by S.S. McDaniel

Created on: July 28, 2009

Parents often believe that because they have raised a child and been present for most of its life that they know their children. In a way, this is true. As a person who spends so much time with the child, the parent is in a unique position to know more than average about the child's surface. A parent knows that their child wears size six shoes (they stood in line at the ice skating arena for fifteen minutes to get them), size small shirts (they paid fifty dollars for the soccer uniform), they will eat spaghetti (it's the only thing they can get them to eat in restaurants), and they will not eat they can not identify (the list of which has long since exceeded the memory of the exhausted parent).

But the truth is that these things are all superficial. Knowing what size clothing your child wears, what they will and will not eat/drink/do/say is not knowing that child, it is knowing how to handle the child. It is so easy for a frustrated parent to reduce their child from a personality to an obstacle: the parent does not recognize that the child is afraid of spiders because of the story they read about spiders eating people, rather seeing that fear as a trigger of aggravating behavior that needs to be removed without any reasonable background.

It should not be assumed that this is the only way in which parents see their children: quite often the child is assigned a personality based on the behaviors the parent has observed (mostly in their presence). The problem with this point of view is that a person, child or adult, is not made of just one set of behaviors. The personality a child presents to their parents is not necessarily the personality that other people see.

For example: a teacher calls the parent from school, explaining that the child has hit another child. The parent, who has never observed any violent behavior in their child, denies that this could be so based on their assessment of the child's personality. However, if asked, the teacher may explain that the child has often been unpleasant or violent towards other children and it is a pattern of their "school personality".

Another example, easier to see and understand, is the interaction of a child with their grandparents. Every parent has seen their sullen little monster turn into a sweet-eyed cherub in the presence of grandmother and grandfather.

In conclusion, parents should be aware that what they know of their child is only one aspect of their child. It is probably a closer view to the "true" self of a child than most aspects, but it is far from the only one.

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