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<p>Thank you, p3t for saying what I wanted to say. The Earth is not flat (not even a perfect sphere!), and there are more colors than just balck and white. If something as simple as “manning up” were the solution to mental pain, there would be no need for psychology professionals in this world.</p>
<p>emeraldkity4: That is the source of a lot of my disagreement with my mother. I actually wound up working full-time to make extra expenses meet (with the help of a fellow CC member, hazmat, I landed decently-paying tutoring gigs while also working as a research assistant and on-campus technician). We had initially agreed on a payment-splitting plan after endless Penn debates – but she reneged on it after my freshman year. This was also after I had signed over my SS checks to her to help her out.</p>
<p>Max,
When your father passed away your senior year you mentioned that your mom was left with very little money except for an insurance policy that you have borrowed against for your tuition. Being familiar with the financial aid available at schools like Penn did you receive financial aid? I am wondering if your mother who was alone after your fathers death was just so worried about how she would financially survive the next 30 or so years of her life that she failed to tell you how proud she was of you. Did your mom try to offer you what she could…either through insurance money or savings…have you received financial aid from Penn? I know you have bitter feelings toward your mother for her seeming neglect but was your mom really able to do more? Money should not be the deciding factor in claiming abuse and I am sure there must be more to this than just noy having money. </p>
<p>As you know there are so many poor kids who have had a tough time going through school…my own sons had to do some of the same things you have mentioned to get through school (not poor just several kids in school)… however I have a daughter who does resent the smallest item I purchace because she feels that my husband and I do not need to buy for ourselves and that she should be the receipient of every penny we have.<br>
Max at what time of your life would you feel that your mom does not need to financially help you? I am just thinking about my kids…one will be heading off to professional school in the next year or so and another will attend grad school. They will be on their own with the debt and I am sure they will need to make some choices about how they spend the money that they will need to pay back one day. One son will be 22 when he starts the next phase of his life, the other a bit older. When I heard the part of your post when you said mom is taking trips I wondered if adult kids who are taking on debt feel angry if their parents are not giving them all they could…I hope not or my sons will be very angry at us. I can not speak for anyone but I think most everyone understands your anger but we also know that life with anger is just miserable. It is how you proceed from here. You mentioned that you spoke to your mother again and that she was not going to sue you for the money. </p>
<p>You must speak to her often if you had those two phone calls in pretty close proximity to each other…I think you have expressed your sadness to your mom before. I am sure she knows how you really feel about her and how you felt about your dad. Now that you have aired your feelings could you consider that any more talk of it is just repeating the same thing over and over and if you have not gained any positive results from telling her already you probably never will. Now your mom knows…you have told her…it is out in the open…time to proceed with your own life. Please follow the advice of the posters who advised you to get an in network dentist to remove your teeth or use the services at Columbia. </p>
<p>If you continue to tell your mom your troubles because of your past you are accomplishing nothing other than to make it all real, and put it in the moment again. You can move on from past hurts…</p>
<p>LOM, in order for you to have all the things you want for yourself, your future family and personal peace, you must start to let go of your past. Easier said than done. Base on your ability to get things done, despite your obstacles, I believe this is one of those things that you will eventually accomplish. But you need to do it. All this stuff will come back to haunt you when you start to have your own family. Working on your physical self can be done one step at a time. Working on your emotional health is just as important. Don’t let being a victim be your life’s mantra, because in the end, no one likes a victim who is a victim all the time. Life is about choices.
Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>LOM, it sounds like you have decided to make the choice to improve your situation. Good for you. It’s hard now when your mouth hurts and your hand hurts and you only have so much money. I totally get where you are coming from. Really.</p>
<p>I don’t even like to think about things from my childhood. I’ve finally decided to put things behind me and to pretend that my childhood was ok. Not great, I wasn’t beaten and wasn’t abused physically but I just have to get past it and the answer is to not think about it. My parents are older now and have made bad choices with their money. I don’t offer to help them and they don’t ask. It works out ok. I feel that I am still paying for choices my parents made when I was a young adult but I can’t change it. I call them once in awhile but not all the time. Some people call their mothers every day. I would go crazy if I had to do that and my mom seems to be ok with it. I tell her I hate to talk on the phone and call her every month or so.</p>
<p>It is what it is. We just have to make the best of what we were dealt with. </p>
<p>Also I am an adult and health insurance still confuses me. I remember being your age and finding it so confusing that sometimes I did nothing at all.</p>
<p>Momma-three: It was the same old story: “We don’t have any money – oh btw we just bought another boat, another sports car, signed up for a few cruises, bought a ton of alcohol, and I’ll be in Mexico, Hawaii, and Vegas over the course of the next couple of months in the penthouse suites (not even exaggerating one iota here about these spending habits). Nope, there’s not enough to pay for wisdom teeth removal – you don’t need that done anyway, etc.” She would <em>tell</em> me that she had no money but then spend lavishly. I mean, is it not apparent enough? If this situation doesn’t scream the obvious, then what WOULD?</p>
<p>I had been in constant contact with a particular financial aid officer for all four years at Penn who has dealt with my mother on several occasions, and he well-understood the situation. He tried his best to give me a decent financial aid package but obviously he could only justify so much during his meetings based on my mother’s financials. As my mother’s financials started to reflect greater wealth, aid started to suffer pretty intensely and I wound up taking out more loans than had initially been agreed upon with my mother. One thing I regret is not getting it in writing. </p>
<p>On top of that it’s not like my family didn’t have the money to spend on things like dental care and health care growing up. They just simply didn’t think I was important enough to spend money on. Last night on the phone, my mother finally admitted this to me. Over the years, my father had a much better relationship with my brother because of his interest in sports. My mother also mentioned that dad felt he had no power at work, and so when he’d come home, the only way he’d feel better about himself was to punish me and assert his authority. It also explained that absurdly arbitrary nature of his punishments/beatings/rules for me despite the fact that I was a valedictorian with stellar stats and was clearly staying out of trouble. I was a <em>good kid</em>, and I never understood why my family hated me so much and was so much harder on me than they were on my brother. I <em>can’t help</em> but feel victimized, and it doesn’t make sense to me when people here on these boards tell me to just suck it up. It’s not that simple. Even when I try to move on (new job, new location, new circle of friends, new girlfriend, new clothes, new lifestyle, taking care of health issues, etc), it just keeps coming back. </p>
<p>It’d be one thing if my family legitimately didn’t have the means to provide and were obviously doing all they could. But all the staggering evidence points to the fact that they had more than enough money and intentionally decided that they were OK with neglecting parental responsibilities.</p>
<p>We don’t speak that often. We only started reconnecting yesterday, really – after a hiatus of no contact. It was a very strained conversation. The problem is that, in her view, 18 is the age in which you stop providing for a kid. But she’ll use arguments like this along any metric. “So and so made it to age 30 without having wisdom teeth removed. This other person did just fine without a college degree. Yet another person I can refer to didn’t have any health problems despite only going to the doctor once a decade. This other friend of yours is paying for his own education at the local state school. Your dad was financially independent when he was 18,” and so forth. The problem is that we can ALWAYS single out an individual case for any given metric, but that doesn’t mean those things are good ideas – and it ignores situational context. She would use this sort of logic to justify not doing anything because she could always cite an example of a scenario where a parent wasn’t providing some particular thing to her kids, and therefore she shouldn’t have to provide any of them.</p>
