From: ajwwong@black.ox.ac.uk (Albert Jun-Wei Wong)
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens
Subject: Re: My daughter needs to be more assertive (II)
Date: 25 Jan 93 13:33:09 GMT
Organization: Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford, U
Originator: ajwwong@black

I am just recently graduated from teenager-hood (now aged 22).  This is
a fact however which obtains really only as a technicality.  In my
parents eyes, I am still very much a teen, perhaps still also very much
a child.  There are strong dynamics of control and efforts to hang on
that do persist in the manner in which they do relate to me.

I read the stories regarding the relationship between Ruth and her
daughter with great interest.  I think that to large extent (though not
exactly) the dynamic between Ruth and her daughter is akin to that
between my parents (esp. my father) and myself.  I do not presume to
understand the situation as it presents itself to you, Ruth.  Perhaps,
however, something in my own story will make your own story the more
intelligible.  The perspective that I present is the perspective of the
teenager looking at the situation --- and seeing how the parent is
acting / has behaved.  Perhaps by understanding the way in which I
feel, you might understand how your daughter might feel herself.

Background:  

My father cares for his family and his children more than anything in
the world, I do believe.  I think that this is part of what makes his
task of parenting the more difficult.  

He does never discuss his own childhood and growings up with the
family, but his childhood was not easy from what little of it that I do
know.

For my own part, as a child, I was pressed upon by my father to
succeed.  He wanted to give me the head start that he did never have
and that he would have wanted so much for himself, if he could have
made his life over again.  I think that it is natural for parents who
feel their own lives difficult to want their children to be spared the
pain.  They try to pave the way for them, to make the going smooth.

My father taught me math at an advanced level (somewhat forcibly), he
taught me physics, he read and corrected my essays when I was growing
up, he arranged for me to take music lessons, he was my soccer coach.
He tried so hard, so hard, so hard.  But in it all, and despite all his
efforts to give me such benefits, I did never really feel close to my
father.  He cultivated in me various talents; however, he did not so
much give me love.  Praise was conditioned on success.  He did not aim
his efforts of parenting towards granting me a strong sense of self.
He aimed to make me excellent in certain areas, more than helping me to
find out who it is that I am.  I was not taught to appreciate my
uniqueness.  I did not get the sense from him, really, that there was
something in me of unique, irreplaceable worth.  On the contrary, I
thought that I *was* what I achieved.  There was no self outside of my
attainments.  My accomplishments were my identity.  There is in me (and
people generally), I believe, an identity which requires great care and
nurture for growth; this nurture I did not receive, I do not think,
while growing up; and so I have catchup work to be doing now.  I was
not taught to have my _own_voice_, shall we say.  He taught me to have
a voice that mimicked his own or that accorded with particular external
standards.  Indeed, when he could, he did try to do my speaking for
me.

He did not so much ask me what it was that *I* cared about, what it was
that *I* was feeling, what it was that *I* wanted to do.  I was made to
do that which he perceived would be to my benefit.  He wanted to do
what was good for me, without question.  Of course, it was to be
expected, so he thought, that I would not know what was good for my
self; I should be expected therefore to complain about having to do the
things which he prescribed that I do.  What he prescribed that I do
would be what is best for me in the long run, so the logic continued,
and that I would be thankful one day for all of his efforts.  For
example, he told me that I should not play with certain friends of mine
because they were a bad influence; essentially their wanting to play
with me was prima facie evidence that they were not industrious
enough.  I was a sheep, so I acquiesced with his command.  I stopped
playing with those friends.  I let parts of myself atrophy.  I had no
backbone.  I had no self.

He presumed that I would want in my growings up precisely what he would
have wanted as a child growing up.  He did, throughout, have his very
set notion of what it was right for a person to do and he prescribed to
me that I do as he thought I ought.

