POAC is a help forum for parents of adult children. Life is not always what we thought it would be, and these are the people who remind us...every day, if we are lucky!
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Operating as usual
...THEN there are times that they melt your heart, which doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's all worth it.
Personally I think he most difficult part of parenting is letting go. They don't belong to us. They are loaned to us for a little time and then they go off and live their own lives. That's when you begin to see yourself in them. For better or worse.
This Sunday is Mother's Day.
What type of plans do you have?
THE BEST thing about adult children is babies! The absolute WORST thing about adult children is they are sometimes SPITEFUL and refuse to let the grandparents SEE them!
Have the restrictions due to Covid19 impacted your family life? For better or worse?
We've been socially distancing, but we did it at a Sweet 16 and a great restaurant for my birthday. Most of my events are on ZOOM or HOUSEPARTY or FACETIME -
At the very least wear a mask. I knew four people who didn't survive it.
What is most worrisome during the lockdown (quarantine) for COVID19?
I suspect we all have different answers depending on our life situations. FOR me, it's been very difficult only because I do not get to see my family! I am ok with ZOOM, FaceTime and Houseparty, but really, I just need to hug the grandkids. BTW they are grown now and I have to stand on tip toes to reach a recently bearded face, but my grandaughter is still petite and open to Nana hugs, if only I could see her!
Can anyone think of a worse time? A more frightening time? The only thing I can compare it to is 9/11 and the Northeast blackout 2003. Has it don anything to your family relationships? We are either in very close quarters with family or peacefully and nervously alone.
Does this mean the US national security community should prioritize global health now?
David Bowie - Absolute Beginners (Official Video)
Official video for Absolute Beginners by David Bowie. Stream David Bowie's greatest hits here ▶ https://RhinoUK.lnk.to/ThisIsDavidBowieAY Subscribe here ▶ ht...
My favorite love songs-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEygTz-9-SU
Madonna - Crazy For You + Lyrics
TOMORROW is Valentine's Day. I have bought all my children and grandchildren appropriate cards and candy, sent out appropriate emails, and simply enjoy the beauty around me. Every day is Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Children's Day.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too painful to bear.
-Martin Luther King-
Kindness in words Creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking Creates Profoundness.
Kindness in giving Creates Love
-Lao Tzu-
Keep love in your life. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
-Oscar Wilde-
10 Reasons Why your X's Current Spouse is petty, mean-spirited and rude to you.
1. Deep down, the CS feels threatened.
2. The CS is seriously Envious of you.
3. The CS's children are uneducated dirt bags while your children are well-educated professionals.
4. He/She is an uncouth boor.
5. You ex still sends you cards and gifts/for all occasions.
6. He/She is stupid.
7. You are better looking than CS
8. You are smarter than CS.
9. CS resents you for all of the above-
10 CS is simply an A.....e
Any other suggestions?
Grown and Flown
To parents of kids suffering from anxiety and/or depression—read on.
Exactly one year ago, my son (shown here) was a senior in high school with rapidly declining mental health to the point where he couldn’t leave his room and had to withdraw from high school. This, despite the fact that he had tons of friends, a loving, supportive family, was a good student and had already been admitted to a number of great colleges.
He felt that life had nothing to offer him and he had nothing to offer the world. He was entirely without hope. This week, one year after our lowest point, he started college out of state and is happy, healthy, confident and full of hope about his future.
It’s been an incredibly tough year of intense treatment and therapy. If you’re a parent of a kid who’s suffering—take heart. Get the best help you can afford (including for yourself) and don’t give up. If you have questions or need encouragement, please PM me.
We need to share our stories and remove the stigma of mental illness. We need to support one another.
By Stacy Pena
Very often the painful issues we fail to understand are due to mental illness. I found this article about it on FB.
No one wants to imagine their child with mental illness. No one wants to get near or go there. You go there because you have to. There is nowhere else for you to go because YOU LIVE THERE.
Bright Blessings! Happy New Year!
Have a Joyous Winter Holiday!
The Holidays (BECAUSE this is an important time and ALL faiths celebrate Winter) are here! How do you celebrate?
SO we live for moments like this: I accidentally ran into my daughter at the library-(We live about a mile apart)-she smiled, embraced me and kissed me on the cheek! I wanted to say "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY DAUGHTER!" It's not all Sturm Und Drang, there are beautiful, rare moments like this. A little kid was dancing in front of us and I said to her "I miss babies.." She frowned and responded "Me too..." Heavy sigh. May your day be beautiful and care free...
This will be longer than my usual posts, BUT: "And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children, And He said: "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself-They come through you, but not from you, and although they are with you yet they belong not to you. YOU may give them your love, but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. YOU may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the House of Tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. YOU may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. FOR life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. YOU are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. THE archers see the mark upon the path of the Infinite and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. LET your bending in the archers' hand be for gladness,FOR even as He loves the arrow that flies, He loves also the bow that is stable."
Khalil Gibran
Comments?
SO what do we do when the grandkids outgrow us? What started out as joyous cries when you enter the house has now devolved into wandering through the rooms calling out for them. Sometimes you get an answer, sometimes not. How do you deal with it?
I do a lot of moaning about our relationships with our adult "children". Sometimes it is so painful it's hard to breathe. I am fortunate, because I have three adult children and two of them are totally delightful-true they live far away and I don't see much of them. I think I made all my mistakes with the first one.
