S2 EP286 – Parenting Without People-Pleasing or Power Struggles

Hi everyone, Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. Today’s podcast is about how to parent children without trying to control them and without giving yourself up. 

When we are operating from our ego wounded self, we generally either try to control our children or allow our children to control us. We are operating as an authoritarian wounded parent when we attempt to have control over our children and are being a permissive wounded parent when we allow our children to have control over us as a covert form of trying to have control over them loving us.

Often, we try to control our children in the ways our parents tried to control us or each other, or in ways we learned in childhood from other children or from media. Or we go overboard in trying to do the opposite of what our parents did.

How do you try to control your children? As you listen to me listing the various ways you might be trying to control your children, please be very gentle with yourself. We have all learned to control in many ways, and judging yourself for the ways you control will cut off your ability to learn and understand what you are doing and the consequences of these choices.

• Arguing, getting angry, yelling
• Criticizing, judging, saying “Tsk, tsk” and shaking your head, scowling
• Demanding
• Getting annoyed, irritated, short, curt
• Accusing, blaming
• Pouting, sulking
• Becoming ill
• Being sneaky and deceptive
• Lying or withholding the truth
• Being dismissive
• Moralizing
• Nagging, bitching
• Lecturing, giving advise
• Explaining, convincing, selling
• Becoming self-righteous
• Complaining
• Justifying
• Interrogating
• Denying
• Asking leading questions to which only one answer is acceptable
• Bribery
• Hitting, spanking
• Changing the subject
• Using sarcasm
• Raising eyebrows
• Whining
• Shrugging shoulders
• Making comparisons
• Throwing things
• Interrupting
• Telling feelings as an accusation that your children are causing them
• Silent angry withdrawal
• Acting like a know-it-all
• Interpreting
• The silent treatment
• Disapproving looks
• Disapproving sighs
• Blaming tears
• “Poor me” tears
• Put-downs
• A superior attitude
• Half-truths
• Giving gifts with strings attached
• Teaching, point things out without being asked
• Flattery or giving false compliments
• Rescuing
• Using threats of: 
• Financial withdrawal
• Emotional withdrawal
• Exposure to others
• Abandonment
• Illness
• Violence
• Suicide

Authoritarian parenting comes from many fears and false beliefs. 

What are your beliefs about controlling your children? Do you believe that:

• You can have control over your children liking you, loving you, caring about what is important to you, respecting you?

The inability to control others’ feelings applies to all people, including children. Do your children have control over how you feel about them, how you treat them, whether you like them, love them, care about them, respect them, or reject them? You may have some influence on how they feel about you and treat you, but they each decide for themselves how they feel about you. 

Do you believe that:

• You can have control over the type of people they turn out to be?

Anyone who has ever had children know that they do not come into this world as blank slates. They come in with their own personalities, each one different. We can influence how they turn out by the environment we create, and by the role-modeling we provide, and by the love, listening, and comfort we give, but we have no actual control over who they choose to be. 

Do you believe that:

• It’s your job as a parent to control your children?

Your job as a parent is to provide a safe, loving environment and healthy role-modeling of personally responsible behavior. When you do your own inner work so that you can provide this, your children will not need to be controlled. 

Do you believe that:

• If you don’t control your children, they will be totally out of control?

Your children will be out of control if:

• You are out of control and role-model out of control behavior.
• You are permissive and allow them to violate you and others.
• They are fed poor diets with too much sugar and processed foods.
• They are on medication that causes disruptive behavior.
• They have inherited illnesses or other physical or developmental problems that may lead to out-of-control behavior.
• If they are very mean to animals and others, they may be sociopathic, having been born with a part of their brain missing. This needs to be checked out immediately and you need to be trained in how to deal with this.  

Healthy children do not have to be controlled to behave. They need to see caring behavior modeled and they need you to set loving limits for yourself — letting them know what you will and will not accept and following through with your own self-loving behavior when they behave in ways that are uncaring about themselves or you. 

Do you believe that:

• Controlling your children indicates that you care about them?

Children feel cared about when they are cared about, not when they are controlled. No one feels loved when someone is trying to control them. 

Do you believe that:

• Your children will eventually appreciate you controlling them?

I have worked with many thousands of people over the years and rarely has anyone said they appreciated being controlled. And even if they said that, it came from their programmed wounded self. With deeper healing, they recognize the truth – that they hated being controlled and that it’s having a very negative effect on their life.  

