Getting along with your parents as an adult, part 5: Four ideas about parenting your kids better than you were parented
1. Parenting in reaction to the way your parents interacted with you means their failure still controls you.
It's tempting to look at the things your parents did that hurt you and vow to do the opposite. But when you do that, it means your parents are dictating the way you parent your own kids. So they (and the things they did or didn't do that hurt you) are still controlling you.
One of the running themes I've noticed is parents who didn't seem to see who their kids were or what they really needed. Parenting the opposite from the way your parents did puts you in prime position to do this to your own kids, because you're not focusing on your kids as individuals--you're reparenting yourself instead. My mom laughed about this when I was maybe 6 or 7 and we were at the shoe store. She wanted me to get black patent Mary Janes, but I wanted the brown lace-ups. Finally I broke down and wailed, "Mo-om, I don't want the fancy shoes!" My mom stopped, thought, and realized that when she was that age, she'd always wanted the fancy shoes, but her mother had always made her get the sensible shoes (she already had 2 or 3 younger siblings by that point, so the shoes had to last). So she was forcing me to get the fancy shoes because those were the shoes she'd always wished she'd gotten but could never have.
That's obviously a trivial example, but it does show how you can do this stuff without even thinking about it. But once you do think about it, and expose it, you're not held hostage by it anymore.
Instead, by identifying and releasing what happened to you, you're saying "This wasn't healthy." Then you can calmly figure out what is healthy and start there with your own kids.
2. Giving your children what you didn't get from your parents won't make up for what you didn't get and it won't make it OK. But it's better than repeating the cycle, and it gives you a good relationship with your kids.
If your parents aren't capable of it, you will never get what you need/ed from them. There isn't anything you can do about that. Let yourself grieve/rage/sob.
Even being the best parent you can possibly be won't bring back what you lost from your parents. But at least you know you're not doing to your kids what was done to you. And you're also creating the connection, space, and boundaries necessary for a healthy relationship and closeness with them for the rest of their lives (even though they'll eventually leave you physically).
3. There is no such thing as perfection. But you can do better than your parents did. And you'll hope your kids do better than you did.
My mom is not a perfect mother. From her point of view, she yelled too much. (She pretty much did. Although sometimes we deserved it.) She had other imperfections, too. But she parented me better than her own mother parented her, and my grandmother parented my mom exponentially (truly miraculously) better than her own parents parented her.
That's what's supposed to happen. It is absolutely not possible for you to parent your children perfectly. No matter what you do, they're going to be screwed up somehow. But if you can do better than your own parents did, you're honoring your children. (Those of us with parents who are pretty healthy have probably already heard them say some version of "I know you'll do a better job with your kids than I did with you" and mean it.)
So good news for those of you who got a truly raw deal--you have plenty of room to make some huge mistakes and still have your kids come out of it saying "I have no idea how my mom was such a great mom, especially considering how she was raised."
4. You have the ability to get a reality check.
Something our parents, isolated in their houses and apartments, never had. The internet is here so we can talk to each other and say things like "I freaked out on my toddler in the middle of the night and am afraid I've ruined everything" and there will be people there to tell you to apologize to her and start again in the morning. Or, conversely, to let you know that it's not a realistic expectation that your 4-month-old be able to entertain himself for an hour at a time.
A friend of mine grew up with a mother who never quite recovered from her divorce and was quite bitter about it. My friend said she wanted a healthy marriage and family, so when she was in high school she started spending time at the homes of friends with together parents and happy home lives. And she paid attention to everything and filed it away. She knew she was going to need to see it modeled if she wanted to replicate it. Super-smart cookie, my friend. She knew the danger of being stuck in a feedback loop with only yourself, so she started building a file of reality checks for herself long before she needed them.
Ok, what am I forgetting?
It's tempting to look at the things your parents did that hurt you and vow to do the opposite. But when you do that, it means your parents are dictating the way you parent your own kids. So they (and the things they did or didn't do that hurt you) are still controlling you.
