It should not be a surprise to learn that not every mother is loving nor is every father understanding and accepting. Some are down right mean and difficult to live with. Some have been demanding and dominating to their children from the day they became parents and intend to keep it that way until sometime after their funeral. I could spend more time and space than anyone would want to read just telling the stories I have heard over the years. Some would curl your hair. Some would drive us to tears.

These parents are hard to live with in their normal existence. When they must have outside care to live, they become impossible. Their kids can never do enough and what they do is never right. I have always been shocked by fathers who curse their children and put them down at every visit. They remember every mistake ever made and seem to enjoy bringing them up at every possible occasion. 

It takes a certain kind of parent to do that. Why would any parent want to? It also takes a certain kind of adult child to allow themselves to be subjected to such treatment. The strange thing is, in many of these cases, one child is subjected to the abuse and the other children are not. The difference is that some children are more prone to accept and allow this treatment and others will not stand still and let it happen. Manipulation is by invitation only. If someone is manipulating me it is at least partly because I am allowing it to happen. The question is, why are some more prone to allowing themselves to be mistreated? We will never find a cure for the problem until we figure out the reason it is allowed,

Almost every family has at least one unblessed child. I do not know who came up with that term, but it fits hundreds of people I have tried to help. Some of us just never feel like we have received the blessing from our parents. Never felt that we have met their expectations for us or that we somehow do not measure up to our siblings. We think the other kids are smarter, or better looking, or somehow more loved by the parents. 

Sometimes this is a perceived idea we bring on ourselves by noticing little slights or having parents that are not very demonstrative in their love and support. Other times it is a blatant and open rejection by the parents. I have a friend who was told all of her life that her mother did not want her. Her older sister was the only child the mother wanted and when she was born the mother looked at her and wondered why she was born. The mother told that story openly to anyone who would listen including the daughter. The mother has always been full of praise for the sister and full of scorn or disinterest in my friend. Nothing she could do was good enough or acknowledged. Most of the time her accomplishments were belittled. That produced the classic unblessed child.

Most unblessed children spend their lives trying to earn the blessing, with little or no success, but they keep trying. The real rub is that the unblessed child usually ends up being the primary caregiver to the aging parents. They do this in the hopes of finally earning the blessing. It also happens because they have never known how to stand up and say no to their parents, no matter what it cost them or what kind of punishment they must face. 

The only “cure” for the unblessed child is to find the courage to stand up and say, “This is me! Everyone needs to decide whether or not to love me as I am. If you do, great. If you don’t, then I will live without your love. I am not going to spend my life chasing a rainbow that has no pot of gold at the end.”

I speak as a recovering unblessed child. The day came when I simply did not care whether they loved me or not. After I stood up, I developed a very good relationship with my parents. I do not think that could have ever happened without my doing so. It was a gamble on my part of course. They could have rejected my position and I would have been an exile. I was willing to take that chance. Dominance dies when, and only when, someone refuses to be dominated no matter what it cost.

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