<p>I didn’t live for my kids’ graduations–but it was something I looked forward to greatly, and I would have been deeply hurt if they declined to go without an extremely good reason. I think many parents would feel the same way. It seems to me that we’re mainly quibbling about what a good reason would be. Do some of you really think “I just don’t care for ceremonies” would be a good enough reason to disappoint a parent in such a situation?</p>
<p>I agree with those who have said they think D is being a tad unreasonable and a bit ungrateful. Having said that, it makes little sense to twist her arm and insist. I think this will just damage the relationship and perhaps engender resentment. I like the idea of celebrating with a special dinner or lunch attended by family and anyone else D chooses to include. That way the day is honored but in a manner of your D’s choosing.</p>
<p>OP, I don’t blame you at all for feeling angry or hurt. Once children reach a certain age it has to become a two way street. Parents have feelings too and our offspring should develop the maturity to remember that. I am all for indulging VERY YOUNG children and their temperamental moods, but at 23 D should be able to look beyond her own wants and needs and consider those who have contributed to her success.</p>
<p>The reality of a graduation ceremony at a medium or large school is you probably won’t be anywhere near anyone you know. You’ll be sitting alphabetically next to strangers and may not even see any friends. Where’s the fun in that? I guess that’s what my undergrad ceremony was like ( i honestly don’t remember a single second of it) because that’s how i felt about the grad level one. It’d be plain lonely.</p>
<p>Mind you i had a few fabulous parties with my friends to celebrate graduation. Those i remember well!</p>
<p>And those parties were at my parents’ house, so they were part of it too.</p>
<p>@hunt. The OP didn’t say this was just about “I don’t care for ceremonies”. The 23 year old adult who attended the college for only junior and senior year did not feel any connection to the school. I don’t know exactly what she meant by that, but she knew the parent wanted her to go and that wasn’t enough to change her mind. </p>
<p>My DS is not into ceremonies and thinks they are a waste of time. But he went to every one without a complaint because he knew it would make us happy. If he ever came to us and said I really don’t want to go, I would be far more concerned about him (why? what happened?) than about me (darn, I was looking forward to this). I couldn’t enjoy a ceremony knowing my DS really didn’t want to be there.</p>
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<p>Depends on the context and history of the parent-child relationship up to that point. If there was a history of genuine give or take where some of the child’s reasonable feelings/input was meaningfully considered and even gracefully accepted by the parent…especially from adolescence onward, I’d be more willing to sympathize with the parent’s POV…</p>
<p>…even if I am of the belief graduations are primarily about the graduate and families/friends are there to share in the joy of the event. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if the parent-child is one where the parent had the “my way or the highway” attitude throughout the relationship up to that point, my sympathies then are completely with the child. Especially if that attitude is still being manifested past 17-18 and the issues involved aren’t related to gravely serious issues like financial irresponsibility, risk to one’s life, involvement in illegal activities, etc. </p>
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<p>I also have the impression that the issue is much more than “I don’t care for ceremonies” or “I don’t wanna”.</p>
<p>Cobrat, I’m guessing you’re a young adult. It is perfectly normal for young adults to struggle with or work out their perceived issues via instances like this one. It is also self-absorbed. But people tend to be self-absorbed when struggling.</p>
<p>Let me give you an alternate perspective.
