Lisa Dunning, California Marriage & Family Therapist
Parent / Child Relationship Expert

When Your Child Does Not Meet Your Expectations

When you and your partner were expecting your first child, you probably enjoyed mapping out their entire future. If you are raising a girl, you may have envisioned her as the first female president or a ballerina or a doctor. If you are raising a boy, you may have imagined him as a famous athlete or the president or a lawyer or doctor. If these were not your child's goals, you probably had other goals equally as grand. After some time with your child, you may have realized that your son was not as athletic as you had hoped. He may be a sensitive child, enjoying arts and crafts and listening to music. Or you realized your daughter was not the smartest child in her class and was as graceful as an ox. At some point in their development, you began to realize your goals for your child were not going to happen. As parents, we hold on to these dreams until we realize that our child has dreams of their own or has no interest or talent for the dreams we envisioned for them.

The Death Of A Dream

What do you do when your partner wants your child to be that super athlete, movie star, singer, or Nobel Prize winning scientist and yet your child shows no interest in any of your partner's dreams. Or perhaps your child shows an interest in being a famous athlete but is born with two left feet. The difficulty comes when you try to communicate your disappointments in the loss of the ideal child, or dream, to your partner. As parents, we often place our expectations on our child because we did not fulfill our own expectations. Parents who fully pursue and achieve their dreams, generally do not pressure their child to pursue the same dream. They strangely almost discourage their child from following in their footsteps. Perhaps your partner wanted to be that famous athlete, movie star, singer or Nobel Prize winning scientist but did not have the talent, family support or the drive to fulfill that dream, so they kept the dream alive in their child.