Inspired by Anaamika’s post here, which I didn’t want to derail. (And this is certainly not an ‘advice for Anaamika thread,’ I just thought it would be interesting to see if other people went through a similar process to me.)
I certainly went through a tough period in my early twenties where I wanted ‘to be treated like an adult, dammit,’ but I wasn’t being treated like one by my parents. I didn’t have, and still don’t have, much of a relationship with my older brothers, so that wasn’t really an issue.
For me, I slowly came to the realisation that I couldn’t make them treat me like an adult. All I could do was act like an adult myself, relate to them in an adult-to-adult way, and hope for the best.
So instead of taking their advice as ‘telling me what to do,’ and getting defensive and angry, I took it as advice. Instead of the phone calls home being all about me and what I was doing, and what I should or shouldn’t be doing, I took an interest in their lives, asked them what they were up to, how they felt about various things.
Instead of always being defensive and arguing my case with them, I dropped a few defenses, gave thought to what they had to say, and thanked them for it.
Now that I’m in my thirties, I have a great relationship with my parents, particularly my mum. My mum will confide things in me that she never would have confided in the past. In fact, she often says, ‘You’re the only person I’d tell this to.’
Anyone else had any experiences, good or bad, that they’d like to share? I’d be interested to see if my experience is common or uncommon.
I had the opposite problem. I am still one of the few adults in my family.
For me the realization was a bit different. I realized that there is absolutely nothing in the world I can do to stop them from being children. I did my best to raise them and I let them go. Now that I have accepted they are responsible for themselves, I am free to focus on my own needs.
I have to say I really like the attitude with which you approached this issue. You’ve hit on something universal that I think applies to both of our situations – learning not to take everything so damn personally. It is easier said than done, of course, but once you get the hang of it it can take you far. People are who they are, and in the case of family you are usually stuck with them. The less you see their behavior as a reflection on your character or your identity, the better off you are.
Yes, don’t take anything personally. I am still the only adult in my family, as well - if I told you some of the stories of the drama. Ok, just one.
When my brother-in-law was fighting with his wife and planning to leave her, my aunt - who lives with them, laid down in front of him and said “You can walk over my dead body. Just kick me as you go!” sob
But basically their craziness doesn’t reflect on me. On the contrary it reminds me to go home every day and make sure my house is happy and I am not being a drama queen.
I take their advice the same way, too. One bit of relief I have is they live so far away I don’t have to see them very often. Even when I do I have learned to bite my tongue and smile and remember - I don’t have to live with them. I am happy. They are not. As such, it behooves me to be as pleasant as possible with them.
My mom and dad are the same way - but they are slowly acknowledging me as an adult with my own mind about things. My aunt still thinks of me as a child.
The funny thing is, my mom, who once flipped out about me marrying outside the race (and still isn’t thrilled), took the news of my atheism, my voluntary childlessness, and my desire to donate my body to medical science - all things she has been vehemently against all her life - with equanimity. If she can accept that I can make those decisions as an adult, then I can deal with her on her terms.
I’ve always been treated as the child in my family, well into adulthood. (I’m the youngest.) But it hasn’t been that way for a number of years now, and sometimes I’m the one sought out for advice. I’m not quite sure when that shift happened, or why.
Part of it may be that I’m the only one who never owned a house, never married, and never had kids. Maybe they now accept that those things were never part of my reality in the first place, and I don’t have to go down their paths to be an adult. Maybe it’s because I’ve finally accepted that for myself. Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing an enormous amount of work on myself.
But dammit, last Thanksgiving I had dinner with a friend’s family, and we STILL got seated at the kid’s table.
Yes, as long as you don’t have kids, you are considered a kid. Same in both of our families, and his family isn’t even batshit crazy. From his family I don’t mind it, because we get spoiled a little now and then.
Parents don’t consider their jobs done until you’re married and have children. Until that time comes they will always treat you like a child.
This doesn’t apply to all parents, but it is a general theme that I’ve noticed.
Maturity is all about how responsible you are. Once people see that you are handling more responsibilities than they are, then they will treat you more like an adult.
