I have lived with and raised my son on my own for the majority of the last 8 of the 11 years of his life and have been learning that the responsibility of being a parent is not what I first thought it was.
My Son and I and Being a Parent
In the beginning, the relationship between my son and I was based on need. One of the reasons I became a mother was because I thought having a child would ease the constant loneliness I felt as a human being. Therefore, with the birth of my son, I proceeded to construct a life between us that protected what was my ‘ideal of love’.
For me being loved meant being understood; therefore whenever I felt I was not understood, I would use this as an excuse to isolate from the world and focus entirely on making the relationship with my son to be everything that I needed.
Instead of taking up the responsibilities of being a parent, I would make sure no conflicts existed between us; I would pander to all my son’s demands and more often than not, fulfill them. Indeed the relationship between my son and I seemed harmonious on the surface because he would always get what he wanted.
For example, I would let him have his dinner while watching TV, so there was no true communication every time we ate, or I allowed him to indulge in excessive video game playing because I had to work, even though this made him aggressive and bad tempered. I would go all out in all ways to appease any potential conflict.
Even though I knew that a lot of the choices he made did not support his true well-being, I still allowed them because then I did not have to deal with his explosive emotions of not getting what he wanted. This created a very destructive cycle of behaviour between us.
There was no true harmony within our relationship or in being a parent, as I needed my son to fit into my way of life and offer me company. Very soon he knew he could ask me for anything because of what my needs were. I started to realise that the relationship between my son and I was no different from any close relationship I have had with others, especially with men.
However, eventually the grief of filling another’s demands at the expense of myself could no longer be ignored. The pain of ignoring how I truly felt in many everyday situations and not expressing my truth got too immense. Every single day I was living with a deep sadness that would explode into crying episodes once in a while. I was never completely free from this grief, no matter what I tried.
Taking Self Responsibility: Building a True Relationship with my Son
The blinding force of my ‘ideal of love’ slowly dropped away through a very deep level of honesty and self-responsibility that was re-introduced into my life. With the support of Universal Medicine, taking self-responsibility became the turning point in my life, in my patterns of behaviour and in the way I parented. Subsequently I have started to live (rather than escaping from) what I always felt deep inside of me and what my heart has always known. That is:
The heart simply knows that true love is not from need, and without true love, there can be no true relationship.
It was very exposing and painful to admit initially that I had never lived a truly loving relationship with myself. This in turn affected my relationship with not only my son and the way I parented him, but with everyone.
The foundation of any true relationship begins with the responsibility of living who we are, rather than living in a way we think we ‘should be’.
The committing to self-responsibility and true love has changed many of the momentums and patterns of behaviour that were controlling my life. After eleven years of being a mother I have finally become a truly responsible parent, without perfection. There is a freedom with this that I had never experienced before; less rules, less control, rarely raising of my voice or hardening of my body when speaking, but also no holding back in expressing lovingly what is truly felt.
For example, even when I feel I sometimes react to my son blaming me for something that he feels I’m responsible for, I can now stop myself and not take it personally or judge him or myself for this. Remembering how much I love him allows me to go to a deeper understanding of him and his situation. With that I hold him in true love. He in turn feels that acceptance and understanding and often surprises me by letting go and returning to being his true loving self.
I have found that the true responsibility of being a parent eventually comes back to our relationship with ourselves first and then with others. How truly honest, open and loving a relationship is between parents and children will influence how our children are in their relationships as adults throughout their lives.
My son used to always say when he was younger: “Mommy I love you more than you can ever imagine.” Now I realise the truth of this sentence and what a true relationship is. What I also realise is, when true love is our commitment – and remembering that our patterns of behaviour are not who we are – then not only how I love my son, but how I am in relationship with all others is more than I could have ever imagined.
Inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for forever opening and deepening my knowing and living of the true love that I am.
By Adele Leung, Fashion stylist/Art director, Hong Kong
Related Reading, Building True Relationships and Responsible Parenting
557 Comments
What a beautiful gift to your son Adele, that being to take the time to build a true connection to him; a beautiful gift to yourself also. Thank you for sharing your experiences and your wisdom.
We can learn so much from our children when we see them as equal and take the responsibility to parent them from the love we know we and they are and not hold back on expressing the truth. And the more we let go of ideals and believes we have around parenting the more the relationship can grow into a loving relationship without any attachments.
Adele you have turned parenting around and it is these gems that need to be shared with other parents.
I see more and more parents letting their children run riot or pandering to them with sweets and chocolates because they don’t have the time to be with them. I have seen mothers exhausted addicted on coffee to counteract the exhaustion and dealing with a hyper stimulated child – its a forever vicious cycle and you took the responsibility to do something about it – an inspiration.
