Stop Living Through Your Child
Are you living out your own dreams vicariously through your child or children? This is a hazardous way to raise children and it's often insidious, in that sometimes you're not even aware that you're doing it. Children who feel they have to live up to their parent's dreams will often try very hard initially because they want to please their parents but for many of them, resentment, frustration and even anger can set in, either as a child or reflecting back on choices made when a young adult. If you're placing undue pressure on your child to achieve your unfulfilled hopes, it's time to start afresh. The good news is that it can be fixed any time you choose to do so, provided you recognize you're doing it and then make a conscious choice to stop.
Steps
- Consider why it might be that you feel compelled to encourage your child to do things you wished you'd done. It's essential to face up to the motivations that have caused you to feel as if you need to live through your child. The drive to live through your child is often a competing mixture of wanting the best for your child, confusing what is best with the dreams you considered were ideal for you, along with seeking the fulfillment of something dear to you that didn't eventuate. While it's easy to feel defensive, realize that this isn't a self-blame action––it's about recognition and acknowledgment of how you might be living through your child and reaching acceptance that things need to change.
- First, be honest about any of your dreams that you never achieved. Clarity about this can be hard where you've built up a self-defense around something you missed out on or failed to do or finish just so that you can cope better. For example, you may shrug off the fact you missed a Broadway audition due to the flu but deep down you've remained completely devastated because you never auditioned again. Or perhaps a coach told you that you were too fumble-fingered to play baseball or too fat to do ballet, and you're "avenging" your personal hurt from long-passed judgments by pushing your child through the activity that you missed out on.
- Second, identify which opportunity you missed out on that has transferred to a hyper-focus on your child's direction. Perhaps you never attended college or didn't finish your degree and you're now determined that your child won't "make the same mistake." The driver behind this is a fear that your child won't get a good job. Encouraging a child to do something (like attending college) that you believe will enhance his or her life and hopefully make things easier for him or her is a sign of supportive parenting; on the other hand, being driven by your own fears and sense of loss can cause you to overshoot the mark and force your child to see his or her destiny as only that which you've ordained. Or, you might raise the bar so high that only the very best will do, like getting into an ivy league school or becoming captain of the sport's team, even though your child shows neither interest nor aptitude.
- Third, consider things from your childhood that you felt you were not allowed to act out, talk about or reveal because of family tension or taboos. Growing up, you may not have even tried to raise such issues, knowing it would be futile. The inability to act on hidden desires can often emerge later in life when you gain a form of control over another person, such as the parent-child relationship. Do you ever catch yourself saying to your child: "I never got to do that, think yourself lucky young man/lady" or simply find yourself thinking often that your children get enviable opportunities that you never had? More telling still, do you ever find yourself feeling jealous when your child gets close to or achieves the goal you've transferred to him or her?
- Finally, notice whether you're disregarding your child's real talents, submerging them under your idea of "preferred" activities or options? While these might lead to gaining your dreams, they fail to allow for the natural expression of your child's own talents.
- Confront all of your missed opportunities. Before you can start focusing on the ways to disentangle your dreams from your child's life, give yourself the chance to let go of unfulfilled dreams and face the pain head on. This may feel painful, in fact it will feel like grieving, because you'll be passing through stages of denial, anger before hopefully reaching a place of acceptance, especially if you haven't really faced the underlying issues before.
- Give yourself a chance to mourn your lost childhood. Acknowledge how much it hurt to miss out on or never pursue the dream that you held dear as a child and teen. Acknowledge how much it has rankled that you were never captain of the cheerleading squad or didn’t make that final round during the spelling bee. Simply letting yourself express the negative feelings about what you missed out on is an important beginning.
- Often talking over your fears and sadness with someone who cares about you is a really good way to free yourself from carrying it around. First, you can let out the pain of your loss, while second, this person will often be able to reflect back to you all that you have achieved in spite of your sadness or anger at what you didn't do. Choose someone you know won't judge you and loves you unconditionally.
- Start to let go by asking yourself who you want to be now. Everyone has regrets about some things in life but it's how we react that makes all the difference. Carrying around the baggage of an unfulfilled past self can derail the rest of your life. If you've become too attached to making a sad story from your life, this process might be even harder because you've let the past define you. But the fact that it's hard is no excuse to stay stuck in this mindset driven by past loss. Focus on the parent you want to be rather than on the achievement you thought would once define you. Tell your inner/past child that it's time to move forward in order to celebrate the kind of parent you want to be. It's okay to want to nurture yourself and you will do this more effectively when you let the adult and parent self take charge.
