Between You And Your Family |
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The most important relationship you will ever have during your lifetime is the one between you and your parents. This vital relationship starts the day you are born and follows you whatever path you may take. How you view your parents and how your parents view you shapes your opinions, attitudes, and dreams.
What do you expect from them as parents? What do they expect from you as a child? Can you talk with them as friends? Or is your relationship strictly controlled? Do you feel close to them? Or do you feel like a visitor living in a hotel with them?
Answering these questions honestly can tell you where you stand with your parents. No two families are alike. Every family has its problems as does your family. But my family and my parents are different, you say. Maybe your parents are separated or divorced. Maybe you don’t even live with your natural parents, but with someone else. Maybe you have a stepfather or stepmother.
Whatever your own situation, whatever your feelings may be, reading this chapter can help you. It can help you understand yourself and your parents. Life is not easy, and nobody ever said it would be. Life can be very stressful. But you can learn to handle your family problems and come out a winner. Remember, you are not alone struggling with family relationships, but it is up to you and only you to maintain a positive and healthy attitude toward a very important part of your life. That is between you and your parents.
Life along with nature is a cycle. It can be called a learning cycle. A cycle is a complete set of events that keep repeating in the same order, such as the cycle of the four seasons. And so it is a cycle you encounter growing up with your parents.
A form of cycle is called bonding. The parent-child relationship has three phases: (1) bonding; (2) detachment; and (3) reunion. When each phase begins and ends depends on the unique circumstances of each family. The phases require parental intuition about when to ease into the debonding period or detachment and come together in the reunion stage. How well do your parents acknowledge these three stages? How well do they let go and let you enter and leave at your own will?
The bonding years are your main source of love, approval, and acceptance. The emotional bond that develops from birth on is an intricate web of feelings that gives you a sense of being bound together with loving parents. The texture of the family bond is colored by family experiences: whether you were originally wanted, whether you were loved or disliked, whether one of your parents was absent or withdrawn, whether your parent’s marriage was a success or failure, and the general atmosphere in your family.
When you are small your parents play the part of protector and socializer. This is how you learn the rules of life and how to function with your family and in school with friends. Your mother or father controls your sense of well-being with love and acceptance. As you grow up you learn to cooperate with your family and at school.
Your parents show anger and displeasure when you disobey the family rules. Some children fear the loss of their parents, love if they get in trouble. Parents should be wary of conveying negative feelings in this manner.
As a teenager you must remove yourself from the family bond in order to become independent. Many times this upsets your parents because it disrupts family routines. For you to successfully complete the task of puberty, to become yourself you must unravel your bond with your parents. You must learn to cope as a separate person with your own personality, attitudes, and opinions. This is not easy for parents, nor for you, but it can and must be done. This debonding is stressful in itself. It is stressful because there is no assurance of your future bonding with others during this time of breaking emotional ties with your family. It can cause even the most self-confident person to become insecure and scared.
You can debond from your parents by changing your mode of dress, changing from normal, average clothes to flashy, loud styles. You can debond by changing your way of talking. You can go from being shy and quiet to loud and obnoxious. Another way of debonding is by adopting different attitudes. Perhaps when you were younger you believed in going to church, or in joining groups at school. Now you have become a loner, with no special set of friends. Debonding is necessary. Children who cling to their parents, fearful of self- determination‘ to do things on their own, remain childish throughout life. It takes guts to become your own person, but it is well worth doing. Go ahead. Try some things you have wanted to do. Believe in some things you want to believe in even if they are different from your family’s beliefs.
A mutual rebonding occurs when a young adult leaves home as a separate person for the first time. Sometimes it does not happen until long afterward. Maybe there has been a rift between the young person and the parents. When they meet again after some time has elapsed, they look at things differently and can come together again as a family. It’s a happy day when family members realize that they can still love someone who has a different way of thinking.
Important aspects of debonding from your parents are the following:
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