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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 659387" data-attributes="member: 17461">I am very sure it is genetic.  My sister is different than me.  SWOT's sister is different than she is in that same generous, ingenious, kind of innocent assumption that the good will triumph way.  My daughter may be what it looks like to be the genetic mix of my mother and my sister when we have been mothered well enough ~ or maybe, not quite well enough.But my daughter has that same generous belief in the good, and that same determination to take responsibility and stand up, that I do.She is a very good mother to her children.  Even with everything that has happened to all of us, her children have that solid, well-mothered feel to them.  Like in that Simon and Garfunkel song "Kodachrome".It's like they have time.I always feel a panicky sense of immediacy.You had to take a stand, Copa.  My son was getting so abusive with me, too.  SWOT posted about abusive adult children.  At first I couldn't see it.  Then, finally, I sort of did and stood up on principle instead of trying to understand us both back to civility.  What I learned from that experience is this:  Our sons cannot respect themselves if they do not respect their mothers.  Whether we like it or not, whether we would like to parent in that way or not, we need to be moms who are strong enough to require our sons to keep a civil tongue in their heads when they are speaking to their own mothers.My son didn't talk to me for a long time, either.We had also said:  No money.So, whichever thing it was that made him so angry, I just acted as though I was sorry for how it was between us.  Which I was.  He will sometimes begin to talk in his old way now, but not for long and not every time.  In the interim, he was picked up and made to submit to random drug testing.  That is probably the thing more responsible for any change in my son's behavior than anything I might have done.  It was good for me to stand up though, Copa.  I think it was good for you, too.  There is nothing easy about any of this.  It is hard to know how to see it when they want nothing to do with us.But it was not healthy before either Copa, or you would not have searched for and found this site.That is the thing that is so hard to remember.  We always think we caused the bad things, somehow.But we didn't.What we did was stand up.That was the right thing to do, Copa.  Just like it was with my family of origin.  They have always been snaky mean.  Being nice to them didn't stop it.  Being mean to them hasn't changed it. (Like when I told my sister the truth about what I was thinking instead of whatever it is I usually do.)I am sorry your son is doing this to you.  But it is true that he needs a strong mother, not a mother he can dominate and frighten.That is a true thing, Copa.Cedar</blockquote>

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