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April
16, 2007:
Improving Parent/Adult Child Relationships
Interview
with Jane Isay, author of Walking
On Eggshells
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Mike
Carruthers:
Why
is it that so many adult children have a difficult relationship
with their older parents? Well, someone's done the research…
Jane Isay:
What I've discovered was that everyone wants the relationship
to work but we're both lacking a playbook for conversation, for
interaction, and for ways to make the love between the generations
more obvious.
Jane Isay, author
of the book Walking
On Eggshells, says parents of adult children need to understand
what their grown children are now looking for.
What they're
looking for is a kind of respect and affection that we could
certainly give them. They want distance; they want us to understand
the boundaries. They don't want their divorced father to tell
them about his new girlfriend. And they don't want their mothers
to hang on their every word and be as needy as some mothers
are. They want to be autonomous, they want their freedom, they
want their space so they can come back.
Jane says, her
best advice for parents of adult children is…
Don't give advice
and don't criticize. One of the women in my book is in her fifties
and her father, when he was complimenting her on her looks,
he said, "You look better." Which meant to her you
really look not very good. And she finally said, "Dad if
you want to say something nice about my looks, say I look well."
And you know what? - he did it and it makes it easier.
Tomorrow, what
adult children can do to improve this relationship - I'm Mike
Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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