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Abuse and Estrangement by Adult Children: A Sad Secret

8 points by jstarfish 3y ago

jstarfish 3y ago
The content of the post is underwhelming; the more interesting part is the comments. Nobody deserves this. If you think everything sucks and you truly want to make the world a better place, but don't know where to start, try showing kindness and empathy to the demographics the media has conditioned us to hate. There used to be a disabled older homeless guy living out of a van on my street. I saw him scavenging for cans and struggling to carry them while using his cane. His story was that his family were estranged; no reason stated, but I didn't question it since there was a sparkle in his eye when he talked about rare occasions to see his granddaughter-- and anytime I came around (despite never once asking me for money). I'd donate my own cans as an excuse to stop by and see how he was doing though. It made his day to know anyone on earth gave enough of a shit to think about him. He's far from the only one out there.
- codemusings 3y ago
  The content of the post is underwhelming; the more interesting part is the comments. Probably just an ad for the books. But some of the comments really are heartbreaking. Tangentially, I've really come to appreciate that Hacker News sometimes provides a glimpse into non-tech topics I've otherwise wouldn't have come across.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  One thing I've learned in life is that it's really challenging to comprehend the effects you may have on those over whom you have power, whether that's your children or your employees or even just members of a community you run. The comments are interesting and heartbreaking, but some of them are really full of red or at least yellow flags. try showing kindness and empathy to the demographics the media has conditioned us to hate. I'm not sure if I agree with this statement but for whatever it's worth, my parents were pretty awesome. So if the media is conditioning us to do this, it didn't work on me.
freddie_mercury 3y ago
Can't really read this without first reading The Missing Missing Reasons. https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-mis...
- squigz 3y ago
  > Members recognize that unjustified emotions (like supersensitivity due to trauma, or irritation with another person that colors the view of everything the person does) are real and deserve respect, but they also believe that unjustified emotions shouldn't be acted on. They show posters different ways to view the situation and give advice on how to handle the emotions. In short, they believe that external events create emotional responses, that only some responses are justified, that people's initial perceptions of events are often flawed, and that understanding external events can help people understand and manage emotions. I particularly liked this bit
  - sjducb 3y ago
    I liked the part where parents who actually listen to their children go to forums that are focused on the child’s problems, such as a forum for parents of drug addicts.
- maayank 3y ago
  Thank you for the link, very interesting post.
- fnordian_slip 3y ago
  I thought of that post when reading the comments, too. I still have empathy for these people, just like I have for people who have made a cult their entire personality[0], and attack their family members if they try to get them out of it. But a lot of those comments read like they are written by _very_ unreliable narrators. [0] like www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/
- jstarfish 3y ago
  Every single example comes down to "why didn't they humiliate themselves further by sharing the content of the lies and defamation brought against them?" This is sophistry. This practice is a good way to get away with defamation though, by tricking the victim into repeating your falsehoods themselves. I accuse you of being a child-sodomizing warlock, and shame you for not telling anyone you go crying to that you've been specifically accused of buggering kids. This is just more abuse of victims, and an impressive new low. You hijacked my post for this?
sjducb 3y ago
I wonder what the authors of this article are trying to achieve. Do they want to get back in touch with their estranged adult children? If that’s the goal then this approach is unlikely to be successful. It reads more like someone who is hurting, but doesn’t want to take responsibility for their part in the dynamic, so they’re making it the fault of the other party. It might make them feel better in the short term, but it’s a terrible long term strategy.
- bjackman 3y ago
  Yeah, and the very idea that it's meaningful group together the parents as the victims and the children as the perpetrators tells me that the people behind this website are being unreasonable. That's not how relationships work. If your relationship with your child breaks down and you go to club together with other parents and deliberately create a grouped division like this, instead of actually examining the things the actions that led to your individual situation, I can't really take you seriously! And if I _was_ going to "take a side" in the ridiculous aggregation of all broken paren-child relationships... I'm not gonna take the side of the people who had absolute power over the other side's entire childhood, set most of the behavioural examples, and has an additional generation's worth of experience managing conflict. Edit: this is a bit like men who respond to a breakup by becoming online mysogynists. Maybe the other individual _was_ just a manipulative psychopath but if your response is to politicise that experience into "women are manipulative psychopaths" then it's obvious you don't understand people or relationships.
