Just yesterday they were full of energy, working hard at work and at home, building their lives, raising children, helping with grandchildren. They made decisions, managed their lives and gave advice. They were needed and in demand.
What about today? A lot of sores and a feeling that life is over. The children have grown up and provide for themselves. The grandchildren have become independent; there is no one to babysit. And so problems begin to arise in the relationship between parents and adult children - “whims” on the part of the parents and excuses on the part of the adult children.
Parents feel unnecessary; adult children are too busy to include communication with parents in their “schedule”. When there is no need to interact with each other, then naturally communication is reduced and relationships fade away.
Don't treat communicating with your parents as a duty
Communication with parents - especially if it is associated with negative emotions - is perceived much more difficult by adult children if they treat it as a duty. It is important to remember here that no one decided whether to be born or not, and in order to be “owed” to someone, you need to borrow or ask for at least something from someone on your own initiative.
A person imposes all obligations in this sense on himself - or they are imposed on him by his own love (which is quite logical). So you have the freedom to choose how and in what mode to communicate with your loved ones.
Remind yourself often that you are not a hostage in this relationship, and then communication with your parents will become much more pleasant for you.
Your personal experience remains only with you
A big mistake many parents make is trying to scare their child with their life experiences, which are full of negativity. Yes, parents who have experienced defeat in life are trying to protect their beloved child from the same mistakes. Just don't do it in a critical manner.
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It’s better to advise something, admit that it didn’t work out for you and, most importantly, why. But under no circumstances insist that an adult abandon his idea. In the end, it might not work out for you, but your son or daughter might just get lucky. No - this will be his personal experience, which will help in some way or at least make the person stronger.
It’s even worse when a parent who has not achieved anything in life begins to persistently give out intrusive advice.
If you begin to persistently protect against “mistakes”, then you will find yourself guilty of not allowing you to try your luck. A wise parent lets their children fill their “bumps”, but always gives advice and, if suddenly something doesn’t work out, supports them morally, and does not reproach them with the phrase “I told you so.”
Call first
Although some parents may be overly intrusive when communicating with their children, many, on the contrary, are afraid of disturbing someone once again - even those closest to them. At a certain age, they may begin to feel their company is undesirable, and themselves - superfluous and unnecessary in your life. To help them overcome this feeling, don't wait for them to call you, go ahead of them: call and visit them on your own initiative. When your parents feel important to you, they will be calmer, and there will be much less reason for conflict, rest assured.
Adult children and their parents
What is your relationship with your parents?
You swear all the time, conflict, prove your point of view, or remain calm and neutral, but no more than a certain time.
Perhaps, on the contrary, you are friends together, and you can’t imagine your life without them, because mom is the best friend who will always listen and understand, and father is the best friend, with whom there is always something to discuss, and more than one important decision in You don’t accept your life without consulting your parents. Probably, by the answer to this question you can judge the level of your maturity and independence, your psychological age. What is your relationship like with your adult children?
Do you think that they are weak and helpless and cannot exist without your help?
However, your help is not appreciated and once again it seems to you that you are being used, and what is most offensive, without asking your permission and forgetting to thank you for the service provided. More and more often it seems that you missed something when the children were children, you didn’t give something, you didn’t teach something. And you feel responsible for what still needs to be given, said, taught... But for some reason, adult children more and more often demonstrate their disrespect, building a fence higher and higher that does not allow you to influence their life, which is so wrong. Perhaps, on the contrary, you see and hear so little of your adult children that sometimes it begins to seem that they do not love you, have completely forgotten you, and do not respect you. You feel loneliness, resentment, and somewhere deep in your soul again this feeling of guilt, for not raising you correctly, not giving something, missing something. Probably, by the answer to this question you can tell how codependent you are, that is, a person whose life and emotional peace depends on the degree and success of your influence on the lives of people close to you, your children. Child-parent relationships are a unique system that develops over time
. Ideally, this relationship changes from the complete dependence of a small newborn creature to the complete independence of an adult from his parents. Remember how often in fairy tales a young man leaves home in search of happiness? In general, this is some illustration of how a person, becoming an adult, can exist separately from his parents even in the most difficult conditions. In our country, “the housing problem has ruined everyone,” young people do not have the opportunity to separate territorially from their parents, and for quite a long period of time they find themselves dependent on their parents not only emotionally, but also financially.
