If your children call you names as adults and are plainly rude - what do you do?

  • Love them in spite of it and stay in touch remotely?

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Cut them off?

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Seek counseling?

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Give ultimatums?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Focus on the children who are positive?

    Votes: 2 33.3%

  • Total voters
    6

Halogen Lights

New Member
In raising five children as a single mom after divorcing - all achievements were phenomenal I have believed. Two daughters were talented and gifted students who were the youngest children in attending college on their campuses. One daughter bought a home at age 22. My sons are loving and kind and resourceful. All the children are high-achievers who excel in sports and their education / career pursuits.

We were always very close and seemed like a duck with ducklings is the best explanation.

Dad was intelligent but abusive and I left when the children were very young.

During their upbringing I provided each of them with their own personal space. Always had to have 4, 5 and 6 bedroom homes. Often I slept on the sofa in order to ensure they had their own space and privacy.

My sons and I are very close. We enjoy one another's company. The odd thing is, I felt the girls and I connected more over the course of time and we were very close as well until the past ten years - ten years ago we were all good. One daughter's husband complains his parents call each weekend but then compares that I do not - if I do they don't answer the telephone. In fact, one-half of the time they don't answer when his parents call.

My daughters now are anything but.

My friends say I should just blaze ahead and let them work out their own journey but it hurts. With Facebook they are friends, then not friends, then friends . . . over my lifetime I've done so much. If I share how much I've done the girls say, "Oh you are full of excuses." I don't even know what they mean by that. If they discuss the past and then I answer by saying, "Well, you know XYZ. . ." They then suggest I should be more attentive but when I reach out they are rude and belligerent.

My sons want nothing to do with their sisters and are both angry they are acting the way they are.

All the children are solid adults with good lives. They have their foibles but they are doing well, productive, families, quality adults . . . I just don't understand.

I do know my sister and I had angst for some years and she bends the girls' ears. Then they talk among themselves. One daughter has a disability along the lines of anxiety and she continuously relives the past but projects it bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until her memories don't map to real-life events - then she shares that with the world and paints me as a horrid person and people meet me and are surprised to see I'm not that person and quite the opposite. Two daughters call me by my given name rudely. One started after beginning to talk with the other lately. Another has a career with the government and I believe has been instructed to distance herself from family in general.

We come from a very good family with good heritage and good ethics. I raised the children attending our church. I wasn't overly dogmatic. Given them freedom of choice.

I feel their commentary is nasty, rude and abusive. Am I selfish to just move forward and not reach out or should I write monthly or send cards and then just let time pass?

I'm so confused and sad about this but I have my own life.
 
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pasajes4

Well-Known Member
Live your life. It does hurt and it is unfair. You have seen what happens when you try to respond to their venom. Stop responding. Stay off their facebook. Hide their posts. Just my two cents.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I agree with Pas. The girls sound mean for no reason. Your sons see this. I adopted a very loved son from another country at age 6 and he had a good life and was loved the same as all my kids, three others being adopted too. He stopped talking to us after meetig his wife and it took two years of therapy for me but we all moved on...siblings as well. I am close to them. I found that writing my deepest thoughts and love to him, carefully picked cards and nice gifts just made it worse so we stopped. The son and wife laughed at me. He is not the man I tbought he was and his wife is awful.
You need and deserve to have a good life regardless of your daughters. Do block their social media. I would stop talking to sister. She sounds untrustworthy.

Love and hugs!
 

Halogen Lights

New Member
I have to say - my sister and I are on very good terms "now" and she advises me like the two of you. She's run into the same thing with her children. I believe we spoiled them.
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
HI Halogen,
Welcome, and sorry for your need to be here.
It sounds like you have given much to your daughters and they are disrespecting you.
I feel their commentary is nasty, rude and abusive. Am I selfish to just move forward and not reach out or should I write monthly or send cards and then just let time pass?
I would let time pass. Let them figure it out. They are adults. Well, sort of.
I mean, what kind of adult child mistreats their own mother?
We wouldn't take that kind of treatment from strangers, even more so, respect should be given to ones parent.
I'm so confused and sad about this but I have my own life.
It is sad and confusing when these adult kids of ours go, well weird on us.
For you, especially because they seem to have done well in their lives. Who knows what their mindset is? Where is this coming from?
For me, my two are addicted and using. I have learned to expect weirdness from them when I see them.
I don't see them often, due to lots of things, but top of the list is being disrespectful.
I don’t deserve to be mistreated.
Either do you.
You matter.
We do have our own lives HL.
I have been downsizing and going through accumulated stuff lately. It has taken me some time to get to my photo albums. I was too sad to look through all of those pictures of my kids growing up. I finally dove in ( thank goodness for digital nowadays, man, I have so many, many pictures!)
What I saw, were memories of days gone by, happy times spent as a family. It reminded me that we did have some lovely times together.
My most recent communique with my two d cs was all about how it is “my fault” they make the choices they do, “if I was a better mother” .........
Huh.
Did I make mistakes- darn tootin, I am only human after all. I did the best job with what I had and knew at the time.
Often times kids will grow up and bemoan this and
that about their lives. Blame parents for their issues. We can role back the tapes and find incidences where we wished we did better.