One of the running themes I've noticed is parents who didn't seem to see who their kids were or what they really needed. Parenting the opposite from the way your parents did puts you in prime position to do this to your own kids, because you're not focusing on your kids as individuals--you're reparenting yourself instead. My mom laughed about this when I was maybe 6 or 7 and we were at the shoe store. She wanted me to get black patent Mary Janes, but I wanted the brown lace-ups. Finally I broke down and wailed, "Mo-om, I don't want the fancy shoes!" My mom stopped, thought, and realized that when she was that age, she'd always wanted the fancy shoes, but her mother had always made her get the sensible shoes (she already had 2 or 3 younger siblings by that point, so the shoes had to last). So she was forcing me to get the fancy shoes because those were the shoes she'd always wished she'd gotten but could never have.
That's obviously a trivial example, but it does show how you can do this stuff without even thinking about it. But once you do think about it, and expose it, you're not held hostage by it anymore.
Instead, by identifying and releasing what happened to you, you're saying "This wasn't healthy." Then you can calmly figure out what is healthy and start there with your own kids.
2. Giving your children what you didn't get from your parents won't make up for what you didn't get and it won't make it OK. But it's better than repeating the cycle, and it gives you a good relationship with your kids.
If your parents aren't capable of it, you will never get what you need/ed from them. There isn't anything you can do about that. Let yourself grieve/rage/sob.
Even being the best parent you can possibly be won't bring back what you lost from your parents. But at least you know you're not doing to your kids what was done to you. And you're also creating the connection, space, and boundaries necessary for a healthy relationship and closeness with them for the rest of their lives (even though they'll eventually leave you physically).
3. There is no such thing as perfection. But you can do better than your parents did. And you'll hope your kids do better than you did.
My mom is not a perfect mother. From her point of view, she yelled too much. (She pretty much did. Although sometimes we deserved it.) She had other imperfections, too. But she parented me better than her own mother parented her, and my grandmother parented my mom exponentially (truly miraculously) better than her own parents parented her.
That's what's supposed to happen. It is absolutely not possible for you to parent your children perfectly. No matter what you do, they're going to be screwed up somehow. But if you can do better than your own parents did, you're honoring your children. (Those of us with parents who are pretty healthy have probably already heard them say some version of "I know you'll do a better job with your kids than I did with you" and mean it.)
So good news for those of you who got a truly raw deal--you have plenty of room to make some huge mistakes and still have your kids come out of it saying "I have no idea how my mom was such a great mom, especially considering how she was raised."
4. You have the ability to get a reality check.
Something our parents, isolated in their houses and apartments, never had. The internet is here so we can talk to each other and say things like "I freaked out on my toddler in the middle of the night and am afraid I've ruined everything" and there will be people there to tell you to apologize to her and start again in the morning. Or, conversely, to let you know that it's not a realistic expectation that your 4-month-old be able to entertain himself for an hour at a time.
A friend of mine grew up with a mother who never quite recovered from her divorce and was quite bitter about it. My friend said she wanted a healthy marriage and family, so when she was in high school she started spending time at the homes of friends with together parents and happy home lives. And she paid attention to everything and filed it away. She knew she was going to need to see it modeled if she wanted to replicate it. Super-smart cookie, my friend. She knew the danger of being stuck in a feedback loop with only yourself, so she started building a file of reality checks for herself long before she needed them.
Ok, what am I forgetting?
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I think forgiveness and empathy are two critical points for being able to move past your own childhood into a sane adulthood.
At some point, usually in our teens or early twenties, we realize that our parents didn't get some magic handbook when we were born that told them how to be perfect. We realize that they are just as flawed and human and real as any other person (like The Velveteen Rabbit - they're real because of their imperfections, not in spite of them). At some point, we have to accept that and forgive them for being imperfect in whatever ways injured us. Only when you've truly forgiven them can you a) build a healthy relationship with them, and b) heal your own hurts. I think you also have to forgive God, or whoever you believe in, for sticking you with such a broken person for a parent. With me, I remember that there are people (friends of mine) whose fathers abused them horribly. While mine wasn't perfect, he never hurt me or touched me inappropriately, so I have a lot to be grateful for. Someone's always got it worse, right, so it's healthy, I think, to forgive the universe for giving you the rough spots to deal with in your parents, and for not giving you anything rougher than you got.