ANY minute there will be proms, graduations, after proms, awards and the long awaited SUMMER before our eldest grandkids head off to college! What's YOUR roll in this huzzarah?
YESTERDAY was Mother's Day 2019. How'd it go for you? Mine wasn't ideal but I did get to speak with my two remote children, have dinner with the oldest and give each of the kids a kiss and a hug, which the boys (17 & 10) were not thrilled with. Too bad, I am the resident NANA! Sometimes you have to *force* them to love you!
Maturity should come with age, but it isn't a given...
Overcoming the negative influence of guilt with a troubled adult child.
OMG. "The Divorce". Will they ever let us *forget*?
How remarkable when our children become our parents! (Or at least THINK so!)
The stages of our relationships with our children is elastic for most. We bounce between warm fuzzy feelings, tears and indifference. Sometimes all with the same child at the same time...I should use the word "offspring" but "Adult Child" is so much more descriptive, don't you think? When things are good, they are very, very good. When things are bad they are horrid...
2018 inches it's way into the history books. Each New Year is a resurrection accompanied by powerful emotions. Everything we feel during the holidays is magnified because The End and New Beginning are the most important parts of a year. I have made a few resolutions.
Be kind to yourself and others
Be forgiving
Smile
Commit Random Acts of Kindness
Share my abundance
Offer shelter
Listen carefully
Happy New Year, Blessed Be!
We are a celebratory species. The Winter holidays are here! Time to party, eat, put on a layer of fat for the long cold Winter, hang out with family, eat, drink, eat some more. Before I begin that cycle, I celebrate the season by helping to feed and clothe the homeless. May whatever you celebrate be joyous, may you be fortunate enough that you +can+ help those less fortunate. I hope you are, and you do.
The Holidays...yay or nay?
SOMETIMES What we THINK is happening, is not always the case.
Last week I learned to forgive myself...
Do you think your relationships with your parents have an impact on your relationship with your kids? I was never estranged from my mother, but I was always furious with her. On her death-bed she said "I guess I'll never understand you..." I responded "I guess not..." I however did all the "right" things. Today I realize I was not entirely fair with her. But yesterday... SO I wonder how that impacts my/your relationship with your own children. Are you a "good" adult-child parent?
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly
Scholastic Boombastic Book - Read along with the Video
Gratitude-as long as we live there is time to change situations. Nothing stays the same forever. Life is nothing if not change. When times are good we forget them more quickly than when they are not. For me, I think when times are rough I must be grateful for the good. Today is a good day. I hope yours is too!
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"
People often become estranged from children or other family members. Stop beating yourself up over it. We strive hard to be the quintessential family member in a highly idealized role, that has basically been defined by television script writers. The reality is very different, and the amount of angst we suffer over it is out of proportion to the relationship itself. My grandfather came to America for a better life, and I remember him crying because he never saw his mother again. It is common for families to grow, and separate, and come together again--or not. You must find your own bliss. Idealized family relationships are more rare than we think.
New research challenges the deeply held notion that family relationships can’t be dissolved and suggests that estrangement is not all that uncommon.
Yes. OH yes! yesyesyesyes!
Every grandmother out there needs to see this ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Huntington, NY
11743
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When we are very young we are taught the rules about surviving in our society. This is true for every race across the planet, probably in the stars as well. Sometimes it is not so much a journey as it is a free-fall--but we are not prepared for that. We are prepared for the Ideal. How it SHOULD be. Learning that’s not how it is becomes the shattering entrance into adulthood.
For my generation it was television. We were the first electronically raised generation. Television was a miracle engaging us in other-worldly experiences that no-one could conceive of or predict. We were fed a feast of social lies. And we believed them: The ideal middle class family as depicted in mid-century television-seductive, but in conflict with reality.
We, the Boomers attempted to make that ideal manifest- so we created a pseudo society where everything is perfect. Each relationship is defined, and the responsive behavior patterns obvious. I grew up thinking that my family was fractured because it did not follow the model that I knew from television, so I vowed that I would use “Father Knows Best” as my model for parenting. In that world, the kids were responsive, responsible and had great respect for their parents. I vowed to be that all-knowing, wise parent with each answer perfectly worded and accepted with a bowed head as if it were the Sermon on the Mount.
THEN I had kids that did not fit into my neat, grand equation, and learned that the relationships I thought I was cultivating were unrealistic. But not soon enough.
It took me a very long time to learn that the dynamics of those relationships I thought were disastrous, were really mundane. Normal. More the rule than the exception.
The purpose of this is to let you know, and reinforce in myself that we have to stop beating ourselves up because we think we screwed up parenting. While it is true there are rare families who behave the way we thought they should behave, the truth is that what most of us experience is the norm.
I learned that more than half of my friends who had children my own children’s ages barely spoke to them. They suggested their relationships were “strained”. My dearest friend in the world is knocking herself out because she thinks she is a failure as a parent. They agree to go to therapy together and every week she says “I’m not doing this again, it is too painful...” Girlfriend, what you are going through is NORMAL. It is not your fault. It is not HER/ or HIS fault. It’s the way things are. We were simply not apprised of the reality because the comfort B&W television was so seductive it invaded our dreams and changed the course of society.
Be good to yourself. It’s not *all* your fault.
