Puberty vs Menopause Survival Kit

Part 2. Feelings and Fears

I am torn apart. If there was an easy answer, I probably wouldn’t be writing this. For lack of formal education on the subject I can only orientate myself, analyzing own emotions. So let’s start.

Guilt: is a catalyst for everything. You can endlessly manipulate people, bringing their performance to the unknown heights by activating their feeling of guilt. You can make them or break them. Guilt is a button that parents activate in their children from early days. “If you don’t finish everything on this plate, a number of calamities shall befall humanity, starting with bad weather, heart attacks of close relatives and all the way through to hunger death of underprivileged children in Africa. You may not tell people they are idiots in their face so as not to hurt their feelings. You must strive to be gentle, fair, understanding and benevolent even if you start peeing in your bed with 10 again. Above all you must be loyal and swallow all kind of crap to keep all sorts of people happy… because.

If you feel (or made feel) you’ve made mistakes, your natural reaction is to correct them at the next opportunity. And only if you get this opportunity, you may realize that making mistakes is in itself a learning process. Guilt is a bad teacher. Guilt – ridden we make even more mistakes because it affects our decision –making. I am open to all sorts of blackmail and manipulation because of guilt I feel having been a working mom to my son. My husband can be wrapped around the little pinky because of being a workaholic. You can do wonders with us, because we are not millionaires, don’t hold high positions and probably won’t be able to ascertain the future of our kids by leaving them an empire that functions by itself thus enabling them to live a life of contentment and luxury. They will have to work. We don’t want them to earn their money cleaning loos, so they will need to learn something. They don’t particularly want to. We feel it is our responsibility to put them under duress, because as kids they are not able to make reasonable decisions. The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

Fear: Fear is ok. It takes time to realize that too. Fear is healthy. It is our innate security alarm system. Fear for our kids is a means to ensure their survival till their frontal cortex matures. Or so…Parents have all sorts of fears – existential, social, health orientated, fear of failure, I’ve even met some who were afraid of their own children. There’s nothing that doesn’t exist. A generous selection of symptoms constitutes, as well known, a syndrome. And so there are a number of institutions out there that exist solely to cultivate such syndromes. They are called “Parents associations”, “counseling services” and numerous forums. Symptoms range from total negligence called “Anti-Authoritative upbringing” and compulsive –obsessive behavior of total control freaks. We belong to the latter type.

We are scared of everything. My husband a lot more so than me. I try to blend out some things as necessary evils, but give in to the most ridiculous tendencies just to keep peace. We eat organic and air-dried, avoid gelatin in gum bears like the plague, exhale half an hour after applying nail polish and turn all electrical appliances off at night. We have an analogue telephone, with a dial disc in front. None of my friends can think that if I don’t pick up the phone, I just don’t want to speak with them, because I cannot see who is calling. On the positive side, my memory has greatly improved since I have to manually dial. If only the part of it that deals with telephone numbers. If there’s ever a major digital meltdown, I may be the only person who still knows telephone numbers of her friends by heart. We are scared of mosquitoes and spiders, but we are not ready to use any chemicals to get rid of them. Instead, we have mosquito –chasing sessions at three in the morning.

The list goes on and on. But what we are afraid of most, is that if someday we are not there, what is going to happen to our children? Who is going to make sure that the cell phone is safely plugged in outside their bedroom? And anyway, how are they are going to manage life without us sticking our nose in every situation and offering our fifty cents worth of wisdom? Most of all, we are probably scared that they won’t leave home and stay forever in their rooms, scattering their stuff around the place, never getting a job or a family of their own and having us pay their way till we die and then what?

On a serious note, we want them to be able to survive on their own. To teach them do that is somehow our responsibility. Then why are we driving them nuts suffocating them with our attention? Right. Fear. Crazy.

To be continued….