Being too critical of parents

Parents who both consciously and intuitively reflect carefully on their own behaviour towards their children are likely to be adults who have come to terms with most of their own anxieties. It is probable that as children they were cared for well enough. Often the parents of children considered to need additional support to look after their children are not so free of the anxiety insecurity brings. This is not to place blame. These parents are frequently prisoners of their own upbringing and all too often the victims of an acquisitive society where status based on wealth is a predominant value. Their own experience of family may offer them little to fall back on when they struggle with the give and take of relationships which are so much a part of healthy family life. They may not feel able to create the kind of family environment which provides good social examples,consistent warmth and underlying harmony as well as intellectual stimulus and challenge, because they have not experienced these in their own childhoods. As children they suffered a deficit of love.
Now, and for the longer term, as a community we have a responsibility to help these parents, and to work towards a community which will not cultivate the alienation they experience. We are all responsible for creating the kind of community we have. These are our difficulties just as much as they are their difficulties. This is not to deny that in the meantime there is a pressing shorter term problem which is to tend to the needy children of these families.

First published on April 17th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/Home.aspx?cpid=1