I think that part of the difficulty, though, in the job of parenting is
the acceptance of alternative standards for what counts as success.  My
parents have their own notion of what it is that counts as success.
And from my own perspective, their notions seem very, very rigid.  Indeed,
their notions for what constitutes a good life differ from what I do
consider makes a life worth living.  

My parents are concerned about my future.  They worry that I will end
up without financial security.  They speak a voice of fear into me,
telling me of all the things that I cannot do, of all the things that I
need be wary.  They attempt to control my life.  I feel that from an
objective point of view, their worries cannot be justified.  My record
is strong.  And if it weren't, then it would be all the more important
to have someone backing you up, telling you that you can ask for what
you *yourself* do most deeply want.  That you can reach for what you
hope for.  Sometimes, you just wish that your parents would believe in
you; that they would have faith in your capacities.  It would mean so
much if they did just have faith.  To hear the voice of constructive
determination rather than the dooms-caller of fear.  To have someone on
your side.  It would mean so much.

Parents often seem to think that they know what is good for the child.
They do not, however, have immediate access to what it is that the
child is feeling.  So long as the child's feelings are not given
legitimate hearing, so long as his own voice is not allowed to speak as
one who has full status as a personality, it will (1) be difficult for
the parents to know really what is good _for_the_child_ and (2) it will
make the child feel as if he has no voice, and no self.  Oftentimes,
parents presume that what is good for them is good for the child.  Too
often, parents do not seem to take the time or care to listen to their
children or (what's more) to empathize with them.  They do not try with
full heart to step into the shoes of the child and taste the spit from
his mouth and see the world from his vision.  There is often the
feeling, the distinct, empty feeling that the child has of simply not
being heard.  I, for one, have spent too much time simply not being
heard by my parents.  Parents can have a tendency to treat their
children too often as in some manner the objects of social policy (an
objective, external perspective) --- as something to be improved upon
or brought into line or insured against failure --- rather than seen as
full and whole persons in their own right (and seen in the subjective,
empathetic perspective).  [Ruth :  cf.  Strawson's "Freedom and
Resentment."]

Let me just state that under the guidance of my father and through his
very, very strong efforts to give me the head start that he did never
have, I have gone quite far, quite fast.  I achieved a certain degree
of excellence according to the standard that he did establish.  My
father, himself a physicist, made me into a physicist-to-be as well.  I
must say, however, that when I am honest with myself I find now that
physics is not where my heart lies.  The Physicist is not the kind of
person that I want to be, his life is not the kind of life that I want
to live, this is not the kind of thing that I want to be engaged in
doing, this is not what it is that I really care about.  My father
tried to give me the life that was best.  Such a life as he did suggest
could, I imagine, be a good life; but it is not mine, it is not me.
Tread gently, Ruth, that this not happen in your instance, for your
daughter.

I have achieved the distinction in physics that my father did wish that
I achieve.  However, I feel now that the standard which he did set for
me is one that is foreign to myself.  I do not care about physics.
This is not me.

"No one chooses to gain the whole world, if first he has to become
someone else."  --- Aristotle

I think Ruth that you might be pressuring your daughter to live a life
that she does not feel to be truly her own.  It seems important that
your child feel as if the life that she leads is of her own making,
that she is the one who is doing the living for her self, that (as has
been repeatedly suggested) she be the one who makes her own mistakes
and learns from them.  It seems that the most valuable thing that you
can give your daughter is not the monetary benefit of a financial head
start.  If you can give her a strong sense of self, of confidence in
who she is, of being loved by you unconditionally, and let her find
herself, (you cannot do the finding for her) this is infinitely more
valuable.  Period.  You cannot prove to her that you love her by
whatever efforts or sacrifices that you make on her behalf.  You can
only prove to her that you love her by loving her.  And that's loving
*her* _as_she_is_, herself, not as you want her to be.  You are a team,
you and she.  Love her, believe in her, and have faith in her.  And
finally, I know it is probably difficult.  Let her go.  But gently.

Best of luck.

Albert
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens