I understand the experience of being a beloved and vilified child. I also understand the confusion that sentence evokes. How is it possible to be a beloved child who is vilified? Surely, a paradox. Paradoxes are important.
When a parent is unaware of their own complexity and denies their own dark side or motivations, they can’t understand their child. Most significantly, they can’t understand the impact of their behaviour on the child. They expect the child to laugh happily and bask in the eternal sunshine of parental fondness without feeling the impact of the parental voice bellowing insults and browbeating him/her into submission. How can the child not recognise that the pushiness is directed towards helping the child win the rat race? How could they not see the parental devotion in providing the child with chances the parents didn’t get in their own lives? Is it too much to ask for the occasional expression of frustration and impatience be ignored? The child’s ego is expected to ignore the accusations of degeneracy and stupidity, hearing and discovering only the real love and respect hiding beneath the layers of ostensible vilification. Ah! the wonders of life.