<p>So it’s hard for me to answer your “age” question. I think it’s dependent on your relationship, finances, and situation. I don’t think it’s wise to push a bird out of the nest when it isn’t able to fly properly yet just because we’re tired of training it. On the other hand, you’re never going to be able to ride a bike properly if you’re always on training wheels. It’s all a judgment call, so picking a particular age is something I’d have trouble doing. But if I had to estimate various case-scenarios and arrive at some sort of rough back-of-the-envelope average, I’d say that maybe age 23-24 is a good threshold. The best time to let a child go is when they’re ready to do so in a healthy way. I feel like the transition should be something that is planned for – not something where you suddenly go “BTW I’m cutting you off, good luck.”</p>
<p>And I agree about the communication issues. I feel like nothing is ever accomplished when I discuss this stuff. All it does is drudge up painful memories that we’ll always disagree on. It’s just so hard to figure out how to move on when this life is all I really know.</p>
<p>LegendofMax:</p>
<p>Can you do one thing for us today. Can you call both your dental and medical insurance and ask each of them if wisdom teeth removal is a covered service, and if so, what percentage do they pay for an in network doctor. You can call the telephone numbers that are on the back of the insurance cards. Then post here what you find out.</p>
<p>babyontheway: I’ve already made the calls today – they were going to call me back and give me a rough idea. Reason here being I already went in for a cleaning and now have to go in for 5 fillings and then at some point wisdom teeth removal.</p>
<p>I’ve never come across one of Max’s previous threads, but I’ve read this entire thread and I have a good idea of the history. The problem with the advice to man up, move on, stop complaining, etc. is this:</p>
<p>Children from dysfunctional families take on adult responsibilities early. This is true whether the problem is alcoholism, substance abuse, mental illness, or anything that causes parents to neglect and/or abuse their children. The children ignore their emotions in order to take care of business, get through school, get out of the home, and so on. Max has done this, in spades. He managed to graduate from a top university and find a job in an awful market. So the “manning up” part has already happened, when Max was a boy. The problem is that the long-suppressed emotions come out at some point, resulting in the kind of problems Max is experiencing now: paralysis, inability to move on, inability to see options or imagine a bright future. The physical manifestations of the earlier neglect are causing a crisis now, but even if they weren’t there, Max would need help to come to terms with his childhood and move forward with his life. Therapy is ideal, but I think that Al-Anon is an excellent start for now. Even if alcoholism or drug abuse were not present, there are so many similarities that Al-Anon could be enormously helpful.</p>
<p>I laughed when I read babyontheway’s post. I have also noticed in past posts on other threads that he is forumulaic and somewhat cruel. When he told Max to “man up”, I immediately thought, “Max is already 10 times the man BOTW will ever be”. You go, Max!</p>
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<p>This.</p>
<p>And this: </p>
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<p>I’ve always felt BOTW was possibly “on the spectrum” and actually trying to be helpful.</p>
<p>Good luck Max. I hope you find the help you need.</p>
<p>There are many of us who have had horribly narcissistic and self-invloved parents who have found our way to the other side, even ending up helping a lot of other people. It isn’t “easy,” but you can handle it. I have faith in you.</p>
<p>NYMomof2, you said it perfectly.</p>
<p>Folks and Max, </p>
<p>I’m signing off the thread and the message board…I come under fire for my beliefs. </p>
<p>yes, my posts are intended to help max. My belief is that he needs to do something to correct the problems that he has in his life. He says his teeth are in pain, so he needs to have his wisdom teeth removed. Whether or not his mother will pay for it, whether he went to a dentist as a kid, and how often he went to a doctor is irrelevant. What is relevant now is he has an issue and he needs to take care of it.</p>
<p>The same goes with his hand. It’s incredibly unfortunate that he injured it in the 5th grade. But it should not be a permenant injury. He should be able to go to physical therapy and perhaps surgery to have it fixed. Feeling bad that your mother never took you to the doctor won’t fix it, and anything in the past won’t fix it. </p>
<p>Once Max starts moving forward and fixing the things that hurt, he’ll be able to move forward with his life. So yes, he needs to man up and spend the money (arrange finances, apply for loans, etc, etc) to take care of these physical problems that he has. Few people on this thread disagree with it, but sometimes it is hard to force oneself to go to the doctor and have these things fixed.</p>
<p>Many people have posted that Max may also need therapy. I don’t get involved in therapy issues and will leave it to others to guide Max here. I want to be clear that my “man up” comments only refer to his physical illness and not anything relating to him emotionally.</p>
