I’d be interested in hearing what parents and anyone else’s perspectives on this following article:
Even though it is old, it was brought back into notice due to this article published very recently:
http://jezebel.com/clueless-mom-doesnt-get-why-her-kids-hate-her-1679546713
Please discuss.
Interesting first article. This topic is discussed at times in the 'parents caring for parents ’ thread. I worked with a social worker and we had had this discussion at times. He felt that you should be sure that their basic needs are met or try to find an agency to help them- food, shelter, medical care and other than that you do not owe them anything. I can see circumstances that even that would be unreasonable.
Wow, would never guessed that 20% of kids grow up in dysfunctional families, but I guess with so much drug and alcohol abuse and so many untreated mental illnesses that makes sense.
It is hard for those of us who grew up in close, loving families to imagine the hell that others grew up in…it really makes sense why for sanity it is healthier just to sever ties with someone who has been abusive, especially if it took a lot for you to reach a healthy plateau and the contact is causing you to unravel.
I think that the airlines give us the perfect instructions–put on your O2 mask before assisting others. This applies to folks who emerged from dysfunctional families.
I have a friend who was the product of a very dysfunctional mom and dad. He was brilliant but very mixed up and the scars from his childhood hadn’t healed well and would surface when we talked and when he learned how close my family and I are. He did try to come to some peace with each parent before the parents each died recently. I believe they were all lonely and he said none of his sibs could tolerate his mom–not as sure about his dad (they had divorced many years back).
It takes two to create a meaningful, reciprocal and productive relationship. Some parents are indeed toxic, de-railing, and frightening to their adult children who were neglected or abused either chronically or in their earlier years. It is a very personal decision, and to me, understandable that some opt out of contact or support in service of their own quality of life, child rearing focus, or mental health.
Therapy can make a big impact by helping adult children feel grounded as they find their path across this difficult terrain. Sad to say, but sometimes the cost benefit analysis does not skew towards continuing the relationship.
I don’t think anyone " owes" anyone else anything, no matter how they behaved in the past.
But depending on the circumstance, you may want to explore what it is like to forgive, so that you can start to heal.
But if you don’t want to see them then don’t do it out of obligation.
That’s worse than not seeing them at all.
There is a difference between forgiving someone and somehow feeling an obligation to start or restart a relationship with the person who has deeply harmed you. I can see the benefit in forgiving the person but don’t believe that means you have to expose yourself to that person repeatedly, especially when that person has no boundaries and attempts to reopen all the wounds and hurts that therapy helped heal.
To me, forgiving doesn’t mean that you pretend the past never happened and also that you have to just let the other person have the type of relationship they choose, on their terms. It doesn’t mean that there is even any relationship unless BOTH parties want it and will work together to create a healthy one.
It’s interesting how the definition of abuse has changed overtime.
Until very recently teachers could spank children in the classrooms, and now some college students think it is abuse if they have to go to college without a car.
This is interesting to me. I, luckily, have a great relationship with my parents but my dad has zero relationship with his abusive mother (I think I’ve met her maybe twice that I can remember) and my sister has zero relationship with her abusive, narcissistic mother.
In my dad’s family, there are four boys and only one brother talks to their mother. Two of the brothers won’t even call her their mom- they call her “my brother’s mother” if she happens to come up. Even if she was dying, they would have nothing to do with her. They’re not depressed or upset over it- it’s just a part of their lives that doesn’t exist anymore. Both his dad and his mom were more or less MIA when he was growing up- mostly raised by his brother. His dad has made amends but mom will never admit she did anything wrong.
For my sister, I don’t think she would ever accept her mom back in her life either. She tried to ruin my sister’s life by pressing charges on her for kidnapping her 17 year old brother who had moved out to live with her and then taking out a bunch of credit cards, loans, etc in my sister’s name and defaulting on them. She is in therapy but I can’t see her helping out her mother for at least a few decades, if ever.
Having worked with abused children, I really can’t imagine what they’ll go through in a few decades. I never want to see those scars open up for them.
