Why Your Parents Don't Understand You...And Why You Don't Understand Them
I turned 27 a few months ago which means my mom has officially been a mom longer than she hasn’t been a mom. Her identity has encompassed parenthood for just over half her life. Before me she was many things - a girlfriend, a basketball player, a student - multiple identities made up her life. But to me, her main identity was always mom.
That’s where the problems start.
Parents are people. When you’re young, that idea is impossible to comprehend. Parents represent ideas and feelings like authority and, hopefully, safety. They’re bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter. Even the basest parents make sure we stay alive. Better parents try to make sure we thrive as well. As children, they make sure we eat, stay clean, do well in school, and have good friends and activities. They explain the world to us and make sure we’re insulated from as much of the unsavory pieces of life for as long as possible. But we don’t view them as people.
As you get older, you start to see cracks in that omnipotent vision. They complain about their boss at dinner, you hear them whispering heatedly about money after you've gone to bed, or maybe they have surgery and you’ve never seen them so physically weak. You start to realize that maybe they don’t have it as together as it seemed before. Your idea of them starts to change.
By adulthood, you realize your parents truly are just people. They have their own dreams, fears, emotions, and trauma. But you haven’t grown up actually seeing your parents this way. You haven’t experienced why they are the way that they are. Even in an especially communicative family like my own, my parents can only speak to their pasts, but I will never know what it was truly like for them. They went through their own formative experiences, had their own conflicts with their parents, and eventually struck out on their own and did totally new things as well.
You realize that they have been parenting you this whole time the best that they could, but that their best is heavily dependent on their life before you even existed.
When you’re young, your experiences match up to your parents’. All kids go through very similar growing pains. Parents recognize these similarities and can act exactly according to their own experiences. However, as an adult, you start having more and more experiences that your parents may have no reference for. For example, neither one of my parents have worked in my nor my sister’s field of employment, so when one of us is seeking support regarding our jobs, we often don’t get the responses we were hoping for. Not because our parents don’t care, but because they don’t truly understand what it’s like just as we don’t understand what it was truly like for them.
There are some areas we grow into that our parents simply have no experience with. But we continue to look to them for support and wisdom, and they feel obligated to provide it to us as best as they can. At this point they have also parented us for 18+ years and changing tactics now can be uncomfortable or even impossible for them. They desperately want the best for us, and may still employ tactics or fall back on ideas that worked when we were younger but don’t quite give us what we need as adults.
I’ve had conversations with a few friends going through this with their parents and it seems like it’s a common issue amongst twenty-somethings. Navigating this period of life where we are striking out on our own but still relying on our parents for emotional and mental support can cause friction and frustration for both parties. We have looked to our parents for support for our whole lives, they’re familiar and safe, so to realize that the support we need might not be there anymore is incredibly painful.
I don’t believe this is necessarily a lost cause. As I mentioned, most parents simply want the best for their children and act accordingly. In some cases, we can simply ask for what we want. There’s no harm in trying to let them know how we feel when they don’t respond to us in the way we were looking for, and seeing how they react or attempt to change their behavior. They may not even know how we’re feeling and would be more than happy to pivot on our behalf.
However, it’s also important to realize that you can set boundaries where needed. I used to be a chronic oversharer to my parents, but over time, talking about certain topics with them started making me feel worse rather than better and I simply learned to keep my distance from those in conversation with them. It does make me sad that I can’t rely on them for everything anymore, but I’ve also learned to spread out my search for support. I can rely on my sister, my friends, or even my boyfriend depending on the topic. Not everybody is suited for every conversation and unfortunately, that includes our parents.
The hardest part is that even if we set the boundaries or learn to live with their styles, we still crave their support. We want them to see that we’re happy and we want to know that they are proud of us. We’ve been telling them about our lives for so long that it feels distressing to put limitations around that relationship. I’m still going through this and the silver lining I’ve noticed is that these boundaries and adjustments have only strengthened my relationship with my parents. I believe that this means I am entering a new phase of life with them and am simply taking the necessary steps to get through this change.
The Fam