LETTING GO OF OUR ADULT CHILDREN
Chapter 2: When Children March to Different Drummers
Page 5
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Continuation of Chapter 2 of Letting Go of Our Adult Children explores the process of coming to the realization that a child has disappointed his parents.
Nagging Fueled by Guilt
If you respond to disappointment in your child by frequently offering comments and suggestions for how he should live his life, you are not alone. You may call what you do "showing an interest in my child" and "just staling my opinion." Your child recognizes it for what it is, "nagging."
When we are stuck in a parent-to-child relationship, our "suggestions" easily take on the tone of nagging and manipulation. This is not surprising. We think we understand our child's vulnerabilities — and what he should do to overcome them. We know there are always pitfalls and dangers lying ahead to snare the unwary. After all, we've been around the block a few times and have made more than a few mistakes of our own. We want to prevent our child from going through what we experienced.
Consequently, if coercion and frequent reminders were our favorite techniques in getting our child to change when he was young, we will probably continue to use that approach in our attempts to reverse the direction in which our adult child is moving. With efforts both subtle and direct, we encourage our child to be more responsible, to enter a treatment program or to stop living with that no-good character. We lose sleep, money, and time in our efforts to form our child into the shape we want. Seldom do we see much progress for our efforts, but we continue trying "for the sake of our child."
If the truth be known, we often continue as much for our sake as for the benefit of our child. The reason is not because we are narcissistic and don't want our child to have a life of his own. But we parents have been sold a bill of goods. We have been told that parents, especially mothers, have the power to affect our child's personality and lifestyle to a great degree. When we buy this myth and our grown child doesn't "turn out" as we think he should, we assume it is our fault. We are afraid we won't get our good parent badge until he turns out "right." So we keep nagging in the hope that things will change and we won't feel like failures.
Passive Hope and Crying in Our Beer
Some disappointed parents don't get angry. They don't nag. They simply throw up their hands in resignation and claim there is "nothing" they can do. There is, of course. They could work on exploring why they can't let go freely. Unfortunately, they think they have given their child freedom to choose her own life. But their gift of "letting go " is attached to the not-well-hidden proviso that she should choose what they know is best for her. This passive tactic seldom works any better than direct nagging and expressions of anger.
Nevertheless, these parents are left with a vague hope that things will, somehow, work out. They maintain a vigil for signs of "improvement," signs that their child will make the changes they want her to make. When that doesn't happen, they settle deeper and deeper into their side of the rift that separates them from their daughter. They may not jerk the rope, but they also won't let go.
The passivity of some parents is worn like a hair shirt they display at every opportunity. They become experts in playing the martyr, releasing deep sighs meant to influence their audience; sighs that seem to say, "After all we've done for her, you'd think she'd be able to see what's best for her." Their sighs have no effect, of course, on getting their daughter to see things differently. But what is even more unfortunate, their sighs prevent their hearts from healing.
Unable or unwilling to address differences in values with their child openly and directly, a process that might resolve those differences, they have no good outlet for their distress. Such parents often develop physical and emotional problems that are difficult to solve. After all, it is hard to cure an ailment in which symptoms are far removed from the cause.
Acceptance
This last response of parents to disappointment in their adult children is characteristic of those who focus their attention on developing what can be called an adult-to-adult relationship with their child. They don't waste time in anger, blame, guilt, or vacant hope. When they express honest differences of opinion, they aren't nagging. They respect the right of their child to have different views. They may even have heated discussions but they don't indulge in pointless arguments. And while they may offer suggestions on what their child might do to resolve a problem, they make it clear that it is the child's right and responsibility to make a final decision.
This book is all about how you can become this kind of parent. You, too, can learn to accept your child and to let go with love, even though your child's functioning in life and her choices have helped create painful rifts in the family.
In looking at the four ways parents express their disappointment in how things have turned out, we can look again at Maria's and my situation.
Maria's personality clearly shaped the way she responded to Angela's engagement. Her independent nature and desire to solve problems by herself led her, initially, to keep her opinions hidden. She seldom expressed anger and was afraid that telling Angela she was upset might cause her daughter to pull away from her. Since she had not been an overbearing mother when the children were young, nagging to keep Angela from marrying Kenji was not her style. It was her strength of character that gave her the courage to discuss her concerns with me, even though acknowledgment of her views opened her to the possibility that I might consider her prejudiced.