As far as the second, empathy, that has been a lot easier for me to grasp since I had kids. We all thought we understood what it was like to be a parent, didn't we? Before we had kids, we thought we knew. But we didn't even know what we didn't know. Now that we have kids, and we can simultaneously love them so much it hurts and want to list them on Ebay, well, we have empathy - true empathy - for what our parents went through.
A lot of our mothers had it so much worse than we've got it now. They couldn't choose to work, because daycare was less available than it is now. They had husbands who helped so little, because they weren't expected to do anything. They had mothers telling them they were doing everything wrong, and they lived in a world that was really going through tumult and upheaval. A lot of them were stuck in really bad, even abusive marriages, and didn't have the social support to get out of them. A lot of them got out of those marriages, and found that they could barely keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths.
No one has a kid and sets out to screw it up as badly as possible in 18 years. I really believe that most parents try, and do their best. It's just that some peoples' best doesn't measure up to other peoples'.
Anyway, I think empathy and forgiveness are essential, before you even try to proceed with all the other things you listed.
Amy @ http://prettybabies.blogspot.com (where we do NOT talk about anything nearly so controversial, because all my parents and in laws read it. I think I need a blog where I can talk about the stuff that really matters to me!)
Posted by: Amy | May 31, 2008 at 11:39 PM
So eloquent and well said.
Posted by: Sharon aka Mommie Mentor | June 01, 2008 at 12:20 AM
And I'll add gratitude and patience with ourselves as we figure it out.
starting with the second - patience is hard when we're trying to do better than our parents. There's an urgency to get it right, NOW. And a really deep pain when we see we didn't in some way. It's hard to look for the next opportunity, and we feel we've missed the boat already and there will never be another (@sue, oh, the many many times I've taught another layer of 'please speak to me, even if you don't think it will help, even if you're certain it won't.' and 'you, yourself, are worth protecting'... most of my kids understood that from birth, but not all. You *WILL* have many many chances to impart that lesson, in layers, until it is part of her structure of self. Good luck with the new preschool/daycare search!). So, be patient with yourself. We see our childhood as a string of failures and successes, but it's really layers and layers built up. Even a few successes help.
Gratitude for the opportunity to do this is the rest of it. It brings humility with it. I'm not even sure how to express that, but I can sometimes even find gratitude for the chance to deal with a child at 3 AM when I'm wiped out. Not often, but even here and there helps.
Posted by: hedra | June 01, 2008 at 08:20 AM
I want to expand the conversation about "not doing the opposite", because I do do this, and I don't feel trapped still by my parent's choices, and it works for me.
I do it on a limited basis and more of a meta-level than the shoes example. When I find myself feeling angry or frustrated (the emotions my mom couldn't handle or let go of), if I'm not careful, I'll act out the behaviors I was raised with. If I stop and think, "What would Mom do?", the answer, 99.9% of the time is freak out, yell and scream, slam doors, use insults, etc. Once I've been through that thought process, I KNOW freaking out is the wrong choice, even thought it feels right in the moment.
I then make the concious decision to do the opposite - I realize that the situation at hand is not that big a deal and that overreacting is unhelpful and exhausting. Sometimes that means I have to walk out of the room and calm myself down, sometimes that means I can manage to immediately say what I'm thinking/feeling in a calm way that doesn't take one small situation and extrapolate it onto someone's entire life story/character, sometimes it means I realize that a broken light bulb is not that big a deal, and just sweep up the mess and move on with my life.
So, in those particular situations where I feel myself automatically responding in the way I was trained/raised, it is empowering for me to reject overwhelming, inappropriate anger and anxiety as the "opposite" thing from what my mom did.
