How to confront an adult parent

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“For two weeks every Christmas my 80-year-old mother comes to stay with my family. Each visit seems to get more fraught than the one before. The trouble is my mother never appears grateful or happy with anything we do for her while she’s with us. She flies from Perth, where she lives close to my sister and brother. When she comes to our place she stays in one of the children’s rooms and shares their bathroom, and although she pretends it’s all very comfortable, she gets in little remarks about my sister’s beautiful guest suite and how clever and talented her other grandchildren are. My wife says she’ll lose it if she hears once more about how poorly we compare with the Perth contingent. I need to say something this holiday to make sure Christmas isn’t ruined. I love my mother, but I am not blind to her faults. And I feel guilty just discussing this because she won’t be with us forever.” David, St Johns Park NSW

This is a tough one, and there’s no simple solution, but if it’s any consolation, you’re definitely not alone. I can just see thousands of readers all over the country and beyond nodding with recognition and keenly awaiting an answer to that burning question – how do you confront an adult parent? You can feel overwhelmed by the emotions that arise when you even imagine doing such a ‘radical’ thing – almost like biting the hand that feeds you. And doesn’t it drive you wild to feel like the 10- or 12-year-old you once were when faced with standing up to your mother? Even as adults, our mothers can still ‘press our buttons’ like no-one else.

Is confrontation the answer?
I would be very careful about this as it can so easily go so wrong and that wouldn’t be good for you, or anyone. Right now you’re torn – between standing up for your rights and those of your wife on the one hand, and wanting to avoid hurting your mother’s feelings on the other. It can seem impossible to achieve both of these goals, but it can be done. One of the keys is to learn about assertive communication, which means being able to express your feelings clearly (for instance, ‘When you do that, I feel like this’) without being overwhelmed by your emotions.

You sound like a very responsible person, willing to be the one to ‘solve’ this dilemma, so you might like the following advice. I heard it so long ago that I can’t remember where it came from. It is: ‘Your responsibility to others
is to ensure that you are happy.’

Why is this so hard?
Mothers have the power to make us feel ten feet tall or absolutely wretched, and everything in between. Because human infants are dependent on their mothers for survival for longer than just about every other animal, it’s not surprising that mothers are incredibly important in determining how safe and secure we feel. As children we learn to adapt to their needs to avoid our worst fear – being abandoned – and by the time we’re adults this has become a habit. Also, we generally love them very much.

Cultural patterns also play a part in this. Some cultures aren’t as hung up as others when it comes to confrontation and argument, seeing these things as just a normal part of life; some, and Anglo-Saxons in particular, would almost rather die than say what they really feel. Within these cultures, individual families have their own culture, which includes spoken and unspoken rules and taboos. Examples of beliefs that might be handed down in families are: ‘tidy’ equals ‘good’ (and therefore ‘untidy’ equals ‘bad’); you must respect your elders, and so on. What are the unspoken rules in your family’s culture?

What can you do?
You’ve probably heard this before: you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself. And it’s true. It isn’t at all easy to change family patterns, and if you look back to your childhood, you’ll probably see the same patterns have been operating in your family for a long time – the same allegiances, the same antagonisms – and those patterns are often repeated throughout generations. Changing one of the elements – yourself – is really the only way you can break the patterns, but be prepared to encounter resistance as families have ways of keeping their individual members in line.

Further reading

• Family Ties That Bind by Ronald W. Richardson (International Self-Counsel Press, 1995)
• The Drama of Being a Child by Alice Miller (Virago, 1995)
• What Children Learn from their Parents’ Marriage by Judith Siegel (HarperCollins, 2001)
• The Expanded Family Life Cycle by Elizabeth Carter and Monica McGoldrick (Allyn & Bacon, 2004)
• Games People Play by Eric Berne (Ballantine Books, 1996)

Words: Carolyn Parfitt