Gettyimages.com/Teenage girl ignores her mom. The mom gestures while through to get through to her daughter.
I pull away from my parents a lot. When I do it, I find myself thinking, “It would hurt me so much if my child did this to me.” But here’s the thing—I’m not trying to hurt my parents when I pull away. I’m trying to prevent them from hurting me. To give you an example, I am a spoken word performer sometimes. In the past, I invited my mom to some of my shows but she sat in the front looking disappointed. After the show, she asked me a lot of questions as to why I perform—questions of which the subtext was I don’t like that you perform. The look on her face while I was on stage distracted me and threw me off my game. Her questions after the show hurt my feelings. So now, I don’t invite my mom to my shows. Perhaps she’d hoped her behavior would cause me to stop performing, but that’s not what happened—it simply caused me to remove her from that part of my life. I think that’s a shame, and if it’s one you’d like to avoid with your own kids, know these are mistakes parents make that make your grown kids pull away.
Telling them they never call
When your child calls, the first thing you tell them is that it’s been too long since the last time they called. Then you drill them as to why they’ve been too busy to call, and you analyze their schedule, deciding there was no excuse for them to wait this long.
