Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Fighting Parents

Because of my promise to someone, I have been trying to translate a chinese book one of my teachers wrote into english.. the book is simply put about a psychology model used to explain how family dynamics in the family and how parents and even our ancestors have a direct or indirect impact on our lives, our life pattern and our actions.

Just I was translating this bit about the importance of having order in the family, something interesting happened. You see, the book states that as in every system, there has to be some sort of order and hierachy. The same goes for our family system. So the parents, having come into the family first will be "bigger" in this sense and the children, having come to the family later will be "smaller".

But whenever the mum and dad gets into a quarrel, sometimes one of the partners unconsciously want the drag the child into the quarrel and manupilate them or make use of the child to attack their partners. Sometimes,  the child himself, will unconsciously start to take sides and may try to help by taking on the anger the parents feel for each other. As a result, the child is affected and not just he will have many unexplained emotional outbursts towards the father or mother, he may also lose interest in his studies.. the effects are far reaching and may even affect the relationship between him and his wife when he gets married!

It was as if the heaven's thought just reading the book is not good enough, they proceeded to provide an opportunity for me to see how this will really function in real life.

The night before, I had spent lots of time translating and only slept at 4am in the morning.. at 7am, I awoke suddenly because someone woke and started playing KINECT with the TV on a full blast early morning! So I was already grumpy.

I finally buay tahan and walked out to lower the volume.. then I walked into the toilet and this is what I see...

Towel falling on our toothbrushes...

My hair conditioner seemed to have erupted like a volcanoe...

And then ran off to the sink! The cap of Ace's toothpaste is also unscrewed...

My towel on the floor beside the toilet bowl...

Boy was I mad!

I asked Ace to come into the toilet and asked if he did this. He said he only changed out of his clothes (cos he peed in his pants in the night) and played kinect and he did nothing else...

So our conclusion was that it must have been Max and boy was I mad... cos the night before, Max went out to watch soccer with his friends and his leg was injured. Because of that, i asked him to come home earlier... not only did he not come home early, he adjourned after soccer somewhere else for a drinking and dancing session even though he promised me that he will not go drinking with his friends if I am here in Dubai. And let's just say those are not exactly the kind of places a wife likes his husband to hang out in no matter how much she trusts him.

And also, why did he throw my towel on the floor next to the toilet bowl???? go throw your own towel... why throw mine?????

Against my better judgement, I went on to complain to Ace about what his father did. But only after I complained, I started to have the awareness of what I was doing.. I was manupilating my son into taking sides!

Anyway, finally after a few hours, Sleeping Handsome woke up from his slumber and saw the pictures I sent to him in whatsapp... he said he also did not know what happened.. the only thing he knew was that when he woke, there was some sort of substance on his ankle.. he totally blanked out from the night before and it is a wonder how he got home!

My sis says it must be because he has got no hair on his head to apply the conditioner on.. so he apply on his ankle and my guess is tat he wanted to apply ointment on his ankle but in his whoozy alchohol filled haze, he decided to apply either the toothpaste or my conditioner instead...

Anyway, afterward, he came and tried to say he is sorry but I was still mad. I told him I am not going to iron his clothes for him for the week.. tat is how mad i was... but of course, he persevered on and kept saying sorry and because I also saw the humourous side of things, I lightened up and forgave him lor....



But in Ace's mind, we did not come to a conclusion.. so when we went out, he was pouting all the way. I asked him why he was pouting and he said he is upset because we are fighting and havent made up yet. I told him then that I had forgiven Daddy already and once he is certain we are really ok already.. he was his happy self again.

Anyway, I then shared with Ace what I learnt in the book.. that when our parents are in a fight, as children, because it is not in our position to interfere, we should not take sides or take it upon ourselves to resolve it. Cos this is their fight and we have to respect the way they interact with each other and just love them no matter what. "So if me and daddy ever do quarrel again, you must remember that this is between us and has got nothing to do with you. You do not need to do anything. Just love us and trust us to sort it out ourselves.. ok?"

I don't know how much he understood but I am glad I read the book and caught on to what I was doing before he became anything big or ugly... My husband says I learn too many psychology stuff and over analyze too much.. I think fretting over it incessantly is too much but being aware and readjusting ourselves for the better of ourselves and our familly is actually ok:) Don't you agree? ;)

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