Most of the abusive and dysfunctional families I have read about are way beyond some shading or just a selfish kid recharacterizing his or her childhood to get back at parents, more like the above poster’s situation.
Some of the things done to these kids and families are VERY tough to recover from or move beyond.
IMO, forgiveness is way overrated. One doesn’t need to forgive an abuser in order to move on.
There are levels of abuse that need never be forgiven unless the victim, for his/her own reasons, wants to forgive. If a parent abuses a child in some of the truly terrible ways we’ve all read about, I believe the child owes the parent exactly nothing, no matter how needy that parent may become. It’s a great privilege and responsibility to have a child, as we’d all agree. Tragically, some parents are monsters. If you can forgive a monster, you’re a better person than I’ll ever be.
My parents had a lousy marriage and ours was a fairly dysfunctional family. My mother’s parents were out-of-control alcoholics. My father’s mother was widowed when he was a baby, and her subsequent mental illness made for a very difficult childhood. I don’t consider any of these deficits to be unforgivable - not at all. Our family has remained close despite them. But the serious physical abuse of a child, sexual abuse, deliberate cruelty - I’d say any kid who has survived those deserves to cut all ties, if he wants to.
I never met my grandmother. I don’t know the whole story, but I believe that my mom never forgave her mother for marrying a sadistic abuser. I suspect that he also abused my mother and she felt her own mom stood by and let it happen.
Whenever I would ask my mom about her mother, she would usually respond “I don’t want to talk about it.” My parents divorced amicably when I was really little. My Dad told me that my mom’s stepdad was coming around the corner in the house in a fury and my mom (16 years old) was waiting and threw a lamp at his head. Dad says the stepdad never bothered her again. She got pregnant and married my Dad at 17 years old, obviously as an escape route.
As far as I knew, mom never had any contact with her mother. But I found out later that she did in fact write letters to her until she died and also helped out financially.
We definitely grappled with this over the years. DH left his small town of origin to get away from an abusive family dynamic as soon as he was old enough. He had nice friends with nice parents who set a solid example he did a lot of sports to be active and out of the house as well as other outdoor activities. When we had kids he was very clear that the pattern that he grew up with was not going to be repeated and that we would see his parents a couple times a year as distant grand parents so as not to “poison” the kids’ outlook but would never stay and would never leave the kids alone with them. There was a lot of drama around those visits that I won’t go into, but he succeeded in allowing the kids to have a loving relationship with them but at arms length. Then . . . his little brother was killed in a car accident.
DH has to go back and identify the body, make arrangements, etc. and it went bad in a hurry. He should have died instead (according to mom), he was depriving his mom of seeing her dear little grandbabies (according to everyone else at their church) and basically just a horrible son. He chose to do what he needed to do then walk away and pulled back further. They got really nasty in their last few healthy years - accusatory to us his mom (who has a mouth that doesn’t quit) constantly complaining to friends in their small town that we neglected them. He chose to just not engage with that at all and raise our family at a distance.
Then they got sick and needed help. They were lucky to have a great senior social worker who helped them through making arrangements. Eventually his mother had to enter a care facility and at that point DH was able to rebuild a bit of a relationship with his dad (over the phone) without his mom as instigator. I’m not sure if he forgave, but they came to an understanding and moved forward. Then his dad, the healthy one, had a massive stroke and died. We were there at ICU with him and intimately made the arrangements. I planned a really lovely memorial at their church, complete with a movie made of happy photographs. Writing the eulogy was therapeutic for DH to pick out the good qualities and happy times. We chose to dwell on those and let the rest go.
