Caring Parents of Estranged Adult Children Community Group
We have given our lives to our children and they reject us. We still love them but this love is now frozen in time. How do we deal with the resulting chaos of our lives? We talk and we listen to one another as we cope with this loss and assault on our sensibilities. Respect in our thinking and language are a must.
We all had or still have expectations of how our adult children should have turned out. How our families should have been. We all wanted close and loving relationships with our families. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be anyway?
For those of us who are dealing with estrangement, our expectations didn't turn out as we hoped. But now I ask myself whose expectations were they? - My adult child's or mine? I had expectations of how my adult child would turn out, but they were not his choices.
So what can I expect from my adult child today? A phone call? Gifts for mother's day? A visit on the holidays? For him to believe in everything I believe in? For him to fulfill all of my expectations?
I'd like to share part of reading on expectations in answer to this:
"Expectations can get us into trouble. If we are inclined to expect the worst, we may become sick with worry or paralyzed by fear. Unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment. Expecting too much from ourselves or others creates grief and frustration because no one is perfect, Perhaps the only safe expectation is that God will bring about a correction solution, now or later and that the answer to our prayers will be Yes or No or Wait."
For those of us who are dealing with estrangement, our expectations didn't turn out as we hoped. But now I ask myself whose expectations were they? - My adult child's or mine? I had expectations of how my adult child would turn out, but they were not his choices.
So what can I expect from my adult child today? A phone call? Gifts for mother's day? A visit on the holidays? For him to believe in everything I believe in? For him to fulfill all of my expectations?
I'd like to share part of reading on expectations in answer to this:
"Expectations can get us into trouble. If we are inclined to expect the worst, we may become sick with worry or paralyzed by fear. Unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment. Expecting too much from ourselves or others creates grief and frustration because no one is perfect, Perhaps the only safe expectation is that God will bring about a correction solution, now or later and that the answer to our prayers will be Yes or No or Wait."
I cannot believe how people don't even send a "thank you" for a wedding gift or baby gift anymore. My dd recently said a new mom on my sil"s side "is just so busy with the baby to send out thank you's." I didn't respond to my dd's comment but thought to myself, "Weren't we busy with our babies years ago?"
What I am having a hard time with is when you mentioned about our own children....holidays and gifts and "Mother's Day". I realize they have their own lives and new traditions, etc. but did we not have birthday celebrations for them? Didn't they grow up in homes where we celebrated holidays and visited grandparents or grandparents visited us? And did we not teach them to acknowledge Mother's Day and Father's Day when they were growing up? Isn't that how we learned about things, from our parents and then passed along to our children? To ignore so much of what we taught them, I believe, is a lack of respect and I guess goes back to the old "me" generation we raised.
And, Maria, God made it clear....quite clear....that children are to honor their parents. And the consequences of not honoring parents are not good. But, maybe our ec also changed their views about God and the bible. And they can do that, it is their choice..... And I guess the result of that means we need to just pray, pray and pray some more for them and to remember, God is faithful. Hugs, my sister.
Our son made it into university with the goal of becoming an engineer. He was really in awe of the space program and that was his ultimate dream, to be on the engineering teams organizing those grand projects. He started his courses. He barely made it through his first year with a couple of failed subjects he had to repeat. He started his second year. All this time, since i worked for myself, i found the time to drive him to campus in the morning and i would pick him up after courses and bring him home. In the second year this pattern continued. I would drop him off and at around 5 pm i would pick him up. This went on for September, October, November, and when December came around i asked him how prepared he was for the mid term exams at christmas time. He confessed to me that for the last 2 months he was not attending classes and he just did not have the heart to tell me this, and so he still had me driving him to campus every morning so that he could go to gaming rooms and be on gaming sites all day long and then i would pick him up. My expectation of him keeping up his end of that bargain to go to classes really suffered when i found out that i had been had by him like this. I ceased having any expectations of him at that moment. He is now 42 and he is unemployed and unemployable subsisting on the good graces of our government. I have no more expectations with regards to him about anything.