I had a realization today, after thinking on a situation with my mother and my 2-year-old.We were chilling in the living room together, talking, playing, drinking tea. At some point my mother wanted a hug from my son. However, when she asked, he declined very clearly. So my mum made an overly dramatic face and said, that makes her sooo sad. He just looked at her puzzled. So she continued by saying: "I am so sad, [sons name] does not hug me. I better leave, if nobody wants me here." And went in a different room.We all just sat there like: "What was that?!"After a short time she came in again and looked at us expectantly. I just told her frankly, that her emotional pressuring won't work in our family. We continued after this incident and had dinner and the incident didn't come up again.But it kept bugging me and I read up on the topic. As it seems, this was a legitimate parenting technique roughly 30 years ago. So in her mindset, she did nothing wrong. But it just feels weird and horrible today.Additionally, I reflected I had issues as a young teen and adult, that might be directly connected to this. I always felt, I need to earn love and affection with behaving as expected: having good grades, making the right decisions... That pressure made me live through some dark times. But I have built myself a good life, having grown up like this, so the result seems to be good. But I would like to think, it would have been the same outcome, just with more happiness, if love would have been unconditionally at my home.Who knows, what effects our parenting these days will have on our children? It is kind of scary, what we might do to our LOs. I hope, my son grows up happy and will make the right decisions without feeling pressured to it. My son is fairly young, but I still would like to hear your opinions on this question:How can we enable our children to make the right life choices for living a happy life? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2HoczBS
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