Healthy Family Relationships

written by: Kosjenka Muk

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Although a majority of people understand, or at least feel intuitively what is appropriate and what is inappropriate in family relationships, in most families there are still quite a lot of unhealthy patterns and a huge load of imposed guilt. Those patterns hinder many people from acting in the way they feel is healthy and appropriate, even from questioning their behaviour and behaviour of other family members from a rational point of view.

Soulwork Systemic Coaching looks at the family as an emotional system. Every system strives to keep a balance, and if some parts of the system become dysfunctional, other parts will try to take over their function to compensate. It is similar with families, in which children, being the most sensitive and receptive members, unconsciously try to bring the balance back through problematic behaviour, so to redirect family activity and attention, and sometimes through the expression of feelings and behaviour that are either forbidden or suppressed in the family.

If a child, even after growing up, compulsorily and overly expresses certain emotions or needs (e.g. sexuality or anger), it is possible that this is just an unconscious expression of an emotion or urge that one or both parents have been denying or have avoided expressing. This is the consequence of “systematic“ behaviour – keeping balance in the family as a system. For such a person, and for the family, those compulsive urges can be not only unpleasant but also completely inapprehensible, so the person can develop a lot of shame and guilt because of those feelings.

From time to time, we’re contacted by parents who are confused with depression, fear or aggression shown by their children, saying that there seem to be no apparent reason for this and that they put a lot of effort in the child’s upbringing. In many such cases it becomes apparent that there are many suppressed and unexpressed emotions between the parents or inside one of the parents, and sometimes even in other family relationships.

In those situations we focus primarily on working with the parents and their feelings. And, as the parents change their self-image and experience and start to feel relief, very often they’ll say that the children, without any obvious reason, started to act differently, e.g. to communicate more calmly or even became motivated to study without extra encouragement.

In short, many adult people have emotional urges which are irrational, compulsive and unconsciously motivated, and for children it's even more difficult to rationally and willingly control such urges. Unfortunately, many people do not recognise unhealthy patterns until they escalate in the child's behaviour, and even then they are very often justified or ignored until some serious crisis happens, or someone from outside has to intervene, but then the responsibility will very often be put on the child again.
After ignorance, the second most common reason for this kind of attitude is shame of being labelled. What is important to understand is that it is not shameful to have emotional problems, but that it is totally common and normal, as opposed to a perfect outside appearance that we usually try to present.

I will briefly list the basic principles of healthy family behaviours the way I see them:

A healthy and mature adult feels ready to take over the responsibility for his or her feelings, actions and life circumstances, and does not expect that his child will share this responsibility (meaning the responsibility for the parents’ emotions).

A healthy and mature parental role is to support the child through the years of growing up, in development of his identity, and finally in separating from parents and becoming independent. In this process, both parents and children can create an atmosphere in which they see each other as mature and responsible human beings.

A healthy role of the child is to respect his parents, their history and experiences, but to focus on his own life; to be aware of the fact the parents are adult human beings, able and responsible to take care of their lives.

Sometimes parents expect from their children gratitude, “paying back of the debt“, and sometimes this means that children are expected to sacrifice their personal needs in return, even their own individuality and independence. Mature and responsible parents understand that the children do not owe them anything and especially that they are not obliged to sacrifice their happiness for the parents' sake. Life by itself, just like investing time, energy and money in a child, is an incalculable gift for which a healthy child, when adult, will feel gratitude, but in the instant when parents start to demand expressions of this gratitude or even the child's sacrifices, it stops being a gift given freely, and becomes a trade and blackmail. For a child this is an extreme burden, not being loved or born for herself, but only to pay back for this “gift” someday. In a very small child this will create a huge felling of guilt and lack of self-esteem.

It is natural that the child gives his own life and family (his own partner and children) priority. Taking over the responsibility for the parents' needs, feelings and happiness, sacrificing oneself, trying to make parents happy – automatically means putting the parents into a child's role and perceiving them as weak instead of grown-up and capable adults. The parents’ expectations that the child should fulfil their emotional needs and should live their wishes is one of the most common sources of suffering, emotional disorders, feeling of guilt and problems in relationships, which are often carried over from generation to generation and are very hard to release.

Children need to trust the important adults. This need is so strong that it is at the root of many traumas and limiting beliefs: these are created as a way for children to continue trusting their parents. Beside the need for trust, there is also the need to love and to be loved, so small children create many defense mechanisms to be able to keep on loving people who are close to them.

For children, especially if younger than three years of age, when they are extremely dependent on their parents, the awareness that they can not rely on the parents or their love is too frightening an experience to bear. So they spontaneously and unconsciously justify their parents. In situations when the parent acts improperly, children can even take over the responsibility and create negative and limiting beliefs about themselves. Beliefs like: “I am not good enough”, “Something is wrong with me“, “My feelings are not important“ then become rooted in the foundations of personality and affect the adult life. We can all feel them very strongly especially in situations that remind us of circumstances that originally created those beliefs.

