Mothers and Daughters Forever?

My Facebook buds post stuff like this (above) all the time. And there's a kind of truth to it, but they leave out the tough bits. A daughter is always her daddy's little princess (unless he's some kind of psychopath or a complete jerk). Her relationship with her mom is always somewhat problematic. Beginning sometime around puberty, mothers and daughters find themselves at cross-purposes. It's biological. God put this "I have to get out of here" gene into all children so that a kind of madness descends in adolescence that drives them out of your house before they realize what a swell deal they've got going and wind up at 45 living in your basement and expecting you to do their laundry.

The first corrective measure God ever took with mankind was to throw them out of the Garden of Eden and to give them homework.

"Go forth, be fruitful and multiply!" God said as He gave them the bum's rush out of the Garden. Remember too, God was unhappy with us when He said it. 

It works much like that with our own children. God wanted us to have kids so we'd understand in a very real way, what He experienced in trying to raise us to be decent, hardworking, kindly people. God wanted us to experience rebellion, ingratitude and distrust as manifest in our own offspring.

The above meme represents a condition that exists beyond a certain point in the mother/daughter relationship. It only happens after your daughter gets over being mad at her Mom for all the supposed motherly atrocities mom committed during her adolescence. Things like making them tell the parents where they are at, where they are going to be and when they are coming home. Horrors of that sort. In adolescence, the youngsters feel this terrible constriction when their parents demonstrate their love for them by demanding they not do things that are dangerous, self-destructive or generally bad for them

There is a strange transformation of the mother-daughter relationship that occurs during a daughter's twenties or thirties. It usually happens at about 2 am some morning after she's had a couple of kids of her own. The daughter-now-mother-herself is sitting up all night with one of her babies that is sick. It may happen the day she drops that first one off at school for the first time and cries about the loss of her "baby" all the way home. It can happen in Walmart when the two year old demands candy in the checkout line and when Mom says "no", the precious child screams "NO" right back in her face and the throws himself down on the floor and has a right old tantrum there in front of the cashier, the manager and 40 or 50 Walmart customers.

It is during or shortly after one of those magic moments, when the daughter is unburdening herself to her mother, that Mom magically becomes her daughter's hero. And it's usually around about this time that Mom offers to take the grandbabies off her hands so she can have  "a couple of hours to herself" and seals the deal.

God, it turns out, is a terrific educator. We just have to get the kids to do their homework is all.

© 2017 by Tom King

Psycho-Social Development Made Easy: Stages 3 & 4

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Photo used by permission - Amy Maples, 2013

Put your pants on!” says Mom.

“Okay!,” says Aidan and proceeds to follow mom’s instructions to the letter, with the results seen here.

They're very literal at that age, children are.  At ages 3 to 5, their big psycho-social issue is "Initiative vs. Guilt".  Renowned psychologist Erik Erickson says that children need to begin asserting control and power over their environment at this age. Success in this stage leads to a strong sense of purpose. There are generally natural controls in place that prevent megalomania, however.  Children who try to exert too much power experience disapproval from parents or other authority figures, resulting in a sense of guilt. Guilt counterbalances self-assurance and can be a healthy factor in determining one's personality.  

So the good news is that Aidan is likely asserting just enough control, but not too much. If he does not do learn to make choices and exert some measure of control over his environment, he will grow up riddled with guilt. 

So congratulations, Mom.  You are probably raising a relatively guilt-free kid.  As such, he is far more likely to move out of your basement before he is 30.

If, however, the kid has begun to cross over into the stage that happens at about six through 11, he becomes even more concrete in his obedience and outlook.  He will want to know "What happens if....." kinds of things.  Mostly he will want to know the rules and the consequences of breaking them in order to figure out ways around those rules without suffering the consequences.  Kids that age are literalists.  Erickson identified this stage's primary psycho-social issue as "Industry vs. Inferiority".  Children, says Erickson, need to cope with new social and academic demands. Success leads to a sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority.  

Putting his pants over his head then becomes, for Aidan, a way to successfully obey his mother while maintaining his sense of control over his environment by taking initiative. This obedient rebellion helps the boy not to feel inferior to those around him. If you as a parent or authority figure laugh at him over the joke rather than scolding, you reward the behavior and he is more likely to repeat it.

Congratulations, Mom.  You are probably raising a comedian with a healthy ego. Not an easy task in this modern world.

- Tom