Vicariousness Can Be Considered A Kind Of Possessiveness

There are many varieties of vicariousness. An example of vicariousness is a father using his son to satisfy athletic longings of his own. To see this phenomenon in action, go to your nearest Little League game. A vicariously oriented parent becomes emotionally involved in the game to such an extent it is as though he himself were the player. You can see him becoming outrageously angry at the umpire when the call is against his son. Worst of all, such a parent will reprimand and demean his son when he makes a mistake. What does this bring to mind? The old problem of conditional love. The more vicarious we are with our children, the more our love for them is conditional upon how well they have performed and met our own vicarious needs. We’re all vicarious to some extent, aren’t we? When our David played Little League baseball, I considered him a pretty good baseball player. As I sat there watching him, for some strange reason my mind drifted back to my professional baseball days. I would find myself recalling how desperately I wanted to make it to the major leagues. The pain and disappointment of failing to accomplish this focused before me as I watched David play so well.

After The Fall

What a mistake it would have been if I vicariously attempted to fulfill my lost dream through my son. We parents must not let our own hopes, longings, and dreams determine the type of love a child receives. Vicariousness can be considered a kind of possessiveness if it causes us to view children as possessions we can use to fulfill our own dreams. How can children grow in their own right and think for themselves and rely on themselves in this situation? We must keep our love for children unconditional. These parents expect and demand a great deal from their infants and children. Not only is the demand for performance great, but it is premature, clearly beyond the ability of the infant to comprehend what is wanted and to respond appropriately. These parents deal with the child as if he or she were much older than he really is. Observation of this interaction leads to a clear impression that the parent feels insecure and unsure of being loved, and looks to the child as a source of reassurance, comfort, and loving response. It is hardly an exaggeration to say the parent acts like a frightened, unloved child, looking to his own child as if he were an adult capable of providing comfort and love. An abusing parent feels his child must take care of the parent’s emotional needs, that the parent has a right to be comforted and nourished by his child. When the child fails in this, the parent feels a right to severely punish him. Child abuse is the extreme form of role reversal, but all parents use role reversal to some extent.

Drifting Too Far From The Shore

Sometimes when we ourselves are not feeling well, either physically or mentally, we expect our child to make us feel better. We may be depressed, physically ill, mentally, or physically exhausted. At these times we have little or no emotional nurturing to provide our child. It can then be very difficult to give eye contact, physical contact, or focused attention. When our emotional or physical resources are drained, we need nurturing ourselves. In this condition it’s so easy to make the mistake of expecting a child to be comforting, reassuring, compliant, mature in behavior, and passively obedient. These are not the characteristics of a normal child. If made to assume this unnatural role, a child will not develop normally. The list of possible disturbances that can result is endless. We parents must not allow such a situation to develop in this way. We must understand that parents do the nurturing, and children receive it. When we are unable to carry this out, we must not look to our children to parent us.

Determination Gives You The Resolve

Of course, they can help us as they are able, running errands and getting things for us when we’re sick, but they must not be expected to nurture us emotionally. We should make every attempt to prevent times when we are unable to nurture our children. It may mean looking out for our emotional health by engaging in hobbies or other refreshing activities to prevent depression or mental exhaustion. It may mean keeping our spiritual life fresh and exciting by allowing ample time for prayer and meditation. Most importantly, it means keeping our marriages strong, healthy, and secure. Remember, we will be able to give more to our children if we keep ourselves emotionally and spiritually replenished. This gets back to setting priorities and planning toward goals. Don’t Toss Out the Baby with the Bath Water. Over the last few articles, we have looked in detail at the four most common types of inappropriate love and several common misconceptions. Of course, these are ways of relating that we want to avoid. They are good neither for the child nor the parent. However, as we avoid these mistakes, let’s not toss out the baby with the bath water. Let’s not make a worse mistake and withhold appropriate love. This is by far the most common of all child rearing mistakes. Far more children suffer from the lack of appropriate love than from exposure to inappropriate love. Appropriate love is really for the benefit and welfare of the child. Children have essential needs that only parents can fill. The longer we wait, the worse the situation will become. Anger is a natural response within all of us, including young children. Yet handling anger in a child is, in my opinion, perhaps the most difficult part of parenting. And because it is so difficult, most parents respond to a child’s anger in wrong and destructive ways. A child who becomes angry is quite limited in ways to express that anger. Both of these ways make it difficult for a parent to know how to respond properly.