When things have been quiet for awhile I find myself letting my boundaries be compromised piece by piece. My difficult child's seem to know when my resolve weakens..
Yes.
The reality of parenting a difficult child child is a harsh one.
difficult child kids are differently wired.
MWM always reminds us of that.
But I think I am just now getting that what differently wired means is that the wires are probably never going to magically make the right connections if I behave differently.
That is key.
I am not going to get what I want.
difficult child kids are differently wired
and why doesn't matter.
So that is one part of radical acceptance: Why doesn't matter.
I know firsthand that convincing ourselves we are
unaffected by difficult child irresponsibility only works until there is explosive damage.
Okay, so I hit a key, there. difficult child irresponsibility. It isn't solely the drugs, the alcohol, the mental illness. It is that from the beginning, from the time they were out of the house enough that we could no longer enforce responsible behavior, a difficult child child invariably chooses irresponsibility.
They do the strangest things.
We're back to genetics, again. Back to adventuring, back to courage and creativity and the creation of new things; back to so many of our ancestors having chosen to sail an ocean in the time before radar or even adequate maps or engines on boats.
They did that.
Those were our ancestors, here in America.
And that is the blood that runs in our children.
From the time she was a little girl, difficult child daughter's dream was to be an astronaut and settle another planet.
difficult child son makes things happen. He does. His ambition? Was to sue people. We were hoping that meant attorney. Wrong again! He meant to do nothing and get money.
Who knows where they even come up with this stuff.
I may start a thread on that. What did our difficult child kids want to be when they were little as opposed to easy child kids.
I'm betting there will be a difference.
***
Someone posted about being labeled "cheap". I think it was Seeking. husband is labeled cheap, controlling, and mean. Now that I am now refusing to be the money conduit to husband, no one quite knows what to do with me. I am looking askance at their difficult child interpretations of family, too.
This is where I am vulnerable. Wow, how did I not see that vulnerable place for what it is.
The role of family, the role of mother; I blackmail myself first. All they have to do is play the music I provided. The dream of getting what I want (a happy, successful family) will keep the money flowing.
I have to think about that one a little bit.
Back to cheapness.
I am the good cop. husband is the bad cop.
Do you see the triangulation, the disrespect, the identity through the difficult child eyes in these roles we have been cast in.
Do you see the harsher realities our marriages are tested against, versus non-difficult child child marriages.
Another difference between ourselves and non-difficult child parents is the way we are seen and labeled and who we are understood to be by our difficult child children compared to the way they are seen by their non-difficult child kids. This is an important distinction for us to make. Those differences in the nature of the self reflected to the parent by the child is a source of much pain that the non-difficult child parent is wholly unaware of. We might choose to be unaware of that too, but we do so at our peril.
It makes us weak, that our difficult child kids see us as they do, and it makes other parents very strong, very centered, to know their children see them as they do. I mean, it affects the who they think they are in every other area of life too, just as that same weakness, that same sort of horrified inability to look away affects us in our lives, in who we think we are down in our hearts where no one sees.
This pain and the weakness attending it may be the core thing that keeps us hooked in. The shame of the way they see us, the coldness of it, the lack of respect in it weakens us, sets us off center and out of balance and out of sorts and is a thing to recover from before we can participate in the world with our heads up, not determinedly, but joyfully.
That is a difference between us, whatever our positions in life, and those we know whose kids are not difficult children, whatever their positions may be.
I am talking money and accomplishment and things like that.
Shallow, I know.
But there is something here, I just know it. Something that will set me free. I know I am supposed to be so happy for them that they do not know what I know.
But I want more than that for myself.
It is not that I wish them to know the taste of my situation. I would like to understand my freaking situation in a way that does not leave me wounded and vulnerable to further manipulation.
***
Friends or not, we know darn well those successful parents have just as many tics and shortcomings and hang ups as we do and yet their kids are fine. This puts us on the rotten outside looking in again.
It's maddening.
Faced with the pain and confusion surrounding the way we love and are loved by our children, we need the factual, blow by blow knowledge of the dynamics of our relationships. That way, we can counter the hurtful self image come of parenting difficult child children, one little piece at a time.
Maybe.
Understanding the purpose and the payoff of the roles our children cast us in is a beginning way to heal guilt and shame. Guilt over what we did or did not provide. (Which is a rationalization, a way for us to believe that if we could find and fix whatever the lack was, the difficult child would be able to thrive when the truth is that humans are hard wired for challenge and our difficult child kids are behaving irresponsibly even in how they express their genetics.)
But here's the rub. We are going to have to do this over and over and over again for the rest of our lives.
Maybe we don't, Trish. If we can figure out our own motivations, then we will be free. Our difficult child kids will still be difficult child kids, but we will be able to face whatever comes without guilt or remorse or even, regret.
We will know better.
How long ago is "some time"? Please remind me how old the grandkids are now.
Here are the small sparks I haven't assimilated yet.