Once, at a psychological seminar, we did an exercise in pairs. I had to draw a family tree of my relatives and my husband’s relatives, write a motto for each and the diseases that he or she was suffering from (an exercise to identify the causes of psychosomatic diseases). Imagine my surprise when the girl working with me showed me the result of her labors. On the one hand there were my husband’s relatives, they had the motto “We are the best, forward to victory” - they all lived separately from each other and clearly respected their boundaries - none of them was sick. On the other side, there were my partner’s relatives; they lived as a large family in the same square, everyone helped each other and were dependent on each other. My partner’s mother and aunt were the original centers of each of their families - “fist” - my partner called my mother and listed a list of diseases that she suffered from: asthma, diabetes and others... Then I thought that defending my right to an independent life was not dependent on older relatives and children, building our territorial and psychological boundaries, learning to be emotionally independent from our children, parents and grandparents, we lead a healthier lifestyle, both psychologically and physiologically, since one depends on the other.
We talked for the first time at the Psychological Forum. She complained that her daughter did not want to study and all the advice that she had been given before - to give the child a free choice - did not lead to anything good. My daughter is still a poor student and failed the exam. Walks a lot with boys, is rude, lies, does not obey. And when they left home for three days, she tried to invite a boy home! In mother’s words one can feel a lot of grief and fear, because her daughter does not meet Her expectations and understanding of how a girl should behave. The forum community, having learned that her daughter was 19 years old, very aggressively began to accuse Her of not allowing her daughter to live freely and interfering with her personal life. Such statements only gave rise to a storm of indignation in Her, since She already gave her daughter a lot of freedom and is probably now reaping the benefits of this freedom. She makes only one conclusion - control her daughter more, make more decisions for her, force her to study more. Our communication with her began with us talking about the fear and horror for the future of her daughter that lives in every mother. About the fact that it is very difficult when a child does not meet your expectations. About how scary it is to feel helpless in influencing the fate of a child. It was very important for me that She was ready to do something, change something in order to change the situation and help her almost adult daughter. We talk to Her for many conversations in a row about the fact that in order for a person to become independent, he needs to make independent actions, make mistakes, try again and be responsible for his decisions. Meeting after meeting we discuss transferring responsibility for our life and destiny to the girl herself. I say that from the point of view of personality maturation, it is much more useful if now she makes a mistake (not being able to get an education), and then she herself faces the consequences of her mistake and corrects it herself - she gets an education later, when she is ripe for this. I'm saying that if a person is forced to do something he doesn't want, he will first of all learn that he can be forced (that is, broken), that his desires are not valuable, that he does not have the right to do what he likes to himself. Will such a person be happy? I doubt. Will he achieve much in life? Only something to which he will be pushed with incredible efforts, since he, quite logically, will resist. Meeting after meeting, we discuss transferring responsibility to our daughter for her studies, for the people she chooses to communicate with, for what she eats and how she looks. This is very difficult, and we are talking about the fact that She is very worried about her daughter, that she really wants to help her, that she feels guilty for not saying something in time, for not teaching her something. About her powerlessness because she wants only the best for her daughter, and every time she faces with horror the limits of her capabilities - well, She cannot live her life for her daughter and make her daughter live the way She wants
.
This is far from the only case in my practice when, around the age of 20, “children”, problems and conflicts with parents become more obvious than before. Most likely, this is typical for a certain type of child-parent relationship, when a child in adolescence did not defend the right to make his own decisions and did not separate from his parents for some reason. Perhaps due to the fact that the parents are psychologically stronger and simply did not allow the teenager to start some kind of independent life, to make a number of decisions relating exclusively to his personal life. By the age of 20, in this case, this crisis seems to mature again, due to the development of his social skills, a decrease in the need for financing (since he has the opportunity to earn money on his own), personal development, which requires greater freedom in decision-making and cannot tolerate regular intrusions into his life. inner world into personal life.
Usually, for parents, a dependent “child” is some kind of emotional boost
. After all, then they become more significant and necessary. Then they have a task in life for many years - to help children. The task is actually dangerous, since children often want to live on their own and do not like it when people interfere in their affairs, since children do not see this help well as help, since parents are generally poorly perceived by children as helpers who need to be thanked for the service. You will agree that it is strange that a mother who helped eat, helped dress, helped study, helped simply because she is a mother and this is her main function, suddenly begins to be offended because she was not thanked for preparing dinner. In general, it’s not that I’m an ungrateful daughter, but I don’t even notice well when my parents help me. Probably, the issue of help in general is worthy of a separate topic for consideration; in my experience, people remember more and longer when they help themselves than when they are helped.
The danger of this task is that less and less energy is spent on oneself, and accordingly the feeling of sacrifice grows every day, and resources run out every day.
