(Grand)Parenting Tip: The Undermining Remind
My wife and I are very blessed to have both sets of our parents.
Really, our parents are together, healthy, and within 35 minutes of where we live. They are very generous with their time and help us out with our five kids a ton!
I wanted to make that point really clear at the beginning in case that sentiment gets lost in the middle of this post at all. I love my parents and in-laws and am grateful for their continued support. I also want to be honest about the state of these relationships, and inside that bundle of love is also a portion of frustration and overstepped boundaries.
I'd like to describe one such set of examples and explore the solution we have sought. If you're a parent or grandparent, let me know if you can relate. And to be clear, pretty much all four of the grandparents do this to some degree or another, and I'm only picking on my mother-in-law because the examples are most clear in my mind.
The Set Up
My mother-in-love is a 5'1" force of nature. She is in her late sixties but continues to work as a seamstress at least 40 hours a week, often much more. She immigrated with her husband from Macedonia about forty years ago. She has Mondays off from work and will often come over for several hours to help us out around the house. A huge blessing.
In her help though, she also feels the need to regularly instruct us on how to run our house and parent our kids. I know this is not a unique phenomenon. But I think being relatively young when we started to have kids makes us easier targets.
I was barely 21 when my first child was born. I now have five and will be only 27 come March (my wife is two years older than I). In our parents' eyes, we were mere babies ourselves. I get that.
The Advice
The advice is expected, undesired, and covers a multitude of sins.
Make sure you take the trash out.
My house.
You need to dress the kids warm.
My kids.
You shouldn't go to church so much.
My. Fucking. Religion.
You shouldn't make that much oatmeal.
Wait, what? What does that even mean?
Make sure you change their diapers before bed.
Okay. If you saw my other post you'll know that I have already changed over 10,000 diapers.
Did I mention five kids?
I have put my kids to bed thousands of times. I don't need such advice on the matter.
Obviously this is all coming out of place for her desire for our well-being. She wants to ensure that me and mine are taken care of.
Here's the problem.
The Problem
It undermines my position, and that of my wife, as parents and leaders in our house. To remind someone of something that is so rudimentary for them is actually offensive. Not the kind of offensive that leaves you speechless or knocks you back. It is the kind of offensive that slowly erodes your inner landscape until you find yourself irritable around this person for no obvious reason.
Ignoring it works fine in the moment, but over the course of several years, it starts to take a toll.
The Solution
This is a tricky situation because it is not universally recognized as problem by all parties. In the grandparents' minds, they are speaking from a place of love and care. For the parent (adult child), it feels like a form of gas lighting.
It is not so straight forward to tell someone to stop loving you in their default mode of love. And I'm not looking to offend anyone here. Like I said, we deeply care for these people. Then there is the added difficulty of not having the same native language. My mother-in-law is fully conversational in English, but we still often find ourselves talking past each other.
Still, having clear boundaries with loved ones is essential to having emotionally healthy relationships. It is important to define where one person stops and the other begins.
We tried a subtle approach at first, even passive at times. We'd respond to her unwelcomed advice with "Yes, we know." Etc.
Unfortunately, that did not land on fertile ground.
We needed boundaries, but we sort of wanted them to create themselves. We had no real experience in having to explicitly call these things out into the open.
Ultimately, we needed a more direct approach. We needed to muster the patience, stability, and nerves to confront our parents and tell them what and why we would like to see change in our communication. Then we open ourselves up to receiving the same.
It's important to approach the conversation with the goal of increasing overall understanding between the parties, not to go in there and "win." You want to be prepared so that you know what it is that you want, but you also don't want to come at someone with what appears to be a long list of their wrongdoings. Borrow a tip from a work manager's playbook. Sandwich some compliments in with the critiques and explain that you are only seeking these changes in order to foster a more authentic closeness.
Each relationship is different, so you will likely need to tailor your approach to fit the dynamics in front of you.
I'd be lying if I said that this has been a one time cure. It takes a regular renewal of a new concept in order to sustain lasting change. We get that. But, we are making progress towards an overall healthier family.
I wish you the best on your journey through this parenting life.
Cheers,
Sam
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very well written and being a Psychology buff , this is so applicable to a lot of human relationships...undermining another can border on a form of passive aggression
Thanks for your upvote and comment! Sorry it took me a few days to get back to this post.
I think you're totally right that this kind of dynamic exists in a lot of different relationships.
What is often worse is the compounding effect from the dance that we do. Passive aggression can be hard to weed out because it is not overt. It is veiled and if you call it out, you can sometimes be made to look like the fool. For that reason, so many of us will shove our feelings down and never bring it up in the relationship.