"Some time" was in relation to the length of time the ex-husband has been out of work. So, he let difficult child daughter come home in early Spring. By Thanksgiving, he had quit his job. She had been demanding that he do so. Suddenly, one Monday morning, he did. That was all we knew.
The kids are 5 and 9.
Remember I had a 4-year old special needs/non-verbal grandson that was found neck deep in water in a nearby lake.
Nightmare imagery. I am so sorry Trish and I wish I could know, for you and for me too, how to cope. I fall into the FOG sometimes because I can stand it better to be in that buzzy place than clear eyed and present.
This totally sucks, and this is not something that is supposed to happen, either.
When I get twisted up in the "what ifs" I defer to my husband. While you probably had to lead your husband to the serenity well, it sounds as if he may find it easier to maintain a cool head in the face of an oncoming storm.
husband is...he does not trust either difficult child. He is jaded where the future is concerned for our grands, too. He does love them, but his eyes are open and he takes no joy from what he sees.
Oh Cedar, I think it is not only okay, but perfect and loving to be wary and wise where difficult children are concerned. To be anything less (or more?) is to discount not only the truth, but ourselves.
Thank you for this, Albatross. I am confronting the way I am put together in looking beyond what I think I see with my kids.
It's hard to sort of be making these kinds of accusations. I never know for sure whether I am telling the truth, or trying to clear myself of something I am responsible for.
But I have to know.
Nothing is changing, so I have to change.
There isn't so much room for the luxury of illusion regarding who and how our children are, when our children are difficult children.
We all know the stories of elderly parents abused by difficult child kids. Ultimately, these things happen because the parent refuses to believe it, when the child tells them who he or she is.
We all know the heavy cost of that.
Though I knew she had helped him with part of a bus ticket, I did not know she had paid for a round-trip bus ticket simply because he wanted to make it all they way to CA...and traveling money. I also didn't know that she told difficult child not to tell her husband about it. (He and husband and I have been very vocal about her enabling behaviors toward her own child and ours.)
I find it unbelievable, too.
My sister used to be able to collect quite remarkable sums of money during plane rides because she was a single mother.
It is the same thing. Though it is disconcerting in the extreme for us, predatory people see nothing wrong with what they do.
And I especially didn't know that the reason she "helped" difficult child this time was because he greatly colored the story of how he ended up 1000 miles from home with no $, very much painting himself as the victim
My sister does that too, only I would not say painting herself as a victim. She paints herself as the courageous survivor and gets people to invest in making the world better through giving her money.
I'm hoping the sober him isn't really the kind of person who would not only do the things he did that necessitated us kicking him out, but turn around and find the nearest sympathetic soul he could find, so that he could turn a natural consequence of bad behavior into an expenses paid vacation. I really hope that's not who he is, when he's clean and sober.
We are working on eradicating our vulnerabilities, Albatross.
We are going to be fine and strong and happy and focused again soon.
No more guilt, no remorse.
We have parented fully and beautifully. The beauty in generosity, in forgiveness, in loving someone for the best in them ~ all that stuff is ours, is bred into us, is in our natures.
We will still be ourselves, but our eyes will be open.
But I'm not going to go that way.
Nope. Not this time.
which reminded me a bit of the dig your daughter had to make, about how comforting the neighbor was. Those kinds of hurts...man, they hurt on so many levels.
Not only that.
I don't know what she told the neighbor, what she tells the neighbor. I do know she...BLANK SPOT which Cedar pushes through. I do know difficult child daughter and difficult child son talk about us to one another. I do know they do not think well of us. I do know there are sophisticated manipulative games being played which will cost the neighbor money.
It very much sucks.
I'm still working on that "radical acceptance" part, in which I accept that yes, somehow perhaps my son didn't get what he needed, but that yes, also, I did the best I knew how at the time. That none of us get everything we needed, but we are still responsible to make a life worth living for ourselves, anyway.
Me, too. I am so glad you are posting and participating with us. We will do this; we will see our own vulnerabilities and...well, that's all.
But maybe that will be enough.
You might have WANTED to slap his face that day at school, but maybe you held back because you remembered. And somehow it ends up getting used against you. That double standard is a killer. I use it against myself. And my son uses it against me.
And that is key. Knowing how our difficult children manipulate our feelings about ourselves to have it the way they want it.
Now that I think about it, they tend to be good at finding our soft spots and blind spots.
But not all kids become professional victims...some decide not to let it define them and get help
I've never seen this cycle I go through again and again put so succinctly.
You didn't know he was going to have mental illness. What crapola from them
And I didn't ask for you to be born to suffer from mental illness. Neither did I ask for my own complex range of issues and challenges.
IT ISN'T FAIR.
Laughter is magical for me, it helps to color my world against the shades of darkness.
I did not feel hurt by the words that came out of his mouth. His life will continue on the same path he has been on because of this attitude. I have done all that I can do. I have said all that I can say. I have run myself ragged. I have put my health on the line. He will sink or swim and he can hate me or love me. I am 61 years old and have x number of days left to me. I will be damned if I give him those.
I accidentally hit post.
Edit time is up.
Cedar
