Whether you are a helicopter mom or a free-range parent I’m sure you have at one point or another said the words,
“Children are resilient.”
but the fact is – they aren’t.
How many times have you heard the tell-tale old story of a friend in therapy because they are still holding on to something that their parents did when they were children?
Or your spouse angrily slamming down the phone instead of having a good conversation with their parents?
Divorce these days is so detrimental that there are whole organizations that consider it a “trauma” to children’s mental health…
Yet… You hear all the time, “children are resilient” & “they are fine” & “kids bounce back”
Parents love to believe that their children live life in rosy child colored glasses and we can just make decisions and our decisions aren’t affecting them…our fights don’t effect them… But they do.
Now, I’m not saying swaddle them or guide them through life by holding their little hands, always cover them in the rainstorm & lie to them about the monsters under the bed.
I’m also not saying don’t live your life in fear that you will screw them up because the fact is, you will.
And we have to be OK with messing up our kids a little bit.
Parents are human.
People lie.
Statistics for 2018 on divorce say,
Porn is responsible for 60% of divorces this year…
And FB is responsible for a 1/3 of divorces filed as a reason given
(I bet that involves ignoring kids, not just each other!)
And if your parents remarried after divorce, you are 91% more likely to repeat this pattern and find a happy second marriage.
If you argue about money at least once a week, you are more than likely to divorce by 30%… because I bet… your sex life will suffer as a consequence
One person constantly playing Video games can increase divorce by 80%!
When someone really close to you divorces it makes you not appreciate what you have in your marriage by 147% and can increase divorce chances within a couple! (hence why a married person usually hangs out with a married people!)
We simply can’t ignore the fact that treating kids like they are infallible is not a good option anymore.
It’s hurting them and they hate us for it.
We hate our parents for it.
It’s high time we admit it.
The addictive behaviors and the acting out in our marriages and relationships and who’s fault is it?
Who taught us these things?
Why do we need this escapism?
The “phubbing” when we should be enjoying and loving and living healthy emotionally connected lives.
We are all now trapped in these cycles.
These taught cycles.
We watched and we learned that if we “ignore it, it’ll go away”…. Except it won’t.
We aren’t all special. We are all hurt. We all walk around pretending nobody is hurting the way we are hurting and it’s BS.
Most of us are addicted to something. Anything from porn to chocolate and everyone these days has issues with our parents and are emotionally unavailable or emotionally Immature. We are all faking it while we try to raise our kids and we are mad at our partner who doesn’t have it figured out any better than us.
Why should they?
These are horrible habits!
Whether we meant to, or not…
We learned them.
All of us.
Because we are not resilient!
We never were.
We should understand the next generation isn’t either.
(my kids are Not resilient)
We need to talk to each other.
Bridge communications. This isn’t always easy. We all have drastically different ways of speaking and understanding. We have different ways of learning. Trying to figure it out can make you want to pull your hair out sometimes.
My mom and I, for instance, do not speak the same love language. That doesn’t mean we stop fighting to communicate, however.
Love shows up. Every time.
That’s something I’ve always really appreciated about her. We may not talk the same or listen the same but that does not mean we don’t keep trying to understand and figure out what the other person is saying.
We, as a people, all have bad tendencies.
This does not mean we are not bad people.
It’s time to stop making comprises because that’s where everyone loses.
It’s time to stop saying “I’m going to wait because…”
It’s time to listen to each other.
It might make the world a bit better place.
A little less broken for one more go around the sun.
Interesting statistics. I’m the manager of a private day nursery and whiteness first hand the effects that the children’s experiences can have on them.
Thanks for commenting, yes when I read Chloe’s article and saw the stats I was shocked too!
Wow, those statistics are really eye opening! I never thought about how Facebook could hurt a marriage and although I knew porn would effect relationships, I didn’t realise that the percentage of divorces over it would be so high!
The stats really are eye opening. See, I knew the stats about porn and divorce but not how Facebook could hurt the marriage (but there’s porn on facebook and most social media) as much. I hope you enjoyed reading Chloe’s article 🙂