She was already 21 years old when she suddenly realized that her parents could no longer provide her with psychological support, that, despite all their mutual love, they were far from her. They don't understand what she wants to say. They don’t want to listen to her again. And in fear that she will make a mistake somewhere in life, as if they were dissatisfied with Her in advance. She suddenly felt alone in this world, it became unpleasant to return home, everything at home, so dear before, suddenly became somehow alien and unpleasant. She came to the psychological forum with the question, what is happening to me? She complained about being ignored by her mother, her mother suddenly stopped being a friend and said, solve your problems yourself. And she so wanted to cry to her and get support from her. But the mother was tired, she had her own worries and wasted energy on listening once again to stories about how unhappy her daughter was, because no one loved her, she clearly didn’t intend to
.
Interestingly, quite often parents of adult children themselves begin to demonstrate some separation
: Withholding emotional and financial support. The parent seems to be saying, “I don’t want to invest in you anymore, I’m tired, maybe I’ll have time to do something else for myself in this life.” In the case when the “child” is not ready for this, he begins to experience some discomfort, often this is experienced as a lack of parental love. This is a kind of anxiety about whether I can survive without my parents. It seems that he is no longer a child, but he is still not very strong on his feet and has little confidence in his own abilities.
HE was already a grown boy, finishing college, but his parents were constantly dissatisfied with him: you don’t know how to do anything, you won’t be able to earn money, where are you good for, how will you live, because you are not at all adapted to life. And all due to the fact that he does not know how to do everything with his hands, like his father, and chose the not at all “manual” profession of a historian. He suffered terribly, as the feeling of failure slowly but surely penetrated inside him, and it became more and more difficult for him to fight it
.
Parents find it difficult to control their anxiety about their children's future
. Parents assign children's success as their own success and, accordingly, failure as their own failures. If an adult child does not meet the parents’ expectations, their anxiety increases, all their hopes of relying on the child in old age dissolve, and the first person they want to blame for this is their own child. Parents often express their concern through a form of terror. They rely on the illusion that if a child is pointed out all his mistakes, he will be able to correct himself. The reality is that it is human nature to make mistakes and it is not possible to correct all mistakes; it is important to understand why you do this or that, what motivates you. And the oppression of parental terror creates a feeling of weakness and the inability to stand on one’s own feet and make one’s own decisions.
Relationships with parents are lifelong relationships.
. Even after the death of our parents, our relationships with them affect us. Our parents are the first people with whom we communicate, and at the first stage of life they make up the whole world for us. It is for this reason that we unconsciously view all our future relationships with the world through the prism of relationships with our parents.
One of the tasks that I set for myself and my clients is to realize where and how we act due to our childhood unconscious experience of communicating with parents
. We choose a life partner based on this experience, we often look for a parental figure in a partner or a teacher, but the task of our psyche is to become our own father and mother in order to stand firmly on our own two feet and not be dependent on relationships with other people.
Source: Personal website of psychologist Anna Smirnova
Report less negative news
With age, people develop a fear of life - due to the fact that they themselves can no longer significantly influence it. Therefore, some of the problems become unsolvable and cause serious difficulties and stress for elderly parents. They are especially upset by the problems of children, because they can no longer help in solving a difficult situation. This, in turn, makes them feel powerless.
If you don't want your parents to be in this state, try to protect them from overly traumatic news as much as possible.
On the contrary, tell them willingly about small problems in which they can help you - this way they will be convinced that they are still useful and necessary to you. And this feeling is very important in the life of any person.
The “I’m big and you’re small” attitude is very bad.
The common problem of millions of parents is that they flatly refuse to accept the fact that children tend to grow up. Quite often you can hear from older women that they consider their adult children to be small. They say directly: “For me you will always be small,” and quite seriously. This phrase is some explanation of why mommy still controls every step of her son, who is no less than 30 years old.
With this approach, you can raise either a mama's boy (or daughter) or an adult who will not take the parent seriously. A mother who says this cannot be an authority.
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If you want your child to be successful and respect you, recognize his right to grow up. Believe me, there is nothing bad or scary in this, it’s normal.
Don't try to re-educate your parents
As children grow up and parents grow old, the balance of power in the family begins to change. The older generation is becoming limited in its capabilities, while the younger generation, on the contrary, is just getting the hang of it. Elderly parents may understand many things worse than you, and they may need your help in solving difficult situations, just as you once did. However, you should not take advantage of this and assert your power over them, as if they were stupid children. You can never change your parents. Don't settle scores with them for childhood traumas and grievances - they are adults, and they need to be accepted for who they are if you decide to maintain contact with them.