Do you believe that

• Controlling children teaches them personal responsibility?

Children learn personal responsibility by seeing it role modeled. If you do your inner work and become personally responsible, it is likely that they will too. Children tend to do as you do. Controlling children just teaches them to be controlling of others, especially others younger, smaller, or weaker than them.

Sometimes attempting to control a child can lead to compliance, and sometimes it has the opposite effect: he or she may become resistant and rebellious against the control. Rarely, in today’s society, do children passively accept being controlled. If they don’t rebel as small children, it is very likely that they will rebel as adolescents when you can no longer control them. 

Do you believe that:

• There are times when hitting or yelling are necessary to get a child to behave?

Millions of children who were never hit or yelled at grow up to be responsible and successful adults. When you hit or yell at a child, you are role-modeling that it is acceptable to hit or yell at someone smaller than you. Do not be surprised if your children learn this from you and take it out on younger children. 

Do you believe that:

• Children are naturally unruly and need to be controlled?

Children naturally want to please their parents. They are unruly when they are unhappy, hurt, angry, sugared out, drugged out, or have no other way to communicate. They need to be seen, heard, and comforted rather than controlled when they are acting out.

Some of your need to control comes from the expectations you may have for your children. Whenever you have expectations, you may feel upset when they are not met. Often, expectations have to do with what you believe your children will or should do if they love and care about you. Often, our expectations come from false beliefs about caring.

What are some of the expectations you have for your children? 

Do you believe that if your children really loved you, cared about you, or if you were really important to them, they would:

• Never do anything that upsets you.
• Be ready on time.
• Agree with you.
• Lose or gain weight.
• Go to college.
• Do their homework.
• Get good grades.
• Eat what you cook.
• Eat with the family.
• Keep their rooms clean.
• Eat right and take their vitamins.
• Do their chores.
• Dress the way you want them to.
• Be affectionate.
• Put their clothes away.
• Make you proud of them.
• Give in to you.
• Do things your way.
• Do things for you to prove their love for you, such as getting you gifts.
• Stop drinking or taking drugs.
• Spend more time with you.
• Stop so much screen time.
• Never lie to you.
• Never argue with you.
• Talk to you about their problems.
• Take a shower every day.
• Stop being friends with kids you don’t like.
• Become a doctor, lawyer, and so on.
• Not leave dirty dishes around.
• Have good manners
• Say “Please” and “Thank you.”
• Not do anything that embarrasses you.
• Be good in front of your friends.
• Appreciate the things you buy for them.
• Be who you want them to be

Are you aware of the negative consequences of trying to control your children? Authoritarian parenting and the resulting choice to control always has negative consequences for children. It is important to connect your controlling behavior with the consequences that may result. While controlling might work in the short run, it can create many problems in the long run. 

Do you experience any of these consequences? Do you get into power struggles? Is your child resistant in certain areas, such as getting ready for school, brushing teeth, going to bed, doing homework, dawdling, holding in his or her bowels, and so on?

Or does your child suffer from low self-worth, or is he or she anxious or depressed or angry. Is he or she bossy with other kids? These are just some of the negative consequences of authoritarian parenting.

And what are the negative consequences to you of controlling, authoritarian parenting? 

Your controlling behavior also has negative consequences for you, especially in the long run, such as 

• Parenting isn’t fun. It feels like a burden.
• You feel resentful toward your child.
• You’re tired of the power struggles.
• You feel tense, anxious, angry, or frustrated.
• You feel like a failure as a parent.
• Your child and you don’t have fun together.
• You feel rageful and out of control.
• You feel overwhelmed.

Parenting really can become a wonderfully fulfilling experience when you learn to parent as a loving adult with an intent to learn about yourself and your children, rather than as a controlling parent.

On the other hand, being a permissive parent is also not loving parenting.

Do you allow your children to control you? Are you giving yourself up and going along with what your children want? Are you indulging your children – giving in to them – even when you know it’s not good for them? Or are you withdrawn and indifferent, uninvolved with your children?

Are you coming from a set of false beliefs that lead to permissive parenting?

What are your false beliefs that lead you to be compliant, indulgent, or indifferent? 

Do you believe that:

• If you don’t do what your children want, they won’t love you? You have to give yourself up to be loved by your children?

