Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 June 2009 15:05:25
I had an insight It's a familiar cliche with kids that they push boundaries. The pat theory is that they do this to check that the boundaries are there, and they gain reassurance from finding the boundaries good and solid. If this theory is correct then the kids need the boundaries there, but will do their utmost to destroy them. In other words, their ostensible aim needs to be thwarted, whereas the modish, lazy parenting technique that I tend to espouse is to give the kids what they want. Tricky. Anyway, the boundary-pushing thing is familiar. What I hadn't twigged until recently is how that same destroy-what-you-need approach to life shows up elsewhere. At the moment my daughter Airdrie is going through a tough time because her "best-friend" is pushing her away while also insisting that Airdrie play with no-one else. This, I'm told, is standard behaviour for their gender, but seems to me to clearly fit the pattern: the "friend" is attempting to destroy, if not my daughter, then at least her friendship, while clearly needing that very friendship. And it's pretty tough on Airdrie, just like it's pretty tough on the parents who try to defend the boundaries from constant attack. But what really surprised me, and surprised me most because I hadn't thought of it before, was how kids benefit from a stable family background, and so will, in the same way, do their utmost to destroy it. In other words, as I had observed but not quite understood, if their mother and father are still together, then the child will do everything it can to destroy their relationship. If their parents are married, the child will be working to make them divorced. Which is not hugely encouraging, but does explain why it's such sanguineous hard work at times.