Psychology Simplified – On Like Father, Like Child
That we inherit genes from our parents is no longer deniable. That we copy many traits and behavioural patterns from our parents is equally indisputable, yet many of us are blind to our susceptibility to replicate these at an early age. More, we can be so good at this that we can present ourselves with a choice about how we live the rest of our lives. Either, we can break the patterns and live our own lives; or we can stick with them, and relive those of our parents.
Before we look at the impact of this, how does this manifest itself?
Watch an adopted child’s facial expressions and you could be forgiven for thinking it must be the actual child of the mother. Given that child can mimic even the way it blinks so closely to resemble the mother, that one can assume it must be an inherited trait. The way a parent and child can stand can be identical, as can the style of their walk.
But it can go deeper than that and we can copy behavioural styles of our parents as though they were personality traits inherited from our parents. This can seem to dictate and condition even how we communicate within the family and then, as we grow up, how we communicate and behave with those we meet outside the family.
If our parents always argued, there is every chance we will have adopted the same stance. If they never displayed anger and instead maybe sulked, we can have learned to do the same. If they never resolved any upsets or grievances in front of us or within earshot, then we could well have lacked the family “training” to resolve our own disputes with others as our lives have progressed.
If the father never talks to his wife or any member of the family about his business life or employment, their child may develop the same trait and never talk to them about experiences at school. A father’s reluctance to share the uncertainties and challenges of his job can be mirrored by his child’s reticence and secrecy. As a result the child may not reveal its difficulties in the classroom or bullying in the play ground.
A mother who is not enjoying the best of health, whether for local environmental reasons or from inherited genetic disorders, may never speak of them or share them. So often she will nurture a child who does the same.
What can be really surprising to those parents who seek expert help and family counselling over a child’s apparent unwillingness of inability to share issues at home, is to hear that they have created the problem!
So justified and so natural to themselves can be their own behaviour, they are blind to its impact on their own children. In so far as they are aware of their own particular reticence to share certain aspects of their lives, they often cannot find any justification in their child replicating it in a part of theirs. Nor can they see the connection!
By getting professional help, we can better discover the true extent of how blind we can be about ourselves. One can learn to identify the nature and impact of patterns one formed when young. Having done that, we can work on modifying them to start to live our lives as we would choose, behaviorally speaking. Or, of course, we can rest with what patterns we have and relive our parents lives.
The only thing we are no longer entitled to do is to claim convincingly that, patterned or not, this is the sum total of who we are. It is not the case. The essence of us remains the same, but can be lost or enhanced by the patterns we super-impose on ourselves. We can acquire these at any age. But so too these patterns can be changed at any age to our benefit.
Sir Gerry Neale has lectured and trained under-graduates and post graduates at the University of Westminster in cognitive thinking. He has mentored courses for corporate strategic planning and how to position the organisation’s and the individual’s thinking in relation to them. He has conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with individuals in person and on-line.
He can be reached on http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com and http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com