As I discussed in the first chapter, both Bob's personality and mine played major roles in shaping the way we responded to Matthew's drug and alcohol use — laying the foundation for an eventual rift between him and us. When it had become a full-blown problem, Bob was able to cut himself off emotionally better than I could. Since he doesn't often get angry, he didn't waste a lot of time ranting and complaining. He also didn't blame others, simply believing that Matthew was responsible for his actions once he became an adult.
For the first several years after Matthew began using drugs, my primary technique was guilt-driven manipulation. I would try more and more subtle devices to get him to change. None worked. Finally, I decided to give up trying. However, stopping was not as easy as I expected. Just as ocean liners can continue moving forward for a great distance after the engines are reversed, the inertia of my old habits sometimes caused me to continue trying to change Matthew long after I decided to stop.
Keeping Our Troubles to Ourselves
When a group of parents who have adult children get together, there will almost always be those whose children have not "turned out" as expected. Yet often others in the group may not suspect that anything is wrong. Why? A few parents, of course, will not say anything because they are like Audrey, mentioned at the start of this chapter, and think they "should" be accepting of their children. Others, however, clearly know they are unhappy; they are just reluctant to discuss their family's situation openly. Perhaps they come from homes where they were warned about "hanging the family's dirty laundry in public." They believe they have to keep their troubles to themselves.
If their pain becomes intense, however, they may reach out to a friend, pastor or therapist. Even then, they may avoid discussing their problem by talking about the stress they feel at work, the trouble they are having with a car repair project, worry over a spouse's health or a running feud with noisy neighbors. They are like the mother killdeer, a bird who distracts intruders by pretending her wing is broken, hoping to prevent them from noticing her babies in a nearby nest. They can be quite inventive in designing ways to distract others, and themselves, from seeing the pain in their heart because it is too great. And so the pain remains hidden, unable to be touched and healed by understanding and support from others.
In addition to the taboo some parents have against sharing family difficulties, there are many other reasons disappointed parents hide their feelings from those outside the family (and often within the circle of their own relatives). Here are some of the reasons parents have given me for failing to tell others of their pain.
They may be embarrassed by the actions of their child — and embarrassment tends to keep anyone quiet.
After struggling for years to resolve a problem within the family, they may not have the energy to rehash old wounds. Besides, they figure it won't do any good. What could someone else possibly suggest? They have tried everything.
They expect others will judge them as harshly, or more harshly, than they already judge themselves.
Their pain may simply be too close to the surface to trust others with it. Typical is the mother whose son had problems similar to those we had with ours. She came up to me after a talk I had given, impressed that I could openly discuss our family's situation, and said, "I think sometimes that telling others about my son could help me, but I always cry when I use his name." Her eyes glistened with tears as she spoke.
There are times when parents are distracted from the rift with their child by other pressing issues that take center stage, such as tending to the serious illness of a family member.
Even though I freely told my worries about Matthew to friends, for a long time I was very careful around others. I avoided parents who had raised highly successful children with what appeared to be little effort. Others to be avoided were those who would tell me about friends whose children were worse off than Matthew and those who, in an attempt to make me feel better, would insist that "everything will work out fine." It doesn't help a toothache sufferer to know that at any given moment there are millions of other toothache sufferers in the world. It didn't help to be told that eventually Matthew would see the light. So far that hasn't happened; at least he hasn't seen the light I would like him to notice. Discouraging parents from feeling their pain does not make it go away.
On the other hand, there are those who have helped diminish my pain by listening with an open heart. I particularly remember a woman I met five years ago at a workshop we attended. Several of us went to lunch together and were talking about our families. As I shared about Matthew, she said, "You must hurt a lot. I don't know what I would do if I were in your shoes." Her understanding words were like a gentle hug, deeply touching my heart. They didn't change my situation one bit. My son still had his problems. I still didn't know what else to do. However, for the moment at least, I realized that I didn't need to carry my pain alone.
If you are having trouble letting others know how you feel, I encourage you to open your heart so others can share your burden. You may even discover solutions you had not considered.
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© Copyright 1994, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT, Reprinted with permission
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