Cognitive Distortions: Advice, Help, Success, Failure
An interesting cognitive distortion just popped up on an estranged parents’ board in response to an article on getting along with your adult children. The article is a mother’s well-written account of how she learned to stop butting in and “fixing” her daughter’s problems when her daughter was a 21-year-old college student in another city. The mother’s takeaway is,
Before I offer solutions that are not relevant to my kids’ times or troubles, or warn them from hardship that could benefit them more than harm them, or say anything that starts with “Well, what I used to do,” I stop and consider: What would a neighbor say? Someone who is supportive but not intrusive, caring but not worried, and generous but not forceful with ideas?
What would a neighbor, who wanted to make sure she stayed in their lives, say?
I have become that neighbor, the one who is home at the right time, has time to listen and asks questions that might make things clearer to each of us. Above all, I am the neighbor who realizes that my children’s personal stake in the decisions they make is the only one that matters.
There are only two reactions on the forum so far, but they’re both pretty ripe:
More horrible advice! I’m not my kids’ neighbor! I’m their mother. I can’t imagine not telling my kids what they should do or even stepping in when they fail.
I understand that our adult children are going to make their own decisions, but what kind of mother would we be if we shrugged our shoulders and turned away from them in times of need?
If you can’t stop giving unwanted advice in the face of your adult children’s mounting annoyance, then you’re not going to have the sunniest relationship with them. If you step in when they fail–not wait to be asked for help, but step in of your own accord, which is what the article was about–then not only is your relationship going to be wanting, but you’re doing the #1 thing a parent can do to set their kid up for dependency. Both of these points are obvious, and it wouldn’t be surprising if later commenters gently disagree with the first two commenters.
But the interesting part is that both commenters jumped from “don’t give unwanted advice” to “don’t help when they fail.” The article never mentioned failure. It was absolutely, completely, 100% about stepping back and letting your kids handle everyday problems themselves. Where did the commenters’ assumption of failure come from? Do they think not nagging your kids leads naturally to your kids failing? Do they view the situation in terms so black and white that they don’t see the difference between advice and help, or between asked-for and unasked-for help? They rejected the article author’s advice because they read it as not allowing them to help their kids at all, so somewhere in the string of idea associations is a dysfunctional connection. What it is would be useful to know; how to snip it, priceless.
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One of the newer comments “I am her mother and she needs me even if she thinks she doesn’t.” One of the scariest sentences I’ve ever read.
My mother says that ALL THE TIME about me. It’s so far from the truth it’s mind boggling. I haven’t lived under her roof in 15 years, I don’t ever call her for advice or comfort b/c she’s incapable of giving either. These parents sound so similar.
Yes, I think this one is on the top ten list for sure. It’s because we’re so irresponsible. At least I am. Not like my brother although he made the bad choice to be saddled with another lazy and irresponsible woman. It’s such a good thing for my brother that my mother knows what he needs because his wife doesn’t so my mother can help to make up for the mistake he made in marrying her.
Here’s another winnah: “Children need grandparents like they need air.” (Possibly-if you’re providing CPR.)
Interesting comment from the very people who believe the provision of food, clothing and shelter-the essentials to sustain human life-are indicators of exemplary “parenting”-and “billable services.” (You’ll get the invoice eventually-promise.)
When ever I observe these are also provided by orphanages, jails and prisons out come the pitchforks and torches.
OK. Just sayin….
The situation kind of reminds me of the passage in “People of the Lie” about needing to self-examine, and when your past actions weren’t up to standard, to “serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself” and change for the better. In this context, that was one bitter pill the mother had to swallow, about her intervention translating purely into pressure on her daughter; the realization that in general terms, the mother needed to be hands-off, no longer a parent-to-child “advisor”, in order to keep her grown kids coming to her with the latest in their life stories.
This “loss of status” is actually a natural progression as kids grow up, from what I read about functional families, so the “neighbor” analogy doesn’t really gel for me. It’s like the “parent = advisor” thing is so internalized that no-one can see the positive parenting involved in trusting your kid to make well-thought-out decisions, including concerning lines of communication and calls on support networks.
“Where did the commenters’ assumption of failure come from… Do they view the situation in terms so black and white”
My theory is that they* see the whole of life in those black and white terms, of failure and success and that’s where the cognitive distortion comes in. Ordinary sort of bumps and obstacles that we encounter in a normal life, in a good, growing life, are peceived by them as failures. They don’t themselves have the courage or insight to be able to accept a drop in “status” – a pay drop, a move to a grotty flat, being turned down at interview or audition – even if it moves them closer to a greater life goal, and they can’t see that for anyone else either. I’ve seen my mother do it, express (as far as she is able to, genuine) worry about us doing self-funded study on the basis that it had been a lot more fun bragging to the neighbours when we were doing fully funded PhDs. Never mind that the paid-for masters bloody triples your earning power, and in any case is a different animal to going and doing paid research in a lab and receiving a stipend for it. She couldn’t see it. If someone else isn’t willing to pay you, why bother turning up? This is how so many of them end up staying in the one job and the one relationship forever, never wanting to risk looking like an idiot by trying something new.
