MY KIDS CAN'T STAND ME

And it's all my fault. I can remember how hard it was for me to get calls from my mother - especially when I was "away at college." She always wanted to be sure that I would come home for the weekend. If I didn't have funds for the train ride, she would see to it that money would be sent to me. She would always want information about my social life. I'm not sure how she thought I would have time for a social life since so much of my activity was spent on a train coming to my childhood home......the childhood I was still living as an "adult" college student. She would, of course, talk endlessly about how to find "the right man." After all my mom "loved" me - a love that left me reacting with feeling of guilt, low self esteem and depression about my probable future.

Now that I have adult children of my own, I can understand why my mom treated me the way that she did. I also feel worried about my kids. Did they take the right classes? Are they accepting the right jobs? Are they going to the doctor as often as they should? I have shown little respect for the boundaries that are necessary for a healthy parent/child relationship. I am not surprised that they have worked hard at avoiding my invasion. Of course they had personal social lives but how often I felt that I needed to know everything about their contacts. What were they doing? Where were they going? How much money were they spending? Did they need financial gifts from me? And, if I gave them money, did I not have a right to know how they spent it?

When my kids were kids, I was understandably concerned, but, from their late teens forward, and no longer living at home, it is none of my business to always know where they are. After all, they don't know everything that my husband and I do, where we go or when we come home. Parent and adult /child relationships are like none other. They call for dramatic changes. Otherwise, any contacts that linger will be infected with resentment that will make it increasingly difficult to feel loving together. What out kids do and how they spend their money should no longer be our concern.

We have to recognize that family relationships and traditions change. Our kids may have spouses and kids of their own. I am learning that the best way to love my adult children is to keep my mouth shut more often. This is not always so easy, but, I would much rather be connected than disconnected. I want to live so that as my adult daughters and sons think of respect, real love and honor, they will think of me.

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