We search the entire backyard. At least we thought we had. We had not thought to seached in the swimming pool in our backyard.
Well as you probably had suspected, the kittens were floating atop in our pool. They were ALL dead. Someone had intentionally drowned our precious little kittens. Someone cold, devoid of love and compassion, had purposefully taken the lives of our kittens.
Who do you think did this callous act?
We later found out, the perpetrator was my oldest brother. He had intentionally killed our kittens. We could not fathom why he would want to see the kittens as well as his own siblings suffer. We cried at the lost of our kittens and at the thought of how they had died.
My oldest brother was evil and indifferent. He is the same one that hurt me when I was a child.
I have always wondered why he is so different from me. I could not intentionally hurt an animal. I could not stand by and watch suffering, and/or pain, and eventual death.
What happened to him? We lived in the same house with the same parents and eventually my single dad. Why was my oldest brother so different? Why was he so cold and devoid of love?
Children need love, even when they act out. As a matter of fact, they need love more when they act out. My brother acted out in a negative way constantly. Maybe this was his way of asking to be loved.
Love your children today, and forever. Love them more when they act out.
L. for Love
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It happens everyday where in most families children are physically and emotionally abused in one manner or another to varying degrees. Yet the children still go to the abusing dysfunctional parents for the only source of so-called love they know. Even when the parents understand what hey are doing to their children they do not much at all or anything to change their ways. The children grow up and spend the rest of their lives overcoming the damages inflicted by their parents.
ReplyDeleteMy mother would yell at us and whip our butts with switches. To this day it was they yelling that has damaged me. I laugh when I remember the whippings because I deserved them and some were bad. Yelling at me was emotionally abusive.
All families are dysfunctional to a degree.
I believe that dysfunctionality and or functionality of a family, it is a hard thing to assess correctly. We have seen throughout the years many examples of how the children of what we consider dysfunctional families have grown to become role models in our society; yet we have also seen many children of "ideal" families become the most undesirable members of society.
ReplyDeleteIt is fairly easy for any us of at any point of our lives to look back to our upbringing and draw a linear equation which would include the known variables of excessive discipline, corporal punishment, countless rules to be followed, well defined roles of each family member all of which, at a glimpse of an eye, yields nothing but dysfunctionality.
However I'd like to add an unknown to the equation, a curved ball, if I may and that is if with all that discipline we still somewhat struggle with the concept of "veering off track" from time to time in our lives, does anybody want to guess what would have become of us without it?
Though, I am not saying that our parents were right about their discipline methods, I truly believe that they knew that in order to eradicate bad behavior, the punishment had be much greater than the infraction in order to avoid recurrence by the infractor. I think that the key resides in taking time to analyze whether or not the infraction requires the amount of attention given.
Yes, I am aware of the long lasting damage an abusive have in a child. I am also very much aware of the destruction society brings upon young men, whenever laws are broken.
So as a man I often ask myself which of the following choices fits the category of dysfunctionality: a young man who was not showered with love, often disciplined at times excessively, and by today's standards abused but turned out to be a law abiding, productive citizen or a man who was affectively well nurtured as a child but never respected discipline and authority. The first time he becomes familiar with those concepts he is looking at the world from behind bars.
Suddenly referring to our parents as dysfunctional becomes a bit more difficult and a deeper level of introspection is required before doing so. In the end all we have is who we are because of them. We will never know what would have been had they not been there. That is my friends, the unsolvable unknown in the equation.
This comment is not directed to Lowesamuel. What he said prompted my thought.
ReplyDeleteIt is so interesting how the vast majority of people run from the word dysfunctional like tiring to get an addict to admit they have a problem. Dysfunction is in everyone in various areas of our personality. If not then we would be perfect. Because we don't have perfect parents and a perfect environment in-which to live then there is no way we can be perfect. Especially due to the fact that we are not born with a perfect mind and body. Who we are and become is the sum total of our parents, DNA, environment, individual intelligence and our ability to think and reason which does not always go hand in hand with the amount of intelligence we posses.
The cards are stacked against us. The world grows in knowledge but the people as a whole become worse at being moral agents. We see the decline of all the societies of the world. The reason, Dysfunction.
What I have said does not originate with me but from the Bible and is backed by the Institution of Psychology and other disciplines of study. All we can do is to do our best with what we have, to seek accurate knowledge and to apply that knowledge.
These are not rhetorical questions. Is there a family who is not dysfunctional? Is there a relationship which does not contain a measure of dysfunctionability? Would we want or can we achieve full functionality? I believe the interactions of human beings will always be imperfect, and they are opportunities to learn from them. It is the measure of the man, or woman, how, he or she reacts to it, learn from it, and integrate the experience into your emotional bank to help you in your personal growth. Because the only certainty, is that you will find conflict with everyone sooner or later, especially those you love. We all are responsible for ourselves, and the end of the day, having been a part of a dysfunctional family does not give us an excuse to become sociopaths. Sometimes the people that hurt us the most are our best teachers.
ReplyDelete