Parents who want their kids to stick with a task set the right expectations. Remember, the sport that fit your oldest kid may not be right for your middle kid. The trick is to gauge your child’s interest in the sport, lesson, or activity - before you start. Ask teachers and other adults for their input. If he loves drawing consider art lessons if enjoys listening to music, try piano or violin. Tune in to your child and find his natural interests, passions or talents. In other words, it's better to say, "I feel hurt that you haven't been returning my calls," than, "You're a jerk for not returning my calls.Discuss on TODAY Moms: How do you teach perseverance? One tidbit from the old I'm OK – You're OK self-help book that has stuck with me: Use the first-person singular, not the second-person singular, and you'll cause less friction. The use of the term "confront" is unfortunate in this context. It appears to make things worse."Īs Lao Tzu says: "The sage, because he confronts all his problems, never has any."
Another of the study's findings: "Avoidance doesn't work as a strategy for dealing with conflicts. I'm not saying back out of their lives, though. At this point I've just got to make my own mistakes. Me, I can see my poor old mom biting her lip until it practically bleeds to stop herself from advising me on everything from health issues to how I relate to my boys.īut it's for the best. I know it's hard for the momma bear to stop grooming and guiding her cubs even when they are well into middle age. Now, I'm not saying this is you, or that if it is, you need to change your ways. that the tie between parents and their grown children "is often highly positive and supportive but it also commonly includes feelings of irritation, tension and ambivalence." Also that as children need us less and less, they contact us less and less often.īut, more interestingly, it noted that grown children tend to have more conflicts with their mothers than their fathers, possibly because "mothers make more demands for closeness" and "are generally more intrusive than fathers."Īnd it mentioned "unsolicited advice" a lot. It came to some laughably obvious conclusions, e.g. It looked at a number of factors, including personality differences, past relationship problems, children's finances, housekeeping habits, lifestyles and how often they contacted each other. Let me just point you, for now, to an interesting study on the relationship between parents and their adult children published a few years back in the journal Psychology and Aging. On and on it goes.Īs to what you should do – well, it's hard to say, since I don't know what particular issue your oldest child might have, or if he has one, or even whether he or she is a he or she. They in turn have children who grow up and are ungrateful. So yes, I understand why you might be a little bitter.īut it is the cycle of life. There were some days, as a stay-at-home dad, when if I hadn't been able to hand the boys off like a rugby ball to my wife, Pam – "I spent the day dadding, now I say 'uncle'" – well, I don't know what I would've done. My hat's off to y'all – I don't know how you do it. They owe me, man!Īnd I'm not even a single parent. Sometimes being a dad feels like opening your wallet in a windstorm. Not to mention the unholy drain on one's cash flow. It took so much work to get them on their feet. If they grow up to ignore me, it will be upsetting in the extreme.
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth," hey? After all those sleepless nights changing all those stinking, steaming diapers taking a terrible hit on your career – suddenly they're not returning your calls? I mean, if you broke off all contact with your kids in a huff, I could see the younger one going, "What'd I do?"īut I certainly understand how you feel. And wouldn't it be kind of throwing out the baby – or in this case the younger grown-up offspring – with the bathwater? Now, now, momma bear: I know you don't mean that.
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