Children like to live in their own world of fantasies. Should their parents allow them to do so? Why/Why not?
Answers
I know that all parents want the best for their kids. We all do. And I know that we raise our children in accordance to what we believe is the right way, but sometimes we also know that it isn't enough. The perfect parent doesn’t exist in real life, and therefore we need some kind of an inner guidance we can rely on. Something that will make us feel confident that we are doing things the right way.
Yesterday, I had a wonderful conversation with a young nine-year-old girl in my private practice. She came to see me because her parents were sure she was hiding something from them. They were terrified. And they were convinced she had already started lying to them, because she was telling strange stories about something she had done–even though they knew she hadn´t. When I met with them at first, they were very skeptical and basically scared they had done it all wrong as parents. That they were about to create a lying monster they wouldn't be able to control.
I asked them what they knew about their daughter, not all the things they were worried or concerned about, but instead I asked if they could tell me something about what she enjoyed and valued the most. They both looked at me and became very emotional. They felt insecure and named a couple of things, which she had recently found amusing, but couldn't tell for sure.
For a long time they hadn't asked her or paid any attention to what was going on in her life. Because of their hectic daily life, they took everything for granted and that nothing had changed. They could see right away that they may have missed something: that they hadn't given her the needed attention and that their working life had taken most of the energy and time away from her.
We agreed that I should have a talk with her, and see if there was anything of concern besides what they had immediately realized