PSY 409B – February 15, 2006
Childhood Revisited
Naomi Wong-outline 3
Coleman, Joshua; The
Lazy Husband, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2005, (pages 100-11).
Instructions for this activity are found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/g24-oral1.htm
1)
Introduction
· Everyone’s life is a reflection of their childhood, the experiences in it, the interactions, and the environmental influences around them. Once the person becomes a parent, the thoughts and experiences from the past emerge to affect the couple.
2)
The Entitled and the Unentitled
· The couple is challenged with the balance of strength and weakness in the relationship.
· Example 1 explains that the wife needed to change her assertiveness of commanding, criticizing, and shaming to less criticizing and understanding matter in order for her husband to be interested and understanding of her situation.
·
Example 2 explains how a wife who is passive and needed
to stand up from getting pushed around by her husband and son. In order for her to do that she needed to
learn to object to their wants and complaints. Overtime she succeeded.
3)
A Critical Parent
· Criticism is damaging and hurtful when it comes from your own parents, and it is difficult to ignore. The result can be something that can either break you (make you too intimidated) or make you break someone else (be too critical).
· Women who are intimidated by criticism are suffering emotionally. They feel the need to always satisfy and are vulnerable to being taken advantage of because of selflessness.
4)
How was your childhood be affecting your marriage
Questions.
1. How did your mother/father treat your father?
2. In what ways are you similar to her/him?
3. What were her/his strengths and weaknesses?
4. What might you have concluded about how men/women should be treated on the basis of observing your mother with your father?
5. What might have you concluded about what you deserved in life on the basis of her/his treatment of you?
6. If you were raised without contact with one of your parents, what did you conclude about his or her lack of involvement with you?
7. What areas do you need to work on in your communication with your husband?
8. What would you like him to work on?
5)
Exercises
1) Change in Self
2) Change in Marriage
3) Find your Resilience
4) Positive affirmations
My Thoughts:
I agree
with majority of this chapter and can see childhood influences on people. The experiences we have as a child builds
our characters as adults, and with these experiences, we give or take to better
ourselves or not. Parents are one of
the greatest influences in a child’s life in becoming a parent because of what
they teach them, how they treat them, how they discipline them, and how their
relationship is with their spouse affects the child’s frame of how a parent
should be. Besides the fact that
biology gives a small influence of traits to the child, nurture plays the most
important part. It makes sense to me if
a parent is always criticizing his child that the child’s self-esteem will be
hurt and be afraid to do certain things.
With this condition from the family, they carry it out to society. Whether they embrace the criticism to become
a criticizer or take the criticism to become taken advantage of, they are
affected both negatively to an extent. I
think that there should be balance in the child’s thinking when getting criticizes. They should think that criticisms are for
learning and improving themselves. However,
if they think that the criticism is wrong or don’t believe in them, they should
do what they think is right. Parents
should also be aware of what they say to their children because children are very
impressionable. I’m thinking that in my
family, Chinese parents criticizes a lot.
They always tell their child that they aren’t good enough, they have to
do better, they compare the child to other children, and all in all, they condition
their child to feel shame in order to better themselves. In a way this is good, because this makes
Chinese children internalize this criticism to do better in life and for societal
acceptance. I’m not saying this is the
best way, but criticism can be a good thing and a bad thing.
Links:
http://www.hefter.com/a_critical.asp
This link explains critical parents and why they act the
way they do. It also gives some
consequences towards the kids.
Solutions are also provided in this website.
This link explains from the view of a third person
speaking to the children. The author
tells the kids to try to understand their parents and see where they are coming
from. It also gives other links on relationships
between parent and children.
This link is a study that shows the affects a divorce has on a child, and the way it will influence their lives.
My Home Page:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/409bs2006/wong/wong-home.htm
Class Home Page is:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/classhome-g24.htm