We have all heard about parents who over control their children. But rarely have we heard about children who try to control their parents. This post will be about those children.
In my case, everyone already knows I had an alcoholic, emotionally abusing, and emotionally abusing father with a passive agressive mother who passed away in 2010. Basically my father has moved on - new wife - and only accepting 4 of his 6 children into their lives. My baby sister and I were the 2 not chosen but it is something that is not new to either of us. We have lived our whole lives like that. We escaped a controlling father by refusing to be a part of his manipulations.
As we age, we look forward to getting married, having children, having grandchildren. We went out of our way to try and not control our children. We encouraged them to have goals and reach for their goals. We didn't care what they did in life just that they did something. We put no pressure on them. Now I am wondering if that is the wrong approach.
My husband and I are going through a financial crisis right now but that is nothing new in healthcare. He is 65 and I am 62. We both chose being in the medical field and pursued the education to allow us to be in that field. In my husband's case, that meant 4 years of medical school after college, then internship, then residency. We married a year after his residency. The ups and downs of never knowing what your income will be day to day, week to week, month to month is well known in this field unless you are in it for the wrong reasons. We are in it because both of us love being able to help others. We may not run it as much as a business as we should but we are happy.
Son-in-law who never finished college and keeps drifting every few years from job to job but staying in the IT area, just does not understand this mind set. His parents had very steady incomes (father is an accountant and although drifted from job to job, had an income that could be counted on at any time. His mother was a physical therapy aide who never finished college either because she got pregnant with her first child). So son-in-law is child #2 or the first child from that marriage. They had another girl then 10 years later had a change of life boy. That boy was a drug addict and dealer. He ran away at 19 and ended up deceased in a cornfield. There wasn't enough left of him to have answers to any questions if this was accidental or a homicide. They will never know. This boy ran away from home because he was being told what to do and what to be and his last fight was with our son-in-law who pushed his brother to take flight. I think he thought he was taking control of his brother where the child had no control at all from his parents. But it backfired.
Now son-in-law has turned to us and has turned our daughter against us. We paid for daughter's college and 40 thousand dollar wedding. We did it by my taking on billing for a psychotic doctor who I had the pleasure of dumping after I knew all bills had been paid. Husband and I paid for their wedding and college although we strongly feel now like changing our will to deduct what we paid from any inheritance they get and thus giving more to our son who is going out of his way to help. They are also withholding contact with our only grandchild.
Both my husband and I politely talked to daughter and son-in-law and stated they had no right to interfere in our lives just as we have no right to interfere in their lives. It is called mutual respect. But there was to be no more telling us what we should do or not do or how they think our lives should be. That would be no different than us doing it to them. We never have and we do not plan on starting now. But if they ever decide to 'talk' to us again in the same manner, they should expect us to politely hang up the phone as we will not tolerate it at all.
I think we allowed our daughter to have too much control and now the moment she gets upset over anything, it is being picked up by her husband that he has to interfere. All I have to say is good luck.
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