Posted by: anonforthis | June 01, 2008 at 10:01 AM
I really need to post AFTER the coffee hits...
On gratitude, I don't mean 'for the cruddy stuff' or even 'for the details of how things work' ... I'm not grateful for poopy diapers, screaming tantrums, laundry, picking up, handling their behavior at the park, or them picking their noses in public. But I am grateful for the opportunity to work this relationship, for the insight into myself that parenting them brings, and for the opportunity to try again tomorrow.
And I'll also add 'persistence' - that trying again thing. Being there, and then getting up the next day and trying again. That's all part of what makes it work, at least for me (from my mom) and hopefully for my kids, too. Though perhaps that's really covered in Moxie's list already, in the 'not perfection' part. Not perfect also implies getting up and trying again.
Posted by: hedra | June 01, 2008 at 10:16 AM
@anonforthis, You're really doing both - you're using the 'reject absolutely what my mom did' as the point at which you stop. But I think that while you use your mom's anti-example as a litmus for your stopping point and decision-making, it isn't an exact opposite you choose. It is more subtle than how you describe it implies, since you're not just DOING the opposite, you're *thinking through* the doing of the opposite. Including the how-to details.
I do the same in some things. I use the knee-jerk to halt the process, but then I think through the response that covers the uncovered territory. For example, my step-dad was a big one for letting us back out of a situation because we were afraid, which was his 'opposite to his parents' reaction. Total opposite. (actually, my dad did much the same in different ways) But he never thought through that sometimes I didn't need an escape route and encouragement to not push myself, I needed a buck-up and an I-trust-you and an I'll-be-here-to-catch-you-if-you-fall. My 'knee-jerk' in response is that when my kids are scared, I know what my parents would have done, and start from the "I WILL NOT DO THAT" - but opposite is not just the other end of black and white, but also the fact that one-size-fits-all answers are lacking nuance and tone. So, the automatic knee-jerk is to respond with nuance and balance, to say 'you can choose, I trust you, I will be here if you want to try, and if you choose not to try, I know there will be other opportunities for you to challenge yourself - part of your growth is you learning where your own boundaries are, and being willing to draw them'. That's my 'opposite' end. And it sounds like what you do, as well - My mother didn't think, just took out her rage on us. I choose to do the opposite - I choose to think, to master my responses, and then to act according to the balance of the situation. Total opposite. But not really that 'if she said black, then I say white' opposite. More 'if she said only black or white, then I say shades of gray' opposite.
Posted by: hedra | June 01, 2008 at 10:26 AM
I made a pretty clear decision when I was a teenager that I was going to end the a lot of the generational dysfunction/sociopathic behavior that was handed down from my Father's side of the family. My Father, just like his Mother, abandoned his family and spouses when things became "too hard".
The funny thing is that I have had moments in life where I can see an emotional trigger that would make someone be neglectful or abusive. I realize so much of it is being able to recognize what emotion a person is feeling and being able to intellectually sort it out. So I have been given some insight into the thought process of my Father. Sometimes I can forgive his incredible failings and other days I feel sad that he couldn't do such a simple thing as look beyond his own needs for the well-being of his own children.
It has also made me sympathetic toward my Mother's choices as a parent. She was in abusive marriage, she was an untreated manic-depressive and so some of the things she did were clouded by a lot of chaos.
It was after I had my son that she said to me, "You know. I could have been much kinder with you. I wasn't and I am sorry. I am so impressed with your patience with your son."
It completely blew me away. I didn't know what to say and I think I just sort of tossed it off. "oh hey we all have our down days."
But still. It meant a lot.
The great thing is we have a really great relationship as adults and she is probably the first person I turn to when I have questions about being a parent.
