I think that's a huge part of why I am not having kids, because I am aware that overriding that training is incredibly hard. I'm 35, and I'm only JUST learning how to do it. O_O It's a horrible shame that there's nothing in place to help parents to NOT repeat those patterns. There is some information out there if you look for it, but it took me until late 20s early 30s to realize I was fucked up, communication-wise. How can you look for solutions when you don't realize there is a problem?
Counseling, therapy, marriage/couples counseling, those can all be super-helpful, but as I'm so painfully aware, resources for that if you are anything but wealthy enough to pay full price for it are hard to find. Sometimes impossible.
We don't even teach that counseling/therapy as a preventive measure is very helpful in marriages/relationships. Making a pretty good thing better, you know?
I really think that we ought to offer kids classes in interpersonal communication starting at least in high school, preferably much earlier. And parents should get more support, not just when the baby is new, but right up through young adulthood.
And I have no idea what the solution is to the problem, except politicians and rich people as a whole magically getting a clue and taking health care seriously, especially mental health care, and taking families seriously in the sense of valuing connections and communication between close-knit units of people and facilitating good relations. And education. We should take that more seriously, too. Not in the standardized test way, more school hours, work harder not smarter way, but in giving kids an education that will actually benefit them.
I sometimes wonder if the powers that be really want crime, poverty, and dysfunction to be "cured". Who from a mentally healthy place would ever want to abuse themselves with drugs or go to war?
TBH it is part of why I am childfree also. When I read parents joking around about how their children destroyed things, and how bratty their kids are, and my reaction is just rage... or sometimes even for normal things... no kid needs or deserves that. And I really worry that I would carry on some of the abusive patterns in my family that have existed for generations.
I definitely agree re: interpersonal training. One of the best classes I took in college at age 16 was a communications course on interpersonal relationships. Although, I have had the nasty experiences of people using those skills to abuse and manipulate, and I pretty much lost patience with bending over backwards to use "I" statements with my first partner. (It may not be the best approach, but I have no patience for sugar coating how the other person did something hurtful. You did this thing, it fucking hurt, take responsibility, deal with it. And it's not like I really want anything more than recognization of doing this hurtful thing and an apology.)
I tried the "I" statements for a while with my husband when he was being a dickhead. He would then "helpfully" explain to me how I ought not to be feeling that way, but some other way, because all he did was perfect and appropriate. *rage* So I went back to "you" statements, which made him really mad, but at least he wasn't "helpfully" explaining how wrong I was; he was at least defensive and mad, too.
Actually, direct confrontation like that was seldom helpful. What was, many would call passive-aggressive. *shrugs*
Oh, except for this: he'd use some word directed at me or something I'd done that was insulting or a put-down. I'd call him on it. He'd claim he didn't mean it THAT way; he meant it in some obscure definition that was, say, 12th out of 15 possible definitions, with the first 8 being insulting. I know because we started to look them up in the dictionary. I would then him how, as an educated man, he could be UNAWARE that only a very obscure alternative def was benign, and that the top 8 were offensive??? He actually cut that crap out pretty quickly when I started that approach, and not having fairly frequent subtle put-downs helped me and our relationship a LOT.
Counseling, therapy, marriage/couples counseling, those can all be super-helpful, but as I'm so painfully aware, resources for that if you are anything but wealthy enough to pay full price for it are hard to find. Sometimes impossible.
We don't even teach that counseling/therapy as a preventive measure is very helpful in marriages/relationships. Making a pretty good thing better, you know?
I really think that we ought to offer kids classes in interpersonal communication starting at least in high school, preferably much earlier. And parents should get more support, not just when the baby is new, but right up through young adulthood.
And I have no idea what the solution is to the problem, except politicians and rich people as a whole magically getting a clue and taking health care seriously, especially mental health care, and taking families seriously in the sense of valuing connections and communication between close-knit units of people and facilitating good relations. And education. We should take that more seriously, too. Not in the standardized test way, more school hours, work harder not smarter way, but in giving kids an education that will actually benefit them.
Gah. Things are so fucked.
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I definitely agree re: interpersonal training. One of the best classes I took in college at age 16 was a communications course on interpersonal relationships. Although, I have had the nasty experiences of people using those skills to abuse and manipulate, and I pretty much lost patience with bending over backwards to use "I" statements with my first partner. (It may not be the best approach, but I have no patience for sugar coating how the other person did something hurtful. You did this thing, it fucking hurt, take responsibility, deal with it. And it's not like I really want anything more than recognization of doing this hurtful thing and an apology.)
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Actually, direct confrontation like that was seldom helpful. What was, many would call passive-aggressive. *shrugs*
Oh, except for this: he'd use some word directed at me or something I'd done that was insulting or a put-down. I'd call him on it. He'd claim he didn't mean it THAT way; he meant it in some obscure definition that was, say, 12th out of 15 possible definitions, with the first 8 being insulting. I know because we started to look them up in the dictionary. I would then him how, as an educated man, he could be UNAWARE that only a very obscure alternative def was benign, and that the top 8 were offensive??? He actually cut that crap out pretty quickly when I started that approach, and not having fairly frequent subtle put-downs helped me and our relationship a LOT.
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