I was just listening to a talk about learning to have integrity in our friendships and they mentioned how telling someone directly how their actions make you feel is important for your own well-being. The end goal shouldn't be to correct their behavior (that is a nice spin-off benefit), but rather to be able to be settled with yourself.
Great post. I can definitely relate. But I also want to begin my comment by saying that I do not necessarily believe that such behavior comes from a place of a desire for others well being. I obviously don’t know your mother-in-law, or your relationship with her, so I mean that more in a general sense. I think sometimes such behavior is actually coming from a relatively malicious place, and to try to rationalize it can further one from what is really needed as a “solution.” I don’t mean overtly mean, or with an intention to do real harm, but due to whatever issues a person has pent up inside, outward behavior can be malicious, or at least anti-social. I had a similar problem with my mother-in-law, in which she was simply acting like I was unwelcome. This was after several years of having a very good relationship, and somewhat “out of the blue,” but it continued long enough that my wife and I recognized it as a new normal. Somewhat like your family, My in-laws are an integral part of ours. They actually provide all our day care needs, for which we are indebted to them, and that complicated the problems I was having with my mother-in-law — I didn’t want her to think I was ungrateful, but at a certain point the rate of passive aggressive behavior was unbearable. When push came to shove, my wife confronted her mother, which I really appreciated. She simply told her mom that her behavior was noticeable and inappropriate, and she asked her mom to explain if something was wrong. This was enough to influence a noticeable change, but I’ve also scaled back my approach to her as a parent. I realized that I was making assumptions about our relationship, and my sense is that she doesn’t really want another son, per se. In addition to my wife she has another daughter and a son, and I have learned to politely excuse myself from many gathering so she can have time with them without me around. This wasn’t exactly easy, as it is just me (my kids/her grandkids are always welcome in her space!) But between my wife insisting that being mean is not okay, and me making some adjustments, things are much improved. I guess my biggest response to your post is that sometimes direct communication is necessary (although difficult as you wrote), and most important, that we have a right to expect that we can have those tough conversations. In your case, I think it would be totally appropriate to state very clearly exactly what behavior you see, what you interpret it to mean, and you’re honest request for a change.
For sure! I really appreciate you calling that point out because I totally agree. We have had several direct, tough conversations, and in our case, I think there really is a fundamental disconnect about what constitutes appropriate behavior. There is a deep cultural tradition of the matriarch telling everyone else how to live.
Now, that doesn't mean that the conversation is done, but it does influence our approach. My MIL often responds with something like "That's just how we do"--meaning that is all she has ever known, that's how her friends act, that's how her mom was, and her mother-in-law, etc. My wife and I have had to draw a line in the sand and tell her that, while that may be true, we are choosing to be different and if she wants to maintain a close relationship with her daughter and grand kids, then she'll need to respect that change.
My father-in-law is another story altogether. His comments are much more malicious, manipulative, and sometime downright mean. I recognize that this flows out of a deeply wounded place in his own life, but that doesn't excuse the behavior. We have had to take a much more forceful approach with his behavior and call it out for what it is.
I like your comment because it reminds me that a lot of people struggle with the concept of recognizing the faults in their parents. I think we tend to hold on to the childhood need for our parents to be superheros and so we make constant excuses/rationalizations for inappropriate behavior well into adulthood. I have had soooooo many conversations with friends that go something like "Yeah, I know that my dad loved me, he just never told me. And he stopped hugging me at age 10. And..." My wife and I have done our best to give up that fantasy and it frees us to actually see when they are trying to love, even when it is borderline abusive. Placing blame onto blameworthy actions does not mean that you cannot forgive and continue loving that person.
Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!
Hi @ssimkins0, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
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This is a real honor! Thank you very much. I look forward to reading the other posts and following you for future highlights. It really makes it so much easier to find awesome Steemians when people like you take the time to put together lists like this.
I see this all the time in my own life. My wife is particularly sensitive as a victim but deals out the same to our grown up kids. Quite ironic. I don't like confrontation so I tend to retreat into myself as I know my tongue is very sharp which can cause serious damage to relationships
We tend to get caught up in cycles, don't we? We work with what we have got, and it is pretty difficult (if not impossible) to give out what you have no first received. I only ever read parts of this book, but I liked it and it has high recommendations from friends: Boundaries. Maybe I'll get back into it because I am realizing I have a lot more refinement to do.
Thanks for sharing honestly about where you are at!