When and How Can a Parent Stop Parenting?

In her column of 9/13/09, a letter writer asked Dear Abby:  “At what point does a parent stop giving unsolicited advice? It is painful to watch my "child" repeatedly make choices that aren't in her best interest.”  The writer's daughter was 43. 

After describing some self-destructive behavior by her daughter, the writer added, “Although I am trying to keep my mouth shut, she tells me she "feels" my disapproval… Must I duct tape my mouth shut?

The relationship between parents and adult children is by its very nature a bit of a mine field. In order to rear their children properly, parents have to discipline them. Parents have to tell children what to do, what not to do, and how to behave in various social situations. Parents have to find ways to make their children follow these parental directives. Good parents continually set limits with their children.

The difficulty is, when is this supposed to stop?

Does the child suddenly become capable of making his own enlightened choices by virtue of having lived eighteen years? Should parents ignore the wisdom of their added years and never advise their adult children about anything? If the parents do persist in giving counsel, how upset are they going to be if the child chooses not to follow their sage advice? If a parent suggests a course of action over a particular issue, will the adult children feel infantilized?

Even with peers who are not relatives, the issue of when and when not to give advice can get to be problematic.  In Eric Berne’s psychotherapy model, transactional analysis, he shows how asking for and giving advice can become a “game.”  On the surface, two people may seem to be engaged in an “adult to adult” conversation, but the subtext may be entirely different.  One member of the dyad may be acting like, say, a helpless yet petulant child trying to frustrate the other member, who may be acting out the role of an exasperated parent who thinks he or she knows what is best for the other person.

A game people play

When the two parties actually are parent and child, the question of whether or not there is a hidden agenda being acted out becomes that much more complicated.  The parents may claim that they are “just expressing their opinion,” while the adult children feel like they are being told what to do as if they had no valid opinions on the subject themselves.  Is the parent’s advice merely an opinion, or is it a directive (a command telling the child how to behave)?

 

Unless parents and adult children are adept at metacommunicating about this issue (talking about the way they talk to one another), tension is bound to develop.

This situation becomes compounded exponentially in those situations where the parents themselves are highly conflicted about the advice they give.  They may be unsure of and unhappy with their own choices in life, but cannot admit that even to themselves - let alone to their adult children.

In such a case, two events frequently transpire: the parents bring up the issue involved rather often — because they are themselves preoccupied with it — and they give out a double message.  The offspring often interpret the advice to mean “Do it because I did,” but almost simultaneously, the way the advice is given may also have elements suggestive of “I hope you don’t have to do what I did and become miserable like me.” Whenever this chain of events takes place, a question about the motivation behind the parental advice giving is invariably created for the child.

The child must choose between two possible presuppositions. As mentioned, either the advice is meant as a directive or is merely the parent's opinion about a controversial issue. The frequency of the advice giving will most usually indicate to the child that how he or she behaves is a matter of grave concern to the parent. Therefore, the younger family member will presuppose that the parent's statements about the issue are directives or instructions.

But which part of the double message should the children heed? In situations where the advice is given ambivalently or is part of a double message, they will then make an effort to determine, using principles of ordering environmental cues that I describe in my book, Deciphering Motivation in Psychotherapy, which side of the double message to follow.

  

Consider the example from that book of a woman I will call Trudy and her mother. Trudy was having all kinds of anxiety symptoms over making a decision to really commit to her boyfriend.  Her mother had said on numerous occasions that "marriage is a mixed blessing: one has to take the bitter with the sweet."

One could interpret this as sage advice on the wisdom of not expecting perfection and retaining one's equanimity in the face of unavoidable adversity. Nothing in the lexical content of the statement indicates that Trudy's mother was commanding her to behave in any particular fashion or make any particular choices regarding marriage or spouse selection. The statement can be viewed as an expression of the mother's opinions about life and as good advice - nothing more.

  

On the other hand, the fact that the mother seemed compelled to drive this point home by repeating it over and over again suggested otherwise. The statement began to sound like a warning: "You'd better watch out! If you get married, you'd better be prepared for all the bitter you're going to get along with any sweet!" Every time the mother would talk about the good points of relationships, she seemed to be throwing in a warning about it.

Not only that, but her frequent repetitions indicated to the daughter that the mother was very concerned about whether the message had been heard loud and clear by Trudy. Perhaps she was worried that Trudy had not understood it the first twenty times it was said.

  

Naturally, Trudy began to worry about the consequences of getting involved with men. She became concerned not only that she might be in for a rough time, but also, for some reason, that her mother might become very upset about it. What Trudy did not realize was that the mother's repetitions indicated that she was trying to convince herself, not Trudy. In any event, the motivation presupposed by the mother's statement was in question, and the patient had been forced to guess what was correct. A good therapist would be alert to the possibility that Trudy may have guessed wrong.

