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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 678135" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I feel antipathy toward my children, Copa. Even my grands, when they are following wrong paths. It isn't that I don't love them. I do. I do not love what they are doing to themselves.</p><p></p><p>I do not love that, at all.</p><p></p><p>It's repulsive.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>You did not fail. Your son is committing moral atrocities against the man that you raised him to be. </p><p></p><p>True.</p><p></p><p>Of course you are not loving and accepting of that. Again Copa, this is about behaviors and lifestyles and thinking patterns that you raised your son better than to engage in. There is no way for you to feel you are loving and accepting right now unless you are willing to love, and accept, the immorality at the heart of your son's current choices.</p><p></p><p>That is the issue, here.</p><p></p><p>The kids try to trick us (and everyone else) into believing there is something the matter with us ~ that we are not loving enough, and that that is why these terrible things are happening to them.</p><p></p><p>How rotten of them, to do so.</p><p></p><p>He is a man, Copa. He is choosing to do what he does though he knows better.</p><p></p><p>That is why M said: "She merits respect."</p><p></p><p>You are his mother, Copa. He should not be doing what he is doing. There is nothing more to say.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Better you should be a strong center for him to return to Copa, than a soft place for your son to turn himself into a vicious and arrogant beggar living on your charity through your willful blindness to the wrongness in his choices. In your son's choices of vulnerability Copa, I see the same targeted manipulation of you that my children have engaged in with me.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Where your heart breaks, where you become FOG bound ~ that is the tender spot, the vulnerable place, where you can be manipulated. The baldness you cannot see; the vulnerable little boy within your son who is really a grown man, but who parades those vulnerabilities before you to break you so he can have what he wants.</em></p><p></p><p>I couldn't believe it when I finally could see that is what my children were doing to me, either. One of the parents here on P E had to point it out to me too, Copa. I was blind as a bat to what my kids were doing. Here is the thing: <em>Our kids didn't grow up like we did. They were raised to have more integrity than to target our vulnerabilities ~ than to break us ~ to get what they want.</em></p><p></p><p>Copa. The only thing you ask of your son is that he work if he refuses to go back to school. </p><p></p><p><em>***</em></p><p></p><p>Here is another way to see what is happening with your son. (I don't so much care about your son, actually Copa. I care very much about you.)</p><p></p><p>True.</p><p> </p><p>This is a phase your son is going through. See it like that, Copa. Remember who is right, and who is wrong, here. Like when he was three or two and got into a phase and you wondered whether he would ever grow out of it. Just as you did not crumble then, just as you did not question whether toilet training or table manners or wearing clothing was really all that important after all ~ just as you held the line then, you must do so, now.</p><p></p><p>That's good advice.</p><p></p><p>I should listen to myself.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your son. The situation is horrifying and we will never know the why of it or we would have found and corrected it by now so the why behind any of this cannot matter. </p><p></p><p>What matters is how you survive; is how you come through it. What matters is whether you pull yourself together in an ethical way so that if and when your son is able to move into a different place in his life, you are there and strong and healthy.</p><p></p><p>Copa. That is the only thing that matters because that is the only thing we have any control over or even, that we can effect at all. </p><p></p><p>I am so sorry you were sick, Copa. </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>That one of our children has been arrested, or has used hard drugs or is addicted or mentally ill ~ none of those things Copa, in and of themselves, destroy love or empathy. None of those things, in and of themselves, are evil. It is the underlying thought pattern attending criminal activity that we don't understand and cannot abide. <em>We did not raise our children this way Copa because we are not this way ourselves. These kinds of victimizations, these repeated moral slippages turned habit are abhorrent to us. How then could we abide it in our children? </em></p><p></p><p>So, that your son has not been jailed or used drugs does not make what he <em>is</em> doing okay.</p><p></p><p>What he is doing is morally wrong.</p><p></p><p>It is the lack of empathy and the advent of cruelty in its thousands of guises and the hectoring viciousness of our children's senses of entitlement that turn our hearts. (How many threads have we had on those hard, empty eyes in our children's faces?!? Or on the filthy, unbelievable things they say to us, to their own mothers and fathers, when finally we stand up to them and stop giving them money and make them leave and won't buy them another car?)</p><p></p><p>Now I forgot where I was going with this. </p><p></p><p>This is what I do know. We protect our kids from the way we feel about the things they do by turning those feelings onto ourselves. I think all moms (and dads) do this. But for those with hurtful childhoods, those feelings we turn onto ourselves to protect our kids break down barriers erected for us to survive what happened to us in our dysfunctional families of origin. </p><p></p><p>So, we are really in terrible positions. And once we are, our rotten dysfunctional families of origin swoop in for the kill, too.</p><p></p><p>So, this is all so much harder for us than it is for those raised in healthy environments.