Holidays for most of us either mean getting together with family members or they mean being lonely and not seeing family.
Families are a strange animal, having a life of their own pretty much. We never quite know what direction they (family members) will take.
Like, well, family members who 'friend' you on Facebook, never really talk to you and kind of just sit in the background. Why? I assure you I haven't a clue. Why friend people if you have no intention of really communicating?
How about real life? After all real life can be stranger than fiction. You can live around the corner from your kids and never see them. Why do kids sometimes only adopt their in-laws and pretend their biological families don't exist? This, I find, happens very often.
My present husband finds his children (one child anyway) blames him for leaving the state she lives in and blames him for not hanging around to take abuse from his ex. For the most art, children see through cloudy lenses, believing the parent they live with and like to hold grudges until it hurts and is unhealthy against a parent they perceive as bad. They have to blame someone. Adult kids often aren't interested in what really happened and would rather fabricate the scenario on their own.
We cannot crawl into their minds and switch off the misinformation. I am amazed at how many adult kids think they never make mistakes and when they do find out they made plenty, especially when their own kids grow up, they find out the hard way what their own parents experienced.
Some parents think indulging their own kids with material items will make their kids love them. Not so. For is a child has not been given the gift of self-esteem from a mother or a father, they usually will grab the first person who shows them attention because they had felt worthless. That first person is not always good for them. But how can they be expected to know this when they have not dated enough people to compare them to? So just because an adult kid looks good on the outside, it may be a different story on the inside.
We all make mistakes as parents. Sometimes we will pay for them for a long, long time. But being a young, scared parent does not make one an ogre, only in their kids' minds maybe.
If you are an adult child, remember your parents will not live forever. When they are gone, it's too late to make amends.