You're Asking For It

In a recent advice column by Dear Abby, A 19-year-old woman complained about the way her two younger sisters were treating her mother. When the writer was 4, the mom had gone to prison for eight years, but the experience of jail had somehow turned Mom's life around. At 38, the mother had a college degree, a loving husband, a good job and a new home.

The two sisters said that they did not want to be part of the mother’s life, but they never failed to call her at holiday and birthday time to pick up the gifts they know Mom has bought them. Afterward, they would not contact her or answer her calls and texts until the next holiday. From the letter writer’s perspective, this repetitive dysfunction interpersonal interaction would leave the mother depressed and feeling used. If the writer tried telling them to stop this, they would tell her to get out of their business.

In her answer, Dear Abby opined that the two younger sisters were manipulative, selfish and self-centered, but correctly pointed out that the mother was enabling them to behave in this way. Abby astutely said that the mother might be giving and giving out of guilt, while the sister may be taking and taking in order to punish her.

On the surface, the younger sisters were in fact being manipulative, selfish, and self-centered. But - just maybe - they were really responding to what they believed the mother needed and wanted them to do. Perhaps Mom was feeling so guilty for being in jail during their childhood that she was actually inviting the girls to abuse her in this way. They may have been “helping” her to atone for her sins. The mother's "need" for this was evidenced by the fact that Mom kept giving them stuff in spite of their mistreatment of her.

Under this interpretation, the sisters are giving the Mom the punishment they think she feels she deserves, while taking the heat off the mother by looking like they are the villains in the story. They are the ones who appear to be “acting badly.” For a parallel situation, please see my post, Your Spouse’s Secret Mission.

We have all heard the expression, “You’re asking for it,” as when a child defies a parent’s orders knowing full well that he will be spanked. Now of course, this is said as if it were meant facetiously, as a sort of a joke. After all, why would anyone be “asking” for a spanking?

Not a good tattoo for a criminal



What I propose here is instead that people really do mean this. They really think people are in fact asking for it when they do something knowingly that will surely lead to a negative consequence. Why else would they do that? The individual who says, “You’re asking for it,” however, does not know why the “asker” is doing so. He or she has to come up with some sort hypothesis to explain it. Maybe the other person is mad, bad, crazy, guilty, or just a masochist.

So why is the phrase said as if it were being said facetiously? The answer is that the person uttering the phrase knows he or she will be attacked for offering this theory seriously.

For example, let’s take the case of one not-uncommon type of abusive husband. In my most recent book, I describe the case of a woman who was married to a hyper-jealous and hyper-possessive husband with a history of violence.

One day in a fit of pique, she torched his prized vehicle and then had sex with his best friend. She then went home to tell him all about what she had done - in the nastiest way she could think of - and blamed her misbehavior on his inadequacy as a husband. So what happened next? Duh!!!

Before I go on, let me add a caveat. I am not suggesting that this guy’s behavior should be excused. One should not beat someone else up no matter what the provocation, except perhaps in the case of Osama Bin Ladin. So don’t write me a nasty note!

Now, if this husband were to tell, say, a marital therapist, that his wife was “asking for a beating,” what response would he be likely to get in return? The therapist would almost certainly exhibit an angry and disgusted facial expression and accuse him, perhaps in a sugar-coated but still easy to spot way, of trying to justify his vile behavior through rationalizations and deflecting the blame for his own shortcomings onto his victim. The average abuser generally knows better than to subject himself to that - unless he actively wants the therapist to hate him.

Such a reaction would hardly be limited to a therapist. Most people would attack this guy unless they were afraid of him or somehow complicit. Better to use the phrase facetiously, no?

Now, “asking for it” does not have to be this clear and dramatic. Subtle behavior can draw out hostile responses just as well as can gargantuan provocations.

The great Eric Berne, founder of a type of psychotherapy called Transactional Analysis (TA) and author of the best-seller, Games People Play, describes a “game” that he calls Kick Me : This game is played by people whose social manner is equivalent to wearing a sign that reads “Please Don’t Kick Me.” The temptation for everyone is almost irresistible, and when the natural result follows, the person cries piteously, “But the sign says ‘don’t kick me.’” Then he adds incredulously, “Why does this always happen to me?”

The mother in the Dear Abby letter might have been acting in such a manner with they younger daughters, while acting very differently with the eldest daughter. If this were the situation, the eldest daughter would probably not understand what the younger sisters were really reacting to, and blame them. Just as they would want. As I have pointed out in previous posts, people are so thoughtful that way!