KingMob 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this, because I've seen both sides intimately. There are definitely parents of assholes, and parents who screwed up but won't be forgiven, for sure. But I've also seen deeply narcissistic parents hang out in forums like this, who either refuse to, or are incapable of, acknowledging everything they did to drive their children away, even to themselves. Take the comments with a grain of salt, is all.
- fileeditview 3y ago
  So true. Parents and children can be narcissists. However if I read from parents that they have done "nothing wrong" it is a red flag immediately. I have two young kids. Being a good parent is hard. We all make mistakes all the time and the important part is to make good for them and not reject all responsibility for problems that have emerged. If your child rejects you, maybe you should not go and demand proof of your wrongdoing. Sometimes even you must acknowledge failure if you are convinced otherwise because you are the parent and have to be an example.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    However if I read from parents that they have done "nothing wrong" it is a red flag immediately. I have two young kids. Being a good parent is hard. Absolutely. I didn't fully appreciate my parents until I started raising pets. I cannot even tell you how many mistakes I've made raising pets despite loving them and trying my hardest, and pets are (in most regards) waaaay simpler.
imtringued 3y ago
Is this supposed to be a gathering place for parents that don't know what "tit for tat" is? Those children probably have bottled up resentments.
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
I have a hard time taking this seriously. Power dynamic goes the other way around in the family. No doubt there are some people who are the nicest people in the world and their kid suffers from a mental disease and becomes abusive towards them, but how many can there possibly be? Just reading the comments about someone's daughter running away or having cannabis related psychosis is pretty out there.
olliej 3y ago
Having your children stop talking to you is not abuse, and trying to frame it as such is offensive to people who have been subjected to actual abuse. If your children have tried to stop talking to you, and you keep trying to contact them, and they name call or swear, that's not abuse. If they've said they want nothing to do with you, even if you don't agree with the reasons, and you keep trying to be involved in their lives, then they have a right to be angry at you for not respecting their wishes. Your children do not owe you anything. Now there are a whole host of reasons that children want nothing to do with their parents, and given this post does not list physical abuse, but does list "coldness", "bullshit", "biting the hand that feeds you"[1], and to me most notably "evil" as the abuses. That last one to me really puts this in the general feeling of parents who mistreat their children for being "evil" (they're LGBT, not conforming to whatever gender norms the parents have, aren't being religious enough, etc are the common ones), or just have those extreme American christian groups that encourage beating children, etc. Certainly I've seen enough cases of the former personally where the parents are abusive, but get upset when their children move out the moment they can and want nothing to do with them, and then have outbursts that are nearly identical to the "content" of this site. u/freddie_mercury correctly mentioned that if people haven't, that they should read The Missing Missing Reasons before taking this site at face value. Abusive parents seem extremely unwilling to acknowledge that anything they do is wrong, and therefore present any action taken by their children to distance themselves as being unreasonable and/or unfair (or "character assassination" as this site claims). I get that their are parents who may not know what they did, or maybe they did nothing at all, but their child[ren] joined one of the many religions and cults that require you cut out any family members who aren't also in that religion or cult, which I get would terrible, but the hyperbole and the terminology on this site screams "I am an abusive parent, think my children owe me, and they are required to include me in their adult lives regardless of any of my actions". [1] though again, your children do not owe you anything simply because you're doing what you are legally and morally required to do as a parent.
- whatindaheck 3y ago
  My siblings (three of us) and I have entirely cut off our parents. Recently my youngest brother started receiving letters from them. He moved out, never gave an address, and told them to not contact him. Yet the letters come inviting him back to a “welcoming” home. And that’s just one of the more “normal” behaviors they exhibit. Harassment seems too harsh a word but it’s a clear disrespect for boundaries and privacy. I have a hard time reading these stories without feeling like there’s missing information. I’m intimately familiar with these psuedo-confused attitudes. They play victim yet there’s huge holes in all their stories. All three kids left and yet…nothing but confusion.
gembeMx 3y ago
What ?

