Are parents always right?

Any criticism of one’s own parents looks ugly. Those who gave us life, who did not sleep enough in our crib, who fed us with a spoon, taught us to walk and talk, parents are always out of the zone of our critical assessments. Dad and mom are sacred. Not even talking, but only thinking about them can be either good or nothing. This internal moral prohibition lies at the foundation of human society. It is built into the personality structure of each person at various levels - biological, social, cultural, religious. And where it is violated, a situation of tragedy and catastrophe immediately arises, even if the criticism is justified three times. Hamlet, deciding to expose his mother, inevitably faces the question - to be him or not to be.

In the same way, any of us feels catastrophic accusations against our parents. Therefore, such accusations and grievances are suppressed even at the level of thoughts, and if they break out, they are perceived by the very same person as something criminal, improper and shameful.

But suppressed resentment does not disappear anywhere, alas. Remaining unspoken for decades, they slowly corrode a person’s life from the inside, poison his existence, even when being squeezed out into the unconscious area. And if this were only a problem of openly antisocial families, where children sometimes have to go through something that is scary to talk about from their closest people ...

In fact, such grievances, like a snowball, have been wound up from very early childhood in very, very many who grew up in conditions that seemingly quite prosperous. To be convinced of this, it is not at all necessary, like Hamlet, to blame parents for various sins. It is enough to look at a critical angle on one's own parenthood.

Are we ourselves so perfect in relation to our children? Have we ever been hurt by injustice, hardheartedness, or ordinary indifference?

The Lord defined the attitude of the fallen man to his offspring in rather harsh words: ... you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children (Matthew 7:11). And indeed we are able, yes. We will not give a stone instead of bread; we cannot slip a snake instead of fish. But do we always succeed in putting this important skill into practice? Does our evil and deceit break through it here and there? And finally, how many of us are able, with a clear conscience, to say that they really don’t have anything to ask for forgiveness from their own child?

Unfortunately, we are able to offend our children in the same way as we are able to offend any other person. The only difference is that you have to sort things out with strangers in one way or another - ask for forgiveness, promise not to do that anymore, explain that you had no malicious intent, that you simply broke loose, they say, nerves and all that. There can be a great many options for reconciliation, as well as options for resentment.

But far from everyone is capable of apologizing to their own children. It’s not easy at all to plead guilty. The dodgy mind is constantly trying to find some cunning loophole that allows one to make excuses. And in a situation with your own child who is offended by you, such loopholes are just a sea of ​​spills. Here, any bastard goes on the line - and pedagogy (well, it’s not pedagogical to admit that the parent may be wrong), and developmental psychology (the child is still small, he does not understand much, and the parent’s contradictory behavior can violate his emerging view of the world), and already existing experience in such situations (so what - not the first time, and nothing, has not died, will survive now). Although, probably, most often parents do not think about such things at all. Just a ban on criticizing the elders, assimilated in childhood, when a person has his own children, suddenly magically turns over like an hourglass. And now, any own action in relation to a son or daughter is perceived by man as an unconditional truth, not subject to any doubt. So the principle “parents are always right” is transmitted from generation to generation. Behind which, for many years, there may be hidden unprotected children's tears, unspoken words of indignation and a whole bunch of negative emotions that did not get their way out in the behavior of a small and then an adult.

Alexander Tkachenko, psychologist, father of four children.