I also think more generally for all parents and not just the nutters, it’s the doing vs managing thing – you know, as a capable adult it’s a damn sight easier to just take care of all your kids’ needs by doing everything for them than it is to stand there with your hands twitching, giving them space to do it themselves. But since people learn best by doing, and since the job of being a parent is to let your children learn how to be capable people, you have to sometimes sit on your twitching hands and give them the space to make mistakes. What comes across in the first parent reply up there is how automatic the response seems to be, how little thought she seems to have given it:
“I can’t imagine not telling my kids what they should do”
It feels like she sees something wrong, it gives her a bad feeling, so she does something to stop the bad feeling (wades in and interferes until the situation is resolved to her own satisfaction) and concludes that the resultant feeling of satisfaction is a sign that her parenting has been good today.
*When I say they, I mostly mean narcissists like my mother – I suspect a lot of the interfering “good parents” are covert narcs
This key part of the article is definitely not resonating with the dysfunctional parents: “I still wince to think of how I took over, and how often, before I was relieved of my role […].”
To me, the line between caring and controlling is pretty clear, because the people determined to give me “advice” (criticism disguised as concern) are usually NOT “capable adults”. Eg diabetics who tell me how to eat, ie to eat salty or fatty stuff banned by my taste-buds, that I have difficulty digesting anyway. With these people, it seems that they want to feel superior (eg a social eater, not a fussy one who requires special catering) because the “problem” is not “fixed”, it’s all venting. (Not even when very small was I stupid enough to force myself and vomit. No doubt I’d get the blame for it somehow.)
You’ve just highlighted *my* cognitive distortion right there, the one I often fall into: assuming that the parents are trying to be helpful. That’s not always true, certainly not with my mother, sounds like it’s the same for you – sometimes the pointless stupid advice is being given to undermine, to take the wind out of your sails, to make them feel clever.
Well, to be fair to you, my thinking began as a child with the reverse cognitive distortion: “parents are tyrants”, “parents don’t know best, because power corrupts, and they have a lot of power over their kid”. I thought the only way to resist the temptation to have your own way and bulldoze kids (become corrupted) as an adult was to stay in touch with your child self, keep on thinking things through from the kid’s point of view – inc listen to the kids around you – and use that as a guide towards compromises to suit everyone, at least to some degree.
I’m still happy with the second part as a moral compass, but it’s a pity I started off with such generalized mistrust in elders. I guess it was a FLEA. I read a book on narcissistic families that said that can happen. Children of narcissistic parents can react by going along with the parents’ agenda, ie meeting the parents’ needs while ignoring the kids’, or they can react by “rebelling”, but the focus is still on the parents, ie the kid NOT meeting the parents’ needs on principle.
(Just to reassure you, I wasn’t actually in the toxic environment that made me rebel against parents for many years. I moved to a home base that is more of a mixed bag – inconsistent, but quite often responsive to my needs – and visited the rest of my family, inc extended family. With better (most) and worse branches, got quite an overview.)
The other thing about this position is that it assumes that the parent really does always know the right thing. What strikes me about the article is that the daughter wanted to live in the city more than she wanted a nice apartment. With that context, mom’s urging her to move out was not the right thing. It’s more than just control, it’s just simply the wrong thing to push her to move out because it does not take into account the facts of the situation — that living in the city is the goal, not a nice apartment.
It’s like the parent that tells their child to “pound the pavement” or “be the squeaky wheel” on a job search, when that’s simply no longer beneficial advice. It ignores the factual context that social norms have changed and following the advice might actually make it *harder* to get a job.
I cringe that it’s posters on these forums saying things like this, because it’s pretty clear that their approach has not worked at all. They ignore the fact that this conduct has destroyed their relationship(s) with their child(ren). I’ve also seen the level of logic they operate under, and the “help” they provide is probably of that caliber.
In my own life, my mother’s helpful solution to my unemployment situation was to get a job. She told me I needed to do this over and over again while I was unemployed. Thanks, mom. I wish I had thought of that.
Looks like a failure to put themselves in the kid’s shoes. And things are very different when the shoe’s on their foot, in my experience. (Eg gossip. I was supposed to tolerate being gossiped about, for fear the questioners would get offended. But when the senior generation is personally the target of the prying, suddenly the questioner really IS intrusive, and they regret telling them anything.)
Magpie,
This made me laugh!
‘Like the parent that tells their child to “pound the pavement” or “be the squeaky wheel” on a job search.’
Today, if you were to ‘pound the pavement’ and then turned up at a workplace asking for work, you would probably be told to go home and apply online like everyone else.
If you repeatedly turned up at that workplace, i.e. ‘be the squeaky wheel’, you’d probably be viewed as some kind of crazy stalker, and someone would call the police.