Posted by: Genevieve | June 01, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Wow - I am sitting here realizing what a gray area there is between #1 and #2 ... and how careful I need to be about #1. I feel like I didn't get enough physical affection from my parents (my mom, specifically - not that my dad was more affectionate, I guess I expected / wanted it more from her) so I really try to hug and kiss my kid a lot and tell her how much I love her (#2) ... which is easy because she is 5 and likes hugs and kisses and declarations of love, still ... but when she is 10 maybe what is now a #2 compulsion will start looking more like #1. Am I making any sense at all? Anyway, thanks for this series - it's made me think.
Something I'd love to discuss if you want to put it out there sometime Moxie is how our parents' marriages (or not) affect how we are with our partners and how that affects our parenting. (I totally understand if you don't want to go here at this point, what with your own circumstances ... ). RE: affection - my parents also we not affectionate with each other and I really want my kid to know and SEE that my husband and I love each other and see healthy affection demonstrated daily. (Grant it I should (and do) want to hug and kiss my husband daily - and not only when my kid is witness! But I am pretty aware of sometimes being deliberately affectionate becuase I know she is paying attention ... seems like that falls in the the #1 / #2 gray area but nothin' wrong with hugs and kisses, right?!)
Posted by: TheLuckyGal | June 01, 2008 at 09:03 PM
Wow, Lisa O, I could have written that post. Except I'm Lisa M.
Showering my son with physical affection and being mindful of wishing I'd had the same from my parents growing up. One of the things that this week of conversation has suggested to me piggybacks on Moxie's earlier reminder that we're gonna mess up something. It will probably not be the things that we're thinking so deeply about, it'll be something completely different that we were oblivious too. So smooch away!
Posted by: Lisa M | June 01, 2008 at 09:13 PM
Oh so true. My mom always cut my hair really short when I was a kid, so eventually I rebelled and grew it really long. Then one day I asked her why she had always cut it so short. Apparently when she was growing up, she had to sleep every night with her hair in curlers because girls had to have long curly hair. And she swore that she would never inflict that on her daughter. Ditto the piano lessons...she'd been forced to practice and so she didn't want me to take lessons.
As far as I can tell, my grandmother did a pretty near "perfect" job at parenting my mother...with the result that my mother had absolutely no idea that parenting wasn't super easy, and I think she had a much harder time of things. Probably one of the best things you can do for your kids is to let them know that you're human, and that things aren't always easy. Let them see how you work at solving problems, and how you get up to try again when things don't work the first time. Plus, there's nothing worse for a teenager than having nothing to add to the conversation that starts with "My parents drive me crazy..."
Posted by: Today Wendy | June 01, 2008 at 10:28 PM
Today Wendy, that's so interesting about your grandmother having done such a great job that your mom didn't know parenting was hard. I wonder if it really was so easy for your grandmother, or if she was just really invested in not showing how difficult it was to get everything right. I think they key, whether it's easy or hard and whether you're good or bad at it, is to make sure you show the process to your kids so they can see that it *is* a process and work from that.
Lisa O, I have plenty to say about how we are with our partners once this is all squared away. A big part of this has been my realization that I unconsciously went to someone with whom I would repeat the bad things in my parents' marriage without the good things.
Posted by: Moxie | June 02, 2008 at 09:56 AM
Writing in haste because naptime is almost over....
First of all, amen amen to what Lisa M. said: the things our kids will identify as our greatest flaws are highly unlikely to be the things we ourselves worried about the most. My mom grew up in fear of her own mother's temper and fretted a lot whenever she lost her temper with us. But if I could go back and change one thing about my mom's parenting, it wouldn't be her anger, it would be her anxiety, the sense I picked up from her that there was no room for trial and error, that mistakes were potentially disastrous... and there's the baby. More later.
