Unconditional Love vs. Conditional Love - A Parent's Struggle

And what I noticed real quickly, my children, this is the beauty of children, that they know us at times better than we even know ourselves. Yes. And my two oldest, the two, you know, two boys, like they picked up on my insecurity and they kept they kept like kind of like rubbing it in my face a little bit. And they were young. Yeah, they were Yeah, they were young. And they kept like like Yeah, I remember one of them got dressed and like he did his buttons wrong and he's like, "Aba, what do you think of this?" And I of course I just want to enjoy it and have a good time. But I found like my need for them to be a certain way was which is what we would call conditional love. That's what we would call it in that moment. It was a experience of conditional love. I needed them to be a certain way to quiet my own insecurities. And I placed attention upon them that they didn't deserve. They didn't need. And I think that we ultimately but it was coming from my myself. My own feelings of you know am I am I really good enough? Am I valuable enough? Will people see me in a regard that I'd like to be seen or will they see me as as a human being with flaws? And in that moment for whatever reason I didn't want to be perceived as a person with flaws. I wanted to be seen as sort of put together. And uh and I I was forsaking myself and worst of all I was forsaking my children. Um, and I think one of the beautiful parts of this story is that there was attention and we were able to speak about it and we ultimately made that decision to say until, well, it's mostly me like until I kind of work it out, um, we shouldn't place our children in such a position where they're uncomfortable with it. And obviously we've gone to other programs since and we've gotten to I've gotten to a better place with it. Um, but it's just amazing to kind of look at this story of conditional or unconditional love, not from the vantage point of our own cognition. What do we believe in? What's correct? But rather look at that question with a mirror before us and say, "What is going on with me? Why do I need my kids to be a certain way? Why do I why do I impose certain beliefs on them?" And I think the more we ask ourselves that question, the more we're going to realize that it's it's our own work. And if we if we do that well enough and we're aware enough of who we are as people, then we're going to have much less of a need to place to impose these sanctions upon other people that give them that sense of of ultimate loss in in who they are.