<p>Some people do find my advice harsh. But that is because I don’t see how it is productive to fester in ones beliefs that their childhood was bad. He needs to move beyond that. Yes, it can be very difficult. I’ve had traumatic experiences in the past for me as well. I understand (to a limited extent) the difficulty that Max has with a bad childhood. </p>
<p>Anyways, I’m signing off now.</p>
<p>Al-Anon.</p>
<p>10 char</p>
<p>BOTW, I think from your screen name that you are not a parent yet, is that correct? Like many people have before you, I assume (hope) you will develop some compassion through parenting. You may find that life is not always as straightforward as you seem to believe now…</p>
<p>I give Max a lot of credit for coming here for advice, and have found in the past that he earnestly evaluates the suggestions out here and implements those that he can/that make sense to him. Your criticism of him for asking advice out of here was not appropriate.</p>
<p>My parents, as the first generation immigrants, also did not believed in dental care. When I was 13, I had a cavity that my parents did not think was necessary to take care of, it caused me so much pain everyday until the nerve completely died. </p>
<p>My parents did not approve of my marriage and was very upset with me for not wanting to stay home after college to help them out (by turning over 100% of my paycheck to them). 2 years out of college, married to H, my wisdom teeth became infected. They were so swollen they almost blocked my air pipe. H ad I didn´t have much money, and knowing my parents wouldn´t help out (I couldn´t expect them either really since I was married and 23), H and I read through both of our dental and medical insurance. thoroughly. For impacted wisdom tooth, it´s covered by both dental and medical care. I went under, and had all 4 of them taken out, happiest day of my life.</p>
<p>My relationship with my parents now- great. I understood where they were coming from. My fahter had said to me that if he were to do it all over again, he would have done it differently. My younger brother is still bitter about my parents and he is not happy with himself. He still blames my parents for every one of his failures (hence no ownership on his part). There are so many things I would like to tell my parents that they have done wrong, but as a parent now, I think it would just unnecessary hurt them for no good reason. For the remainder of their years, I would just like them to be happy and feel like they have done a good job with us.</p>
<p>So OP, you are an adult now, find a way to take care of your own medical and mental health, stop your dependency on your mother for your well being.</p>
<p>Your mother isn’t suing you. At the moment, she’s threatening to sue you. Most threats don’t turn into suits. You don’t even have a threat articulated by a lawyer yet. Deal with the suit, if it ever happens, when it happens. Many, many people scream “Lawsuit!” and then do nothing about it.</p>
<p>oldfort: What allowed you to move on?</p>
<p>I figure on some level I will be okay in a year or so. I haven’t even been here in NYC a year and I feel like maybe I’m being too hard on myself for not being up to the same levels of my peers in terms of resource ability. I can’t tell – but I think after all these basic things are taken care of, everything will start to improve from there.</p>
<p>BOTW merely used an expression common in many parts of this country- but not all. Man up is shorthand for move on. No, it’s not delicate. So be it.</p>
<p>The state max needs to aim for is “compartmentalizing.” That means, sure, you have pain, but you put it in its box or on a shelf in your mind and try to keep it there whie you work on the other aspects of your life. You focus on what you CAN change.</p>
<p>Very much like the serenity prayer.</p>
<p>I am still a bit confused because most of us, if our parents either neglect something or are unable to provide it, get advice and role-modeling from our peers, teachers, info on the web, etc. And, I still do not undersyand how he got to go to Penn without submitting annual health forms.</p>
<p>Please understand, people can “understand” his pain and the continuing trauma, even PTSD. At the same time, they can “not understand” how it has taken so long to make some baby steps forward.</p>
<p>Of course, we all wish him the best. Of course.</p>
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<p>I forgave them. I realized they did the best they could (in their mind). When I no longer dependend on them for financial or emotional support, and I began to take ownership for my own success and failures in life.</p>
<p>I worked like a dog to gain financial security. The first year my H and I had $35 every week for grocery, and nothing else. I purposely went after a profession that doubled and tripled my pay almost every year (I had 3 different employers in 5 years), but also meant a lot of personal sacrifices. We didn´t have kids until we knew we could provide them with the best care.</p>
<p>You could do better for your kids someday.</p>