Why do some parents become over-involved with their children’s lives? And what can they do about it? Maybe the first step toward letting go of a vice-like emotional grip on children is to work out what your own needs are.
Readers continue to tell us that Dr Carver’s article about relationship losers, abusers, manipulators and controllers — and how you can protect yourself from them — rings true. How about you? Have you dealt with someone like this?
One of the Mommy-wars I referred to in a recent post is the sleep war, in which CIO (Crying It Out) advocates sing the praises of leaving a baby or young child to cry until they fall asleep, while anti-CIO mothers think that this is psychologically damaging and offer a variety of alternatives, including the ritual chanting of ‘this too shall pass’.
“Mommies who drink: Sex, Drugs and other Distant Memories of an Ordinary Mom” reveals just how judgmental we can be can be when it comes to motherhood, how deeply the expectations run that women transform overnight when they become mothers, losing not only half their brains but all their previous adult tastes, becoming wholesome and somewhat childlike themselves.
The lesson that it is facilitative not to press others to disclose, and to communicate that lack of pressure explicitly, is a useful one in all kinds of relationships; mothers persistently asking their children to tell them what happened at school springs to mind, as does the situation in which the stereotypical wife ‘asks the husband to talk about his feelings’.
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