Photoessay #1908 - Our issues

I will be speaking tonight in Seattle (and tomorrow night in Shoreline) giving one of our Changes 101 programs. A few years ago, we developed a number of basic programs teaching core Changes principles and decided to give them all periodically. New people come all the time and it doesn't hurt for all of us to hear about it again.

Tonight, my topic is "Separating your issues from your child's issues." Not an easy one because it's hard to put your finger on. One clue is when the parent uses the first person plural "we". As in "We need to make a court appearance." or "We need to get through the ninth grade with some credits." The parent is taking ownnership of things that the child needs to do.

Or more often, the parent has their own personal issues that are causing them to manipulate the child. Easiest example is education. The parent believes education is important and will do ANYTHING to keep the child in school.

This particular program came up last week when Curtis gave a good program on Emotional Blackmail. How our family members can use these blackmail techniques on us to get what they want. Or we ourselves have done this ourselves to get what we want. Learn to recognize when you are doing it; the best thing we can do is model. We are vulnerable because of our own Fear, Obligation and Guilt. Curtis talked about those and Rodney (another member) pointed out that this related directly to 'separating the parent's issues form the child's" Bingo, I knew that I would give this program the following week.

So what does the picture have to do with this topic? If you live with young women, you probably have seen this program "Say Yes to the Dress". Women planning to get married come, often with their friends and relatives, to this high end bridal salon to find a wedding dress. As far as I can tell, the show features real brides, salespeople and families.

I like this show because it features real women interacting about issues important to them. Sometimes the mother wants something so badly for herself. Or a hidden agenda is driving the decision. The salesperson finds out what the bride says she wants and gets a budget number then the bride tries on some dresses and comes out to show the family and friends who are there to help. Often they aren't talking about the dress at all.

So often we, as parents, find ourselves in the same position. Something stressful comes up and we feel SO strongly but we don't recognize why. Maybe our own parents did not provide for us monetarily. Or an uncle disrupted their childhood with his violent behavior. Or the family was always late because of the grandmother's alcoholism. And we get our feelings all mixed up with the situation.

If you can recognize them, you can work to set them aside.

Part of this program is to list some moral qualities and think about how it affects your parenting:

INTEGRITY? COMPLIANCE? PROPRIETY? PIETY? SOBRIETY? MODESTY? LAW ABIDING? STATUS IN COMMUNITY? MONEY? PUNCTUALITY? LOYALTY? FILIAL RESPECT?

Add your own, how about academic achievement? How about well dressed?

Other aspects of this same issue include trying to control things in regards to your child that you cannot control.

And your own disappointment and feelings of loss about the relationship that you thought you were going to have with your teenage or young adult child. This was not the way it was supposed to be! A long time ago, a parent gave a similar program. She had a little handout printed on light blue paper. She explained that this color was West Seattle High School blue. She had bought the paper in anticipation of how she would be so involved with her daughter's high school activities. She now recognized that this high school career was not going to happen. So she wanted to share her special blue paper with us.

Picture taken from Valerie David's TV News and Reviews site, used without permission.