By Anne Benissan

They have pressure for their kids health, for their children's manners, for the right preschool, for the right school, for the homework, for the right activity, for the right parenting technique, for the right friends etc...

It is a 24/7 job that lasts for long. Everywhere you read how wonderful it is, the truth is that it is not always wonderful. It can be draining.

There was an interesting article in The Atlantic, entitled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy: Why the obsession with our kids' happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods. A therapist and mother reports."

The article is about the way many parents focus much of their energy on being there for their children, but their children end up feeling lost and empty.

One of the issues I've written about extensively is that half of good parenting is being there for our children, and the other half is being there for ourselves. This article says nothing about parents becoming loving role models of personal responsibility for filling their own emptiness. In fact, these parents, who are obsessed with their kids' happiness, are likely addicted to filling themselves up through their children - not a healthy situation.

This article validates what Inner Bonding is all about - learning how to take responsibility for your own feelings. The problem with these lost adults is that their parents always took responsibility for them, rather than role-modeling how to fill themselves up.

Feeling lost and empty is the result of a lack of love. As the cartoon drawing shows, these kids received an abundance of love from their parents. But they never learned how to fill themselves with love through a personal source of spiritual guidance. They never learned how to access their own higher self to guide them in what is loving to themselves, so they end up feeling lost.

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you."
-- Kahlil Gibran

Symptoms of enmeshed parenting:

• Your children's good or difficult behavior and successful or unsuccessful achievements define your worth.
• Your children are the center of your life - your purpose in life.
• Your focus is on taking care of your children rather than taking care yourself.
• Your happiness or pain is determined by your children.
• You are invasive - you need to know everything about what your children think and do.

If you identify with one or more of these symptoms, you might be enmeshed with your children.

by Kathy Somers Walsh


Lord Grant me more Patience please.
Who would have known that I would ever become a mother? Anyone who knows me personally still can't believe it, especially my mother. I promised myself since I was in my early 20's that I would never have children nor get married.

For 38 years I was a free being on this planet, coming and going as I pleased since leaving my parents side and renting my first apartment at the age of 19.

From the ages of 19-38, though working shift work, life was great even though it didn't feel like it at times. I could sleep in every day, have friends over at any time, watch whatever I wanted to on television. My house was always clean and I didn't have to pick up after anyone, I didn't have to cook if I didn't feel like it, I went to the gym and worked out 5 days a week, 3-4 hours a day, my vehicles were always spotless inside and out and the list goes on but, at times, I admit it was lonely.

Then I met my husband. We dated for maybe a year and a half and we had to think fast what we wanted in each of our own lives. He had always wanted a family, wife, kids, house, the whole package. I just wanted happiness, which I had a very hard time finding due to having had depression and severe anxiety for most of my life, which is the reason I had decided not to have children as I didn't want to pass this on to them.

From a male's perspective

by Abe Blauvelt

Dear Mom,

Scraped knees, fighting siblings, forgotten homework. Lost clothes, broken glasses, soccer practice. Late night tears, early morning rants, coming home past curfew. Our first steps, first tooth, first day at school. First date, first dance, first day driving. Graduation, wedding, grandbabies. These are all the things you have put up with from us all these years. After all that how can you still like us more or less still love us? Mom, you are an amazing woman. Just thought you would like to know.