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  %PREPARE PARENT CHILD BEING INDEPENDENT GROW LOVE 890314

     Family  life is the process of preparing parents  and
children to be able to live independent lives;  and so  to
be  able  to  enter into  relationships  characterized  by
honest love, rather than by compulsive dependency.

     Children who do not grow up continue to be  dependent
upon  their parents in a clinging and/or  rebellious  way.
Rebellious children define themselves in rebellion against
their  parents,   and  so are still dependent  upon  their
parents  in  their definitions of  their  own  identities.
Clinging vines are more obviously dependent.

     In  a healthy family children begin early to learn of
the need and the skills for taking care of themselves;  so
that  they  may be free to live independently rather  than
dependently.   The freedom and skill to live independently
is essential to healthy relationships of  interdependence.
People who are not free to live independently are not free
to be interdependent; they are imprisoned in relationships
of dependency.

     Children  who equate being taken care of  with  being
loved do not learn to take care of themselves;  and do not
learn to recognize healthy love.  The essence of real love
resides in the quality and quantity of communication  more
than  in  the  quantity  of care  giving.   In  real  love
relationships  there  is  real  dialogue  which  is  open,
honest, authentic, and regular. In unhealthy relationships
there is a lot of care giving which is not associated with
any dialogue;  or is associated with communications  which
are not open, not honest, not authentic, and irregular.

     Helpful   parenting  prepares  children  for  helpful
parenting.   Misleading  parenting prepares  children  for
misleading parenting. Creative people help break the cycle
of misleading parenting and help to start creative  cycles
of helpful parenting.

     Helpful  parenting entails habits of mind and  heart,
intellectual  frameworks,   role models,   and  supportive
communities.   Breaking the cycles of misleading parenting
will involve changes in all that is entailed in parenting.
It  is unreasonable to think that any aspect of that which
is involved in misleading parenting can continue unchanged
as the disintegrative cycle is broken.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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