How Do I Help My Wife Get Better Results With Our Children?
How Do I Help My Wife Get Better Results With Our Children?
What can a husband do when his wife and their children don’t get along very well?
Let’s explore based on a man who had this exact situation…
“The issue I’m having is not between me and my wife as much as it’s between my wife and our children. The children and I have a very positive relationship whereas the children and their mother are constantly “pushing each other’s buttons”. So often, when I get home from work, my family is an emotional wreck.
My question is, how can I help my wife have the positive kind of relationship with the children that I have?
I’ll give you an example that happens often…yesterday, my wife was asking one of our children to practice their music and it promptly turned into a huge battle of the will’s…my wife pointing out mistakes and asking our child to get them right and our child becoming more and more obstinate and stubborn.
Today, when I got home, my wife hadn’t got to the music practice yet so she asked me to work with our child. The result was that our child and I had a wonderful practice that was positive, fun, and enjoyable for both of us.
Of course, my wife got very upset…as she usually does..when she sees how positive it goes for me and how negative it goes for her. In fact, she said, “Watching you with the children makes me feel like a total failure.”
How can I help my wife?”
Ok, connecting what I know of your situation with what I’ve learned from experience, I see two problems.
Here’s the first one…
A person’s strength over-extended is a weakness.
Your wife CARES too much.
Caring is good. Caring too much is a weakness and a problem.
Your wife so cares about your children and how they turn out that she’s literally driving them away — SHE is producing the obstinate and stubborn behavior that you describe. I suspect she’s doing this in all areas…the only exceptions being any areas where your children have a high level of interest and passion where they of their own accord are driven to succeed at a high level.
The music practice is a great example of what I’m talking about. Your wife so wants your child to be an accomplished musician…someone who’s “significant”… someone who represents HER well…someone who points the world back to HER…SO THAT SHE FEELS AFFIRMED…so much so that a “mistake” is unacceptable to her.
What I just said reveals the second problem…
Each person must live out their own unique life.
A child IS a person.
Your wife wants her dreams and goals fulfilled through her children…she wants them to be of higher class and capability than she perceives herself as being.
Your wife wants it to be the case that when the world looks at your children, the world thinks of them as so special and remarkable that they cannot help but think about how special and remarkable these children’s “Mom” must be.
This mode of operation…having a mental-map that drives a person to this kind of behavior IS HOW a parent DRIVES AWAY their kids and sends them off into bad/wrong directions in life. The more a parent tries to project their own wants and wishes onto their children, the more the children will reject and resist their parent.
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The thing is, SOME kids will resist and reject while they are still a kid. But most will seemingly go along with their parents wishes and desires UNTIL they are an adult at which point they will reject and resist anything that reminds them of their parents.
So, the first thing a parent has to do IF they wish to be successful with their children…and if they wish to have children who are successful…is to realize and accept that EVERY person is a unique individual formed and fashioned by God to be UNLIKE anyone else who has ever existed or ever will exist…and to then support and encourage that uniqueness within each child.
A parent must realize and accept that they must pursue their own dreams for their own self and they must help their children find and pursue their own dreams for their own selves.
If YOU try to live your life through me…sooner or later, I’m going to reject that. If I try to live my life through you…sooner or later, you’re going to reject that. Any parent that tries to live their life through the lives of their children…sooner or later, those children are going to reject that.
Without exception!
It’s this way because God intends for each person to live out their own life according to the gifts and talents that He gave each person…so that they can fulfill their unique destiny and purpose…and someone who is trying to intervene and interject THEIR will into another person’s life creates a disharmony and division between that person and
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