Thus, by investing money in a bank we get a card to draw our interest and a contract where terms and charges are mentioned.
The only difference between making a deposit with a bank and with ones children is that parents make a lifelong investment in their children and cannot withdraw the full amount, except the interest.
However, parents dont really need that. Making an investment in our children we hope to get interest from them at old age: attention, help, care or whatever we might need at that time and what they will be able to give us. I mentioned give and not return, because parents do not need nursing, feeding, rearing and teaching. Children receive all this from their parents when they are YOUNG. Then they do the same for their own children. This is the stage people undergo just once in their lives. The help that THE ELDERLY need is quite different as their demands are very different form the demands of children. There is only a formal likeness between them as both are physically weak and insecure. Nevertheless, that is an imaginary likeliness since children are not yet able to create anything, while the elderly are no longer able to use the things they have created. Children are the foundation where we invest money in order to receive our interest later. However, we cannot take it all, since the whole amount does not belong to us our children create more and more things on their own. We should learn to distinguish between what is ours and what is theirs. This is the case when the principle divide- and-rule can be changed into divide-and-use.
So, parents want interest: the possibility to request and receive what they need at some particular time.
However, negotiations between parents and children are also a lifelong process. For that reason both sides can agree or refuse to satisfy each others requests; or they might not be able to fully satisfy them and might offer something else instead. Not having received what they want from their children parents can try to get that from other people. Thus, along with making investments in our children we are impelled to work hard, save money, make contributions to retirement and other funds, get involved in public life, donate for charity, maintain the existing relationships and establish relationships with new people.
We can also make an investment with the expectation of growing interest earnings. We invest in our children and get the interest that increases with the arrival of new generations and people who interact with them.
When parents do not negotiate with their children but just give them what they need without getting their acknowledgement and confirmation that a deposit is made and, consequently, receive no reward from them, they begin to feel like their entire life has gone down the drain. They explain such state by their childrens alleged failure to accomplish anything significant. Thus all the efforts taken by parents are wasted as they try to find faults with their children and suffer because of their mistakes and failures.
Meantime children begin to feel empty and desperate. They start with ascribing their problems to unfavorable conditions and end up blaming their parents, claiming that parents did not give them what they needed, and whatever they gave them was useless and even harmful.
In this way, underestimating each other, children and parents create the sense of black hole, emptiness, incompleteness, vanity of life and even its absence. This is not a life, they say.
What can we do about it? Is it possible to improve such relations?
The answer is yes. The clue is in acceptance, gratitude and respect for each other. Then both sides will find joy in their mutual relations.
It would be good if parents giving to their children all they can took notice of what their children find most desirable and useful. Then they would identify which skills their children have developed thanks to their efforts and what they do best of all. When parents appreciate their childrens achievements they accept their children as they are and at the same time get the interest for their efforts in the form of unique qualities displayed by their children.
When grownup children accept what their parents were able to give them with gratitude and respect, they use what they have received for further development. In this way they prepare to return the interest to their parents by showing appreciation and consideration to them. Admitting that their parents should be given credit for many of their achievements children reach harmony with their own personalities, which allows them to create something new, which is their own and is not dictated by their parents or any other circumstances.
In such case both parents and their grownup children are freed from mutual accusations, criticism and resentment against each other, which enables them to build the relationships where they will feel themselves as integral, independent and successful people.
Indeed, recognition of others makes us free.
It is never too late to start
I often hear from my colleagues, who have learnt psychology at a mature age, express their regret that they had not been taught that subject before. Indeed, now we find out that we did not use to know many things when we were younger and how we behaved was incorrect, if not harmful to our children. It seems that if we had known more we would have been able to avoid mistakes and consequently would have better relations with our children, who are now grownup people. Now you will hear from parents of grownup children words like those uttered by my colleague a 50-year-old woman whose daughter is 28: How many things we did not know about people, family, relations and were not able to do for our children! Now its too late. My daughter is already an adult.
But we did what we could and gave them what we could give. We gave our children everything we had, sparing no efforts and we have a share in all the best qualities and achievements of our children. However, we usually dont appreciate our childrens merits just as well as our own merits and efforts. Then our children too fail to appreciate all the good things we did for them and take us for granted. Instead they dont forget to mention our mistakes, faults and inability or unwillingness to give them everything they wanted. It is like a saying: When people dont have anything to discuss they start discussing problems.
By the way, we can still give our children what we were not able to give them before. We can do it now if we think they need it. It is true that they have already grown up, but we can do the same just treating them differently. Now it will be an adult-to-adult and not parent-to-child relationship, which will involve more dialogue and less teaching or passing on our knowledge. This is how we should treat our children and how they should treat us.
It is not late but its just the right time now! Parents and children are learning in the same way. Hence, when we parents learn something new, we can share it with our children who, like us, are open for new knowledge, except we are 50 and they are 28. The ability to learn new things is not lost but develops as we grow older.
By the way, 28 years ago many accomplishments that are now strengthened by a great number of studies and are available to the general public were not known. At that time psychology was practically in its first stages and the achievements in that field were only accessible to scholars, doctors and the powers that be. There were no popular book series like Assist Yourself or Psychology for Everybody. So how could we give our children something what we did not have ourselves?