Always remember your child's strengths
Alas, even the most wonderful parents sometimes have to quarrel with their children (or at least argue). After clarifying the relationship, resentment and annoyance may settle in the soul. Even if this feeling is short-lived, it can still leave an unpleasant mark on your relationship.
To prevent parent-child relationships from being damaged, make it a rule to think only about the merits of your son or daughter. Believe me, they are in every person. If you have a fight, don’t curse the child, but re-read the list of advantages. By the way, it’s nice if an adult child also has such a list. It's good for your relationships.
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Give them the opportunity to take care of themselves
Worrying calls from your parents and treating you like a child (“Are you sure you packed your suitcase and put everything you need?”) can be annoying, and that’s normal. However, you should not give free rein to your emotions. The phrase about the fact that children remain children for parents at any age is a fact. In this way, they not only show their love, but also give themselves the opportunity to feel their strength and importance. Of course, you shouldn’t allow them to cross certain reasonable boundaries of your personal life, but you also shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to take care of you at least a little.
The child can make his own choice, accept it
At any age, a child is an individual, and as he grows up, he also becomes independent. Learn to admit this and calmly accept the fact that an adult can make mistakes, think differently than you, and act as he sees fit, and not as is right.
If you don’t want to ruin your relationship with your adult son or daughter, don’t criticize his opinions, choices and actions. As a child, you could scold and explain: “It’s wrong to do this.” Now before you is an adult with his own views on life, he perceives any criticism with hostility.
Forget about any criticism - rather look for what he does well in your child, highlight his best qualities. This will not only strengthen your parental authority in his eyes, but also make him more confident - parental support often plays an important role in the success of children.
Recommendations for reconciliation of “warring” parties
In an attempt to correct the situation between grown children and parents, it is important to take into account the features of reconciliation. By adhering to the following recommendations, the result will definitely meet your expectations:
Find common ground - play sports, collect rare coins, get carried away by watching movies together. Create situations in which your communication is an inevitable occurrence. If you are in line to see a doctor, then even the most offended child will want to “exchange” 2-3 phrases. Correct mistakes in upbringing or behavior that you really regret making. The “warring” side will definitely appreciate the scale of reconciliation by moving towards it. Reinforce communication with positive memories, gradually forgetting about the negative “stamps” of the past. Be patient, because the process of reconciliation involves people with formed characters, worldviews and habits. Building relationships based on the principle of equality is an inappropriate solution. Parents a priori must have a certain authority in the minds of even a grown child. The first step is especially difficult, so you can take a similar action by writing a letter. You can refuse communication, but interest will not allow you to leave the message unread. In the process of reconciliation, children are advised to take into account the age of their parents, being lenient towards this factor. Support the “warring” side in a controversial issue at the round table, showing your favor. If a conflict is brewing during communication, then try to “cool down” your own ardor by preventing a quarrel with your loved one.
The relationship between adult children and their parents is a complicated story, the nuances of which are known only to its participants. Neither the child, nor the mother, nor the father will ever notify the environment about the intimate moments of the family hearth, so the services of a psychologist in such situations turn out to be meaningless.
It is important for children to remember how much pranks and pranks their parents had to endure in order to raise a healthy and successful personality. Imbued with touching emotions, go for a conversation with the people closest to you in your life.
What questions are asked most often?
Here are some of the common concerns that adult children voice when talking about their parents:
- they didn't like me
- father or mother “were cold to me”
- brother or sister “loved more than me”
- I was constantly compared to other children, they said that they were better than me
- I was told that I looked like a relative that many family members did not like
- I was often undeservedly punished
- they were unfair to me
- It was drilled into my head that I needed to be obedient
- I was forbidden to do what I liked, to be friends with those with whom I wanted to be friends. Simply because the parents didn’t like it for some reason. Moreover, they can’t even explain to me now why they banned it
- I was constantly accused
- I was told that I don't deserve to be treated well
Help from a psychologist
Professional psychologists have methods and techniques for working through such negative experiences in parent-child relationships. They will help you:
- overcome resentment, anger, guilt;
- form effective models of interaction with parents;
- gain self-confidence;
- get rid of fears and negative parental attitudes;
- feel freedom from painful experiences;
- establish relationships with others;
- get rid of a repeating family scenario;
- increase self-esteem;
- start thinking positively;
- find an inner resource;
- minimize mental discomfort.
