Your Feelings Are Important

Uppermost in a parent's feelings these days lies our own concern over the ever-present problem of authority. We are eager to give our teenager enough responsibility but we fear giving him too much leeway. We know he must develop independence. And yet we fear that he may get out of hand and out of control. We have heard so much talk about the necessity for parents (and for teachers) to give adolescent children freedom that we often hesitate to step in. Then when we do step in to assume authority we are often afraid that what we are doing is wrong.
Actually during most of his teens, this teenager of ours still needs us to rely on.
He still needs OUR FIRMNESS to help him stand MORE FIRMLY HIMSELF.

Some forbiddings, restrictions and demands are bound to enter in home, in school and in other groups where he finds himself.

"I hate to put the brakes on, but I have to," one woman remarked. "There's a bunch of thirteen-year-olds in the neighborhood and they congregate at our place. When they get to roughhousing and to throwing the couch pillows around and spilling Coke and soda pop over the rugs, I have to call a halt."

Says another to her seventeen-year-old: "I can't have you and your friends burning holes in the furniture. We can't afford new upholstery every few months."

"No, Son," says a father, "I'm not willing to have you play football, with that knee of yours."

"No matter how important that party is, and I know it's terribly important, you're running a temp, dear, and you've got to stay home."

"No. We are not going to let you use the car if you get another ticket for careless driving."

"I don't care what others do, Daughter, but I don't believe in a sixteen-year-old girl dating with a twenty-two-year-old fellow."

As in the old days when he was little, three rules must still reign:

This is important for health and safety.
This is important to protect property.
This is important because of law and order and social acceptability.

These are firm bases for standing firm. Actually, however, they do not enter into too many of the issues that confront us. And this is fortunate because when the burden of forbiddings, restrictions and demands overbalances the chances for independent action, a child loses self-confidence. He either becomes afraid to act or he becomes rebellious.

On many more occasions another issue enters. When we step in with the authoritarian voice, we are frequently saying:

This is important because it's important to ME!

If we are altogether honest, a great many of the issues that arise are important actually for this reason and for this reason mainly. We want a thing done because we feel the way we do about it.

This does not mean, however, that we should wave our desires aside. They're an essential part of the picture. They must be taken into account. When we frankly consider our own feelings, we put ourselves in a much stronger position than when we claim that they have little to do with what we ask.

"But," admitted one mother, "'way down inside me I'm ashamed of insisting on anything for my own sake. Somehow I feel I have no right to want what I want. So I start selling myself a bill of goods. I tell myself that my children have to mind because it's good for children to mind. Actually, however, I know that's nonsense. It makes me into a dictator when the days of dictatorship should be past. Then, because I'm divided inside and feeling guilty, I get irritated and irritable and picky and I wobble uncertainly and I'm not effective at all."

"While I," her husband put in, "I'm the opposite. The less justified I feel in wanting things my way the more justified I act. I become a regular bully. I pound the table and grow insistent. I see now what I'm doing. I'm covering my real feelings with a lot of shouting. And I end by getting my children's revolt."

Most of us want what we want because we want it. But we manage to find ways of hiding this. Shades of our childhood rise in us. Old prohibitions reecho: "Don't be selfish or selfcentered. Don't think of yourself. Think of others, my dear." In consequence, we are seldom honest or free in declaring our wants.

Instead we may rake up a high pile of grievances to justify our demands. "You never use your head so I have to use mine for you." We may heap up proof that a child is too young to know what to do. "So he needs us to tell him from the vantage point of our superior age and experience." We keep pushing relatively unimportant reasons to the fore. And we think more of them simply because they make us appear to be thinking less of ourselves.

Obviously this is folly. A far more productive policy is to try to be honest.

"You will have to make your bed before you leave for school in the morning. It gets under my skin to have it left undone all day." This is a very different thing from saying, "Unless you learn to make your bed as you should, you won't know how to take care of your own home properly when you get married." In the former, you are being more honest about your feelings. You are admitting that it's for you you're asking. You're not putting on an act that it's for your child.

He may still scold at you roundly. But basically he will love and respect you far more for being honest than he will if he senses any sham. In the long run, knowing that you are open and square with him wins cooperation to a far greater degree than many a more reasonable '"reason" that is essentially less sincere.

It does no good to pretend you don't want a thing because you feel that wanting it is no good. You may fool yourself often, but you don't often fool him.