Repair broken relationships - before it's too late

To recap on the strained relationship I had with one of my children, they were my partner's favourite and a little monster because my partner took the child's side over everyone else. My child had a major attitude problem towards me (and others) because they thought they ruled the house. For example the only person they would let hold them was my partner, if I or our other children tried to hold them, they would whack at us, struggle and cry. Then my partner would come along and molly coddle them and all would be well, except that it reinforced my child's own importance and my partner's importance, while showing that the rest of the family were irrelevant.

 

As my child grew, since I was bad cop, the one always saying no to him, they would challenge me physically and verbally. They'd tell me I'm not the boss then we'd have scuffles followed by all mighty tantrums because they weren't winning and the other parent wasn't around to back the up. In short they were hard work.

Good times... not!

Add to that the resentment I felt towards my child and my partner because things weren't turning out well. There was a heartbreaking moment where I truly felt I didn't like my own child and wasn't so sure having them had been a good idea. I loved and took care of them, protected them and guarded their life with my own like any good mother, and I wanted to like them but they were obnoxious and precocious and didn't seem to like me very much.

As the years passed by our relationship became more and more strained. The child trying to win and struggle and fight, me wanting them to like me while trying to still be a good parent and not to show my resentment... and feeling like the world's crappiest mum.

There came a point in time when I realised it was up to me to repair the relationship, to fix the damage and re-bond with them in a way I hadn't when they were little. I needed to do it now or else our relationship would get worse and we'd struggle through the teen years. I wasn't prepared to deal with them rebelling as a teen. If they were this bad as a child who knew what grief they'd give me in the teens.

I started having quality one on one time with my child. Removing us both from the family environment and going out together. We had a weekly ritual of going out for afternoon tea and using that time to talk, bond, and get to know each other. It took a while. At first the conversation was strained. They had a habit of seeing everything I said as an attack, being overly sensitive and taking offensive to a lot that was said. I had to tiptoe around them. To make matters worse my partner resented my time with our child, seeing it as me trying to squeeze my partner out and trying to become the favourite.

This wasn't about making my child like me. It wasn't about trying to be more favoured than the other parent. It was about me getting to know my child, what they liked and the type of person they are. It was about learning to appreciate and bond so that moving forward we had friendship, comradery instead of fighting.

Things are much better between us now. We have long conversations together and enjoy each other's company. We still have our clashes because we're not going to get along 100% of the time. The main thing is it was up to ME to repair things. It couldn't be them because they were little and a product of their upbringing. They couldn't help that the other parent chose to spoil them and they didn't choose to be caught in the middle of our good cop/bad cop routine. I couldn't change my partner (not over night anyway) or my child so I needed to change ME and make me the catalyst for new beginnings.