Sorry that wasn’t my intention. I described a few things that I feel helped my relationship with my kids and a couple that I think hurt my ex because I thought your thread had two purposes and the understanding of why relationships work the way they do is a much harder question.
I will stand by my later comment that you can’t control everything and trying to generally works out worse in the long run.
You’re talking about people not food. There is no guaranteed combination of ingredients that will get you the result you want. The best you can do is do your best and cross your fingers.
I think it might be helpful to try to distinguish between control and influence. As a child gets older, the range for control shrinks, and ultimately becomes much like any other relationship, where all one can really control is one’s own behavior. But I think a parent can still have immense influence on one’s child’s character by the way one models one’s own life and relationships.
Maastricht, if I may be so forward, I would point to your mother’s apparent influence on you. She was a narcissist, and while you turned out to be a good and caring person, you nonetheless paired up with a man who, from your account, sounds like kind of a narcissist. The child of a narcissist may well get her emotional “shape” not by imitating her parent, but by filling the little space the narcissist left around herself, so to speak. When that child goes to find her own partner, the one she finds that “completes” her may well be another narcissist, because that person fills the same space as the narcissistic parent.*
Personally, I think a big factor for a parent is being someone that the child trusts. Someone whom the child trusts to listen to her and care, and not to laugh or belittle her. Someone whom the child trusts not to use her, as a narcissist would.
My apologies if I’m speaking too personally, and particularly if I am painting an unfair picture of your child’s father. I don’t mean to be giving you a hard time; I think you’re doing a wonderful thing by approaching your parenting choices thoughtfully and with care.
I figure, focus on doing what you feel is right, and best, as a parent. Both now, and with grown kids. At the same time, fill your life with enough friends and other things that you aren’t relying on your grown kids for happiness or companionship. Then anything you have with them is a bonus.
Well, I had this big long response written out, but the conversation has moved on a bit. So I’ll just try to address what’s here. I think you nicely identified the problem here:
No, I think you’re thinking about it exactly right. The thing is, both types of books are two sides of the same coin. Everything you do as a parent will have some effect on your child. But you can’t necessarily know what that effect will be, and you can’t override the influence of a million other factors. All you can do is to do your best, and you will have a *fair *chance - not a guarantee, and not even necessarily a good chance, but simply the best chance you’re ever going to have - of a good relationship.
So how do you do your best as a parent? Well, you can look at those parenting books, and if you agree with what they say, if they espouse values and behaviors that you want to encourage in yourself and your child, then you take tips from them. And if you feel your mom did things that negatively affected you, you should certainly strive to treat your son differently. You might - no, you will - find other new and creative ways to screw him up, but at least you can avoid the mistakes she made.
Yes, there’s an element of luck involved, but for the most part, the luck is in having all the other external factors go the right way. You still have essentially total control over how you behave, and how you treat your kid. It’s like a job interview. You can do everything as well as you possibly could and still not get the job. So do you throw up your hands and say, “Well, since I can’t control the outcome, it’s all just luck, and it doesn’t matter what I do,” and show up in your pajamas and pick your nose? Of course not. You dress nicely, speak politely, prepare your answers, etc. - you give it your best shot. And you also give your best shot at having a good relationship with your kid.
The question that keeps coming up for me, though, is: How do you (not “one”, you Maastricht, personally) define a “good relationship”? As you yourself said, there are two ways to look at what you “get out of” a relationship: emotional rewards, like enjoying someone’s company, and tangible ones, like having someone take care of you or do you favors. I think the first is a healthy approach, and the second is not.
You seem to fear that you will become one of these parents who wants to see their kids more often than they do. You say that such parents “get far, far less” from their kids than they have given. But that only makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of tangible rewards, where the parents have invested X number of hours in their kids, and they’re not receiving X hours in return. If you look at it from the perspective of emotional rewards, then clearly, these parents must be getting a lot in return from their kids. They enjoy their company so much that they would like more of it.