Posted by: Catherine | June 02, 2008 at 10:41 AM
i would say that ITA that swinging away from whatever we thought was bad like a pendulum really is more reactionary than productive, and nearly dooms our kids to doing the same thing (my inlaws were, in their kids eyes, MIA for so much of their "stuff"- athletic events, school things, etc. my parents were the exact opposite, so much in fact i would purposely *not* tell them about stuff just to get some breathing room, anyway, my husband and i are good balances to each other to each want to do the opposite).
i really liked the concept of process/journey that hedra spoke about when she talked about the labyrinth experience- and honoring the good that we experienced from our parents that we'd like to emulate as well as singling out the bad and deciding how we'll try it differently.
i also think we've brought up before the idea of how different personalities (on the part of each parent/child combo will effect the experience as well. as in, our kids are their own people with their own personalities and lives- and even if we gave them exactly the same parenting we received, they would experience it differently.
i've been thinking about this so much- my husband is a great dad, but his dad was pretty checked out as a dad- typical traditional euro/male/patriarch role, wasn't too involved w/ his boys unless it was discipline related, etc. kinda guy. an angry, snarky, always makes you feel like you are on the defensive kind of guy. each of his sons have, to a varying degree, some of those traits, and i imagine 2 of the 4 will never have children b/c of it. at his worst moments, i see my husband repeating that nastiness when pnut gets too frustrating (and i am no peach, either, believe me)- and i keep trying to figure out how to talk to him about it w/o making him feel like a jerk.
Posted by: pnuts mama | June 02, 2008 at 10:54 AM
I love the comments. Yes, our kids will have different issues than we had, and different than we expect.
It's challenging (often, not even 'at times') to remember that each of my kids is a very different person with very different needs. Fortunately, our eldest was SO different from me that I got a good set of lessons in 'I am not like you were'. (Over and over) So I got that he needs different than I needed, so I can't just either duplicate the good stuff OR avoid the bad stuff - what was bad for me may actually be good for him, what was good for me may be bad for him. What he needs is not me repeating OR avoiding on either end, but RESPONDING. Assess, respond, double-check. Assess, respond, double-check.
And I still will miss things, because he's different than me and I can't even see some of the spaces in his character, I suspect.
Repeat three more times with the other three kids. Each needs different, wants different, finds an area of response to be a trespass or boundary crossing violation where another finds the same exact response to be not enough. And they change over time, too, and with moods, and with sleep or illness. I have to remember to couch my responses in terms of principles rather than rules - R needs to express herself in community with others, but more as a performance (placing herself into the space) than as a dialog (having a conversation). M needs to be responded to by action rather than word, and silent action says more to her than any amount of chatting. G needs both action and word, and more on the words. B needs privacy for his important conversations, everyone else can have them with others in the background (R almost *needs* someone to be in the background).
I don't think there's much I could even take 'whole' from my childhood and apply here. I end up with the image of a patchwork quilt, me having to chop up the fabric in small bits, apply one here, another there, stitch together things that were never together before, that may not have made sense together before, but fit together just fine for this purpose. Lots of good fabric to work with, and plenty of bad fabric from which I can salvage something (or shred it and use it for the fill if nothing else).
Posted by: hedra | June 02, 2008 at 11:15 AM
@Catherine, I agree with you 100%. My experience with my Mom is the same. I wish she had stopped worrying about all her particular childhood demons and instead sought medical treatment for her psychiatric condition.
I'm thinking, the biggest thing I can do for my kids now is to take a step back, assess in broad strokes how healthy and happy(or not so much) my general lifestyle is...and try to fix the things that are setting a bad example for my kids.
I remember my Mom being angry and anxious all the time, and I think that had a tremendous impact on us kids.
Posted by: michelle | June 02, 2008 at 12:09 PM
Long time lurker, first time poster here. I think this is such a valuable discussion...I just had to participate.
I've been following the comments and hearing about the very different backgrounds from which we all come from. So, I figure I should chime in on that one.
I consider my parents exceptional parents. Though they started very early (and unexpectedly), they did well with what they had and they always let their love for my brother and I dictate their parenting style, which in today's terms I'd label as a sort of "attachment parenting." They were loving in their marriage and toward their children. They participated in our lives and put our needs first ALWAYS.