Should a young adult attend a funeral if the funeral was for someone they felt no connection to, but the family was? Or should they skip it because they don’t like funerals, don’t feel like it, don’t care for ceremonies?</p>
<p>The no-drama answer is of course they should. Not for the deceased, but for the survivors. These things represent a form of emotional support. But lots of people will rationalize their non-attendance by saying they don’t like funerals. Well hell, who does? It’s not for you, it’s for something else. Not everything is designed especially for you, even if you think something, like graduation, is.</p>
<p>To eschew a graduation ceremony – your own – because you don’t feel a connection to the school is pretty much a passive-aggressive rejection or perhaps punishment to the person who gave you that “graduation.” It doesn’t all happen in a vacuum and whether its been academic and emotional support or direct financial contribution, it is something to be grateful for. At the very least, eschewing a grad ceremony that you know means something to your mother is a form of signalling a lack of value of something where at least the magnitude of the gift should be valued. We are what we do.</p>
<p>People who don’t value what’s given to them, who don’t embrace a state of gratitude because they’re working out their “issues” miss out on a lot of opportunities for joy, and run a “good-will” deficit. </p>
<p>In my experience, banking good will comes in handy when young, even if it means doing the odd thing for a few hours that you don’t like. But hey, people are free to choose how rich and rewarding their lives and relationships are – or aren’t :)</p>
<p>At this point, my wish is that the mother would buy the cap and gown and go to the ceremony herself, to celebrate the fact that whether or not the daughter is presently in a condition to understand what she’s been given and what sacrifice have been made, that she as a parent has done what she could to launch her daughter into the world, and to just spend a few hours thinking about that, reflecting on the things you reflect on during a transition. Ceremonies are meant to be therapeutic rituals to demarc transitions.</p>
<p>Parents, too, need a milestone to reflect upon. What better way to realize, absorb the fact that your role as a parent does and will need to shift, because you are now the parent of a young adult launching into the world at large :)</p>
<p>At the end of the day, we all have to meet our own needs. To attend the ceremony without the daughter would signal yet another important boundary…that mom indeed will meet her own emotional needs whether d is able to participate or not. I think this could be freeing for them both, because while its true that many young adults might feel “controlled” by their parents, the truth is that many parents can and do allow themselves to be emotionally controlled by their children. </p>
<p>Just food for thought.</p>
<p>^^ Like^^. Well said, KMCmom</p>
<p>KMCmom13, great post.</p>
<p>Outstanding post, kmcmom.</p>
<p>My father passed away recently. My good friend was traveling abroad when we had the funeral service. They asked their 23 year old son at home to go to the funeral on their behalf. This young man showed up in a suit, stayed for the entire service, then went back to work on a Sat. I was very touched by the gesture and impressed by his upbringing. Some of my own niece and nephews said they wouldn’t have done it. </p>
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I see that in a lot of parents I know.</p>
<p>kmcmom13 – What a wonderful post. We have taught our children that sometimes we sit through ceremonies or funerals because it makes someone else happy or gives them comfort.</p>
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<p>How true, and how eloquently stated.</p>
<p>kmcmom13:<br>
Very well stated - and right on the money!</p>
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Repeating from an earlier post-- but you said it so much better, kmcmom. I think many will be referencing your eloquent post many time in the future.</p>
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<p>As with PG’s example of going to grandma’s for Thanksgiving, funerals for someone one’s family is connected to is very different in my book than graduation ceremonies.</p>
<p>Both family holiday gatherings and funerals for those one’s family is connected to are far more important and are much more meaningful than a graduation ceremony…especially for an educational institution one feels little connection for various reasons. </p>
<p>Both are inherently far more than the merely symbolic, much more about family/family bonding, and meaningfully involve family members and those connected to family in a much closer profound way. </p>
<p>I’d say that’s very different from a graduation ceremony where the event is mainly about the graduates while family/friends share in their joy…if that is applicable.</p>
<p>Also, during the ceremony, graduates usually sit separated from family & friends for most of the ceremony, do their walk to pick up diploma which could be a matter of a few seconds, and then sit back down with graduates far from one’s own family until the ceremony is over. This is especially applicable if the graduation ceremony is taking place at a medium/large sized college and the individual graduate feels little connection to the institution.* </p>
<p>In short, the comparison between graduation ceremonies and other events are as I said previously…apples to walnuts. </p>
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<li>I personally enjoy attending graduations…my own and those of my friends. However, I understand that my friends’ graduations are primarily about them and my role is to share in as much joy and meaning as they place in their respective graduations.</li>
