What are your relationships with parents? Probably, the answer to this question can be judged on the level of your adulthood and independence, about your psychological age. Do you always argue, conflict, prove your point of view, or remain calm and neutral, but no more than a certain time? Perhaps, on the contrary, you are friends, do not waste water and imagine your life badly without them, because mother is the best friend who will always listen and understand, and the father is the best friend with whom there is always something to discuss, and no important decision in You do not accept your life without consulting your parents.
What are your relationships with your adult children? Do you feel that they are weak and helpless and can not exist without your help? However, your help is not appreciated and you once again think that you are being used and that the most insulting is not asking your permission and forgetting to thank for the rendered service. Increasingly it seems that you have missed something when the children were children, did not give something, they did not teach you something. And you feel your responsibility, for what else you have to give, say, teach ... But for some reason, adult children are showing their disrespect more and more often, higher and higher building a fence that does not allow you to influence their life, so wrong. Perhaps, on the contrary, you see so little and hear your grown-up children that sometimes it starts to seem that they do not like you, completely forgot, do not respect. You feel loneliness, resentment, and somewhere deep in the soul again this sense of guilt, for what is not properly educated, something nedodal, missed. Probably, the answer to this question can tell you how much you are a co-dependent person, that is, a person whose life, emotional calm depends on the degree and success of your influence on the lives of people close to you, your children.
This is by no means the only case in practice when in the area of the twenty-year-old "children", problems and conflicts with parents become more obvious than before. Most likely, this is typical for a certain type of relationship between child parents, when a child in adolescence did not uphold the right to make his own decision, did not separate from his parents for some reason. Perhaps, due to the fact that parents psychologically stronger and simply did not allow the teenager to start some kind of independent life, to take a number of decisions, dealing exclusively with his personal life. By the age of twenty, in this case, this crisis seems to ripen again, due to the development of its social skills, a reduction in the need for funding (since it is possible to earn it independently), personal development, which requires greater freedom in decision-making and does not tolerate regular intrusions into the inner world , In private life.
Usually, for parents, the dependent "child" is some emotional feeding. After all, then they become more meaningful and necessary. Then they have for many years a task in life - to help children. The task is really dangerous, because children often want to live on their own and do not like it when they get into their affairs, because children see this aid as a bad help, because parents are generally poorly perceived as helpers, who need to be thanked for the service. Agree strange that the mother who helped to eat, helped to dress, helped to learn, helped simply because she is a mother and this is her main function, suddenly starts to take offense for not being thanked for preparing dinner. In general, not that I would be an ungrateful daughter, but I do not even always notice when my parents help me. Probably, the question of help, in general, deserves a separate topic for consideration, in my experience, people remember more and longer when they help themselves than when they help them.
The danger of this task is that energy is being spent less and less, and accordingly the sense of the victim grows every day, and the resources end every day.
It is interesting that quite often the parents of adult children themselves begin to demonstrate a certain branch: they refuse emotional and financial support. The parent, as it were, says "I do not want to invest in you any more, I'm tired, maybe I will have time to do something else for myself in this life." In the case when the "child" is not ready for this, it begins to experience some discomfort, often it is experienced as the absence of parental love. This is a kind of alarm: "Can I survive without my parents?". It seems to be no longer a child, but still not very firmly on his feet and little self-confidence.
It is difficult for parents to control their anxiety about the future of children. The success of children is appropriated by parents as their success and, accordingly, failure as their mistakes. If an adult child does not meet the expectations of the parents, they are worried, all their hopes of leaning on a child in old age are dissolved, and the first one who wants to blame for this is their own child. Parents often express their anxiety through a kind of terror. They rely on the illusion that if a child points out all his mistakes, he can correct himself. The reality is that a person is prone to make mistakes and correct all mistakes is not possible, it is important to understand why you are doing something or other that moves you. And the oppression of parental terror creates a feeling of weakness and not the ability to stand on your own and make your own decisions.
The creation of a young family is a crisis for the life of the older generation, and if young people live with their parents or are in close contact with them, there is a need to build boundaries, which can help to avoid subsequent problems. So, first of all, new-born mother-in-law and father-in-law, mother-in-law and father-in-law should recognize the autonomy of a young family, respect the choice of their children, who in turn can help parents not to feel lonely.
When children appear in a young family, the older generation needs to accept the roles of grandparents as assistants to young parents, and not the educators of grandchildren and adult children. And for this, the elders must agree with the following provisions:
But even young parents should not consider their mothers and dads as free nannies and cooks, who, after first calling, abandon all their business and run to help the young. In this case, it is not necessary to talk about any boundaries, because the children themselves refuse them. There is no such thing that non-interference in personal life acts unilaterally, so that there is no point in taking offense at maternal hyper-control, if she became the person who is constantly being used for services, without seriously considering the possibility of refusal by the grandmother.
It is impossible to change parents, you can change only your attitude towards them, and for this you need to give up their care and even material assistance, take responsibility for your family and the interaction within it.
Relations with parents - this relationship is a lifetime. Even after the death of parents, our relationship with them affects us. Our parents are the first people with whom we communicate, and in the first life stage they make up the whole world for us. It is for this reason that we unconsciously consider all our further relations with the world through the prism of relations with parents.
@bebetter!!!
