Dear Mom,
I have decided that I don’t want to have any contact with
you ever again. Please don’t write or call me anymore. I can’t
stop thinking about all of the ways that you were never
there for me when I was growing up. Whenever I see or talk to you,
I just end up feeling depressed, angry, and upset for weeks afterwards.
It’s just not worth it to me and I need to get on with my
life. Please respect my wishes and don’t contact me again.
Letter from Clarice, 23 to her mother, Fiona, 48
Fiona sat on my couch in her first visit without looking at me or
saying anything. She reached into her purse and handed me the letter
from her daughter as if to say, “This says it all.”
And it did. As a psychologist, I’ve counseled many adult children
like Fiona’s daughter; in some cases, I’ve helped them
to craft letters just like hers, or supported them in cutting off
contact with a mother, a father, or both. I know the finality that
these letters can portend. It’s deadly serious business and
the stakes are huge—a therapist has no business giving advice
in this arena unless they’ve carefully thought about the long-term
implications of these decisions.
I felt for this desolate mother sitting in front of me because I
knew that the letter could be the last contact that Fiona
would ever have with her daughter. A flood of questions were already
circulating in my mind. “Why is her daughter so angry at her?
What has Fiona done to try to repair it? How capable has she been
of taking responsibility or listening in a non-defensive way to
her daughter’s complaints? How receptive will she be to my
recommendations for how to respond?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, handing back the letter.
”That must be so painful.”
Fiona looked relieved, as though she had expected me to blame her.
“I worry about her all of the time and can’t stop wondering
what horrible thing I did to make my own child turn against me?
I’m sure I made my fair share of mistakes, but I wasn’t
that different with her than I was with the other three.”
She started sobbing, “Clarice was always the hardest of my
four children. Even when she was young, she seemed so impossible
to please. We did everything for her; individual therapy, family
therapy, medication, you name it - nothing seemed to make her feel
happy or connected to us. My other kids resented her because she
sucked all of the time, energy, and money out of the family that
should have gone to all four of them. She won’t talk to my
other kids, either, except for the youngest “It’s really
heartbreaking,” she said, grabbing for the Kleenex. “It
is so goddamned heartbreaking!” Are Parents to
Blame?
Not that long ago I would have assumed that Fiona must have done
something terribly wrong to cause her daughter to respond
in such a dramatic way. My training as a psychologist taught me
that the problems of the adult child can always be linked to some
form of mistreatment from the parent. While this is often true,
it doesn’t hold for all families. And when it is true, it’s
often a far more complex picture than most therapists and self-help
authors realize.
As I worked with Fiona over the next few months, I came to understand
that she had been a reasonable and conscientious mother. As her
story and others illustrate, it is possible to be a devoted and
conscientious parent and still have it go badly. You
can do everything right and your child can still grow
up and not want to have the kind of relationship with you that
you always hoped you’d have. You can do everything right,
and your child may still end up with a drug problem that
costs you thousands of dollars and endless heartache. You can
do everything right and your child may still choose the
kind of friends or partners that you never imagined she would
have chosen because these people seem so lost and are dragging
your child into losing more. You can do everything right and your
child can still fail to launch a successful adulthood
despite being gifted and talented or possessing an IQ that most
people would kill for.
Very few of us escape feeling guilt towards our offspring. It
may be part of our evolutionary heritage, a way that nature hardwires
us to stay sensitive to them, even after they’re grown.
And some parents are responsible for transgressions that are harmful
to their children: child abuse, incest, neglect, and alcoholism
are a few of the more egregious examples. However, whether the
parenting mistakes are subtle or serious, real or imagined, today’s
parents are completely confused by their children’s failures
and accusations. They need guidance and support for themselves,
not more advice about their children.
Who Is This Book For?
This book is written for:
1) Parents who carry enormous feelings of guilt, shame, and regret
about how they treated their children.
2) Parents raising children with a diagnosis or temperament that
makes them harder to parent, and maybe harder to love.
3) Parents whose divorces have created a profound change in the
quality of their relationship with their child. This includes
children who are rejecting, blaming, refuse contact with the parent,
or seem damaged by the divorce.
4) Parents whose current or ex-spouses are dedicated to bringing
them down in the eyes of their child.
5) Parents who were devoted and conscientious, yet their adult
child refuses contact with them.
6) Parents whose partner (parent/step-parent, boyfriend/girlfriend)
makes it difficult to provide the kind of safety or nurturance
that they want to give their children.
7 ) Parents who are mismatched in some important way with their
child: for example, a successful and driven parent with a learning
disabled child; a vulnerable, insecure parent with an aggressive
and rejecting child; a depressed parent with an active/risk-taking
child.
8) Parents who are wounded by their grown child’s inability
to launch a happy or a successful life.
Not a Parenting Book
For all of its glory and gut-busting work, parenting is a dangerous
undertaking. You put in long hours, examine every decision and
action, do the best you can, and yet the child who once adored
and needed you can come to reject, shame, or belittle you. The
youth who was to be your greatest source of joy and pride can
become your greatest source of worry and disappointment. The sweet
kid who wrote you love notes and gave you hugs has written you
off, or gives you the finger instead.
This book is written for parents who have concluded, after years
of therapy, medication trials, soul searching, or family interventions
that they should stop listening to all of those other parents,
pediatricians, psychologists, and talk show experts who say that
if they only do steps one through seven, they, too can have the
relationship with their child that they always wankted. They have
decided that these well-meaning advisors are naive, misinformed,
or plain ignorant and wrong, because frankly, they are. Their
advice is based on a parenting model that offers little to those
who are greeted by pain, guilt, or disappointment every time they
open the door to their teenager’s room or try to get their
grown child to return their calls.
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