When I went to university as a mature student, all students were expected to email lecturers first, rather than just turn up at their office with a problem. As you say, social norms really have changed.
I was at a group home for pregnant girls run by one of these types of people, she refused to believe that we were job searching because we weren’t leaving the house. No matter how many confirmation emails we showed her of applications, no matter the number of actual calls we got for interviews, she was convinced we were tricking her and being lazy.
That ended up culminating in deadbolting us out of the house for 5 hours on a 30 degree (F) evening without coats to ensure we would “really” job search. And despite having the time to lock us out and being the person in charge of providing us transportation, of course we were expected to walk. We all walked to the closest two establishments together, all pretty far along, and were told they only offered online applications. We had him and the next few few people write that on on our “job search” forms and sign them, and presented them later.
She never apologized or made any attempt to alert higher ups in the program that the process needed to be updated. But I guess I should be thankful she didn’t lock us out again.
‘In my own life, my mother’s helpful solution to my unemployment situation was to get a job. She told me I needed to do this over and over again while I was unemployed.’
When I was seriously ill, my mother’s helpful suggestion was to stop being lazy and find a cure. It’s a shame that she didn’t apply the same logic to her alcoholism.
We’re such horrible ungrateful beasts for insisting on being unemployed and ill!
You are doing something differently from how I would do it – therefore you are failing – therefore you need my help – rejecting my help means you are doing it differently from me – therefore you are failing – therefore you need my help…
Oh my goodness, please read the latest response that just popped up on that thread. Are we being punked? It reads like a caricature of itself.
*laugh* Well, if that member is a troll, I’m going to have to rethink at least part of this post, because she’s the one who started the thread. New member, only three posts–can’t find her third post at the moment–certainly did a good job of sounding like a regular until that last comment. I give it 50-50 odds that the regulars will either go along with her enthusiastically, or make some quiet and very polite sounds about possibly disagreeing with her on a few points. Happens sometimes when a member is brand new and the other members haven’t bonded with her yet.
LOL – I didn’t notice that it was the OP.
Third post is within the same thread – it’s the one I quoted in the first comment.
And now it’s been moved to one of the private subforums. Le sigh.
Or they’ll ban her posthaste for being a troll that is suspected to be an estranged child.
When they politely disagree it’s always fun because it starts off very delicately and then 4-5 posts later they’re calling the OP out as an idiot.
That there is gold.
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that your blog is very well done and full of helpful information. I was wondering if you would be open to doing a post, or even a FAQ, on the difference between estrangement and alienation. For those not familiar with the term, alienation (often called Parental Alienation Syndrome) is when a child rejects a parent due to negative input from another person.
Unlike estranged parents, alienated parents know exactly why their children have rejected them. It’s the result of emotional abuse, usually in a divorce situation, by the alienating parent (most often the custodial parent), causing the child to reject the alienated (or targeted) parent. It usually happens when the children are young and have reduced or no contact with the targeted parent. Also unlike estranged parents, alienated parents usually see their children as victims as well, and do not blame the children for rejecting them.
Sometimes alienated children will grow up, and realize that their hate and rejection of the targeted parent is not based on their own relationship with the targeted parent, but rather on the alienating parent’s relationship with the targeted parent. However, often they never realize this, and the alienation continues into adulthood. The emotions they have toward the targeted parent are real, but instead of coming from their own experience, they are the result of enmeshment with the alienator. Sometimes this can turn into a situation closely resembling an estrangement situation.
I am currently an alienated parent. My children are young, still in their teens. I hope that when they become adults, our relationship can be repaired. I also recognize that it might not be. I will be watching my own behavior closely in order to make sure that I am not engaging in any of the behaviors exhibited by estranged parents that you write about in your blog. Thanks again,
Walter
https://walter-singleton.com/
Thought you might find this up your alley:
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/12/16/new-ontario-law-gives-grandparents-some-rights-to-grandchildren.html
Note the woman they interview is EXACTLY like the grandparents on estranged parents’ forums; she hangs out in “alienated grandparents” groups where everyone swears they don’t know why they are estranged.
Having reviewed the bill, I’m confident saying it doesn’t actually do anything to change grandparents’ rights in Ontario. It might put judges on notice to think harder about grandparents’ claims but it doesn’t change the legal tests for access.
“If you step in when they fail–not wait to be asked for help, but step in of your own accord, which is what the article was about–then not only is your relationship going to be wanting, but you’re doing the #1 thing a parent can do to set their kid up for dependency.”
God, yes. I think my own mother set me back years in being a self sufficient capable adult, by always trying to do things or pay for things for me, never letting me fail and learn from my mistakes on my own.
[Content deleted. Don’t post copies of your blog posts here, and don’t use my blog to try to make contact with people who don’t want contact with you. I’m sorry for your pain, but as an advocate for estranged children, I must respect your sons’ desires. — Issendai]