- It can help to find a ritual or ceremony that will help you to let go. For example, write down the dream that you had on a piece of paper. Fold the paper up and place it onto a paper boat. Take the boat down to a local river and set it free. As it floats away down the river, say an affirmation about letting go and moving forward with the rest of your life, unimpeded by the heartache of what didn't happen.
- Turn your pain to gratitude. Once you have done something to ritually let go of your pain, think over the things that you have done in your life. There will be many achievements, even if you've refused to acknowledge them before. Parenting your child is a precious, ongoing achievement that you deserve to celebrate, along with the other elements of your life that you're proud about.
- Identify areas where you may have confused your desires with your child’s. Most likely if your child is school age, he or she has at least some aspects of independence and has talents of his or her own emerging or evident. Whether it's the ball field, ballroom or classroom, seek to identify the areas where you seem to have disregarded your child’s true wishes or talents and have transposed yourself in his or her place, seeking outcomes related to what you'd wished happened rather than what your child is best suited to doing or being.
- Reflect upon how far you've been taking your desire to live through your children. For example, do you go so far as to push your child into pageants even though she has clearly stated she can’t stand them or is it subtler where you merely (and constantly) “suggest” that your son or daughter take an animal CPR class, which could hopefully lead to vet school in the future? Look for both the overt and subtle ways that you've been pushing your child in a definite, parent-defined direction.
- Try standing in your child's shoes. In some cases, children who excel at something they absolutely hate or don't feel much connection with, do so because it is a ticket to time spent with a parent, time they're desperately craving and don't seem to be getting from the parent in any other area of their life. Hence, doing what mom or dad ask of the child equates with gaining the interest and attention of mom or dad, and conforming to doing more of it means getting even more attention. It's easy to confuse the child's actions with actual willingness or enjoyment to achieve the particular activity or goal. Moreover, if your child feels that your love is conditional on the achievement, your child risks never feeling good enough in your eyes.
- Consider asking for an outside opinion. Sometimes it’s difficult to truly know if you're trying to live your dreams through your children or not. Ask your spouse or a close family member for an honest opinion, promising no comebacks for the feedback. For example, ask something like: "Was I pushing too hard on the soccer field or did I lose it too quickly when a “B” came home on an English paper?". If it's someone close to you, they'll be aware of your personal biases and goals and can factor that into your relationship with your child.
- Be very careful about transferring your own internalized sense of shame or lack onto your child. If you expend endless energy focusing on the negatives in your child because you're terrified of other people seeing these aspects and associating them with you personally, you risk turning your child into a proxy for your own standing in society. By neglecting to help your child round out his or her strengths and weaknesses and forcing your child to focus only on certain personality traits that you feel are appropriate, you risk damaging your child's self-esteem permanently. Ultimately, trying to mold your child to be an ideal will damage your relationship now and into the future. Focus instead on guiding your child toward constructive behavior and self-expression while not making a big deal of the negatives.
- Never be “ashamed” or “embarrassed” if your child fails. Children are fast and ready learners, so they will––and should––fail at endeavors from time to time. Failure is a teacher as much as success and the child who knows how it feels to fail and begin again will learn the resilience needed to thrive, realizing that it's not the end of the world to make mistakes. If you believe that your child’s performance or behavior is a direct reflection on who you are, you may be so embarrassed that you transfer your child's small failings into thinking that you must be a failure, wrongly making it all too personal. The repercussions of this unhealthy thinking pattern are devastating for both you and for your child, so learn to spot yourself falling for thinking like this and put an end to it each time.
- Avoid boasting or bragging about your child’s accomplishments. On the flip side of failing, is when your child achieves a goal. Never take credit or conclude that it must be because he or she is your child or "inherited your gift/brains." While genetics play some role in how your child turns out, most of it is about nurturing the latent talents within each person and teaching each child to trust and rely on his or her own abilities. Rather than taking the glory, teach your child that personal effort is what improves everything. As well, see your child as an individual entity with his or her own unique talents and abilities, rather than as an extension of you.
