A central principle of my perspective is that power imbalances screw up human relationships. It is much more difficult to be authentic, and to be emotionally intimate, with someone who has power over us. Most people agree this is true for couples, but it is more confronting to realize this is true in parenting as well.
When I work with young people, I often encourage parents to use a collaborative approach in problem solving. So instead of deciding what WE (the powerful) will allow, we give up that power and talk to our children as human beings. It’s often really effective, because we love them and they love us and everyone has a vested interest in reaching a happy solution.
Having said that, it can be incredibly difficult for us to give up power and live in authenticity and love with our children.
I was recently working with a teenager who was having significant conflict with her mother. The mother decided they were going to see a more traditional provider who would work on the young person’s “problems” so that things would function better in the family. It occurred to me that adults can do this with young people because of the power differential – two humans are having conflict and the more powerful one can attribute it to the less powerful one’s “problems”. Young people can’t send their parents to a mainstream psychologist who will identify the parents’ “problems” as the issue, but parents can do this with young people. And young people typically cannot afford to see a therapist of their choice without the support of their parent(s).
Of course, this dynamic exists at school, where adaptive problems between teachers and students are automatically blamed on the students.
There are many complex reasons why our society produces tens of millions of depressed, anxious, insecure and unhappy adults, but surely the powerlessness we feel as young people contributes.
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