Wise Advice

It is certainly true that parents like to map out a path for their children, drawing on things they themselves enjoyed doing or still enjoy doing. This is absolutely fine, provided you also accept that a child may go their own way and perhaps even reject one or two things that you yourself enjoyed. But if the child loses their sense of self-worth because they are not a reflection of the parent’s own personality, then the relationship becomes toxic, with a clear victim.

“Wise Advice” explores this toxic relationship between a narcissistic parent and their child. For the narcissist does not want the child to develop independently; they want the child to confirm their own perfection. The child is expected to repeat and validate the narcissist’s behaviour.

This may even work at a very young age, as children naturally look to their parents for guidance. For example, if the father listens to a certain kind of music, the child will listen to it too. But at the latest when the child gets older and develops their own preferences, the situation becomes difficult.

The narcissist must come to terms with the fact that their own child rejects things which they themselves consider to be best. For a ‘normal’ person, this is possible, but for a narcissist, it is inconceivable.

The result is the devaluation of their own child. Everything the child does is worthless. If the child wants this parent’s approval, the only option is submission – in other words, giving up their own needs. Or rebellion. This rebellion comes at a price: devaluation and even outright disregard from the narcissist.

Children in these relationships quickly learn that a person’s worth is conditional. There is no such thing as love without something in return. Unconditional love is a foreign concept.

With ‘Wise Advice’, I wanted to portray the pain a child experiences when they realise they can never earn their own parent’s approval. The choice of New Wave and, in particular, New Romantic was very deliberate. One would tend to assume that a New Romantic song depicts something beautiful, something that warms the heart. Here, the opposite is the case. The sound thus represents the dreamlike idealisation of parents, whilst the lyrics depict the brutal truth of a toxic relationship. The ‘wise advice’ is, in fact, an endless burden.