Parenting: GUILT TRIPS

Power struggles between teenagers and their parents take many forms. My children knew that the "when" of performing family responsibilities was negotiable but that the "what" and "why" were relatively fixed. Until adolescence they were generally very co-operative. At that point, my son's bid  for autonomy took the form of long, creative arguments about the rationality of my leadership and the necessity for his capitulation vis-a-vis family responsibilities. He wanted to insist on "win-win" solutions so was usually amenable to compromise, although I was often characterized as a social dinosaur. (More about those interesting encounters later in a separate post.)

My daughter was a cheerful, helpful child until she also reached that developmental stage of "addled essence" when the underlying issue of her autonomy became more important than the overt task at hand. On those occasions what she wanted was to have her way, be in charge of her life. She wanted to win. That perhaps subconscious want was probably intensified as a result of years of being under her older brother's thumb as well as mine. She was conflicted, however, because she was basically a wise, rational, loving and obedient human being who hated conflict and emotional confrontations.

Her last stand, if I asked her to do one of her chores or help me around the house when she wanted to go out with her friends (a standing preference) and she felt the negotiation was not going her way, was to accuse me of trying to send her on guilt trips. Knowing that I tried to be a reasonable, flexible parent and as fair as possible, she would try to use that against me to make me feel guilty by blaming me for the guilt she felt for being defiant rather than reasonable and not following her own higher instincts of parental respect and pulling her weight at home. She was clearly bidding for at least a pyrrhic victory in the end by implying that I was being devious and unfair - a bad parent. I understood her struggles, but did not accept responsibility for the pain her conscience was giving her. 

I think we both knew that if she had negotiated a compromise, she'd not have felt guilty, but when autonomy is the real issue, compromise does not satisfy. So. since I was willing to negotiate logistics and details but not safety, family values or responsibilities and she needed to win, what else could this poor evolving adult do but go underground. I thought she was an unusually considerate and sensible teenager and she was, but after she graduated from college and our relationship changed to accommodate her maturity, I began to hear little stories of crazy things she had done on my watch. 

"You mean to tell me you jumped into Spa Creek from the bridge! That's a fifteen foot drop and the water's too muddy to see how deep it is, and there's hot-rod boat traffic going through that bridge, and people throw all sorts of junk into that creek that could have hurt you...and...," I sputtered. "I never knew you did that."

"Of course not, Mom. I never told you when I did stupid, crazy things because I didn't want to worry you." Grateful for her thoughtfulness, I also read that as, "I didn't want to put up with you ranting like this about the stupid, crazy things I did and then grounding me for weeks on end." 


I take that second reading because she once told me she would never lie to me again because it wasn't worth having to listen to my lectures on trust as well as being grounded. Some might want to accuse her of lying by omission, but I think an experimental adult-in-the-making has a right to Fifth Amendment protections.

So my goodie two-shoes pulled some fast ones on me. I can actually smile about that now because kids need to try their wings and she lived through all her hijinks. But my kids had common sense, we were lucky, and my constant prayer as a parent was answered. I would tell God that I was doing the best I could to prepare my kids to fledge, but would She please keep them safe when they were away from me. They learned, they fledged, and She did.

It is futile to wonder about all the other things my teenaged daughter did that I don't know about but it's a kick when she confesses one because she lived to tell the tale. And now comes my parental vindication. My daughter is becoming the mother of teenagers. I hope she and they fare as well as we did.

Guilt Trips by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use, please contact randmxcentric@gmail.com