The other evening I witnessed an unpleasant argument between sister in law & her older daughter. The family are staying with mother in law for the wedding, the girls have gone home and left the parents to have a much-needed week's holiday with us. Their father has his personal itinerary planned, he is visiting friends in nearby towns. Their mother is looking forward to spending some precious days with her mother. The girls are PCs (mostly) but the elder as been asked to do a bit of ferrying around of her younger sister on Saturday, she has some responsibilities to do. One of those is to help her older sister in her dance school, but this weekend was already discussed, younger sister had to do other things. Older sister decided to get very resentful the other night and insist she wouldn't do the ferrying around, if her sister wouldn't help her as usual (which would mean having to drop out of other important responsibilities).
I listened to sister in law trying to sort thisone out. She ragedd at her daughter; she told her she was selfish, ungrateful, mean, spoiling all plans, going back on agreements - I listened (couldn't help it) and wondered who she was talking to, was it another fight with brother in law? sister in law was saying things I never would have, not in that way. Then sister in law came out, eyes red. Later niece came out, eyes red. There was a lot of tension, we all had to pretend there was nothing wrong. Very awkward.
What really came across to me - the parents were trying to resolve this by each separately talking to daughter, then talking together, more arguing (in quiet whispers) and I saw parents divided by a daughter who wanted her own way.
I love my nieces, don't get me wrong. But they have learnt the wrong way to argue, from their parents. My niece was using divide & conquer rtechniques because she has witnessed her parents arguing with one another in very emotional, unreasonable and unproductive ways.
sister in law took it all to her heart and was the most hurt of all. It wasn't right.
The lesson from this - our children will hurt us. It does happen. As parents we need to be united, as much as possible. We should not let our children see any chink in a united front. Of course we aren't always going to agree, but we need to disagree with one another vwery privately and come to a mutual decision which we present as such to the child.
And the biggest lesson - learn to detach and NOT take it all to heart.
Sometimes we can't help this. So we need our own "walk away" strategy. DDD suggested sitting in a church - that's a good one. Any place of worship which is open can help. Or an art gallery, or a museum. Or a garden. Or the bathroom.The aim - to lose yourself in something different, something tranquil, somewhere apart where you can get some physical distance and regain your balance.
And above all - you HAVE to turn off your personal feelings and remind yourself it is NOT all about you, it is about the other person and THEIR issues.
Not always but mostly - if your child sees how much they have hurt you, then you have just openly handed your child a dangerous weapon and said, "Now feel free to bludgeon me with this whenever you want to hurt me again."
Displaying our pain to our children MAY, ONCE, demonstrate to the child the damage they have just wrought. But it comes at a huge price.
This is a lesson I have tried to share with people on this site from time to time. Most of you have learnt this. Some of you are slow learners and that is when I want to walk away and not continue to try to teach this. Because sometimes in trying to teach this over and over, I am afraid I am boring people, or they are switching off because they NEED to scream at their kids and use emotional blackmail arguments, in order to make their wayward kids feel as badly as they, the parents, do. sister in law does this. I can't teach her anything, she doesn't want to know. THis is one more reason for me to act as if nothing is happening, because if I say ANYTHING, then I know she will use it on me - she will attack and criticise every possible fault in me she can see, and too much will be said to ever draw back from. If I say nothing, we end up communicating more effectively in the long run. Ironic.
Whenever we are dealing with our kids, we need to put our own pain aside for that moment. We need to think, "Will what I say help my child move forward in this and do better? Or weill it only make things worse and make it more difficult for her to come back from her position of wrongness?"
In this post Nancy, what I glean - you want to know what to do with those feelings of extreme pain when you need to retreat and lick your wounds. This tells me that you are one of those people who IS trying to argue appropriately and to walk away when you need to, to avoid dumping your pain onto your child purely as retribution. In which case, the best advice I can now share - if you are doing this then it will eventually reduce in intensity and frequency. It DOES get better. You just have to keep training your child to work on her own problems and not use your own weapons against you.
Marg
