by Huang Jingjing (Jocelyn Huang)

(Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China)

Original article: “顺从的爱，是一种捆绑的爱” in Chinese was published on the China Wu Zhihong official account and received 100,000 views.

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“I’m worried about my son right now; he used to always be close to me, but now he’s hiding from me and his academic performance has plummeted. Being eight months pregnant and having limited mobility has burnt my relationship with my child.”

Ms. Lin is a visitor whom I have counseled many times, and this was her most recent counseling session in which she complained to me in a hundred different ways. As I tried to start caring for more truth about what was happening between her and her child, Ms. Lin spilled the beans about what had happened between her and her child recently.

The child is now in the first year of junior high school, and usually studying is the child’s whole life. However, one day the child applied to her and said that he wished to go out for a party alone with his classmates.

With a mother’s sensitivity to her child, Ms. Lin found that the child had specially bought a phone case from Taobao for this party. Looking through the child’s computer, also found that he had a record of browsing Yellow Pages.

At this point, Ms. Lin leaned back head first on the couch, nearly breaking down emotionally.

Her child is her whole life, but also her life support, for the child’s future and growth, Ms. Lin has placed great hope.

“How do you think your child is making you feel inside by doing this?” I asked her in counseling.

“I find it impossible to control him anymore, it’s like a kite with broken strings out of control, and I’m especially afraid that he’ll fall in love early and affect his academic performance.”

I think Ms. Lin has spelled out what most parents are thinking, which is an even more common phenomenon in today’s Chinese society.

In Ms. Lin’s understanding, there is a twofold misunderstanding.

On the one hand, the stereotypical thinking that good academic performance = a bright future has affected us for generations.

However, with the diversification of society, the world has become tolerant enough to accommodate talents characterized by individuality and talent.

In a diverse society, it is the pursuit of a child’s self-interest that parents need to support more than anything else.

Only when a person loves to do something can he or she really do it well, be unperturbed by external factors, and be persistent.

All giving and behavior, when divorced from the love that gives it, is formalized and hollowed out. Even when results are achieved, there is still unhappiness.

Like, have you ever had this kind of pain?

When you’re trying your best to achieve something and instead of pleasure, you’re seething inside with anger that was once endlessly suppressed ……

It is when we begin to honor ourselves and focus more on what I want than what is out there that our creativity becomes one with our soul.

At this point, the external evaluation mechanism will not be able to sway us to dominate the direction of our own life.

The same is true for children. It is when parents begin to honor the inner child that the child’s creativity and spirituality will be fully revealed in life and learning.

Excellence in grades will no longer be the child’s goal, but the icing on the cake. Even if there is a certain disappointment, the child is convinced that all continents lead to Rome without losing confidence.

On the other hand, in Ms. Lin’s inner heart, there is actually her rejection and hatred of sex. In her eyes, sex is filthy.

Ms. Lin used to say that children are so pure, how can they be polluted by immoral things and have their minds corrupted, so that they will not become juvenile delinquents in the future?

So, I said to Ms. Lin, it seems that what is really causing you anxiety is not your child’s current relationship and exposure to sexual information.

Your concern is that the child’s early love and exposure to sexual information will be followed by a series of extensions that are not morally or legally appropriate.

Because of this perceived dominance, you arbitrarily intrude into your child’s private life and view his computer records.

This is not intimacy with a child, it’s an abject violation.

It’s a wonderful thing that every person has their secrets.

When you are at the beginning of your love calf and silently admire and adore someone in your heart, you are reluctant to share it with others.

Because, subconsciously, what you want more than anything else is for the other person to be your own, to be with your heart all the time.

When this inner love affair is roughly peeled away from the outside without permission, it becomes a great disservice.

What this creates in the other person is not only the loss of a sense of self-space, but it also tramples on the other person’s understanding of love and a sense of the purity of love.

Ms. Lin’s imagination is not the world of real children.

After a parent is confronted with a child’s dashed imagination, a sense of loss of control is inevitable.

At this point, the hardest person for parents to deal with is themselves.

They can’t accept the loss of control, they can’t accept the illusion of rupture.

Often, it is not the child who cannot separate from the parent, it is the parent who cannot separate from his or her inner child.

We should respect the private space of our children’s selves and their own life experiences.

A child’s trust in his or her parents, in turn, blossoms from the respect they give.

When we as parents have this trust, our children are naturally willing to share their world with us.

In sharing with each other, the child does not worry about the world and emotions of the self-being engulfed, invaded, and abandoned.

Parents, on the other hand, act as a safe haven, and the best of companions, listening to the truest voice of a life.

It’s an overwhelmingly beautiful experience that holds the most psychic touch of intimacy.

Therefore, the child’s avoidance of Ms. Lin and the child’s viewing of pornographic web pages were in fact the result of “being treated with a lack of respect” in the previous intimate interaction with Ms. Lin.

Those intrusive digs into a child’s personal space, thinking that by doing so they will be able to read the child, are nothing more than a childish adult game.

When the child begins to reject and resist, violence and blame become the usual methods of defense against the parent’s ego’s monstrous desire for voyeurism.

And when there is mutual respect and trust and interoperability between parents and children, true feelings will surface.

Submissive love is a love that is bound.

No one wants to wear such a yoke.

Because not only does it make us feel hollow and humbled by being loved, it also prevents us from truly loving someone with all our might.

As we immerse ourselves in our children’s world, we will hear within us what they are saying to us:

I am who I am.

throughout the world.

There is no one else so similar to me.

I have everything about me.

My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice.

And my soul.

I have my fantasies.

My dream, my hope.

I have all my victories and successes.

Also own my failures and mistakes.

I will be friendly and loving and encouraging.

No matter what I say and do, how I think and feel.

It’s all the real me.

I have a knack for change.

can survive, can be close to others.

It’s okay to accept that others love me and can love others.

I have all of myself.

Me, the only me in the universe.