8 points by jstarfish 3y ago

The content of the post is underwhelming; the more interesting part is the comments. Nobody deserves this. If you think everything sucks and you truly want to make the world a better place, but don't know where to start, try showing kindness and empathy to the demographics the media has conditioned us to hate. There used to be a disabled older homeless guy living out of a van on my street. I saw him scavenging for cans and struggling to carry them while using his cane. His story was that his family were estranged; no reason stated, but I didn't question it since there was a sparkle in his eye when he talked about rare occasions to see his granddaughter-- and anytime I came around (despite never once asking me for money). I'd donate my own cans as an excuse to stop by and see how he was doing though. It made his day to know anyone on earth gave enough of a shit to think about him. He's far from the only one out there.

codemusings 3y ago
The content of the post is underwhelming; the more interesting part is the comments. Probably just an ad for the books. But some of the comments really are heartbreaking. Tangentially, I've really come to appreciate that Hacker News sometimes provides a glimpse into non-tech topics I've otherwise wouldn't have come across.
JohnBooty 3y ago
One thing I've learned in life is that it's really challenging to comprehend the effects you may have on those over whom you have power, whether that's your children or your employees or even just members of a community you run. The comments are interesting and heartbreaking, but some of them are really full of red or at least yellow flags. try showing kindness and empathy to the demographics the media has conditioned us to hate. I'm not sure if I agree with this statement but for whatever it's worth, my parents were pretty awesome. So if the media is conditioning us to do this, it didn't work on me.

freddie_mercury 3y ago

Can't really read this without first reading The Missing Missing Reasons. https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-mis...

squigz 3y ago
> Members recognize that unjustified emotions (like supersensitivity due to trauma, or irritation with another person that colors the view of everything the person does) are real and deserve respect, but they also believe that unjustified emotions shouldn't be acted on. They show posters different ways to view the situation and give advice on how to handle the emotions. In short, they believe that external events create emotional responses, that only some responses are justified, that people's initial perceptions of events are often flawed, and that understanding external events can help people understand and manage emotions. I particularly liked this bit
- sjducb 3y ago
  I liked the part where parents who actually listen to their children go to forums that are focused on the child’s problems, such as a forum for parents of drug addicts.
maayank 3y ago
Thank you for the link, very interesting post.
fnordian_slip 3y ago
I thought of that post when reading the comments, too. I still have empathy for these people, just like I have for people who have made a cult their entire personality[0], and attack their family members if they try to get them out of it. But a lot of those comments read like they are written by _very_ unreliable narrators. [0] like www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/
jstarfish 3y ago
Every single example comes down to "why didn't they humiliate themselves further by sharing the content of the lies and defamation brought against them?" This is sophistry. This practice is a good way to get away with defamation though, by tricking the victim into repeating your falsehoods themselves. I accuse you of being a child-sodomizing warlock, and shame you for not telling anyone you go crying to that you've been specifically accused of buggering kids. This is just more abuse of victims, and an impressive new low. You hijacked my post for this?

sjducb 3y ago

I wonder what the authors of this article are trying to achieve. Do they want to get back in touch with their estranged adult children? If that’s the goal then this approach is unlikely to be successful. It reads more like someone who is hurting, but doesn’t want to take responsibility for their part in the dynamic, so they’re making it the fault of the other party. It might make them feel better in the short term, but it’s a terrible long term strategy.

bjackman 3y ago
Yeah, and the very idea that it's meaningful group together the parents as the victims and the children as the perpetrators tells me that the people behind this website are being unreasonable. That's not how relationships work. If your relationship with your child breaks down and you go to club together with other parents and deliberately create a grouped division like this, instead of actually examining the things the actions that led to your individual situation, I can't really take you seriously! And if I _was_ going to "take a side" in the ridiculous aggregation of all broken paren-child relationships... I'm not gonna take the side of the people who had absolute power over the other side's entire childhood, set most of the behavioural examples, and has an additional generation's worth of experience managing conflict. Edit: this is a bit like men who respond to a breakup by becoming online mysogynists. Maybe the other individual _was_ just a manipulative psychopath but if your response is to politicise that experience into "women are manipulative psychopaths" then it's obvious you don't understand people or relationships.

