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No matter how old they are, 18, 25 or even 40, children remain children for their parents. This is how nature intended it, and there is no getting away from it, but the nature of the relationship should change over the years. However, not all families manage to rebuild, some continue to play “daughter-mother” according to the old rules. Many parents find it difficult to let their beloved children go into adulthood, and in children this causes fair aggression. How to avoid it?
To paraphrase the saying about small and large children, we can say that the older the child, the more serious and to some extent philosophical questions arise before his parents. How to “reformat” your attitude towards a child who has long ceased to be a child in the generally accepted sense of the word? Where are the boundaries of intervention? How to maintain relationships with older children? How to remove the grown offspring from your own neck? Let’s try to figure it out.
Do you need financial help?
Many parents continue to support their adult children financially until they get back on their feet. Their desire is understandable: today young people have to start their careers with low-paid internships, and financial assistance comes in handy. But often it leads to the opposite result – adult children never get the skill to cope with difficulties on their own.
“If you want to motivate a child to earn money, you don’t need to help him, let him look for opportunities,” family psychologist Anna Varga advises in the book “Systemic Family Psychotherapy”. “Parents who want to tie a child encourage addiction, help with money.”
But what should a loving parent do, who does not find a place for himself, worrying about his child? “Of course, we cannot forbid ourselves to worry about what children do, how they live, how our grandchildren are raised, how finances are distributed, we cannot,” notes psychologist Svetlana Kartinina. “But worrying is one thing, and taking responsibility for their actions and actions is another.” Remember how the child took the first steps, how he fell and filled the first bumps. Let him do the same now.
Personal life – is it better (not) to interfere?
Today, many young people are in no hurry to start families. Some meticulously choose the right partner, others put off this step, building a career or trying to sort themselves out. This situation inevitably causes concern for parents. “My daughter is 21 and she still has no love life. Moreover, she does not aspire to it, ”lamented 45-year-old Eleanor. And 54-year-old Svetlana complains that her daughter “has many admirers, but she finds some flaws in everyone and believes that there are no worthy ones, she is not going to get married.”
“Anxiety is understandable, but interest in relationships should wake up on its own, and not because you want it,” Jungian analyst Larisa Kharlanova comments on such situations.
Some parents are used to controlling their children in everything. First, this manifests itself in checking homework and writing essays for the child, and then in trying to improve his personal life by choosing a suitable partner. It is important for a son or daughter in childhood to learn to take responsibility for their own actions, otherwise they will not be able to truly grow up.
Separation is rarely painless, more often it is accompanied by quarrels and misunderstandings. It happens that parents come to see a psychologist and begin to complain about aggression and rudeness on the part of adult children. “I congratulate them: finally, their boy or girl is growing up, being initiated into adulthood,” says psychotherapist Ilya Suslov.
When children sit on the neck
If some parents try to control and patronize adult children, then others face the opposite problem: the child is in no hurry to grow up and takes their care for granted. He likes to live in his parents’ house, where there is always food in the refrigerator, someone washes his clothes and pays the bills.
“Many young people perceive the family simply as a base, a launching pad, with little thought about their place in this cell of society and their share of responsibility for it, especially if they are really not used to being responsible for anything,” write Jill Hines and Alison Beaverstock in book “Your Adult Children”. Parents complain about the irresponsibility of the child, the unwillingness not only to arrange their own lives, but also to do part of the housework. They feel at a dead end: as soon as they stop cleaning up after their grown son or daughter, the apartment will immediately sink into disarray.
Sometimes to support means to remind a person that he is not at all a small capricious child, but an adult and independent person.
Hines and Beaverstock recommend making a list of things you do around the house and then showing it to an adult child. Perhaps the son or daughter will be surprised and say that they do not have to clean the apartment, but the authors insist: “If you want children to become more responsible, follow the only rule: stop doing everything for them and wait until they start doing it themselves. <...> If all family members begin to take responsibility for themselves, they finally become a group of equal adults living under the same roof.”
Most likely, someone will be surprised: isn’t the first task of a loving parent to support the child, providing him with comfortable conditions in which he can develop and get on his feet? “Support is not only kind words and attention, sometimes support means reminding a person that he is not a small capricious child at all, but an adult and independent person,” explains psychologist Veronika Leonova. “Because that’s the kind of person who can get through the hard times, get through the hard times, and move on. And a capricious child, for whom parents do everything, is unlikely to cope with this task.
About the causes of parental fears and anxieties
The growing up of a child entails changes not only for himself, but for the entire family system. A parent who is accustomed to taking care of, solving any problems of children, is out of work, feels helpless. It is especially difficult for a woman who primarily associates herself with the role of a mother. In her own crisis, she clings to every opportunity to help an adult child in order to feel useful and meaningful.
“Secession is a two-way process,” emphasizes Inna Khamitova. When children grow up, parents also have to get used to the new situation. They may not be ready for parting because they are afraid of the emptiness that forms in life.
Watching how a little girl turns into an adult woman, a mother can experience conflicting feelings: joy and anxiety at the same time. She is afraid that her daughter will make mistakes or, conversely, repeat her bad experience. In addition, the youth of children inevitably reminds her of her own age.
“If a distance has not been established between them, the mother seems to “appropriate” her daughter’s life, wants to live for her and does not allow her to make decisions,” explains Jungian analyst Anna Kazakova. – They form a pair, excluding the presence of a third. If a daughter has a partner, the mother does everything to expel him in any way. In fact, the daughter gets a ban on the manifestation of her own feelings and sexuality.
So how do you approach them?
Parents and children are always people of different generations. They grew up and matured at different times and in different conditions. Contradictions between them are inevitable, but at the same time this does not mean that their relationship cannot be built on mutual respect and love. While the child is small, it is easier for parents to get what they want from him: he is still controllable, reacts to prohibitions. But such tactics fail in adolescence, and it is almost impossible to command a completely adult person.
Between parents and children there will always be boundaries that exclude some topics from their communication.
“The sooner parents recognize a “negotiator” in a child, the more chances they have to establish equal communication in later life, thereby providing themselves with a “significant voice” in old age,” explains Natalia Manukhina in the book “Parents and Adult Children”.
Treating your son or daughter as an equal participant in the dialogue helps to establish a conversation with children of any age: it doesn’t matter how old your child is three or thirty. This does not mean that your opinions must necessarily coincide, but the opportunity to speak out and be heard is the key to the success of any relationship.
Is friendship possible between parent and child? “It is desirable that as your son or daughter grows older, the relationship between you becomes more and more equal – friendly,” write Hynes and Beiverstock. “The truth is, you’ll never be real friends.” The authors believe that there will always be boundaries between parents and children that exclude certain topics from their communication. It is unlikely that an adult son will share with his mother the features of his sexual life, just as she will not feel comfortable talking about her last orgasm. Sex is not a taboo topic at all, but the details of an intimate life are hardly meant to be shared with parents or children.