Trauma therapist Yolanda Renteria tweeted this interesting thread about having parenting conversations with adult children about their need that went unmet. These are difficult conversations to have and she gives some great tips on how to have them:
Source: Yolanda Renteria
(via: Untigering)
Terrific observations
This acknowledgement is great to see. I am experiencing this with my daughter. It’s true, I probably have been parenting to what I wanted or needed, but in my defense, my daughter hasn’t been vocal about what she wants or needs, she just gets mad at me. I am willing to hear her and love her they way she wants and needs, but I can’t do, what I don’t know. I need her to talk to me and be specific.
I’ve been on both sides of this conversation and I think a piece of it is also that a parent can do their very best to provide what they perceived their children’s needs to be at the time and didn’t realize they were not covering all the bases. As awareness and understanding of neurodiversity is increasing exponentially (only one aspect of this divide) and information is so result available on the Internet, it is very easy to assume and ascribe a current/modern level of understanding to our elders who should, as our elders, be wise and knowledgeable. Not so long ago, finding any psychological information outside of a doctor’s office meant going to a physical library and knowing what information they were looking for. Simply knowing what questions to ask count be nearly impossible. As a modern parent, I still have medical and educational appointments where I know much more about my childrens’ disabilities and needs than the “expert” on the other side of the desk. Learning to deal with my (excellent and loving) parents’ inability to understand and meet all my neurodiverse needs was a painful process and now my young adult children are clearly feeling the same way despite my years of effort, sacrifice and self-education on their behalf. The subconscious idealism is so hard to get past.
Absolute horseh*t. All it does is use pseudo-intellectual shrink speak to normalize child abuse.
This is the reality.
https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
Children aren’t under any obligation to validate their parent’s “sacrifices.” If you don’t want to make those sacrifices, don’t have children.
This is pandering to abusers and another example of how irresponsible the psychiatric profession is.