Your children’s love for you is not conditional, because love by definition is not conditional. They might not give you the approval you want. They might be upset with you if they don’t get what they want. But if you constantly give them what they want, especially if it means giving yourself up or going against what is in their highest good, they will learn to disrespect you. Instead of being loving, they will learn to be bratty and demanding. 

Do you believe that:

• Going along with what your children want will ensure that they love you?

When you give in to your children to get their love, you are not loving them. You are attempting to control how they feel about you by giving in. When this is the case, you are more concerned with getting their love than with being loving. It is not loving to children to give to them to get their love. It teaches them to be manipulative to get what they want. 

Do you believe that:

• You can avoid problems with your children if you give myself up?

It might seem that you are avoiding problems in the moment, but the problems that you create by being permissive will come back to haunt you. 

Do you believe that

• Complying is a more loving way to try to control?

Complying as a way to control may seem more loving on the surface, but any behavior towards another that is designed to get something instead of to give love, is not loving. 

Do you believe that:

• A good way to resolve conflict is to give in?

Giving in creates a win-lose situation, not conflict resolution. Giving in to your children does not teach them how to achieve win-win conflict resolution. As adults, they will continue to expect others to give in. 

Do you believe that:

• It feels better to give yourself up than to find out that your children don’t care about what is important to you?.

This may seem true in the short run, but in the long run losing yourself is far worse than losing anyone else. If your children don’t care about what is important to you, it is because you have not cared about what is important to you. If you continually put yourself aside, you are giving everyone around you the message that what you want isn’t important. 

Do you believe that:

• Giving in to you children lets them know they are important?

Giving in to your children teaches them to control. Children learn that they are important when they are treated with love and respect, and when you treat yourself with love and respect. They will never feel important, no matter how much you give in to them, if you do not feel you are important to yourself. How can children really experience themselves as important if their parents do not see themselves as important? Giving into them teaches them that you are not important and they absorb this belief and apply it to themselves. Children learn at least as much, if not more, from how you treat yourself as from how you treat them. 

Do you believe that:

• You don’t want to be authoritarian like your parents were with you, so the only other thing you can do is be permissive?

These are not the only two ways to parent. Loving parenting isn’t authoritarian or permissive.

 There are numerous negative consequences to your child of being a permissive parent.

While giving in to your child may make you feel safe in the moment, there are many short and long term negative consequences that result from permissive parenting, such as:

• Your child is demanding and disrespectful.
• Your child has no regard for others wants and needs.
• You child sometimes acts like a selfish, self-centered entitled brat.
• Your child expects others to take responsibility for him or her.
• No matter how much you give your child, he or she is never happy. It never seems to be enough.
• Even though you are constantly giving to your child, your child is often angry with you.
• Your child has no sense of self-discipline.
• Your child lacks self-direction.
• Your child is overly needy.
• Your child is angry
• Your child is depressed.
• Your child expresses that he or she feels unloved.

And how about the negative consequences to you of being a permissive parent? 

As with all forms of control, both overt and covert, what seems to work in the short run often does not work at all in the long run.

Parenting is supposed to be a fun and fulfilling experience, which it will be when you learn to parent as a loving adult and learn to be loving with both yourself and your children. Do you feel trapped, used, and resentful? Does parenting feel like a burden? Do you feel tense, anxious, angry, depressed, rejected, ignored, or frustrated? Do you feel like a failure as a parent? Is your child often angry at you, or shuts you out? These are just some of the consequences of permissive parenting.

Loving parenting is completely different. The more you learn, through your Inner Bonding practice, to take loving care of yourself and respect yourself, the less you have a need to control by being an authoritarian or permissive parent, and the more you role model loving and personally responsible behavior for your children. It’s easy to be open to learning rather than controlling with your children when you are open to learning with yourself. It’s easy to be caring and compassionate with their feelings when you are caring and compassionate with your own. When you learn to love yourself and take responsibility for your own feelings and behavior, your children will naturally feel loved by you and will naturally learn to take responsibility for themselves. 

Loving parenting is the natural consequence of learning to love and value yourself.

Which is why I’m inviting you to take my 30-Day video and text home study course, Love Yourself. The best time to take this course is before you have children, but it’s never too late to become a loving parent, even if your children are adolescents or older. You are always their role model. 

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.