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<p>This goes both ways in a parent-child relationship. Moreover, as the older party, parents/older folks need to be more reasonably forbearing during emotional or other tussles…especially over matters not involving life or death, financial irresponsibility, involvement in illegal activities, etc. </p>
<p>From the OP’s own words, from the OP’s own postings, OP has already been running a serious “goodwill deficit” by having a “my way or the highway” attitude throughout the D’s life up to the conflict over graduation. </p>
<p>An older supervisor once relayed a similar account of a domineering “my way or the highway” type parent of a former colleague he worked with back in the early '80s. </p>
<p>That wealthy father threatened to completely cut off his son during HS sometime in the late '60s/early '70s and not allow family any contact with him unless he was accepted and attended Princeton. No other college…not even HY were acceptable to him. </p>
<p>Even when son knuckled under and agreed even though he probably wanted to go elsewhere, the father still yelled and criticized him when he opted to do engineering rather than a humanities/social science major because in the father’s wealthy WASP perspective, engineering is “too blue collar”. Father behaved in other ways which caused the son to wince, but son valued connection to other families and his possible inheritance. </p>
<p>Because of the “goodwill deficit” the father was running with the son, once the son was established as an engineer/computer programmer, gained his substantial inheritance, and a few more instances of father continuing to assert his domineering manner towards him, son ended up being the one who completely cut the father off. </p>
<p>And then the father openly wonders what did he do to cause his son to cut him off…</p>
<p>Point being…goodwill in relationships is a two-way street…not only child to parent…but also parent to child.</p>
<p>kmcmom13: Thank you for the very thoughtful post.</p>
<p>I wonder, though, whether young people understand the extent to which some older people value traditional ceremonies. </p>
<p>I’m not sure whether it was an issue in the disagreement that prompted the OP to start this thread, but in some cases, I think that a young person might have no idea that viewing a graduation ceremony might be of great importance to a parent. </p>
<p>In addition, the situation is made more complicated by the fact that NOT all older people value such things. For example, when my son chose not to attend his high school graduation ceremony, nobody in the family minded. But if anyone had minded, my son would have needed to be explicitly told about it; he wouldn’t have known from his own experience.</p>
<p>“As with PG’s example of going to grandma’s for Thanksgiving, funerals for someone one’s family is connected to is very different in my book than graduation ceremonies.”</p>
<p>I think it’s all in the same broad bucket. I think you just made graduation ceremonies different on an arbitrary basis.</p>
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<p>People have different perspectives on many issues. Just because they are different and disagree with your own doesn’t necessarily make them arbitrary. </p>
<p>Moreover, in dismissing their arguments as such speaks much more to your own narrow-mindedness and inability to consider others may have good reasons to reach the conclusions they have…especially in situation/issues where there is no one right answer.</p>
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<p>In fact, a graduation ceremony can be seen as more important than, say Thanksgiving at a relatives, as it is a milestone, not annual event. Its a hard concept for someone who doesn’t have kids to understand. Most of us parents (after all , this is the parents forum) understand and appreciate that joy of seeing our kids do well, be acknowledged for it,etc. Even if it is for a fleeting moment that we watch intently to see if we can spot them when they march in, or scour the sea of mortarboards and robes to see if we can spot them, to hear their name called out, watch them walk across the stage, see them up on a video screen as they shake the president’s hand, as we run up to try to get a photo from our far-away seats, these are memories that live with us. Can we live without these memories. Sure. But it is a true loss to those who find true joy in these experiences. </p>
<p>There is a cost-benefit to the decision to attend or blow off this event. Sometime the young adult needs to look further down the road and past the nose on their own face.</p>
<p>Would I want to subject my child to something that was truly traumatic or painful for them? Of course not. But would I perhaps like them to suck it up and tolerate it for a few hours if it is not more than an annoyance to them. Well, yes, I think I might. </p>
<p>Parts of the graduation ceremonies are fun and exciting. Parts are like watching paint dry. But in the big scheme of things, its a once in a lifetime event. And if the student cannot see or appreciate that, and that is is meaningful to someone other than themselves, then it is they are the ones being narrow-minded.</p>
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<p>I think part of my perspective may also come from having family who also loves attending graduation ceremonies and yet, is understanding enough to realize not everyone feels that way and is thus, “live and let live” on this issue if a child decides to opt out of their graduations. </p>
<p>An attitude which has been demonstrated by parents/older relatives in practice with a few older cousins who declined to attend their graduations.</p>