When our dreams hurt our children
A friend shared a poem with me about a perfect Mother’s Day: kids waking up early to cook breakfast for the mother, flowers in the vase, kisses on the cheeks kinda perfect. The sad part was that she felt that she had failed her children and that she and her children were lacking because her Mother’s Day looked nothing like it. “The imagined picture is perfect - my life doesn’t look like it - so I must be wrong, right?”
And I wonder - would she have been happier if her children had learned the art of fake smiles and organised it all for her, although they felt differently? We can’t skip the REAL RELATIONSHIPS, the real work, the real conversations, the real healing in us…and simply model our life as if it were a page in a colouring book. This will lead to a meaningless, unsatisfied life and depression.
This poem is one example of how the ideas and pictures of Life and Children we have in our heads may hurt our real relationship with them. We start modelling someone without caring for who is already in front of us. We emphasise arbitrary concepts and try to measure up to our illusions instead of letting them go. And it can sometimes be really subtle: we have taken on those pictures as “something we want” instead of taking a breath and centring ourselves on what is TRULY important for us.
And this creates barriers and walls between us and the kid. Your child can read your expectations for him to be different and therefore feel that the way he is, is wrong. Deep down, he knows this is not true and he might rebel against it or choose not to spend time with you when this becomes an option with age. Or he might conform, take over the same ideas, try to match his life to the illusion, and …fail. “No matter what I do - I’m never enough for her.” And he might carry the feeling of “I’m lacking something” with him forever.
The truth is, your child is a human being, and so he has a right to have emotions and moods. He has a right to make different choices than you. He has a right to be tired and a right to go into self-defence and self-preservation if he so feels and the atmospheres (or expectations) get too intense, and this may look like an attack towards you, and it may not.
And you don’t have to like your child and the way he behaves and the human he is in order to love him. It’s not your job to judge him; likes and dislikes are not important in parenting. It’s your job to let go of the “pictures in your head”, look at the person in front of you and… love him.
Love is reasonably easy to do. It doesn’t take much: be present, listen and breathe. That’s mostly it. As presence and breath are both gateways for more love to enter through you and listening is just basic respect and connection. The ego creates complexity. Spirit creates simplicity. And this simple thing may fully transform your relationship with your child. Suddenly you don’t just have a picture and someone who dares not to fit into that picture, but you have something real and meaningful—a moment of connection that can be the foundation for new ways to BE together.
Hi! I’m IIDALA aka Iida-Leena Materasu ,and I’m a professional therapist, writer, spiritual mentor, mother, woman, and human being, who has walked the path of healing for more than 20 years. I facilitate breathwork and nondual healing groups, offer courses, subscription programs, and silent nature hikes as well as receive clients one-on-one live and via zoom. To book a session or get more info on NONDUAL courses or programs, feel free to explore the website or contact me directly.