“It’s okay to pay a price if you’re buying something valuable.”
This section is from a book by Eli Lebowitz and Haim Omer. It’s about the SPACE approach - supporting parenting for anxious childhood emotions. Haim Omer was the founder of NVR and I tend to think of it as NVR for parents of extremely fearful/anxious children.
This section is talking about siblings - what we can or should ask/expect of one child in a family, in order to help their brother or sister who’s highly anxious/fearful. A lot of us have walked this road or are walking this road. We’re talking about situations where family boundaries revolve around one child’s fear/anxiety and the accommodation isn’t going to make things better. There’s a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of gratitude. The accommodations are perceived as a right. Everyone falls in line so there isn’t a meltdown, aggression, an act of self harm, or a suicide threat.
To be clear - the anxious child isn’t being deliberately difficult, and parents are genuinely trying to help. Good intentions all round - or at least understandable. But things will only get worse without healthier boundaries. In NVR we think about how to redress the balance in families - where to place our own boundaries, what to ask/expect of brothers and sisters, how to make sure things feel fair to them when they do have a part to play.
The book uses the metaphor of parents/family as a safe harbour. Without boundaries the harbour walls erode over time and there’s no containment.