Reply to What do you do when your adult child goes into therapy and lays blame at your feet.

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Reply to "What do you do when your adult child goes into therapy and lays blame at your feet."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I feel like the parents who think it is unnecessary or messed up to listen to an adult child, validate feelings, etc. might not have great relationships in other realms of their lives? Unless you genuinely think that your relationship with adult children follows a different set of rules, it sounds like all this resistance to basic relationship principles--empathy, self-reflection, genuine care for how the other is feeling, non-defensiveness, etc--aren't something these posters see as valuable or are practiced with.

So maybe t's not a matter of how adults see their adult children, but rather how these commenters approach interpersonal relationships  generally. Which shouldn't be surprising; most of us are bad at interpersonal relationships. They are hard. [/quote]

The parent-child relationship is not like other relationships. The parent puts the child's needs first and the child is front and center in the parents' life. Other relationships don't demand that of us. That CANNOT last forever. But some kids never move on from being the center of the universe. They never see themselves as adults, just like their parents. They're stuck being needy children. Meanwhile the parents are exhausted from all the work of parenting the needy child.[/quote]

In many relationships, people get caught up with “well what about all I have done for you?” You see this all the time in marriages. It’s like if someone does a lot for the other, [b]they don’t get to point out how something hurt because that means they’re ungrateful. I see the same dynamic happening here.[/b] And if you want a good relationship , you can’t believe that your efforts to help the other person means their feelings don’t matter. So this isn’t about how relationships with adult children are different, it’s just lack of skill in relationships generally  [/quote]

DP. You don’t see that happening here because OP has admitted to specific things she regrets doing and she said she’s apologized. Whatever you’re projecting onto OP, just stop already and go deal with your own issues. Talk about inability to stop centering yourself….[/quote]

That was a poor apology which is a big part of the problem.[/quote]

What would a 'good' apology look like?  Getting down on bended knee at DS feet and apologizing for everything DS didn't like about his upbringing?  
Would that solidify DS's belief that his unhappiness is due to his parents choices and not his own? And that DS is not responsible for any of the problems he has in life? Psrents made the problems so they must fix them.[/quote]

Getting down on bender knee? Your hyperbole makes it difficult to take you seriously. Why can’t OP apologize her poor choices, some of which she can now see are wrong. Why can’t she acknowledge that these choices hurt her child? Why does OP (and apparently you) need an apology need to come with a defense.  There is not a person on this 30 page thread who disagrees that the adult must take of his own life at this point. Why do you continue to raise strawmen? [/quote]

OP says she has apologized. She hasn’t told us how she did it or whether bended knees were involved. She has acknowledged here some of her poor choices. You’re ready to condemn her because she hasn’t painted a picture of abject self-abasement, but in fact we don’t know the details. [/quote]

Your problem is [b]equating any criticism of OP with "condeming" her,[/b] and any attempt to understand her child or see his point of view with "abject self-abasement."  Which speaks volumes about your own ability to handle criticism, and hence puts your view of OP's situation into a certain light.  [/quote]

Slightly related, my 40 something dh is going through some things emotionally and trying to make sense of a couple of childhood occurrences. He asked hid mom to fill in the blanks or set the record straight on 2 things. She answered his questions and he thought it was a good talk. He never mentioned to her the horrible fights his parents had, nor the effect they had on him. She called him a week later and asked if he-thought she was a bad mom. He told her she did the best she could (she was a bad mom, imo) and that he was trying to understand why he feels and reacts a certain way when it comes to feeling and expressing emotions. He never blamed or accused her of anything. The next time they spoke, she cried to him about the horrible fights her parents had in front of her and her siblings and how they were scared and cried and hid (dh and sibs did same). [b]Dh now sees and is trying to accept that he cannot have more than a superficial relationship with his mom. He told her he was suffering and she found a way to make it about her and her suffering.[/b][/quote]

Don't you think that DHs suffering is an extension of his mom's suffering? Her history puts his experience into context. It's like a person that grew up poor and blaming his parents without understanding what brought them into poverty. Just resenting your parents without context is simplistic childish thinking.[/quote]

I actually see that as his mom trying to share a part of her past which might explain why she is the way she is to give him perspective and understanding so he could work on the reason he reached out to her in the first place. You are completely writing her off and encouraging your husband to do so as well. Why not just listen? [b]You'd listen to your friend talk about their trauma but Mom doesn't get/deserve the same consideration? 
[/quote][/b]

This is a really interesting, and I don't know that we owe our parents a supportive ear for their trauma in the way we may want to listen to a friend.  Particularly, if the relationship is not a peer-to-peer relationship in other ways.[/quote]

Yes. [b]Parents going to kids for comfort from their traumas is parentification, which is abusive. [/b]An explanation like "My mother screamed at me, and I unfortunately didn't learn better not to scream at my own children" seems OK enough, as long it is delivered in a factual, neutral way. Parents ideally are strong and in charge. If they messed up, they need to own it without needing sympathy or comfort from the children they hurt with their ignorant and/or abusive behavior.[/quote]

I don't think this is necessarily true for parents and adult kids. I think part of growing up is relating to our parents as adults, and sometimes that means our emotions aren't always the primary focus. I'm not perfect at this myself, in some ways I do want my mom to be my rock instead of a person who comes to me with her flaws and struggles, but I think things change in adulthood. [/quote]

Ok sure, parentification applies to kids who are actually children, when that damage happens, not adult children. If you have a good base and now you're all grown up, chances are, you have healthy parents who can lean on you if they need to. I have one parent who would never, ever lean on me in 1 million years, but he could and I would be happy to be leaned on by him. My other parent was a parentifier and so needy, it's as if she's a toddler. I resent her very strongly.[/quote]

I disagree that parentification  can only happen to kids. Yes, things change. We can share more with our kids as they age. But the parent should still always be the parent, the one who is willing to provide more emotional support.

And the problem is that a lot of parents who think that once their kids are adults you can treat them like anybody else is that they often think this means they can dump the struggles they had as parents on their kids, the same way they would go a friend. And in those conversations some parents make their difficulties with parenthood the primary focus, rather than letting the adult child’s difficulties of being parented be the primary focus. So the adult child is stuck being the one who supports rather than is supported (that’s where parentification comes in) or accused of being entitled and childish.

We don’t need to cry to our kids about how hard we had it as parents. We have friends and spouses for that. Sure let’s empathize with them when they come to us talking about how hard it is to be a parent, but in a way that doesn’t center our feelings at the expense of theirs. [/quote]

If we've raised our kids right, they will have empathy for others - even their parents, instead of being ego centered aged babies.[/quote]

I mean, I agree with that. But that is true for the parent in the situation as well, and if you cannot have a conversation with your adult child about their upbringing without centering your own feelings, you yourself are an ego-centered aged baby. It’s entirely possible for both parties to be guilty of that. And I do think this describes some of the parents in this thread. [/quote]

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