However, having started a family so early in life (before either could really benefit from college, work experience, etc), they are now left with an emptiness beyond "empty nest" syndrome. They devoted so much of themselves to raising kids that when we were adults, they had no identity left, especially my mother. Today, they are separated, but completely codependent. They've always struggled with managing money, have no savings, no retirement plan, and have claimed bankruptcy for the second time in their lives.
This all has left them both to suffer serious depression that neither of them will acknowledge as such. Instead, they mope around, continuing around in the vicious cycle of dependency, blaming things on everything but themselves.
How does all of this affect me? Well, my inner child still adores them for the wonderful parents that they were. However, the experienced adult in me is bitter and resentful. Not only have I lost the good parents that I had, I now feel I am parenting them! I've loaned money, dished out good advice (never taken), bailed out of jams. Even when my son was born, I had parent issues. Upon arriving home from the hospital, I found my dad in my condo, suitcase in tow, because he had been kicked out of his housing yet again...Nuff said.
After years of therapy, I have begun to let go. Having a child of my own is nice to force me to let it go. However, I still have some torn feelings about our relationship. I still love them deeply and do feel a "debt" to them. Maybe it's exactly the reason that because they were so bad with money and other life issues, that I have become so independent, self-sufficient, and successful? But should I be expected to care for them now...me just starting a family and them in their fairly healthy early 50s? It hurts me to know I could have prevented their bankruptcy. I have enough money to pay off their debts, but I didn't do it. And knowing they have absolutely no way to plan for retirement, old age, etc, should I carry that burden, too? Does anyone else have good parents that just fell apart when you became an adult?
As far as how it impacts my parenting. I had a realization recently about my parenting style. It includes three things:
1. Everything that my parents did right....the little things and the big things.
2. Everything I've learned since my childhood (including what my parents did wrong...sometimes it takes time to identify these things, what other parents do/have done, books I've read)
3. Everything that my child will teach me. He is very wise, even at 8 months. That's why his name is Sage.
#3 is definitely the trickiest. It requires me to sometimes go against all common sense, sound logic, and practical thinking. But, when I have perfect understanding, it's actually quite simple. Sage tells me what to do, I just need to listen. It's the truest form of mothering I believe, to have such a deep level of trust in your child. To follow that most primitive instinct is really very natural when you think about it.
Thank you Moxie for opening up the lines of communication for so many scary, yet crucial topics. When I find the time, I love reading all of the thoughtful comments, too. You are all beautiful!
Posted by: Michelle F | June 02, 2008 at 07:07 PM
As a child of a mentally unstable mother, I have spent years trying desperately to break away from all the unhealthy baggage that I was raised with. This post resonated with me because it's so true: I have been trying for years to not be controlled or manipulated by her, but in doing that I am still allowing that to control me. But taking the focus off of that, when your relationship with your mother has so many ties to who you are and how you think, is very tricky.
But I can attest to the importance of boundaries. At some point you have to stand up for yourself and decide that there are (emotional and other) places where they are not allowed. I make the terms of what I allow my mother to be part of, not her. And that is respecting myself and realizing that my mother will not be able to provide for me what other people's mothers can. Mourn that, and try to move on.
And for my children, I have tried to make my mothering not the reactionary response of a scarred person, but the deliberate, thoughtful and planned parenting of an educated and dedicated person. I know that I will do better than my mom, and this gives me a lot of confidence. I turned out fine even with my background, so I have confidence that I can raise up well-adjusted kids too.
Posted by: Laura | June 02, 2008 at 11:44 PM
@Michelle F, that reminds me of something someone once told me (when my first was very young) - that our children are the best book on how to raise them. They ARE the book, the only book about them, and if we can learn to read them, they'll teach us everything we need to know about how to raise them.
I agree that my kids tell me how to parent them best. Sometimes they'll even up and say it flat out in words, making it really easy to understand (and still hard to GET at times!).