</p><p></p><p>That is okay, though. Once we realize what is happening, we can address it. We need to keep what we know about being hurt when we were little kids separate from what our children, who were not hurt like we were, are doing. Our children were not raised to do what they are doing. We <em>were</em> raised to do those things, to be broken people without integrity,<em> and we refused</em>.</p><p></p><p>I expect nothing less of my children. But when they do bad things, I don't want to know that about them. So, I fix things, instead.</p><p></p><p>We need to stop fixing things.</p><p></p><p>The kids need to stand up.</p><p></p><p>Our job is to come into steady state. Is to see clearly and stop protecting those we love by blinding ourselves to what is happening.</p><p>Then we can tell them true things. Things that can help them if they want to change, and that will not hurt them if they don't want to change because nothing hurts them when they don't want to change.</p><p></p><p>Again, we are all time-blasted here, because our own parents and sibs are such poops.</p><p></p><p>Nonetheless, that is our job. We need to do that the best way we know. No one said being the mom (or the dad) was going to be a happy thing. We just believed it was because we loved our kids so much and were so happy with ourselves and with them. How great that we had that time. Now is a different time. </p><p></p><p>We are not the ones who need to change, here. </p><p></p><p>The kids need to change the way they are thinking and the things they are doing. For their own sakes, for the sakes of their lives and of their own children, our kids need to change their ways. It would be very wrong of us to present to them a world where what they are doing is okay. What the kids are doing is not okay. What they want, and what we cannot give them, is for us to be afraid of them and of ourselves to the degree that we pay their consequences. That we let them move into our homes because they spent all their money to "feel" better about themselves. That we raise their children <em>because they are as mean, and as irresponsible, to their children as they are to us.</em></p><p></p><p>That turns me feral, to think about what they do.</p><p></p><p>But we aren't supposed to say anything about that. In fact, <em>we</em> are supposed to be guilty about that.</p><p></p><p>Which we would do, if it helped anyone. </p><p></p><p>But it doesn't.</p><p></p><p>And these behaviors our kids are engaging in are stupidly dangerous. Stupid, because though so much is being risked, nothing at all is being gained by our adult kids but that they feel better about themselves. </p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>How good have we been feeling about their need to feel better about themselves. </p><p></p><p>We really literally don't have time to mess around with things (like guilt) that don't work.</p><p></p><p>We really cannot enable.</p><p></p><p>We need to stop that. (I need to stop that, even in my words when I am talking to my kids.) If our kids are ever going to become the men and women we raised them to be, we need to stop our enabling behaviors.</p><p></p><p>That is the right thing to do.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>Thank you Copa and Okie girl. I needed to have a look at some of this for myself. The thing is that as time passes, we let our guards down and forget how to function (and survive it psychologically intact) when our kids are messing up.</p><p></p><p>So, I needed this, too.</p><p></p><p>And IC response. I liked that alot.</p><p></p><p>Thank you, IC.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 678135, member: 17461"] I feel antipathy toward my children, Copa. Even my grands, when they are following wrong paths. It isn't that I don't love them. I do. I do not love what they are doing to themselves. I do not love that, at all. It's repulsive. *** You did not fail. Your son is committing moral atrocities against the man that you raised him to be. True. Of course you are not loving and accepting of that. Again Copa, this is about behaviors and lifestyles and thinking patterns that you raised your son better than to engage in. There is no way for you to feel you are loving and accepting right now unless you are willing to love, and accept, the immorality at the heart of your son's current choices. That is the issue, here. The kids try to trick us (and everyone else) into believing there is something the matter with us ~ that we are not loving enough, and that that is why these terrible things are happening to them. How rotten of them, to do so. He is a man, Copa. He is choosing to do what he does though he knows better. That is why M said: "She merits respect." You are his mother, Copa. He should not be doing what he is doing. There is nothing more to say. *** Better you should be a strong center for him to return to Copa, than a soft place for your son to turn himself into a vicious and arrogant beggar living on your charity through your willful blindness to the wrongness in his choices. In your son's choices of vulnerability Copa, I see the same targeted manipulation of you that my children have engaged in with me. [I] Where your heart breaks, where you become FOG bound ~ that is the tender spot, the vulnerable place, where you can be manipulated. The baldness you cannot see; the vulnerable little boy within your son who is really a grown man, but who parades those vulnerabilities before you to break you so he can have what he wants.[/I] I couldn't believe it when I finally could see that is what my children were doing to me, either. One of the parents here on P E had to point it out to me too, Copa. I was blind as a bat to what my kids were doing. Here is the thing: [I]Our kids didn't grow up like we did. They were raised to have more integrity than to target our vulnerabilities ~ than to break us ~ to get what they want.