What Do You Need From Your Child?

By: Carol Maxym, Ph.D.

Generally our children know us as well as we know them.  Their existence from infancy through toddler years and into the time when they become increasingly socialized has been based on learning to read every cue from you, verbal as well as non-verbal.  Children often try to provide their parents with what they deem their parents want and/or need.  Sometimes they are right; sometimes they are not.  

The great child psychiatrist, D. W. Winnicott, wrote about how the child who cries when sent to pre-school (day care) because he is worried his mother won’t manage without him.  Sometimes that child is right; sometime not.  His broader point is that children do try to meet their parent’s needs, such as they perceive those needs.  To that profound statement I will add a more banal thought:  The next step after that is that kids discover how to manipulate you by understanding (whether cognitively, emotionally, experientially, or just so) your needs…and what makes you happy, what makes you react in a certain way.

What do you need from your child?  Do you need to need anything?  Once upon a time, children were expected to provide for their parents in their old age.  Although there are aspects of that in our modern life, I think that few people nowadays think in terms of securing their golden years by means of having children.

I remember as a high school senior realizing that my parents wanted me to succeed largely so they could brag about my successes to their friends.  I rejected that concept, so I kept whatever successes I had to myself.  I don’t think my parents were unique or even extraordinary wanting to “use” me in that way.  Still, I reject the notion that kids need to or should provide parents with reasons to self-congratulate.  (Remember that if you are the one responsible for what a wonderful child yours is or what wonderful things they do, so must you then, I suppose, be responsible for the bad and wrong things they may do…it gets very sticky if you go down this road…)

I suppose the question posed here is one of the most fundamental.  It is a question that most of us don’t pose to ourselves and our partners as we enter into the parent state.  Still, and very much in tune with the tagline of this blog, “Think about it”…well, let’s think about it. Should you need something from your child” and if so, what.

There is no single or simple answer to this first and most fundamental question.