KingMob 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about this, because I've seen both sides intimately. There are definitely parents of assholes, and parents who screwed up but won't be forgiven, for sure. But I've also seen deeply narcissistic parents hang out in forums like this, who either refuse to, or are incapable of, acknowledging everything they did to drive their children away, even to themselves. Take the comments with a grain of salt, is all.

fileeditview 3y ago
So true. Parents and children can be narcissists. However if I read from parents that they have done "nothing wrong" it is a red flag immediately. I have two young kids. Being a good parent is hard. We all make mistakes all the time and the important part is to make good for them and not reject all responsibility for problems that have emerged. If your child rejects you, maybe you should not go and demand proof of your wrongdoing. Sometimes even you must acknowledge failure if you are convinced otherwise because you are the parent and have to be an example.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  However if I read from parents that they have done "nothing wrong" it is a red flag immediately. I have two young kids. Being a good parent is hard. Absolutely. I didn't fully appreciate my parents until I started raising pets. I cannot even tell you how many mistakes I've made raising pets despite loving them and trying my hardest, and pets are (in most regards) waaaay simpler.

imtringued 3y ago

Is this supposed to be a gathering place for parents that don't know what "tit for tat" is? Those children probably have bottled up resentments.

nextlevelwizard 3y ago

I have a hard time taking this seriously. Power dynamic goes the other way around in the family. No doubt there are some people who are the nicest people in the world and their kid suffers from a mental disease and becomes abusive towards them, but how many can there possibly be? Just reading the comments about someone's daughter running away or having cannabis related psychosis is pretty out there.

olliej 3y ago

Having your children stop talking to you is not abuse, and trying to frame it as such is offensive to people who have been subjected to actual abuse. If your children have tried to stop talking to you, and you keep trying to contact them, and they name call or swear, that's not abuse. If they've said they want nothing to do with you, even if you don't agree with the reasons, and you keep trying to be involved in their lives, then they have a right to be angry at you for not respecting their wishes. Your children do not owe you anything. Now there are a whole host of reasons that children want nothing to do with their parents, and given this post does not list physical abuse, but does list "coldness", "bullshit", "biting the hand that feeds you"[1], and to me most notably "evil" as the abuses. That last one to me really puts this in the general feeling of parents who mistreat their children for being "evil" (they're LGBT, not conforming to whatever gender norms the parents have, aren't being religious enough, etc are the common ones), or just have those extreme American christian groups that encourage beating children, etc. Certainly I've seen enough cases of the former personally where the parents are abusive, but get upset when their children move out the moment they can and want nothing to do with them, and then have outbursts that are nearly identical to the "content" of this site. u/freddie_mercury correctly mentioned that if people haven't, that they should read The Missing Missing Reasons before taking this site at face value. Abusive parents seem extremely unwilling to acknowledge that anything they do is wrong, and therefore present any action taken by their children to distance themselves as being unreasonable and/or unfair (or "character assassination" as this site claims). I get that their are parents who may not know what they did, or maybe they did nothing at all, but their child[ren] joined one of the many religions and cults that require you cut out any family members who aren't also in that religion or cult, which I get would terrible, but the hyperbole and the terminology on this site screams "I am an abusive parent, think my children owe me, and they are required to include me in their adult lives regardless of any of my actions". [1] though again, your children do not owe you anything simply because you're doing what you are legally and morally required to do as a parent.

whatindaheck 3y ago
My siblings (three of us) and I have entirely cut off our parents. Recently my youngest brother started receiving letters from them. He moved out, never gave an address, and told them to not contact him. Yet the letters come inviting him back to a “welcoming” home. And that’s just one of the more “normal” behaviors they exhibit. Harassment seems too harsh a word but it’s a clear disrespect for boundaries and privacy. I have a hard time reading these stories without feeling like there’s missing information. I’m intimately familiar with these psuedo-confused attitudes. They play victim yet there’s huge holes in all their stories. All three kids left and yet…nothing but confusion.

gembeMx 3y ago

What ?