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]

It's hard to be always be correct in the right in the moment.

I guess you trust time to sort it out when you acquire perspectives you just haven't had the time to earn.

I'm absolutely not perfect, my daughter is emotionally delayed and still often talks to me, but at least one of her older siblings who has always been her champion gets treated the same way that I do. And she literally loved him so much she would always crawl out of her crib to go find him in ye olden days. That's why it hurts him. We just don't know what irks her.

But it's her decision.

She has all the advantages in life. She's OK.

I guess my basic point is that it's very hard for some sets of parents and kids to communicate. You don't all have the same skills.[/quote]

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