Unfortunately, I think it’s normal, or at least very common, for parents to want to see their adult kids more than the kids want to see them. Kids are supposed to want to build their own lives, make their own friends, and have their own interests. And they’re often busiest - with careers and children of their own - right when their parents are retiring and have plenty of free time. So even if they find each other equally enjoyable, it’s likely the parents will think about their kids more often and want to spend time together more often, than vice versa.
But that’s certainly not always the case. And even if it is the case, that doesn’t mean - at least to me - that those parents don’t have a good relationship with their kids. In my opinion, it has nothing to do with how often they get together or what favors they do for each other, and everything to do with how they feel about each other. Granted, people who love each other and like each other are more likely to get together and do favors more often, but every individual’s expectations and needs are so different in that respect that you can’t try to measure someone’s love for you in that way.
I feel like there’s still more I want to say, but I’m not sure what, and I’ve already blathered on too long, so I’ll just leave it at that.
We’ve got two adult kids both of whom we have great relationships with. And we did it without reading a single self-help book. (Well I didn’t , I think my wife read one about mothers and daughters.)
The only advice I have is to treat your kids like people, and be willing to change your relationship with them as they age and mature. And always be there for them. Older teenagers are tough, but they grow past their problems, and they appreciate you a lot more in their 20s.
My son-in-law has a much tougher relationship with his mother. A lot of that problem comes from unfairness and reneging on promises. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, and deliver what you promise - and if you can’t, tell them why, even if it is painful.
Don’t over-manage their lives, but care what they do and understand what they care about, even if you don’t care about it.
It is really just like when they were babies. Let them explore, but watch out for the light sockets. And hugs and kisses when they fall down and cry. They will at 18 years just like they did at 18 months. They’ll understand you were behind them, and that in my experience builds a good relationship.
Yeah, this. I mean, for all aspects of parenting, right? Not just the relationship bewteen you and your kid. Whether the kid turns out to be a good human being. Whether the kid turns out to be a drug addict. (My babysitter turned out really awesomely – hardworking, responsible, calls her mom every day, helps her mom out with the kids during her vacations – and her sister turned out to be a druggie who pawned off her own kids on her mom (the ones my babysitter helps with).) Whether the kid turns out to be interested in the hobby that I am extremely interested in. (The kids I know with lapidarist parents: some of them love it, some of them hate it.) I don’t know why you’re singling out the parent-child relationship as if you have more or less control over that than you do on anything else.
But anyway. My husband is in native temperament responsible and emotionally stable. But my husband’s parents also did a bang-up job in ensuring he was emotionally well-adjusted and had a good model of healthy interpersonal relationships, as well as are really good about not putting pressure on him for things he didn’t want to do (this worked because of his responsible temperament). He grew up to be an adult who really likes his parents, intends to call them every week, arranges to visit them at Christmases and/or the summer family reunions. (His actual track record for calls is more like once a month, not because he doesn’t want to but because he forgets to, or when he does remember it’s past their bedtime – which is also completely consistent with his native temperament. They’re very good about rolling with this, NOT guilting him, and calling him sometimes when he forgets.)
I am also in native temperament more-or-less responsible and emotionally stable. I had a loving set of parents who are also pretty good at doing the emotionally manipulative demanding thing. Because of this, I grew up to be an adult who calls my parents regularly (more regularly than my husband, because i get guilted when I don’t) and arranges to visit them at Christmases and/or summer family reunions. However, I like them about half the time, and I dislike them intensely half the time, and I complain about my parents fairly regularly, whereas my husband pretty much never complains about his (and what’s more, I pretty much never complain about them).
ETA: On reread, my advice would be, DO NOT GUILT YOUR ADULT KIDS and you’ll have a better relationship with them. The way I was raised, it’s going to be really hard not to do that with my daughter, but that’s what I’ve learned from my parents and my in-laws.
If that is so, then they have a problem communicating their needs without guilt-tripping. Some people actually are able to do that. I know families where the relationships are very good - and one of the reasons they’re very good is that people can express their needs and have them heard. Everybody. Parents, adult children, college students, grandchildren, can express their needs and have them heard.