Doing things that demand a lot of responsibility on your part will get everyone to treat you like an adult (e.g. join the army, have a kid, get married, run a successful business, become a doctor, etc…)
Hah. My older brother, who is 55ish, a physician, senior partner of his practice, department head at a major regional hospital, with 2 grown sons, one of whom is is medical school, reported to me last year that our father has finally started treating him like an adult. He certainly doesn’t treat me (40ish, married & 3 kids, engineer/manager at a major tech company) like one, as of his last visit a week ago.
That is all mostly true for most people, but I don’t think a person has to be married and/or have kids in order to be responsible. In fact, when I was a manager, I was responsible for a $2 million budget and ten other people. My parents failed to acknowledge that I was holding down a position of responsibility and continued to treat me like a stupid child. Nevertheless, I am also one of the few adults in my family and they will come to me for advice on one hand and then turn right around and infantilize me with their very next breath.
Here’s a trick I tried on my mom last year that worked beautifully. I am a fixer and peacemaker. I hate to hear someone complaining. Well, my mom lives alone and keeps a running verbal commentary going about everything that is dissatisfying to her, constantly mumbling to herself. (“Where did I put my socks?”)
In the past, I’ve taken that to mean, “I am not happy. Fix it for me.” So I’ve rushed around and twisted myself into pretzels in order to accommodate whatever it was and try to stop the neverending bitching. (I go run and look for her socks to stop the mumbling/grumbling.) Gah! This last visit, I made a conscious decision not to do that. I decided I was going to control only what I could control (my attitude) and just let her bitch. It took significant effort on my part.
As it turns out, she just thinks out loud. I am not actually expected to fix every little thing for her. Nor am I responsible for approving her every action. I took her to the beach and she went into the t-shirt shop to buy some kitchy crap. Fine. The old dogzilla would have tried to talk her out of wasting her hard-earned money on kitchy crap (all gifts for her peeps back home), none of which would be any more useful than your average dust collector. (Snow globes, seashells, crap like that.) Instead, I disengaged and left her alone to shop. If she wanted to spend $350 on a shell-encrusted hula lady toilet paper cover, so be it. Wasn’t going to be any skin off my ass, so fine. She ran up to me, arms full of potential purchases, and asked me to look over everything and tell her if they were “good” purchases.
Rather than judge her taste and tell her how to spend her own money, I just blinked and said, “I am sure that you have made great choices and all the recipients will just love their gifts. I’m going to step outside, so you let me know when you are ready to go.” And I walked away from her, leaving her to make her own decisions – and therefore, be responsible for her own choices. (See, I was supposed to approve the purchases because if someone didn’t like their gift, then she could blame it on me because I “told her to get it.” Uh-uh. You own up to your own choices.)
I was amazed at how much better a time we had together when I stopped holding myself responsible for my mom’s shit. Her problems are not my problems and I do not have to own them. I don’t have to fix anything except my own shit. After I let go of the idea that I had to be responsible for her, she suddenly acted like the adult she is and I think both of us respected each other more. She didn’t infantilize me for the rest of that trip, either, because I expected her to find her own damn socks. I think she does that because our roles reverse: I become the responsible adult and she acts like a punk kid, but then she feels weird because of that and tries to assert her authority as a parent (I’m 40), which I then resent horribly because I’ve been acting like the parent right up until she tried to tuck me in at night (at 40, not kidding). I stopped mommying my mom and she stopped babying me to prove who was the mommy.
Stunning what happens when you simply take responsibility only for your own crap.
A similar thing I’ve found useful, more for my moaning mother-in-law who will moan about everything under the sun but do nothing about it, is to say, ‘Gosh, that sounds bad. What are you going to do about it?’
I’ve recently realized that the one who always expected me to behave like an adult was Dad. Mom treats all four of us (that includes my sister in law) as if we’re seven. Actually, she treats my nephews and their friends like they’re seven, too, which is fine… until you turn eight, at which point being treated like you’re seven isn’t acceptable any more.
I’ve got adult relationships with my brothers. With Mom we’ve all just sort of given up.
She leans on me and Middlebro to the point of strangulation - that doesn’t mean she respects the same skills she’s taking advantage of. And as for Lilbro, she insists in pampering him in ways that complicate her life (and those of the rest when we’re around) but which are completely unnecessary, because he’s the son she did want. Whatever.