- Find out what your child really cares about. Rather than telling your child what to do, ask. Start by asking what he or she likes to do or wants to do. You may be very surprised at the answers. Broaden your questions to include current interests, friendships and hopes for the future. You need to open to hearing what you don't necessarily want to hear––be prepared to go with that and simply listen. You may realize that you've been a fantastic motivator but a poor listener.
- Let your child explore his or her inner world without your overlay. Remind yourself frequently that your child is not you and that expressing his or her talents is not a direct reflection of who you are or what you’ve achieved in life. By allowing your child to explore his or her own interests, no matter how far these stray from your own, you provide a safe learning environment that will eventually enable your child to open up his or her best potential.
- Be open minded when your child has different interests. Set aside your own qualms––perhaps he or she loves bugs and everything about them, but growing up you thought bugs were disgusting. Instead of trying to steer your child away from the insect interest, embrace it and seek to learn more about what excites and thrills him or her. For all you know, this could be a period of growth and better self-understanding for you too!
- Encourage your child's own self-perpetuated expectations so that he or she learns how to live up to goals that are self-set, even if these amount to a "just a phase" in the end. It's the process of learning to be passionate about something, learning both the pitfalls and exciting things, and then finding a happy medium that needs to be supported by you as guide and mentor. Realizing that children grow out of interests is also an important part of not forcing a child to stay trapped in an obsession of your own.
- Refocus on being a parent mentor, not a parent coach. Perhaps you have felt rather overwhelmed and completely consumed by parenting; with all the media expectations laid on parents, feelings of needing to be a perfect parent can easily take hold and lead you to overdo the parental involvement. From ongoing sports schedules and after school activities, to play dates and sleepovers, it's easy to lose yourself in your child’s life. Yet, both you and your child need downtime, time off parenting for you and time off performing for your child. By taking a renewed focus on your role as a parent as a mentor rather than a constant coach, you will gain yourself some more time to work on the things that mean a lot to you (besides your child!), as well as giving your child more breathing space to develop his or her own destiny. And never forget that regular unsupervised play is an essential part of childhood.
- Take a walk down memory lane and recall what made you happy before your parenting perfectionism took over. Did you enjoy painting or playing the guitar? Or were you an avid runner but you hung up your shoes after the children arrived? If you're hyper-focused on your children, perhaps now you have enough time to redirect that focus back to what made you happy.
- Don't be afraid to reach out for help. Babysitters, friends, family and others are all available to help you talk through things, to give you space and time to spend away from constant parenting activities and to simply give you a break from trying to be ever present for your children.
- Embrace your own relationships. Before kids you may have had an entire world of social connections, but if it now feels as if you're more focused on your child's relationships rather than your own, you've invested too deeply in your child's life at the expense of your own. Instead of stewing over your child’s social status, redirect most of your attention to your adult relationships. Nurture connections with not only friends but also your spouse or partner. By modeling good, healthy relationships with others, your child will see how it is possible to maintain friendships and relationships while juggling the rest of life, instead of feeling like he or she is the only focus in your life.
- Pursue your own dream. Who said that it’s completely over now that you're a parent? This sort of talk is negative and often stems from letting misguided ideas of other people's expectations dampen your enthusiasm and will. If you still regret not achieving your dream or goal, seriously consider going back after it. Instead of making your child a pawn in what you want out of life, cut him or her free and go after that dream––or a variant of it––yourself. It’s never too late when you've the will and determination to step up to the challenge. After all, you've been making your child do this for a while, so show your child you really mean to change.
Tips
- Maintain an open, honest dialog with your child about activities you’ve chosen. Allow your child to freely express feelings about activities or projects fueled by you.
- If your child wishes to quit activities you've enrolled him or her in, ask that he or she finishes the project or season and then reflects on the activities. This is an important part of learning to "not just give up" and to not let down a team when part of one. By providing your child with the ability to make a decision whether to continue after finishing the session or season or not, you teach your child to give things a go but then to reach a decision after a trial.
Warnings
- Never force your child to do anything that could harm him or her physically or mentally in an effort to achieve a goal. If you're not sure, then that's all the more reason to question your motives in pushing your child.
- If you're not able to do this alone, seek counseling help. This is as important for your own healthy growth as it is for protecting your child from you projecting your dreams onto him or her.
