Observation: Ruth Nemzoff on life and longing in our relationships with our adult children

In an interview with Vision about her book,  Ruth Nemzoff, talked about what we yearn for in our relationships with our adult children and about the pressures we are under to ease out of their lives.

The ideal relationship between parent and grown child: "My book is written for parents who basically have good relationships with their adult children. What they yearn for is more intimacy. They don’t want to live their children’s lives; they don’t want to be involved in every petty decision—or even every major decision. But they would like to at least feel a part of it. They don’t want to read in the newspaper that their child got a job promotion. Or perhaps the adult child might say, “Hi, I was offered this new job; these are the pros, these are the cons, this is what I’ve decided.” The parents would love it if their child asked, “What’s your opinion? I’m not necessarily going to follow it, but input would be valuable.” That would be the ideal."

Letting go:  The task is not to let go but to constantly use incremental learning to bring them to new ways of staying connected. .... As we get older, how do we live perfectly independent lives yet remain able to share the joys and the sorrows—the frustrations of life? For example, if your child gets a promotion, you all might want to celebrate together. Or if your child experiences a failure, it’s nice to have people who care that you failed. Most of the world just goes on, right? They don’t care whether I wrote my article today or not. But it’s wonderful to have a child who says, “How’s the article going, Mom?”

 

 

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