One thing that makes Mom angry with Lilbro is that when she moans and mutters, he asks “what’s wrong;” Middlebro and me don’t. She thinks we don’t do it because we already know what’s wrong (yeah, we’re telepaths, sure), but it is because we know that if she wants us to fix it or wants to tell us about it, she eventually will; if she thinks it’s “no business of ours” and we ask, then she’ll climb the walls. So actually she’s getting angry at the son that’s less tired of her.
Earning respect from your peers is a relatively easy thing to do. Earning respect from people who have known you since you were in diapers is very difficult.
I think that my parents finally started respecting me when I started being more mature than they were about difficult situations. (Notably, my handling of my recurrent miscarrying and ensuing adoption. They are freaking out. I am pretty calm about it all (99% of the time, anyway)).
But a lot of them treating me more like a grown up now is that I have done a lot of growing up. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I thought I was all grown up but I was wrong. I still had a long way to go. I probably still do.
This is exactly the way it is in my family, too. My dad always expected my brother and me to act like adults, even when we were small children (so that sucked for…oh, twenty years or so). But since my brother and I moved out of the house, my father doesn’t interfere in our lives at all – if he gives us any advice on how to live or what decision to make, it’s only in response to our direct requests. I love him for this.
My mother, on the other hand. Oy. One small example to illustrate the greater malaise: She has friends who like to invite her and me over to their house for dinner on a fairly frequent basis. Each and every time, as we are saying our goodbyes, my mother will ask me (in front of them) in the same syrupy voice she used when I was 10, “Now, did you say thank you for the dinner?” I am 31.
Dozens of times, I have pulled her aside and asked her (politely and calmly) not to do this because it is so embarrassing, and she continues to do so, and continues to do all the other little infantilizing behaviors in her repertoire.
I’ve just chalked her up as hopeless, and I try to remain cool and collected when she treats me like a child, so that any witnesses (real or imagined) will see that I’m a grown-ass woman and my mother’s the one with the problem.
Next time you go, you just need to get in first. Immediately when you start your goodbyes, find your best syrupy voice and say, ‘Now mum, did you say thank you for the dinner?’
First, olives, I haven’t seen you post recently! Have you been away? Or was that me? I forget. Anyway, it’s good to see your name.
Second, I’ve had a pretty good time with my parents. I’m 31 and a broke ass grad student, so it’s not like I’m super successful or anything, but I think my parents are impressed with my sense of adventure and that I’ve been to more countries than they have. Now I can say things like “I’m going to Colombia for spring break!” and the most my mom will say is “to volunteer in a hospital?” (Seriously, that’s what she said. I have no medical training whatsoever. I’m still scratching my head.)
I’m having a more difficult time with my younger sister. She’s 25 but I still think of her as a 12 year old - partially because we’ve hardly communicated since she was that age (when I moved out to go to college). We’ve always had a really rocky relationship and we barely speak. I wish we could just magically make up and relate on an adult level, but I’m afraid there’s too much anger and resentment in our past. It really sucks because I feel like if we weren’t sisters, we’d probably get along really well. Not terribly surprisingly, considering we were raised by the same people, we have similar values and outlooks on life, we like a lot of the same books and TV shows, have a similar sense of humor, that sort of thing. But the most we communicate with each other is the very, very occasional note on each others’ Facebook wall. It kind of sucks.
I’m 23, the youngest of my siblings. Generally, I feel pretty grow’d up.
Until my older brother comes to visit, or I go visit him. Then I feel like I’m 10 again and he’s 20.
Not that he treats me like a kid or anything, it’s just that our dynamic seems to shift back to how it was then. Him having a lot of learned, probably naiive knowledge, and me being all gee-whiz about stuff I read. I kind of like that, makes me feel like [more of] a kid again.
My relationship with my parents changed dramaticaly when I stopped trying to impress them/seek their approval with all the things I was doing with my life.
After I left the nest and I would go and visit them, I always felt the need to tell them things like: “Hey mom/dad, I’m doing THIS with my 401k” or “Hey mom/dad I’m buying my second house!”
I know it sounds asinine, but for some reason I just really needed them to know how mature I am. Which ironicaly, whenever I would tell them stuff like that; they would tell me what a good boy I’ve been.
Now I’m not so intent on impressing them any more. And since then they’ve opened up to me in ways they never have before.
This definitely rings a bell with me. In my early twenties, every time I got a promotion at work, I’d be on the phone to them, ‘Look what I’ve done! Praise me! Praaaaise me!’
