Reply to How to communicate to parents about reason of estrangement so they can stop the “we have no idea”?

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Reply to "How to communicate to parents about reason of estrangement so they can stop the “we have no idea”?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm guessing they have no idea because they were usually never "trying" to hurt you so they don't get it when you were hurt. In their own minds, they were "doing their best" and no one's perfect etc.

I have had tastes of it over time. Like the time I told my 14 yo son in the car that no he could not miss his hockey game to take a girl we'd never met and he'd only met online to a junior high prom at another school and it turned into a whole "so thanks mom and dad for telling me you don't think someone could be interested in me!"

He also once got mad coming home to visit from college where he spent the whole day visiting everyone else and after several "I'll just be a bit delayed" he said he'd be at my house at around 9:30pm and I said, "it's OK I am just done and going to sleep" and he took that as some kind of hostile "I AM DONE !!! (with you)" etc. when I was just basically face-planting after waiting the whole day for him to come around.

His last stop had been my in-laws and they said it was shameful that I got mad at him for staying so long there. I wasn't even mad at all. I was seriously just falling asleep and was entirely okay with stuff just going to the next day.

I really didn't even understand what I'd done wrong, but he took those two things as great offenses at the time. Now he doesn't, of course.

The same "prom girl" he eventually did date for a while also threw a conniption fit a few years later when she wanted him to take him to another prom and he told her we were making him stay to take his final exams that day at his prep school until 4pm, throwing her entire timeline off course.

She was such a pill she wouldn't even let me take pictures of them while I was helping him dress in his tux in the parking lot of her HS to help them make the bus to the fancy hotel. She wouldn't even look me in the eye and turned away when I tried to hug her.

He says today he realizes it all.

[/quote]

So I actually read these examples you're giving.  I think an emotionally mature thing to do as a parent is in the moment have the conversation with the teenager about how you got to that level of misunderstanding.  Because both your examples and especially the second one (I am just done) truly do have a lot of room for misunderstanding.  The parent is just not automatically right with good intentions.  Parents should own their own role and fallibility in sometimes not using the best tone or being tired or just not handling things great.   Through these conversations you'll better earn trust and figure out each other's triggers.   Don't just dismiss their feelings or reactions and don't just count on one day they will realize they were wrong and you were right because your intentions were always good.  Yes, I have teenagers.  [/quote]

I truly appreciate this take.

I still have conversations with this same son (30s) all the time and we constantly talk over one another about "what we mean" vs. what we say ... he's the only person in life I ever have these kinds of talks with, none of his siblings come close to his level of the "prove me wrong" genre

He did it years ago "how do you feel about Colin Kaepernick" and I think I said, "OK IdK right time right place" and he came straight back at me ... like he's always been a dude. Even when I didn't know I'd been raising a dude. He has taught me.

I haven't done everything right, but apparently I did some things right.

Even when he was arguing with me in the car as a 14 year old. He's himself and he knows who he is. [/quote]

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