Contact & Belonging

 Michael Popkin was a family therapist from California who worked with overwhelmed parents and unhappy children, and he saw a need to give parents the tools they needed to help their children to become responsible adults. 

As we study some of the tools for parents it made me reflect on my own life as a child and as a mother how well my parenting skills were and how I grow up as a child.

Here are some thoughts he came up with for children and parents.

Kids need contact and feel that they belong to something.  When children don’t get contact or feel belong, they will start seeking attention and they will seek the wrong attention. Parents should offer contact freely and teach children to contribute to the house so they can feel they belong. 

Kids need protection, when children don’t feel protected, they will rebel and seek revenge on the person that has hurt them.  Parents need to teach children to be assertive but have forgiveness.  The only way they will learn forgiveness is if they see their parent forgiving others.

Kids need to feel the power, without power they will rebel and seek control there will be consequences to some of their rebellion but let them know they will have to be responsible for the consequences.  They can also choose the punishment.

Kids will withdraw sometimes when parents try to overwhelm them with tasks that are too hard for them to complete.  Some tasks make take a while to do but if you take a break from that task and start over again the child won’t withdraw or avoid it.

Kids will take on challenges, some may be too hard for you to handle.  Allow your children the opportunity to build skills.  Talk with them, be approachable, and be loving and kind to help them understand the risk they are taking. 

As I was learning these parenting skills It made me think about my life as a child.  I was always told I was a bad child.  I never remembered what I did as a child, but I can see some things that I did.  As a child, I did not receive contact or a feeling of belonging.  I have always been pushed away, put in a corner, and sent somewhere else to be handled.  I don’t blame my parents because they were raised the same way.  When children were bad you sent them somewhere to get straight.

I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings, but this is therapeutic for me.  I realize why I was bad, or attention-seeking, there was no contact with anyone.  The only time I receive contact was when I was spanked.  No hugs no kind words no love, just a kid who was born to a family with unhappiness. 

I remember moving in with my grandmother, I was away from my mother, father, and brother. I lived in a house where my grandmother took care of old people and I sleep in the house away from the family with the older people sleeping downstairs and me upstairs.  My grandmother checked on me each day and made sure I went to school but at night I was away by myself. Still no contact and no belonging.  Did this little girl understand what was happening to her, not at all?

Contact and belonging are important as an adult, imagine a little girl wanting to be loved by anyone.  As a mother myself, I tried to raise my child so differently from how I was raised.

 In the back of my head, my mother saw that she needed to save her little girl, but I saw that no one loved me.  It’s amazing how parenting can be effective in one’s life.