With Adulthood Comes Responsibility
blog 32
During the weeks since my last blog entry I have been enjoying a post election respite inspired by the hope that the Covid pandemic could be getting under control. Lately however I have been aware of a growing inner tension. My unsettled feelings spiked following the nonsensical comments made by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene with respect to covid and the Holocaust. I had addressed those comments in my previous blog. Still miss information, lies and deception have continued to be espoused by the same group of elected representatives. Their comments again raises concerns regarding their level of maturity or Adultness.
In my previous articles I have presented a system for parenting and governance that I called the “Family as a Country Model”. In this pyramidal arrangement the needs, behaviors and views of the Adults/Government become the primary focal point even before addressing the behavior of the Children/Citizens.
Over the many years of helping children in my clinical psychology practice parents frequently presented me with a great challenge. Please “fix” their child! As the process enfolds the parents frequently blamed their children for the family disruption. Their focus was on correcting the child often without concern for their own parental behavior or lack of responsibility. Similarly as with governing a country the citizens are often blamed for their behavior irrespective of the actions of the governing leadership. .
When assessing a child’s problem my first evaluation is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the “adults” in charge. Focussing only on the child will miss the essential role of leadership as a major contributor of their children/citizens actions. Parents/leaders who claim to be adults must face the test of accountability. Effective leadership is open to review and willing to adjust and make fact based changes. Their actions, opinions and values can not be blindly accepted. Transparency and critical evaluation are fundamental to adult thinking and behavior. It has long been established that children/citizens learn values, attitudes and behavior through modelling their parents/leadership.
In a previous blog I pointed out that “Adultness is a state of mind not age.” Adult thinking is factually based, open to new perspectives. It is based on living on the “Experience Road” of life learning and growing from critical evaluations. Assuming leadership while basing judgements and decisions centered mostly on opinions, biases and rigidity will lead the family/country into a repetitious cycle of inflexible and often destructive behavior.
It is has been well documented that with conflicted families parents often repeat ineffective approaches to parenting handed down from generation to generation. Prejudices and biases are transfixed and ingrained into the family philosophy as well as being closed to critical thinking evaluation. We root for these teams, follow this religion, we like these kinds of people and unfortunately hate those kind of people.
Getting parents to consider their contributions to the child's problem is essential in helping children develop. Parenting/governance needs to be open to making changes based upon evaluation and outcome. Parent/Leadership will work better when functioning cooperatively. A healthy family/country is a process of evolving over time adjusting when necessary.
Our recent election demonstrated that the country decided that change in leadership was required. A new national government is taking shape. The new perspective seems to be embracing a fact based decision model with science and not fake news, conspiracy theories or cultish behavior. With this factual based adult thinking we are tackling covid, environmental and social needs.
Unfortunately in our country there are members of leadership that do not follow adult thinking. They continue to confuse the citizens resulting in avoiding vaccinations, not establishing fair voting rights and avoiding addressing dire climate change issues. They are self centered, biased and use politics to acquire power and financial gain by promoting “big lies”. In family therapy they would be considered a major reason for their children acting out as they become the primary focus of therapy.
Unfortunately children/citizens are prone to blindly follow parents/leaders without regard to critical evaluation. The child/citizen feels more secure when they believe their parents/ leaders are in control. Unfortunately, some even feel safer following a leader even if that leader instigates insurrection that results in destructive behavior and loss of life.
A confused child/citizen can not easily make changes without a role model to guide them. Children/ citizens need to learn how to determine fact from opinion. We need to hold parents and leadership accountable, assisting them to be adults. In family therapy it is often the child that leads the parents/family into therapy. True adult members of society need to raise the awareness of holding our leaders responsible for their actions. It is perfectly okay to ask for the facts behind their statements and claims. Questioning our parents/leaders raises everyone's awareness of how critical it is to base decisions on facts when in a role of responsibility.
A good parent/leader is to be an adult who takes responsibility seriously and is accountable for their actions and outcomes. If something if goes astray they first ask themselves how did I contribute to the bad outcome?
Michael Simon Ph.D.
More information regarding parenting is available in my recent book “The Two Roads of Life: Navigating Yourself and Family to Health and Contentment. Published through PathBinder Publishing, available on Amazon.com