When one or more parties can’t say “I have a problem here” without turning it into “oh, you never take care of your poor parents’ problems!”, or when one party can’t be arsed listening, then yep, there is a problem. But some people actually can communicate like human beings.
On retrospect I don’t think my other post really said very much that addressed the OP’s concerns. Here’s take two.
-One thing that my family did, and all the Asian families I know well do, is to foster an attitude of “family is everything.” It was always family first, everything else later; family helps family no matter what. My parents would always drop everything if my sister or I needed help; my sister and I were similarly expected to drop everything if someone else in the family needed help. (Unless it would affect our studies, because how we did in school, and our eventual careers, reflected on the family as well, so that was a family thing too.) This isn’t something everyone can do (I don’t think my husband could do it at all, for one) but – I also don’t know anyone who was brought up this way who didn’t grow up to have an extreme sense of responsibility to his or her family.
-Since the OP has a boy: one huge thing for boys that’s out of the mother’s control is, of course, the woman he marries. If he marries someone who has a good sense of family responsibility, and who has a good relationship with the mother-in-law, that’s going to make a big difference. My husband calls his parents at least twice as much as he did before I married him, because I am continually reminding him to do so. (Lately, what with the Little One and all, I’ve been slacking off. Oops.)
-On guilt tripping: I don’t think my husband’s parents walk on eggshells to avoid guilt-tripping my husband for not seeing them often enough or anything else, any more than I walk on eggshells with my sister, whom I’d adore to see ten times as often as I do. They do what decent human beings do, which is say, “Hey, it would be fun to see you!” or “Are you coming to the reunion?” or “Hey, we miss you, maybe we should come see you sometime, would that be okay with you?” (Not what my mom does, which is something on the order of “If you were a good child, you’d come to see us! Why are you a bad person???”)
However, if your goal is to see your kid as often as possible – not quite sure if what you are actually asking for is a good relationship or for a particular need of yours to be met – guilt tripping is totally the way to go. My parents see us a lot more than mr. hunter’s parents, because my mom is the master of the guilt trip.
On the other hand, do you think my mom is happier than my husband’s mom? Nooooo. If you ask her if she sees her daughter enough, she’ll launch into an extended tirade about how we only went to my family reunion at Christmas for three days and saw mr. hunter’s family for twice that, and she doesn’t understand why we see mr. hunter’s family so much more. (She will conveniently omit, because she’s forgotten about it, that it was not actually their year to see us for Christmas, so we in fact cut short the usual visit we would have had with mr. hunter’s family in order to make the family reunion.)
So, interestingly, my mom gets more than my husband’s mom by any calculable metric, and yet I am absolutely confident (I have even heard such statements from both sides) that my mom will say she’s gotten far, far less from her kids than she’s given, and my husband’s mom will say that she’s gotten far, far more.
Yeah, but that doesn’t say much, does it? I think I can safely say that, a few really damaged individuals aside, every parent does their best. Doing your best as a parent is pretty much a given, just like the fact that some peoples best is pretty bad. I’ve heard of people wanting to bungle a job-interview; and I have heard of people wanting to shirk the responsibilities of parenthood alltogether, but when was the last time you heard of a parent that said: “You know? I’m gonna screw this kid up. That will show 'em, or something”. I know I do my best, and will do my best as a parent, and also, that it may not be enough. So it is luck (face it, the parents own background and abilities and resources are also luck) that determines how good the parents best will be, no?
I guess my own dilemma is that I have to reconcile my moms parenting with my own feelings about it.
She probably did her best, and I turned out okay. And my mom obviously wants my attention and help and commiseration, and admiration, and that I pretend we’re close…Yet my real feelings for her are a complicated mess of unpleasant emotions like loathing, contempt, and most of all, frustrated annoyance. Mixed in with understanding, caring, respect for some things about her. Perhaps some remnants of love, whatever those may be. But the net result is that the less I have to see her, the happier I am.
