As a generation, we’ve done our children a grave disservice by continually rescuing them from discomfort, self-created or otherwise.
We’ve meant well, but rather than ensuring their success by smoothing the way for them, we’ve created a herd of frustrated, young “victims” who blame us (and society) for their inability to painlessly launch into the adult world. (You’ll forgive me for generalizing because there are plenty of examples to the contrary. I know lots of them.)
We have not allowed our children to experience the pain of failure, or face the consequences of their poor decisions even though we know from experience that bad results can motivate folks to develop some skills and tackle a problem from a different approach, build some resilience. Even though we know that we all must sow what we reap; a cosmic law designed to teach us to stop sowing crap.
According to Alison Bottke, author of Setting Boundaries With Your Adult Children, we have interceded for many reasons.
- We’ve confused helping with enabling.
- We fear for our children’s safety, the consequences, and the unknown.
- We feel guilty about things we did or didn’t do when our children were younger.
- It’s all we know how to do.
- Sometimes it’s easier to maintain the status quo than it is to change.
- We’ve never dealt with our own painful past issues, including abandonment, abuse, addictions, and painful circumstances that have shaped us.
When my children were young, I couldn’t stand to witness them suffer in any way, shape, or form. A mother’s job was to provide a sense of security for her babies, a dependable soft place to land, and I didn’t want to fail in this task, as I’d felt my parents had.
Putting my babies to bed each night, was an exhausting endeavor. To prevent them from crying alone in the dark and feeling abandoned, I would rock them back and forth while pacing the floor until they were sleepy enough to settle into their cots. Sometimes it would take twenty minutes to get them down; sometimes it would take three hours. I didn’t understand that a child must learn to self-soothe, that that’s part of their developmental growth, or they will always be looking for something out there to do for them what they should be able to do for themselves.
As they grew older, I believed that a good mother practices unconditional acceptance and approval, offers forgiveness for inappropriate behavior and provides encouragement and tangible help in order to give her child a fresh start. If her kid keeps falling flat on his face, she’s the one who’s supposed to come to the rescue. If he makes a crappy choice, it’s probably her fault anyway, what with the divorce, or the relocation, or the remarriage…. Even if her child’s behavior doesn’t warrant her support, his “potential” surely does.
But here’s the problem. We want to “help” our children; instead we enable. Helping is doing something for someone that he is not capable of doing himself. Enabling is doing for someone what he could and should be doing for himself. (Feel free to use the pronoun she.)
Despite our best intentions, we let loose into this world people ill equipped to deal with the inevitable challenges. We hobble the people we love best.
A day does not go by that I do not meet some well-meaning parent who has no idea where the hell he or she went wrong with a kid. Like the lady in the gym yesterday who was brave enough to admit that her 26-year-old son can’t get a job because of his prison record, and that he’d married some equally unemployable woman he’d met on a cruise (one she’d just taken him on) after knowing her for all of three days. There she was, worrying about what she should do because he was living in a firetrap up North raising pot plants, when she could probably afford to help him move house. Perhaps she should sell her new car.
I shake my head. I understand the pain and the shame and the second-guessing. To help, or not to help, that IS the question. For her situation, of course, I know the answer. She’d be an idiot to get suckered into that three-ring circus. Let the dumbass figure the shit out for himself.
For my situation, of course, it’s never been that clear. I’m too close to it.
Watching my son struggle these past six years after leaving home in defiance at the age of fifteen has been rough to say the least.
I have failed to live up to my own impossible good mother rules, particularly the most important one—At all costs, save him from pain; save him from himself, and his own bad choices—and that hurts.
I’ve needed a lot of support and counsel to hold myself steady through the storms. I only wish I’d found Bottke’s book years ago. It helps me remember that when an adult child comes to the realization that the safety net is no longer there, he either sinks or swims.
Yes, we’re all terrified of the sinking part. But what if my beautiful son learns to swim?
Are you an enabler? If your adult children are highly functioning, and you disagree with 90% of what I’ve just said, probably not.
But for those of you with the sneaking suspicion that you’ve got issues here, an enabler is a person who recognizes that a negative circumstance is occurring on a regular basis and yet continues to enable that person with the problem to persist in his detrimental behaviors.
When parents give up playing benefactor or God in their adult children’s lives, change begins. Not before then.
