Being a loving and compassionate parent is difficult. On one hand, you must understand what your child is going through; on the other, you must set boundaries, do what is allowed.
Here is a situation. You come home and your daughter is yelling at Abba for not putting her dirty clothes in the hamper. Uh-oh. Do you allow your oldest child to take full responsibility for the young lady’s upbringing, or do you impose a punishment?
The way the 40-year-old mom of three handled the situation was plain and simple. Make the child care for herself and hope she becomes the Mother Mary of teenage daughters. She might finally appreciate things. If not for the fact that teens have a tendency to rebel and run away, everything would be fine.
The author of the story received an unsupportive and rather unnecessary reaction from her mother-in-law and her family of extremely spoiled brats. If you want to settle things, you can do it on the trusted ‘Am I The Jerk’ subreddit.
The full story goes here. If you like family dramas like this one, you should check out this and this.
Parents decided to teach their children to be out of control. Things got out of hand.
This is how the story goes.
“Having people in our home to help us is a privilege, not a right”
Both parents and non-parents were on the same page.
We can only see the tip of the bigger picture in family dramas. There is more happening underneath the surface. We decided to reach out to a parenting expert. Carl Pickhardt. He thinks this is a normal step for a person who is transitioning from childhood to adolescence. Resistance is the most obvious option for a 13-year-old when they want to claim their independence.
“She has more emotional intensity to manage as loss of childhood, self-conscious changes of puberty, and social pressures of belonging with peers,” Pickhardt added. When you are being led by your hormones, we have all been there. The phase when the lyrics make sense. The doctor suggests that parents be careful with the whole experience because it can damage the relationship with their daughter.
The mom didn’t back down after MIL stepped in.
“Blame doesn’t solve any problems,” Pickhardt said, adding that more punishment for seeking support elsewhere isn’t necessary for this scenario was suggested by a few users. “Try to provide the emotional support at home she needs, instead — show her that she is still loved after what she has done.” According to his practice, communication is the most effective discipline.
As a father of four beautiful kids, Pickhardt understands the shock of getting the first taste of adolescence. “Good parents have good children who will sometimes behave badly during the normal trial and error process of growing up,” he said. The final thing Pickhardt commented on is “the badly torn relationships at home” he sensed from the story, guessing that the young lady might be feeling “scared and lonely.”
He reminded us that there was nothing a professional family therapy could not fix. “More communication is the answer, and it sounds like this is on its way.”