For example, if a parent is shouting, insulting or ignoring the child, for a relatively insignificant mistake, which can often happen if the parent is frustrated by other life circumstances, the child must either recognise that the parent is acting in an immature, unjustified and unreasonable manner or trust the parent and make a conclusion that his mistake must be so big that it justifies such a strong reaction. An older child could feel relatively safe to recognise the parents’ imperfection, but a child who is two or three is not able to do so. A small child will almost always choose to trust the parent - creating the belief that even small mistakes are unacceptable. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be “perfect”, especially if you are a child, so naturally the next step for a child is to convince itself that she is not good enough and that something is wrong with her. Some older children will try to defend themselves from this feeling by rage and spite, but after all these are just a defense mechanisms and not solutions.

Very often we project our responsibility for our feelings onto children – an adult that is in any way irritated by a certain child’s behaviour, automatically concludes that this is the child’s fault, because the child is acting inadequately, instead of checking the background of his own feelings, or other possible causes for the child’s behaviour.

Many adults treat children without much respect, just because children are less experienced and have fewer abilities to express themselves. Adults that communicate in a rough, cold and commanding way, even with a certain level of disregard towards children, are unfortunately still more common than ones who communicate with children as with equal human beings who are inteligent, valuable and capable to feel, although inexperienced.

Even accumulated experience does not necessary mean that adults are always right. This is much more obvious when we look back in the past, when the child's natural, healthy behaviour, needs and wishes were opposed by very cruel and unnatural beliefs of adults – who, of course, assumed that they were right. Even today similar behaviour is common, although on much subtler levels and about less important life details.

I think there is a difference between wisdom and “plain“, rational knowledge: wisdom is a form of intelligence which is deeply connected and cooperating with emotions. In this area, children may have an advantage over the adults, since they are much more spontaneous and allowing their feelings to flow. Their handicap is the inability to consider a lot of circumstances and information which can be acquired only through experience and learning. For them it is also much harder to find the right words and expressions to describe what they are feeling.

Just as when we are talking to someone in a foreign language, we might feel uncomfortable and insecure, not because our thoughts were inferior, but because we are not able to find the right words to express them. Children can feel in a similar way in front of a very self-assured, verbally and logically skilled adult. Grownups very often use this fact to their advantage, not thinking about injuries caused to children.

Sometimes what is needed is not only to resolve traumatic experiences, but also consequences of much subtler circumstances that might even seem positive at a first glance. Parents might enjoy the feeling of power and importance, and the fact that they have more knowledge and experience than the child – for some people that might be the only chance to feel competent – while others, with best intentions, might have too high expectations from a child, or expect the child to be somehow “special“. The child is apt to idealise a parent that presents himself as powerful and smart, to admire and wish to fulfil the parent’s expectations, especially if the parent is of the opposite sex. Occasionally I meet people to whom such circumstances left most of the negative consequences – the feeling that they are not able to fulfil the expectations, that they are never good enough. Often they are attracted to people who impress them, but who make them feel less competent and valuable.

Exactly in those areas of life where we spent most of our energy and time pursuing our interests, it might be hard for us to allow our children to be different and live their own lives and beliefs. People oriented on material goods will limit their children in those areas or have certain demands, and the children's interests and feelings will be less important. People who are intellectually oriented will put less impact on formalities and material goods, but it might be even harder for them to accept that their children have different points of view. When something is important to us, we wish that people who are close to us agree with us, and we might even rigidly control our children or love them conditionally.

Lately, as books and advice about children’s upbringing have become increasingly popular, the problem common when working on one’s personal growth arises in this area too: the techniques are used very superficially and only to achieve external results, without deeper understanding of the real meaning of a certain approach. We can see adults who seem to be doing everything right, applying the right techniques of communication, but without really trying to understand and sympathise with the child, but just hoping for fast results. Their nonverbal communication – especially the tone of the voice and the face expressions – will still show lack of patience and respect (especially if the results are not as expected). Just like on any other human being, a much stronger impression is made on children by nonverbal and emotional expressions than words by themselves, so it is natural that their motivation to cooperate won’t increase if the emotional quality is lacking. An adult will then simply attribute the unwanted child’s behaviour to his character.

In general most families believe – and in some way they are right – that they are offering the best they can to their children. When children start to behave in an unwanted or unhealthy manner, this is usually attributed to the influence of other children or the media.
The influence of other children and the media becomes important at the later age, after the most important years of personality development are over (and those are the first three years, which is very rarely understood). But even when those outer influences become stronger they can not influence the child's personality as quickly and powerfully as those early and unconscious impacts do, they just enhance the existing elements in the child's experience and feelings.

I want to emphasise that children's personality is not only created by what is present and given in life, but also by what is missing. For many families this is difficult to understand, since their point of view is, although not verbalised, that children are a kind of “tabula rasa” and that they can’t miss something they never even knew.

It is very soon discovered by many who start researching their feelings and subconscious that when they were children they needed and expected much deeper and more quality love than, as it seems, is even possible in our society. Especially when taking into consideration the organisation of society and the demands of it – expectations from a child on the street, in the stores, in school, parents’ lack of time due to their jobs… It is interesting to ask where this need comes from if we never had a chance to experience and know this kind of love before.

In every communication among humans, no matter what age, the most of nonverbal communication is perceived and processed on the unconscious level, and influences the relationship through vague impressions about the other person, and not through conscious interpretation. When a child is very young, which is the age most important for upbringing, nonverbal communication is much more influential than verbal, which the child can’t even yet understand well. Here lies the reason for all those problems in behaviour that parents later can not understand and often deny responsibility for.

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