Recently, as I watch my son become the man he is I can find it difficult to accept myself and all the mistakes I have made in parenting him, mistakes which he now carries with him in his understandings of life, and this makes me feel very sad. But what I say to myself in these moments, is that what matters most is now, this very second and whether I am choosing love or not, all else can and will be taken care of based on this split second. And when, in those moments I do choose love and not to indulge in regret, what follows next is always a great sense of understanding both for myself and my son and the people we are and the life journey’s we are on and the lessons we each have yet to learn, which takes off all the pressure to be perfect and allows for the lessons to be learnt as they are meant to be – in full.
I could very much relate to the relationship with your son appearing to be harmonious but there being pandering to maintain the illusion of harmony. I suspect a lot of women do this with their sons, in lieu of having meaningful, fulfilling relationships with their partners. This places a huge imposition on the son, who will feel he isn’t just loved for who he is. It also means that you do not get to be the whole and amazing women, reflecting true love to the child, as you are hanging onto what you think you need and what you are getting out of it.
“Mommy I love you more than you can ever imagine.” is at the core of everything. We sometimes cannot imagine how much we are loved or do love one another just because we are to busy with doing it right and to adhere to our self imposed rules and guidelines in life. Have you ever considered the fact that sticking to these rules and guidelines is in fact avoiding the reality that we are love, and that we dearly love all those we are with, and even beyond? From this awareness to me comes a responsibility as from there we can feel we are part of a grander whole, that there is a plan to adhere to which is to live that love to the best of our ability and with that to restore love as our foremost value in our lives and into our societies.
Adele, thank you for sharing your experiences of parenting, this is really helpful, ‘Remembering how much I love him allows me to go to a deeper understanding of him and his situation.’ I can feel that holding love and understanding in conflict situations with my own child is important, rather than going into criticism and judgement of him, I can feel that if children act in a way that is not loving it is easy for us to tell them off and that they can think there is something wrong with them or that we do not like them, when actually it is the behaviour that we do not like, not the child.
Expressions are a constant learning and refining, but no matter what is expressed and how it is expressed, I remind myself to always hold another as an equal to myself.
“For example, even when I feel I sometimes react to my son blaming me for something that he feels I’m responsible for, I can now stop myself and not take it personally or judge him or myself for this. Remembering how much I love him allows me to go to a deeper understanding of him and his situation. With that I hold him in true love. He in turn feels that acceptance and understanding and often surprises me by letting go and returning to being his true loving self.” An amazing lesson for us all. I know that I can hold back expressing what needs to be expressed in trying to avoid the reaction that is going to come back at me, but in this holding back it so often compounds the issue, for even if conflict is avoided in that moment, the same situation, dressed differently will keep cropping up until I no longer hold back. Basically it’s ‘Groundhog Day’!
I think we also have to watch for going the other way to the extreme – where we go into things like ‘Im letting me child feel into it and choose’ this is just another form of need, ideals and beliefs. What children need at times is firm rules, boundaries, consequences, tough love so to speak. Otherwise they can play on this and totally manipulate and bully patents, teachers or others – they have been here before and know all the games to play, that look good so to speak, by are not walking the talk, just like we do. I think we have so many pictures, ideals and beliefs about parenting be it from love of not – that we need to break free of. Love can be rules especially if it’s teaching children what is loving and what is not. For example, say if I was a biological mum and if my child was to refuse to come to the dinner table for dinner, they wouldn’t be allowed food – simple as that, they’d only get dinner if they came to the table to eat. I wouldn’t need them to be a certain way or force them to be chatty. But there would definitely be rules, consequences and boundaries. That is love. Another thing I feel we need to watch out for is in the guise of love are we still looking for children to fill our needs, ideals and beliefs of what a perfect family picture / mother child / father child relationship is or should look like? As in needing our child / children to fill the picture of a loving, communicative family meal. In this we are not connecting with anyone not seeing it feeling the truth of what’s really going on. As we are living from pictures and ideals.
We all have the responsibility of being a parent whether we are a biological parent or not. For parenting, mothering and fathering are an energy first, well before they are about what we do. They do not involve any roles we play. Nor is it about being a child’s best friend, I feel this can be where many people go wrong, it’s a need, wanting a child / your child to like you, instead of at times presenting solid truth and the absolute firm love they may need. It’s about having boundaries and rules, at home or in the classroom – children love this – this is not harsh – but love it its truest and firm sense. For love would never allow another off with being wayward or off its presence it would call it back – with out need or expectation. And also allow free will if a child or person may I hasten so chooses a life that is not loving. But whilst a child lives under our roof there for me would definately be rules and boundaries to adhere too, and unloving behaviours I would not accept or allow one little bit. Some may think this is harsh or hard, but it’s not at all. There are far too many parents who are not taking responsibility for parenting anymore – this can be seen in children’s behaviours at school. And also parents lack of responsibility in wanting to address children’s behaviours and passing it on to teachers or others to do or blaming them.
