Little children or a little child-like?

Posted by lili on Sun 27 May 01, 10:59 AM

Not too long ago Tanos came across a message posted on a mailing list. He passed it on to me. I read it and thought it was absolutely wonderful. It was posted with the title "A submissive's message to a Dominant." It read:

1. Don't spoil me. I know quite well that I ought not to have all I ask for. I'm only testing you.

2. Don't be afraid to be firm with me. I prefer it, it makes me feel secure.

3. Don't let me form bad habits. I have to rely on you to detect them in a early stage.

4. Don't make me feel smaller than I am. It only makes me behave stupidly "big".

5. Don't correct me in front of people, if you can help it. I'll take much more notice if you talk quietly with me in private.

6. Don't make me feel that my mistakes are sins. It upsets my sense of values.

7. Don't protect me from consequences. I need to learn the painful way sometimes.

8. Don't be too upset when I say "I hate you". Sometimes it isn't you I hate but your power to thwart me.

9. Don't take too much notice of my ailments. Sometimes they get me attention I don't need.

10. Don't nag. If you do, I shall have to protect myself by being deaf.

11. Don't forget that I cannot explain myself as well as I should like. That's why I am not always accurate.

12. Don't put me off when I ask questions. If you do you'll find that I stop asking you and seek my information elsewhere.

13. Don't be inconsistant. That completely confuses me and makes me loose faith in you.

14. Don't tell me my fears are silly. They are terribly real and you can do much to reassure me if you try to understand.

15. Don't ever suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It gives me too great a shock when I discover that you are neither.

16. Don't ever think that it is beneath your dignity to apologize to me. An honest apology makes me suprisingly warm towards you.

17. Don't forget I love experimenting. I couldn't get along without it, so please put up with it.

18. Don't forget how quickly I am growing up. It must be difficult for you to keep pace with me, but please try to.

19. Don't forget that I don't thrive without lots of love and understanding but I don't need to tell you that do I?

20. Please keep yourself fit and healthy. I need you.

Interestingly enough it's origin is not in the D/s world at all. A little digging came up with Thomas C. Ritt, Jr as the author for the Arizona ACLD Newsletter right back in December 1975 and it's original title was "A message from a child to a parent".

So what does this mean? Are we all just little girls wanting a good "father-figure"? Could it be true that in order to achieve M/s a Dominant needs to parent a grown child?

Personally I believe some of the answers to those questions lie in Berne's description of the three ego states: Parent-Adult-Child used in the process of transactional analysis [You can find a link to "Games people play" by Eric Berne through Amazon at http://www.slaveregister.com/books/ but perhaps I will leave a fuller exploration for my homepage, since it is turning out to be far lengthier than I expected nor intended it to be.

For now, I hope you enjoy the memo as it is, even more so with a twist!

NB I did write that essay..and I did put it onto my homepage: http://www.tanos.org.uk/lianne/PAC.html

Edited Tue 6 Nov 01, 7:29 AM by lili