Parental dispute: Who is being immature here?
When do parents argue? Ideally, never, of course, but sometimes it simply cannot be avoided. In such cases, however, it is essential to ensure that the children do not notice, unless you want to book them a place with a therapist straight away. Agreed. But how do you do that?
Imagine the following situation: it's the holidays, nursery is closed, the grandparents are in bed with flu (grandmother's words: «I've never felt so ill») and the atmosphere at home is tense. What's more, a low-pressure system is bringing Siberian temperatures, which means you can't just send the little ones outside to play in the fresh air.
It's like walking on eggshells. In the small flat, you constantly bump into each other and are reminded of the smouldering conflict. But that has to wait until the child is in bed.
Unfortunately, bedtimes have been pushed back again during the holidays, which is why the clarifying conversation can only be scheduled after midnight. Dead tired, you try to put the vague feeling of a hurt into causal sentences, when a voice comes from the children's room: «Are youarguing?»
Nowadays, there are many things that parents can do wrong, and only a few that they can do right.
There was a time when children came into the world with a fully formed personality. As parents, all you had to do was accept this fact and make the time you spent together as bearable as possible for everyone involved. Today, parents are primarily educators, which means they really have to take care of this formless being and ensure that it becomes a self-confident, complex-free person (who wins first place in the Chopin competition).
Screeching all the way to Sweden
In other words, there are many things that parents can do wrong today, and only a few that they can do right. Since everything leaves its mark, you are constantly on the wrong track. Especially since your own personality is at stake, which is literally exhausted.
I once heard that in Sweden, the child protection agency intervenes if a child cries a lot. It may be a myth, but it stayed with me throughout the early days of my fatherhood, when our child cried practically non-stop. I believed that his indignant screams must be audible all the way to Sweden: Beware, a child is being brought up wrongly here.
The fear of doing everything wrong can lead parents to deceive their children with a fabricated reality. An ideal world at any cost. But won't the child see through the charade immediately? And what kind of happiness would that be, based on artificial gestures and suppressed feelings?
Public debate as a form of education?
Wouldn't it be more honest if children could learn early on that conflicts are a part of life and that parents don't immediately hate each other or even separate just because they have different opinions? After all, fear of conflict can lead to children becoming conflict-averse themselves. Sounds good, doesn't it? Public arguing as a form of education.
We all know how adults argue. Namely, like children who never learned how to do it properly.
This is the latest trend in Sweden. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, because we all know how adults argue. Namely, like children who never learned how to behave. We are quite immature beings ourselves. We fear our own immaturity, which is why we fight our battles in secret, where no one can see us.
In other words, we don't trust ourselves – and isn't that an unmistakable sign of adulthood? Admittedly, that's not particularly comforting. But the holidays will soon be over, and nurseries and schools will reopen. And life will go on.