Now we were in charge of his mother’s care and the remains of their life. It was 2 years of hell. We visited and I had to purchase her incontinent supplies, take care of hearing aid repair, dial a ride money, hair appointments, etc. all from a distance. For a year and a half it was what I did when not at work. We just figure that it’s what you do, though. Eventually she also died and we planned another lovely memorial for her. It was harder, but we were able to pick out the positive qualities. I made another wonderful movie to music to show at the end of the service. I found myself looking at the photos of her as a child and wondering what went wrong. Somehow she became a twisted, horrible person. Again, DH chose not to talk about any of that when back in his town, to honor her memory at their church, to let the dirty laundry stay hidden in the bottom of the basket. The hard part is then you become the bad guy. Why didn’t we come over more? They certainly missed seeing their grandkids, etc, etc. We told the kids that we just wanted them to be lovely and well turned out and gracious and gave them pre-prepared answers for the haters and to just rise above. Don’t get down in the mud and wrestle with the pigs.
After the service we closed the door on it. There were, of course, affairs to take care of, no money but a house that was mortgaged for more than it was worth. etc.
Last week we received and email (4 years removed now) from the pastor at their church that there was a rumor that we had never paid for the cremation arrangements and had not “redeemed” the ashes. OMG!!! Someone has been stewing about this still for the last 3-4 years. We told him to send money . . . 2 kids in college and all 
We did not have a public ceremony of display past the memorials at the church so somewhere in town is someone who feel they have proprietary ownership over MIL and FIL even in death because DH was such a bad son. It is hard to turn the other cheek and not explain or defend. Again, we had to practice restraint and not drag out every horrible thing that they did and just let their friends and fellow church members have their memories.
So . . . DH chose to be a good son by stopping the abuse in its tracks and by honoring his father and mother in their death. In doing that he became the bad guy for the portion of the town who wasn’t close friends to know his story. I wouldn’t say that he forgave but he came to a level of peace and satisfaction in his own life. When he looks at our kids who are generally nice and accomplished and well turned out and still like us he feels like it was worth the trouble. That’s the best revenge.
@saintfan, that is a pretty good illustration of the saying “No good deed goes unpunished.” Sheesh!
Yep - but the alternative is to let them own real estate in your brain. I wanted to write a ranting tell-all to the pastor and stewed on it for 2 days before it passed.
I want to add that I think DH did a good job a balancing letting the kids love their grandparents as distant people who they rarely saw (although they were just 2 hours away) and not ranting about his parents to the kids. His mom sent a lot of cards and DH didn’t withhold them or say anything negative when they were little. His mom is a gossip monger and bragger so I just scrap booked the heck out of their report cards, sports and musical accomplishments to give her something to brag about (normally not my thing).
After their death and now that one kid is launched and one about to be he told them more details. I don’t think all the details but enough to explain why we weren’t closer. I think the process of remembering the good to eulogize and privately acknowledging and releasing the bad has been freeing for everyone. He didn’t want our kids to be tainted by having brain space taken up with this.
@saintfan, you and your H have done well at figuring out what works for both of you and your kids! Sounds like your kids really benefitted from the maturity and restraint you both showed. Congratulations!
I second what HImom said. It sounds like your DH was put in a no-win position but came out of the situation with his dignity intact. Congratulations.
I think that people who come from a really Christian perspective or 12 step sort of place can fixate on the word forgiveness. I balk when I hear people say that they “forgave their child’s killer” or some such thing. However, that may just be the only way people know to describe that state of not ceding brain space to someone like that and exorcising the negative energy from your own life. I don’t think it’s necessary to forgive to get to that place, but I guess some people do.
Actually, he did more than come out with dignity intact–he and you are role models of how to confront unpleasantness and not be mired in it but still be able to create a new home with love and sleep well at night knowing that he has raised his kids in the way he would have wanted to be raised. Kudos to both of you! I’m sure you’ll both be awesome grandparents, if given the opportunity.
I brought this up to my dad today to see what he thought. His instant reaction was “not a damn thing.”
In his specific case, he was willing to deal with my grandma and her BS while it was just affecting him. However, once she turned that same attitude/abuse onto my mom and me (I don’t remember this- I was a toddler when all of this happened), that was his last straw. He said the first year or two bothered him but he doesn’t even think about it anymore. She’s been out of his life longer than she’s been in it and she’s a stranger to him.