Everything I can bring with myself I can be with another. Letting go of a constant critique of myself that I have recently become aware of has now allowed me to let go of a level of judgement I was inflicting on others that created a tension within my relationship with everyone. It was such a default I hadn’t wanted to become aware of it because it was a great excuse to hide from people. I’d been telling myself I was afraid of being criticised by others and so needed to reduce the opportunities for this by doing things perfectly and limiting my time with people. As I accept myself I can allow myself to relax and enjoy being with me and being with others not worrying about making mistakes or judging or being judged.
Adele what you share applies equally to relationships with parents.. We can also be indulgent in our relationships with parents, we can lose ourselves, fed by ideals and beliefs of what it is to be a ‘good’ son or daughter. True responsibility, cuts old attachments and frees us to be who we are: equal partners relating honestly openly and honestly with each other.
There is a lot of good things said in this article that make sense. Every relationship holds a reflection for us and what it brings to us is something that is there in every relationship. We often think we are great at work and when we get home it all falls apart or the other way around. What we don’t often see is, the relationship we have with one is there the same for everyone. We don’t often link it all up or see the depth we are all connected. Whenever we talk of ‘parenting’ we seem to take on a different persona, almost like I am something and this is what I do. Parenting isn’t something that we do but more the way we hold ourselves, our quality because and as I’m sure you would agree, at times I have been parented and at times I have parented adults. It’s not something that is limited to one relationship as we have just been saying. So we don’t just ‘parent’ our children, it’s a quality we hold that needs to be honoured or expressed everywhere. I’m not saying you sit people down or send them to their bedrooms but the way you are with them needs to meet them for who they truly are at any time. Parenting is pretty simple, you just don’t take it on as a role. It would seem the moment we see a child and I am the mother or father, we already bring in an imbalance. See parenting as a quality you are with everything, the responsibility, holding, the love and direction you have everywhere.
You share much wisdom here Adele. I am sure there are many of us who have recognised ourselves in your sharing. I also appreciate the wonderful teachings of Universal Medicine presented by Serge Benhayon.
Our children reflect so much for us to learn as parents, the lessons I have received from my two children are the most amazing, learning so much about myself, about relationships and about responsibility. Parenting is a gift from heaven.
“The foundation of any true relationship begins with the responsibility of living who we are, rather than living in a way we think we ‘should be’.” So true Adele, We havent dome so well as a society following in our parents’ etc footsteps – the ‘should be’, in order to fit in etc. Finding a new way to be and live as we truly are sets a whole new standard for relating to everyone.
Adele – this is a great blog for me to read as a new parent. What I understand is the importance of consequences and that children know this – for every action there is a reaction. It is about allowing children to make choices but at the same time ensuring they understand what the choice means.
Our relationship with others is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.
From this blog the responsibility of being a parent jumps out. It’s massive, and extremely joyful as well.
As in it’s not a decision to be made on a whim. It’s something you as potential parents / custodians of this child for a certain amount of time, need to talk about and be certain it’s for true reasons and not to fill a need. And not to make other people happy, such as grandparents.
Your commitment to yourself and true parenting is beautiful to read. There is enormous responsibility to be had when it comes to developing a true relationship and you are right in the fact that it starts with how we are with ourselves first.
This raises the massive question of why do we have children? Is it to fulfil a need of our own, because if it is then there is always going to be that bias as we bring them up… we will carry a picture of what we want to happen which will cloud our judgement and impose something onto them. Far better to release them (and us) from that prison and learn to appreciate them for the amazing being that has been re-introduced to the world, ready to express something unique that only they can bring.
Brilliant article Adele. I love how you describe the following: ‘For me being loved meant being understood; therefore whenever I felt I was not understood, I would use this as an excuse to isolate from the world and focus entirely on making the relationship with my son to be everything that I needed.’ The key word in this sentence for me is ‘use’. Whenever we ‘use’ anyone for anything then there is no longer true, loving relationship. certainly we can help each other, but never ‘use’. It is only one step away from out and out abuse i.e. ‘ab-use’.
What a beautiful sharing Adele. The commitment and love you have for your son is a true reflection of the love and commitment you have for yourself; I deeply appreciate and am inspired by this.
“I have found that the true responsibility of being a parent eventually comes back to our relationship with ourselves first and then with others.”
