Jean wrote to me about her most recent visit to her parents' house in western Canada. She has been going for years taking her children on a long, expensive plane ride to visit her family. In previous years they had fun and stayed with her parents for extended visits.
Jean told me that on her visit this summer, however, they left early. She rescheduled her plane tickets and everything to return home with her children earlier than planned. She says her parents think that she's either lost her mind or has a brain tumour.
Why would they think that?
Jean has been in counselling for some time now and is starting to realize how some patterns from her childhood are affecting her personal relationships now. She doesn't accept being treated the same way as she did and she is finding that a lot of her relationships are evolving and changing.
It is interesting that, even when we are adults with children of our own, our parents still think that they know what's best for us. Well, at least some of our parents do. I realize that some parents are absent either emotionally or physically or both. That is a different issue altogether.
Jean is finding that her parents can't accept some of the decisions she's made about her own life. They are being very resistant to her changing and having ideas of her own. This is trickling down into their relationship with her children as well.
Her parents say things like, "I don't know what your mother is thinking carrying on the way she is," or things like, "I know your mother said not to try water-skiing until you're older, but she's being overprotective so you can do it when you're with me."
Jean's parents are undermining her authority with her own children, which they have no right to do. When Jean tells her parents that they are over-stepping their boundaries or gets angry because she finds out they took her five-year-old daughter water-skiing, they tell Jean that she's lost her mind.
Why do they think Jean's lost her mind?
Is it because she doesn't agree with them anymore?
What is more likely is that now she tells them that she doesn't agree with them. Jean likely didn't say anything before and now she does. She has moved out of her parent-child role and moved into an equal parent-parent role. So when they spend time with Jean now she sees them on an equal footing.
This would throw a lot of parents off track and they certainly wouldn't accept it easily. A lot of parents feel that they have a higher status because they can tell their children what to do and when to do it and how to do it. That so-called higher status is false, however.
Adults must make responsible choices for their children, yes, that's true. Children cannot look after themselves alone, but if parents believe that they have control over their children they are deluding themselves. Why? Because control is an illusion.
Jean's parents simply can't give up the idea of control and the misperception that they know what's best because, well, because they just know. Hmm...yes, parents just know. It sounds ridiculous when you put it like that, but a lot of parents would argue that it's true.
It reminds me of that old show Leave it to Beaver where Ward, the father, would say, "Do it because I'm your father and I told you to."
Not the real world!
Children don't do things because you said so, at least not consistently. Children do what you do, in other words, they learn from your example. And if your children, adult or not, don't like what you're doing they have a right to say so. This isn't an issue of respect, it's about personal freedom. Some parents simply can't admit that their children have as many rights as they do and have their own lives, their own minds and their own choices to make--even once they've become adults.
