A Message from a Reader

A message of support from Being There reader Julie J.

Every once in a while, I get an email from people who have read my book and want to comment on how it has changed their view of parenting, validated their parenting styles, or encouragement for other mothers. When I get permission, I repost them here. Here’s one form Julie J.


Dear Erica,
I have read Being There. You nailed it. Thank you for such needed wisdom for parents, especially moms! I wish your book had been there for us in the late seventies because then we would have had research to back up our beliefs. We had our first child in 1979 and were swimming upstream against the cultural flow of “how to properly train a child.” Now, we have eight “diplomas” to show successful completion of the parenting journey, two daughters and six sons. What my husband and I are experiencing now in relationships with adult children is exactly what we had hoped for at the start. It has been priceless…better than any career choice out there. We have relationships!!!

One of our most daunting parenting issues was not so much children but friends, extended family, and culture. Most parents had schedules for feeding and sleeping. If the little baby had the audacity to deviate from that perfectly prescribed truth, then he or she had to tough it out because the parents knew that it wasn’t time to have a need. Training was the ultimate goal by which success was to be measured. To me, the baby was being sent a message that perhaps came across like this: I am not loveable, I am not worth my mom’s time, I am lonely, hungry, scared, tired, bored and nobody is there for me! Like you said.

I sort of parented backwards. My objective was to have a close relationship with my children as adults. Basically, I worked to have with our kids what I myself missed growing up, and never experienced as an adult in terms of intimacy with my parents. My hypothesis was infant crying indicated a need, so when my babies cried, I picked them up. It was my job to decode the need being communicated. Like you said, it’s about understanding. I nursed on demand. I was at times a human pacifier. They had no strict sleeping schedule. Sleeping babies were not forced to wake up to nurse just to stay on the clock. I learned to mange a home, shop, and even use the bathroom with a baby on my hip. I was told that I would spoil my children by holding them too much. In the toddler stage, while we would be in groups with other moms and their children, my youngest ones were usually at my legs or in my arms rather than joining in with the other kids. Didn’t bother me a bit. But to others my children seemed to be antisocial and clingy! I felt it was perfectly natural for them to be there at my side at that age. I purposed to be their primary “source” of security while they were young and the go-to person when they had a need. I wanted to be a person of influence in their childhood and adolescence. People said our children would be dependent little brats who had been waited on hand and foot by their servant mother and father! Actually just the opposite happened. Like you said. Their needs were met from the beginning. As they got older, we’d play a question game quite frequently with each child. It went like this: Who loves you? Why do I love you? What if you do something bad, will I love you? Will I stop loving you? The hope was that they would begin to believe that acceptance and worth were not based on performance, but simply on birth.

We would do it all over again because the outcome is beyond amazing. It works! Our kids have become productive, gainfully employed, fully functioning independent adults who contribute to society. In their respective professions they easily relate to other people. No one is stuck at home sponging off of doting parents who meet their every desire. It seems that meeting those needs in childhood resulted in secure, well adjusted grown sons and daughters. Like you said. They are not still trying, as adults, to get some of those childhood needs met. We are blessed to know that they want to come back home for family events. They even take vacations on their own with their siblings. This could be bragging or this could be stating the facts and observations of child development and human relations… given certain conditions.

I could so relate to your book. I believe from personal research “in the laboratory and in the field” that you are right. I have the “test data” as proof! Our sample size of eight, proved that IF during those early years certain essential, innate needs are met by the mom and dad which require a tremendous amount of sacrifice, then both you AND your children will reap the lifelong benefits. Some of our friends who had different styles of parenting that were more performance based behavior modification oriented are reaping some unforeseen consequences of grown children who are not developing healthy relationships with others, who want nothing to do with their parents, and who seem to be searching for acceptance and worth. Their kids want to be understood!!! Like you said. Your book should be part of Parenting 101! Maybe some different choices would be made if parents only knew what the long term consequences would be, if they could see the outcome ahead of time, if the parents would be willing to receive different ideas and truths about themselves and their children. It’s sad to see the desperate needs of children, even grown children that are not being met. Someone said, “There is no nobler career than that of motherhood at its best. There are no possibilities greater, and in no other sphere does failure bring more serious penalties.”

Thank you for going against the grain. Thank you for all the research and time invested to share this critical truth for the sake of the countless families who will read and believe and change.

Gratefully,
Julie J

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Erica Komisar, LCSW

Written by

Psychotherapist/Parent Coach/Author. Helping individuals to live more satisfying lives and raise healthier children. Order my book: http://bit.ly/2ffe3AQ

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