Dr. Lindsay Gibson

It's just a reminder that other people are, and this is a different mindset, but other people are real inside too.

That they and your child, they have their own subjective inner world, their own experiences that are just as real to them as yours are to you.

Somehow with children, we tend to feel like we can make them into something, like we can shape them.

They'll want to enjoy the same things that we do.

They'll be social like we are.

They'll be book readers like we are.

It used to be that if you were a good parent, you had an obedient child who grew up to be a success and, you know, you get your blue ribbon and everybody's happy.

Now the demand is for you to have a real relationship with your child in which you recognize them as an individual who is not the same as you.

Yeah, I mean, it certainly can be something that's coming from them, but it's also very human.

I mean, you know, like we have the expression, chip off the old block.

We sort of feel like because we made these children and we're raising them and we're so close to them, I mean, partly because very early in life,

That's what babies need.

They need their parents to treat them as a part of themselves almost.

I mean, that's how deep the love goes.

So we want that.

It's just that as the child begins to move through developmental phases, like in their two, three, four-year-olds especially, right?

where they're beginning to try to individuate and develop a sense of self.

If the parent stays in that kind of baby mode, now we're running into a developmental motivation, an imperative really, and that's going to cause conflict or it's going to cause the child to identify themselves too much with the parent that they don't learn how to develop their own separate self.

Yes.

Well, since I'm in the United States, I'll use that as an example.