What if my kid will feel the same about me? What if he wouldn’t want to see much of me either?
I am not as deluded as my mom, I would notice his annoyance.
And if I couldn’t mend the relationship (and you bet I’d try, that at least I am good at!) … Unlike my mom, I can’t and won’t strongarm or nag anyone to spend time with me if they’d rather not do so. I just don’t see the point, and I’m also too proud. So… that would leave me, essentially, without a good relationship with my adult kid.
And that is sad, because I am not the innate motherly type. While I love, like and admire my son, motherhood is more like work then play. I don’t particularly enjoy it. I do it , and as well as most, but it is not a reward, it is the task.
What is even more omninous, I remember my mom saying the same thing. She said me and my brothers were were sweet, easy kids, and yet she still didn’t enjoy motherhood.
The whole thing It is somewhat like the Protestant idea of Predestination. God, or Chance, has predetermined how good or bad a parent you will be, and what kind of kid you will have. But you will still suffer from a bad relationship.
This picture seemed somehow appropriate. Husband, kiddo and me yesterday had dinner outside a restaurant. Kiddo (he just turned four) took the camera on the table and made a picture of us looking at him. So this is how he sees us. His dad looks delighted; I look attentive and a bit worried he’ll drop the camera.
Let it go. The only way you’ll have a good relationship later is by not worrying about it for the next fourteen years. Your issues are not his issues, unless you make them so.
My job is to raise good, responsible adults.
If my choice is to raise good people that never talk to me because we are not physically nor emotionally close, or non functioning burdens that call me everyday or still live at home, I know what I’d choose.
Your job is to raise a spectacular adult, don’t lose sight of it.
Let it go.
My mom’s parenting was in no way “shitty”. Could she have done better? Sure, but I think that’s true of any parent. In her case, she turned me into her little tiny female husband - as a single mom, she needed another person to do work around the house, to be her companion, to be her emotional and physical support, to take out the trash and fix the broken lamps and shovel the snow and and and…I’m a big fan of giving kids’ chores, but I had a LOT of chores as a kid, far more than any of my peers and far more than I think appropriate now that I’m a parent. But what was she to do? There were only the two of us in the house and she had to work and the chores needed to be done and I got home hours before her. It didn’t make her a shitty mom - it made her too poor to afford a full time housekeeper and handyman.
I think her real error was the demand for emotional support and constant expectation that I would be her companion. She really, really needed to “get a life” of her own where she hung out with other adults, instead of me, and allow me the space I needed to live my own life. Her depression and social anxiety thwarted that, and not getting appropriate treatment for that was pretty shitty, but still understandable.
And that part hasn’t changed. That’s the part I find exhausting to this day. She’s gotten a little better, but every time I hear, “I reeeeeally miiiiiss yoooooou! When can I seeeeee yoooooou?” I just tense up and find excuses for why I’m too busy to see her, and wish she would call her *friends *when she wants someone to hang out with.
The kicker is that I really do enjoy the things we do together, and I enjoy spending time with her. I just forget that when I hear the whining and neediness. Triggers implanted in childhood are really hard to remove, even when you want to remove them.
Word. I’ve screwed up my son by having too much of my own life (shielding him from my own problems, or so I thought) and giving him too much of his own life. He doesn’t feel like he can come to me to vent about his problems, or to help find solutions. I hear second and third hand about things he’s doing and dealing with…and he still lives under my roof. I hate the fact that we’re so disconnected; it’s the exact opposite of the mistake my mother made with me, and yet the outcome will probably be the same - less closeness than the mom wants.
Yep.
What if? Well, then you probably won’t see him as much as you’d like. And you’ll feel bad about it, but the sun will go on rising and setting.
Hmmm…sounds like you’re defining “a good relationship with my adult kid” by the number of hours you spend with him. Maybe it would be easier (if it comes up) to work on changing that definition than changing him.