I wish I had advice for how to handle the parents that are falling apart - though one could say that they're doing what all the other parents are doing - fumbling on the stuff that they were never involved in themselves, failing in the places they were never parented. My mom is most brilliant in the zero-to-3 range, in part because that's the span that her eldest 'taught' her to be a mother. But he died, and then she had to figure it out for the rest of us with a less exemplary set of teachers (he really was perfect at it). So, after around 3 years old, her skills get spotty. Your parents stopped learning how to be themselves and to live and become responsible adults when they started being responsible PARENTS. So they have a hole there, not just through subsuming themselves into their parenting, but also because at that point they probably were not *being* parented through their maturation.
At the same time, the generation is the generation, too - as noted, boomers have some curious quirks, and one of them is the tendency to have been grasshoppers, not ants - the joy of springtime, the singing, the love and passion and art and beauty... all joyously embraced. The saving, the grungy boring internal discipline, the constant awareness of winter coming and the work toward protecting that future way far away where we can't see it? Nah, boooring. And really, not boring, just scary. Having rejected so much of what they saw as a prison for their parents, they have also rejected the structure around which they could build something different. Dragging the spring behind them seems safer, and hey, more FUN, than trying to deal with the fear, deal with the shame of having ridiculed that which had some real fundamental value (NO!), and having to grow some internal discipline to make it happen.
I'm just off the tail end of that (barely), and can see it crossing my family in a melange - the eldest sister would be an anomaly in any era, but she earned her discipline and ethics the hard way (REALLY hard ways). The next down is struggling still to throw off the mantle of the ever-young and to live with discipline and effort in every area of her life, instead of just in the areas that she enjoys. The next down edged out of the Boomerisms, as did the rest after that - still weak on the skills that weren't taught (all of us), but knowing that SKILL is important, not just pleasure, and that there are things to be gathered, and that there is work required to maintain it all - and not frozen in time maintain, but maintain and grow and adapt.
So... well, I can talk about it, but teaching it? Best I can say is give them books on codependency, and ask them to get professional help - including on the finances (if they haven't already). And that's really not enough, I'm sure.
Posted by: hedra | June 03, 2008 at 09:14 AM
@Michelle F: You wrote "It hurts me to know I could have prevented their bankruptcy. I have enough money to pay off their debts, but I didn't do it. And knowing they have absolutely no way to plan for retirement, old age, etc, should I carry that burden, too?"
Big, big hugs to you. And also congratulations on making such healthy and successful choices for your own family. Something tells me you already know this deep down -- you're not responsible for your parents' poor choices with money. We can't rescue people from themselves. No, you should not carry that burden. It's their burden. You have your own burdens to worry about now.
Someone on this site once recommended the excellent book "The Adult Child's Guide To What's Normal" by John C. Friel, which has many good insights. I've been ruminating on it ever since, and I want to share a quote from it as we consider our various roles as adult children.
"If you pity your parents, they've abused you."
Posted by: hush | June 03, 2008 at 12:06 PM
@hush: What an illuminating quotation! I have read that book, but don't remember much about it; maybe I should go back to it.
I keep wanting to contribute to the discussion here, but I'm a bit overwhelmed with day to day parenting at the moment, holding on to the rope, not able to get my head up and look around. I love reading it all though.
Posted by: Maria Wood | June 03, 2008 at 02:39 PM
@hush: What an illuminating quotation! I have read that book, but don't remember much about it; maybe I should go back to it.
I keep wanting to contribute to the discussion here, but I'm a bit overwhelmed with day to day parenting at the moment, holding on to the rope, not able to get my head up and look around. I love reading it all though.
Posted by: Maria Wood | June 03, 2008 at 02:40 PM
I'm thinking the same thing - I know I recommended it here (I think two of us did, at one point), but I don't remember that quote - FABO quote, though. Nice as a litmus test. It's interesting because I know that some of the things my mom did really hurt and/or were mistakes, but I don't pity her *at all* - which highlights the difference between 'making mistakes, even really big ones' and 'abuse'. I pitied my great uncle and my grandfather, though. Not much by the time I was done with most of my work, but a definite whiff of it.
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