Conflict Between You and Your Child Is Not a Competition You Need to Win

"There was a place in childhood that I remember well, and there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy-tales did tell."

- Samuel Lover

I have a child. Now all I need is a suitable mind to perform the upbringing. I want to be a Mother with a capital 'M' and learn the outward signs of the inward feelings of my child and myself. My heart is in his happiness, my motherly affection embraces his sorrows. I want to open his soul to generous feelings and prepare his mind to receive new ideas.

It is a foolish impulse to regard any conflict between myself and my child as a competition I need to win.

It is just the way my son protects his dignity. If I imagine someone telling me I am irresponsible - my first reaction to such an offense will be to prove the opponent wrong, and I will blush and defend myself with passion.

No one wants to be perceived negatively, especially by the closest people - family members. It is hard for me, a loving mother, even to imagine being the one who can feast upon my child's vulnerability. I know if I constantly tell my little one, "you are lazy, too slow, forgetful, clumsy" and so on - he will get into the habit of fighting the assaults and can even rave to and fro, screaming and crying upon me. But eventually, if I continue to offend him, he'll tire of being defensive. He will feel weary and stiff, hopelessly cut off from his own family - a strange being in an unknown world.

I have seen the people whose eyes were full of darkness, who saw nothing in woods, sea, or sky, nothing in books, nothing in family. These specimens of humankind are destined to sail forever in the night of blindness, sail through this world with a barren stare.

I will be demented with worry if my child stops protecting himself from harm and becomes silent.

That will mean he has become too tough to understand his feelings, to be sensitive to any outside intrusion. The loss of identity is an outcome of constant attacks. I will be a traitor to my child if I let him lose the taste of life, the joy of creation. If I let him tread the solid earth with his soul humbled, and to breathe the scented air as if biting the dust of material things - I will be a spirit-vandal.

Violence only breeds violence. And forms of this demoralizing act can be physical, emotional, or psychological. Someone said: "Advising a person in public is like insulting him." This is one of the forms of violence as well as slapping a child and continuing to abuse him by asking: "Why are you crying?" The phycological punishment may not be painful in terms of bodily suffering, but it may cause a little child's soul to bleed severely.

If my child will be constantly abused at home and forced to bottle up his feelings for protection, he may develop internal aggressiveness. In such a state he will be like Alice in Wonderland, he will run at full speed with this red queen (which I would call hatred, aversion to everything good and noble) and he never will pass anything or get anywhere. The windows of his soul will be closed to the sunlight of an exuberant faith because his spirit would inherit only harshness and gloom.

Only the one whose inner place was cherished can experience with his heart, not just senses, the smell of a flower, the taste of a berry, the splash of rain against his cheek, and the touch of wind on his hair.

What I do to avoid these pitfalls in upbringing:

• I create an atmosphere of sincere, unconditional love.

My child needs to know that no matter what, even if he misbehaves, I am going to love him just the same. He approaches me with his arms stretched for an embrace; I kneel and let him press his tiny face to my shoulder. I hug him affectionately and keep saying, "There is nothing you can do to make me love you less. Even if I'm a little upset, I still love you to the moon and back."

• I make him feel as if outside because there is no anger, no resentment in nature.

The immensity of the day, and space, and landscape, my love, and care - I recreate this scenario at home. There is nothing to worry about: no one to disappoint, no furniture that he cannot draw at, no books he shouldn't touch. That atmosphere sets my child free and I too feel more open to him and more willing to understand.

My child is an accomplished, beautiful person. I cherish everything he wants to share with me. We start our day with a loving smile. We continue to live every hour with thoughtful attention and respect. We welcome sunset with a bed-time conversation about things that do matter and a fairytale story about values we want to be praised.

Motherly love that is seeping out of me unlimited and strong will turn my son into a compassionate soul. He will appreciate the things that count - love, friendship, respect, and kindness.

Only when I understand and admit in my heart that the being I am entrusted with is perfect and deserves respect can I bestow this world with a true gem of humankind, a person capable of willing to be good, of loving and being loved, of thinking to the end that people can be wiser.

Photo by Wesley Carvalho on Pexels