Can children eventually feel loved and mature enough to love their parents without guilt or obligation? Yes, but first they must be loved themselves, and if they love their parents, it’s a free choice.
Timestamps:
00:00 The 'reasoning' behind the obligations to love and care for parents all their lives.
02:20 Solution to his kind of slavery is the truth and love.
03:18 Children grow up healthy only if they are loved unconditionally.
04:03 Children must first be loved themselves, then they can love their parents freely.
Transcript:
Why Parents Require a Child's Total Obligation
Over the years I have encountered a great number of families, religions, and entire cultures that vigorously teach children that they have an inflexible and total obligation to love and care for their parents all their lives.
The reasoning of parents—mostly unconscious—goes something like this:
- I’ve never felt unconditionally loved in all my life.
- I have felt helpless to control how people treat me.
- I’m alone and in pain.
- If I have a child, I’ll have somebody I can control more easily, because I’ll be able to train them from the beginning to do what I want—and to love me.
- I can use this child to get a sense of power, control, and praise. I can vent my anger and frustration on them in ways that other adults won’t let me do.
- When I get older, I can use guilt and obligation to require this child to take care of me. After all, I supported them all their young lives, and “loved” them as adults. They owe me, so I will be guaranteed their care and devotion until I die.
Why Children Feel Guilt and Obligation
Think I’m exaggerating? Look at the face of any adult when they are confronted with a conversation with a parent where the parent wants something: time, attention, somebody to whine to, somebody to do things for them, and on and on.
The child is strangled with a rope of guilt and obligation. I talk to these adults and children every day. It’s a nightmare, but most people accept it because it is so common.
So what is wrong with this system? Oh, everything.
It imprisons everyone. Parents are in a prison of victimhood and controlling.
Children of all ages are in a prison of obligation and guilt, a kind of slavery really.
The Solution to the Prison of Obligation
What is the solution? The TRUTH. And Love. It’s not complicated.
What is the truth? That parents CHOSE to bring children into the world, and the parents took on the responsibility—whether they realized it or not—to UNCONDITIONALLY love and teach these children THEY invited to join their family.
The children come involuntarily to our family. They didn’t get to choose, so if we then obligate them involuntarily, that’s slavery. If we involuntarily invite them but then love and teach them, that is a divine state of grace.
We have to stop requiring our children to love and serve us. It’s an unthinkable crime, actually.
Children can grow up healthy ONLY if they are loved unconditionally, where the flow of love is one-way, us to them.
THEN they can raise children whom THEY LOVE. There is no exchange of unconditional love.
By its very nature Real Love cannot be traded. But it can be passed on. Let’s get with the flow.
Let’s find love from other adults, and from God, so we can pour it into our children, who will then pour it into their children—all part of the eternal flow.
Can children eventually feel loved and mature enough to love their parents? Yes, but first they must be loved themselves, and if they love their parents, it’s a free choice. Freely given love is a miracle to behold. We can begin to participate in that miracle right now.
