The knot of love
There are friends and there are enemies — and there are brothers, sisters and other relations. We see them loving each other and there are moments when they are ready to die for each other; and then there are moments when they are full of hate for each other — so much so that they can kill each other.
Strangely, the same people who were once in love now hate and want to kill each other. The sudden change from love to hate and, in rare cases, from hate to love, makes us wonder how and why this happens. It happens between husbands and wives, girl-friends and boyfriends and brothers and sisters, and other such relationships.
There’s always a conflict in relationships. And this conflict starts developing very early in childhood, when children observe that they are not getting enough love or attention from parents, while their younger/elder brother or sister is getting all the love and attention. Such situations can create inferiority complex or self-pity in children, and they can become violent. The same can happen in school, classrooms also.
This is very unhealthy and a toxic beginning of life for kids. According to Dr Albert Adler, a famous psychologist, “Kid squabbling is really based on subconscious strive for power”.
Osho says: “The mother may love one child more, another a little less. You cannot expect that she should love absolutely equally; it is not possible. Children are very perceptive. They can immediately see that somebody is liked more and somebody is liked less. They know that this pretension of the mother’s loving them equally is just bogus. So an inner conflict, fight, ambition arises.”
Children are simple and simple things work for them. Osho says: “Don’t say to the child, ‘Love me because I am your mother’. It may create an incapacity in the child, and he will not be able to love anyone else. Then it happens that grown-up children — I call them grown-up children — continue to be fixed. So you cannot love your wife because deep inside you can love only your mother. But your wife is not your mother and your mother cannot be your wife, so you continue to be fixed — a mother fixation... You go on expecting things from your wife as if she is your mother — not consciously. If she does not behave like a mother, then you are not at ease... If she begins to behave like a mother, then too you are not at ease.”
What is the solution? How to deal with children in such situations? Parents must learn to accept the child in his/her uniqueness, appreciate their individuality without any judgment.
Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance
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