[/I] Copa. The only thing you ask of your son is that he work if he refuses to go back to school. [I]***[/I] Here is another way to see what is happening with your son. (I don't so much care about your son, actually Copa. I care very much about you.) True. This is a phase your son is going through. See it like that, Copa. Remember who is right, and who is wrong, here. Like when he was three or two and got into a phase and you wondered whether he would ever grow out of it. Just as you did not crumble then, just as you did not question whether toilet training or table manners or wearing clothing was really all that important after all ~ just as you held the line then, you must do so, now. That's good advice. I should listen to myself. *** There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with your son. The situation is horrifying and we will never know the why of it or we would have found and corrected it by now so the why behind any of this cannot matter. What matters is how you survive; is how you come through it. What matters is whether you pull yourself together in an ethical way so that if and when your son is able to move into a different place in his life, you are there and strong and healthy. Copa. That is the only thing that matters because that is the only thing we have any control over or even, that we can effect at all. I am so sorry you were sick, Copa. *** That one of our children has been arrested, or has used hard drugs or is addicted or mentally ill ~ none of those things Copa, in and of themselves, destroy love or empathy. None of those things, in and of themselves, are evil. It is the underlying thought pattern attending criminal activity that we don't understand and cannot abide. [I]We did not raise our children this way Copa because we are not this way ourselves. These kinds of victimizations, these repeated moral slippages turned habit are abhorrent to us. How then could we abide it in our children? [/I] So, that your son has not been jailed or used drugs does not make what he [I]is[/I] doing okay. What he is doing is morally wrong. It is the lack of empathy and the advent of cruelty in its thousands of guises and the hectoring viciousness of our children's senses of entitlement that turn our hearts. (How many threads have we had on those hard, empty eyes in our children's faces?!? Or on the filthy, unbelievable things they say to us, to their own mothers and fathers, when finally we stand up to them and stop giving them money and make them leave and won't buy them another car?) Now I forgot where I was going with this. This is what I do know. We protect our kids from the way we feel about the things they do by turning those feelings onto ourselves. I think all moms (and dads) do this. But for those with hurtful childhoods, those feelings we turn onto ourselves to protect our kids break down barriers erected for us to survive what happened to us in our dysfunctional families of origin. So, we are really in terrible positions. And once we are, our rotten dysfunctional families of origin swoop in for the kill, too. So, this is all so much harder for us than it is for those raised in healthy environments. That is okay, though. Once we realize what is happening, we can address it. We need to keep what we know about being hurt when we were little kids separate from what our children, who were not hurt like we were, are doing. Our children were not raised to do what they are doing. We [I]were[/I] raised to do those things, to be broken people without integrity,[I] and we refused[/I]. I expect nothing less of my children. But when they do bad things, I don't want to know that about them. So, I fix things, instead. We need to stop fixing things. The kids need to stand up. Our job is to come into steady state. Is to see clearly and stop protecting those we love by blinding ourselves to what is happening. Then we can tell them true things. Things that can help them if they want to change, and that will not hurt them if they don't want to change because nothing hurts them when they don't want to change. Again, we are all time-blasted here, because our own parents and sibs are such poops. Nonetheless, that is our job. We need to do that the best way we know. No one said being the mom (or the dad) was going to be a happy thing. We just believed it was because we loved our kids so much and were so happy with ourselves and with them. How great that we had that time. Now is a different time. We are not the ones who need to change, here. The kids need to change the way they are thinking and the things they are doing. For their own sakes, for the sakes of their lives and of their own children, our kids need to change their ways. It would be very wrong of us to present to them a world where what they are doing is okay. What the kids are doing is not okay. What they want, and what we cannot give them, is for us to be afraid of them and of ourselves to the degree that we pay their consequences. That we let them move into our homes because they spent all their money to "feel" better about themselves. That we raise their children [I]because they are as mean, and as irresponsible, to their children as they are to us.[/I] That turns me feral, to think about what they do. But we aren't supposed to say anything about that. In fact, [I]we[/I] are supposed to be guilty about that. Which we would do, if it helped anyone. But it doesn't. And these behaviors our kids are engaging in are stupidly dangerous. Stupid, because though so much is being risked, nothing at all is being gained by our adult kids but that they feel better about themselves. Huh. How good have we been feeling about their need to feel better about themselves. We really literally don't have time to mess around with things (like guilt) that don't work. We really cannot enable. We need to stop that. (I need to stop that, even in my words when I am talking to my kids.) If our kids are ever going to become the men and women we raised them to be, we need to stop our enabling behaviors. That is the right thing to do. Cedar Thank you Copa and Okie girl. I needed to have a look at some of this for myself. The thing is that as time passes, we let our guards down and forget how to function (and survive it psychologically intact) when our kids are messing up. So, I needed this, too. And IC response. I liked that alot. Thank you, IC. [/QUOTE]
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