But luck or fate or good hard work, the fact is that not all “bests” are the same. Everyone may do their best, but that doesn’t mean your best is the same as your mom’s best is the same as the person down the street’s best. Your best has you self-reflecting, reading parenting books, monitoring the relationship, thinking about things from his point of view . . .all things that your mom’s “best” did not include. Whether or not you do those things because it’s just random luck of who you are or whether they are the result of your deliberate attempt to shape your destiny is really irrelevant to the result.
I do think you are in danger of deciding things too soon: all this stuff about your son’s character being “fixed” is really irrelevant. Even if it is “fixed” in the sense that parenting can’t change it, it’s not fully manifested yet: kids grow and change a lot. It is perfectly normal for a kid to grow away from their parents as a teen, for example, and then back towards them as an adult. Later, having children often reinvents the relationship with one’s parents. If you decide right now that it’s a given that he is like your dad and therefore you won’t have a close relationship with him, you are setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy: you’ll pull back to protect yourself at various points, and put too much weight on insignificant events, and he will read that as you not wanting a warm relationship.
How about a very buddhist approach - can you find a way to let go of the desire to have a good relationship with your adult kid?
What is at the root of it - do you wish you had a good one with your mother? do you think if you and your son don’t have a good relationship when he is an adult, that it means you have failed? will be judged? will be horribly lonely?
My mother is mentally ill; my father not much better. I had an abusive childhood, and as much as I have healed from that, I had to cut ties because they are still abusive and I refused to let them do the same to my kids (and me, for that matter).
In terms of my kids, I try to simply live for the moment. Do what is right, right now.
The only thinking I do about the future, when they are grown, is to keep room in my life and my heart and my home for them, but all I expect of them is to do what is right for them.
If it were possible to figure out how to tailor your parenting to ensure a good relationship as adults, well in a way that seems manipulative. Think of it in terms of a friendship or romantic relationship: “Please stay, look I can be whoever you need me to be”.
You will be yourself, your son will be himself, and whatever that ends up to be, I suspect you will both be ok.
Now, in light of the issues you have with your mom, is it possible that the real work to be done, is figuring out who “yourself” really is, with respect to parenting? If you don’t have faith that you are doing what you feel is right, then I could see being anxious about the outcome.
I 'd norrmally keep this to myself because it sounds like shameless bragging. But since the OP asked, I’ll throw it out there:
In the kid department; I hit the jackpot. No drama, no ‘rebel with out a cause’, never had problems with grades at school. They weren’t and aren’t straight A’s, but well enough. My oldest has graduated and my youngest starts 9th grade this year.
I’m pretty sure my oldest (and probably still does) smokes weed. But you know what? I honestly can’t get too worked up about it. He’s maintained his responsibilities so well I figure if he wants to make that decision, I’ll let him. He’s given me no reason to doubt him.
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I am NOT an exceptional parent. I just got (and am) really, really, fuck’n lucky!!
So all that said and maybe it’s easy for me to say considering my dumb luck; but yeah, I’d say raising the child is its own reward.
Parents don’t always have control over how a kid ‘turns out’. We do, however, have a considerable amount of control over how we TREAT them and how we deal with our relationship.
This is one of the arguments economist Bryan Caplan makes in his book book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids*. He claims that just about the only thing parents can influence in the long run is whether they have good relationships with their children as adults. Caplan is many things (and not all of them so flattering), he is not shy about making an argument. This happens to be one I agree with, for what it’s worth.
My only child,a daughter,married an Australia and moved DOWNUNDER.They visit Canada annually for a month during ski season.He stopped speaking to me my last 5 days of my last visit there.His Mother expressed that he only wants it to be hem my daughter and their child.I feel he doesn’t like the fact my daughter worries about me for I am on my own and am horrible with finances.Normally,people like me and enjoy my company.I am very fond of my Son-In-Law and find him sometimes difficult to deal with.Any suggestions would be appreciated.He is a tree hugger and hates that I smoke.
Because the thread you’ve posted in is fairly old, I’d encourage you to start a new one rather than trying to add on to one that hasn’t been active in three years, particularly since you’re seeking advice specific to your own situation.
