Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > What Helps?

Healthy/Healthier Relationship Examples?

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Simon46:
As I became aware of what a healthy family relationship looks like I wrote the following Children's Bill of Rights and posted in on the refrigerator. My kids sometimes remind me by pointing to one, and I am glad that they feel they can do that. Here it is.

My Family
Childrens’ Bill of Rights
************************
You have the right to be loved and taken care of.

You have the right to be treated with respect.

You will never be deliberately hurt, either physically or emotionally.

You have the right to tell us how you feel.

You have the right to express yourself.

You have the right to disagree.

You have the right to be angry.

You have the right to ask for help.

You have the right to make mistakes.

You are a very important part of this family.

Anonymous:

--- Quote ---My kids sometimes remind me by pointing to one, and I am glad that they feel they can do that.
--- End quote ---


I am so glad there is parenting out there like you are doing Simon.
I am warmed to the core and also energized each time I read your bill of rights.  As much as we might like to believe we are entitled to good parenting and it is our "right" the fact is we are born where we are born with no such bill of rights and it is only through efforts like yours and Argusina's and R. Grossman's (and the list goes on) that even just the potential for such an emotionally healthy environment is achieved.   Not only do you walk the talk (evidenced by the quote above) but you are teaching your children so much about how life and loving is a process and that adulthood doesn't mean we reach some sort of grandiose nervana of omnipotent perfection (what a relief for adults and children alike to let go of that facade/OZ).  This is truely an expample of giving your children both roots and wings (love and freedom/independence).  

Warmed to my core,
Thanks Simon.

Acappella:
That last post is from me, acapella...thought i was logged in (lately i have to go through the loggin process twice to get in once.)

Simon46:
Yes, to anyone reading this, please feel free to use these ideas. Even better, write your own.  Going through the actual process of writing your own Children’s Bill of Rights has tremendous value. For me the really interesting part was in the inner struggle I had in doing the original writing – particularly the ones I got hung up on – Like telling my kids that they have the right to be angry at me. It was originally very difficult for me to say “sure kids, it’s OK for you to be mad at me and to express it.” As I wrote this one in particular I really had to ponder why this was so hard for me to write, and do I really want to give my kids this sanctioned explicit permission to express their anger at me, their parent?

I later realized that it was hard because it went against my unconscious internalized image of what a parent is (Supreme Ruler, Lord over all, Don’t you dare dispute my word, etc.) based on how I was treated. If I had expressed my anger or even disagreement with my parents I would have been whacked. The message was burned in “Kids don’t ever express anger at their parents without serious repercussions.” It’s much easier to act like you are the only one that matters.

I realized that in healthy families all members can express their true feelings without fear. In unhealthy families only the parents can. I certainly did not have these rights as a kid, but I should have and I want my kids to.

Acappella:
Hi Jacmac,

What a great reminder for living and loving!

I am constantly learning that emotional stuff comes out sideways and all sorts of seemingly bizarre or "wrong" directions yet underneath they are all part of some basic universal elemental things we humans share - fear, love, anger, sadness.  It is so easy to blame the medium or messenger...focus exclusively on the way someone expresses their feelings rather than see the method of expression as almost stylistic, much more variant than the content usually is.  

I am going to volunteer today with a group of “at-risk” kids and reading your post helped me focus on what matters (at home too!).

I love the way that you acknowledged both that the cut was old and gone and also acknowledged his feelings.  I imagine a parent who doesn’t tend to the feelings is likely to encourage hypochondria as would, I also imagine, a parent who indulged the tending to the physical wound as if it were totally real and also didn’t acknowledge the child’s need to be nurtured.  Wow, the complexity is daunting and beautiful like looking at one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  Razing children and adults is a wonder!  It isn’t rocket science!  It is much more intricate than that.  The art of science or is it the science of art?  Miraculous and humbling either way.

I am working with "at-risk" kids.  It is so easy to focus on the right or wrong reality of their behaviors (often necessary social judgments about what is appropriate or tolerable even).  AND so easy to ignore, to throw out with the bath water so to speak the baby, the coexisting parallel emotional underlying truth that is really their truth and is what needs tending to and is not something anyone else can even begin to benefit from judging.  I realize over and over again that I have to be able to look beneath their awkward expressions and behaviors to the emotional truth beneath so that I can help them recognize and face it and to expressing it in a more acceptable manner or at least help them understand the reaction they may elicit if they don't. It is easy to just tell them not to swear or throw something or whatever and I do AND yet my primary focus is to inquire about how they are feeling and then when I can help lead them to the emotion I then can chaperone their practicing more acceptable mode of expressing their feelings.  

If so called not "at risk" folks practiced separating the medium from the message we might have fewer wars. Imbalance teaches balance.  Teaching to separate the medium from the message, I  (probably an “at-risk” adult :-)  )  am learning it at a deeper level in my own life too.  I can, with adults – myself included, more easily separate the behavior from the underlying need….I am tempted to eat potato chips..hmmm what am I feeling underneath?  Is it physical hunger or something emotional?  If I get annoyed at my behavior AND at don’t acknowledge or separate it from my underlying emotion I toss out what needs tending in me right along with the potatoe chips and in so doing insure I’ll go ahead and eat the chips either now or soon after!  I still enjoy my potato chips, more so even when I am eating them primarily for their salty fat content rather than to quell nervousness.  I can see the underlying emotion of someone else better too and not fear them (fear as a result of my own ignorance often) and still also choose to skip being exposed to the behavior if, as CC writes, “it sucks for more than an hour” or whatever criteria.  Empathy and boundaries are not mutually exclusive and in fact enhance one another – wow, who knew?

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