Well, fact is, adult kids make their own choices.
Blame is a way to shirk responsibility for just that.
Too bad.
Too bad more kids are growing up into adulthood feeling entitled, dissing and blaming parents.
I am glad you have your boys, they seem to see this for what it is and their sisters bad attitudes are unacceptable to them.
Focus on your boys.
Maybe their sisters will get the hint.
Your attention on your girls right now, is not deserved.
You matter, you have worth.
Life is short.
Too short to be allowing adult children to rob us of our peace and joy.
They will do what they want to do.
They should know better. Do better.
Focus on healing from this and living your life.
You have done your job.
(((Hugs)))
Leafy
 

Halogen Lights

New Member
Thank you. I've been feeling heart-broken lately with what I hear from the girls.

I do need to focus on my sons.

Also, when I reflect on the children's upbringing I remember singing, dancing, joking and having so much fun. When I am told it is my fault for "everything" I think to myself, "Bad choices are the reason for current events or, sometimes "good choices" with bad results that are no one's fault" I'm so tired of the weight of bearing the burden of blame for things that I don't even understand how they were an issue of my doing. I mean - I worked 2 and 3 jobs went to college to improve our lives - afforded quality homes and even a nanny for four years. And, I worked contracts for the government so I was earning good money for less hours to spend more time with the children growing up.

Why can't they see the work for them on my part? Everything was for the children in my life. And, yes, I've made mistakes but nothing grandiose that should cause ruination of our relationships. My parents were excellent people but they made mistakes - I'd never call my mother a c_nt or s_a_ch like my daughter called me last week. I'm just at a loss for words.

Folks hear these horrid stories and then meet me and like me and one daughter is fit to be tied that they do so.

Thank you for your advice. I'm hearing the same thing and understand I cannot fix what doesn't want to be mended.

Halogen
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I would feel pain and sadness too.

These things can turn around. But in their own time.

if you focus on the gifts in your life (and you are a gift too) this will give your girls time to grow up and to potentially come to better understand themselves and life.

Maturity is not about an age.

You sound very strong, sure of yourself at your core and capable. Perhaps your daughters have felt ambivalent about leaving you. They may love and need you too much.

you help them by letting them work this out.
 
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RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
So sorry you are being verbally abused by your girls.

I would not speak to them if they talk to you like that. I would not send cards, letters or call. I would distance myself from them until I saw a big change.

There is no excuse for them to treat their mother like this. Period.

Sometimes things in life have no answer or do not make sense. Sometimes we do not get an answer to our WHY???

Once I realized and accepted that it helped me deal with my "whys".

:forchristmas:
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Your daughters are abusing you and running you down because they know they cannot live up to the high standards you set, where you dedicated your life to your kids. They still want to focus much of their lives on themselves and not on just their kids. So they make you out to be a horrible monster of a mother and then they don't feel so bad about whatever choices they are making that take them away from their own children. It isn't that YOU expect them to make the choices that you made. It is that they don't want you to see that they are not as devoted to their families and children as you were to your children.

This is their way of hiding their shortcomings and selfishness. It is also a way for them to feel better about being less of a woman and a person than you are. They are belittling you to make themselves feel better. It never works and only makes them feel worse, but they are not smart enough to realize it.

It is time to leave them alone. If you must communicate, do it in a way that shows you spent little time or energy on it. Give them only what they give you, nothing more. It is high time they earn your respect and regard. You don't get to abuse your mother and curse at her without having her teach you that she won't put up with it.
 
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