Adele, what you are sharing here feels really important, ‘I sometimes react to my son blaming me for something that he feels I’m responsible for, I can now stop myself and not take it personally or judge him or myself for this. Remembering how much I love him allows me to go to a deeper understanding of him and his situation.’ This is a beautiful way to parent, to have this understanding and still hold your son in love is very beautiful, I can feel how I can go into judgment and criticism with my son and how unsupportive this is for both of us, thank you for sharing this.
One of the hardest parts I find about parenting, is in watching your child make their own choices, even when you know that they know exactly what to do that will honour and support them, and yet they still continue to choose dullness, complacency, neglect, numbness, and to give up on themselves. I am learning that as painful as this is to watch, there is little you can do except to be the love that you are and never compromise on that. This does not mean to be all soft and enabling, but rather to align your body with the vibrational energy of God and let this hold the light in the house. Therefore at the very least, all your children have the opportunity to feel in themselves the true light of God, and whether this is a choice taken or not, the opportunity was there.
I can very much relate to this Shami. Eventually I realised the deeper I accept of my own love to me, that I am human and accept more of the human experience, I am able to accept my son much more as a person. I am interested in him as a person, I care deeply of him as a person, and therefore I do not have to be affected by the behaviors and choices that he makes which are not him. No matter what he chooses, I go back to being interested in him.
In watching the relationship that I have with my son, I can see how there are times when my own need for him to be a certain way, to enable me feel like I am succeeding as a parent, is an immense pressure and a crushing force on to him and does not allow him to be the young man that he naturally is. I am learning however, that when this happens I can look within myself and find what disruption there is to our relationship, without having to blame him, I can take responsibility and bring everything back to our normal harmony. As Adele Leung says, it all starts with honesty.
What you share her Adele about true responsibility and parenting is beautifully honest and inspiring to read. When I first had my daughter I parented in a way that was inconsistent and often lead me to pander to her to avoid tantrums etc. Attending Universal Medicine events have been key to learning tools to deepen the relationship with myself that has supported all of my relationships to become more true and loving.
‘It was very exposing and painful to admit initially that I had never lived a truly loving relationship with myself’. Adele I totally relate to this realisation. Allowing myself to express from and be the real me is something I am working on daily by making loving and caring choices that support me.
Parenting is no easy task but it sounds like you have really turned things around. I struggle at times being a parent and having to enforce rules that often lead to explosive tantrums and then my daughter may react as well.
Adele this is pure wisdom for me: “The heart simply knows that true love is not from need, and without true love, there can be no true relationship.”
Relationships are entrenched in many corrupted pictures which are idealistic but not true, and if these are followed and attempted to be achieved, we have further ingrained the foundation we have with everything, absolutely everything, to be a lie.
When there is a relationship with God, with Soul, with our body, it would be a lie to hold this back with people. And if we do not have a relationship with man, what has to be looked at is how is our relationship with God, with Soul and with ourselves?
There are no good or bad relationships, there is only relationship or no relationship.
Our first relationship is the relationship with God, this is Divine Will. This relationship when in form becomes all the relationships we have with people. Relationships are really not what we think they are, such as to fulfill each other’s needs etc., but they are constant opportunities to reflect and evolve. There is actually zero comfort in true relationships, we are always going deeper.
Raising children with this level of responsibility has to be key in breaking the cycles of the past, where children and parents spend years not understanding eachother.
A very beautiful sharing Adele thank you. I love the way in which you took responsibility to develop a true relationship with your son; what a divine blessing for you both.
“The heart simply knows that true love is not from need, and without true love, there can be no true relationship”.
This blog acts as a relationship reset for anyone who reads it. I love the truth you bring to the fact that it’s too easy to enter into a relationship of any sort, not just with our kids, to get our own needs met and how irresponsible for both parties that is. True responsibility is to start with the relationship with ourselves first. Everything else flows from the quality of that.
There is also a trap for women to focus too much on our children and forget how important and needed we are in other aspects of life. This is something I am deeply pondering at the moment.
A woman has to be true to herself to bring truth to any relationship. And a true woman will not consider herself less than any of the relationships she has in life.
I have found that by bringing my absoluteness to parenting has been one of the most profound changes I have made. To simply do what I feel is true without compromise and then my daughter knows what is what. No longer do I get the nagging for more and more and she is then able to settle, without the craving to satiate a need that isn’t real anyway.
Absoluteness is an honoring first to ourselves, to our relationship with God. What a blessing to bring this to any relationship.
“Remembering how much I love him allows me to go to a deeper understanding of him and his situation. With that I hold him in true love. He in turn feels that acceptance and understanding and often surprises me by letting go and returning to being his true loving self.”
This is very useful. In those moments that can potentially become tense, to stop and hold my understanding of her, of another, is what allows them to feel acceptance and the space to choose again.