Dr. Mary Gresham » Families

Families with problem mothers

Dr. Mary Gresham — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:33:08 +0000

There is often denial in families about the emotional troubles of others in the family. This is particularly true when a mother is emotionally unstable and family members look the other way instead of stepping in and dealing with the issue. The problem with this kind of denial is that children are affected by a mother’s mood swings, alcohol use, rage, verbal put downs or neediness. The same woman that no one in the family can deal with is left in charge of the children. Often fathers have no idea what to do and avoid the situation by withdrawing and resigning themselves to a wife’s mental difficulties. Fathers are the adults who have the most impact and power to change the situation but many are afraid to rock the boat for fear of angry outbursts. Extended family members could also step in and insist that a mother get some help or could at least be willing to talk to the children about mom’s problems and let them know that it is not their fault. Many times daughters are left to try to care for and help their mothers with mental issues. We call this kind of child the “parentified” child since they are attempting to fill the role that a parent should undertake. Families do not have to remain helpless in the face of a mother’s refusal to seek treatment. There are a number of people who now specialize in doing interventions with emotionally unstable family members and even if it may be an upsetting experience, the problem now has a name and the children will know that someone cared about what happens to them. When the problem is brought out into the open and made clear, the children no longer have to wonder if they are bad and somehow caused it. If you cannot tolerate your family member’s emotional outbursts, imagine how her children might feel. It takes courage to bring out these types of problems and there can be some difficult fallout but the alternative is to continue to whisper and dance around the issue without really confronting it.

Helping young adults who are underfunctioning

Dr. Mary Gresham — Sun, 02 May 2010 19:26:40 +0000

Is there such a thing as a slacker young adult? Yes there is and they may be part of your own family or even living with you. I have recently been asked by 2 mothers who have children in their 20s living at home, how to help launch these grown children. First of all, not every child who lives in a multi-generational household is a slacker. Some are busy as students or full-time employees and it may be that these young adults are living at home to save money for something important or avoid student debt. In these cases, the children pay some of the living expenses of the house and do chores in the home to acknowledge that they are not guests but family members who have to contribute to the household. They are living in the home as adults and are able to negotiate and have some say over communal issues that arise in every household (i.e. how long can dishes go unwashed in this house?).
The young adult I am referring to as under-functioning is not in a healthy situation like the above but is living off his/her family. This child may be working part-time and having a perpetual summer, sleeping late and primarily interested in hanging out with friends. There is not a sense of moving forward in this young person’s life but more of a sense of being stuck. If you are the parent of such a child, you may be distressed but you keep allowing yourself to be persuaded by your child’s compelling arguments to keep things the way they are. If you take a step back and look at the situation you might begin to see how this is doing your child a true disservice. If your child has no inner drive to leave, you will need to become the motivating force if you are not happy with the situation. All young adults should pay some money for their upkeep. You can use this money to create a savings account for your child and then use the savings to help your child move out. You can also use the money they contribute to buy your child a service instead of free rent. Some young adults need counseling to develop the confidence to leave home or to begin to see the benefit of leaving. Sometimes they need the services of a career counselor or a financial advisor to help them develop the skills of independent living. Having them be responsible for some of the cleaning and cooking tasks is another way to send the message that they need to be learning the skills of living as adults. Sometimes it helps to ask them (with compassion) if they are afraid for some reason to grow up?
Many young people may initially resist changes that ask more of them but over time they will notice an improvement in their feelings about themselves. It does not feel good to know that you are not developing your potential as a person but many young people do not realize how their feelings of well-being can be improved by becoming a more highly functioning person. Remind your child that he/she will feel better if they are moving ahead in life even if that means paying rent to you. In addition, be sure to look at yourself and your life. Is there some way that you may be lonely or trying to fill a void in your life by allowing your child to hang around the house? Do you need to develop more of a life? Remember that if you decide that you like your child’s presence, you can change to healthier patterns of living together in lieu of eviction but be sure that you are not keeping your child from growing up.

A Difficult Mother

Dr. Mary Gresham — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:46:49 +0000

What does it mean to have a difficult mother? All mothers go through difficult periods due to fatigue, stress and the demands of adult life and parenting. However a truly difficult mother is difficult all the time and presents a child with an unresolvable dilemma: you can either sacrifice yourself and have a relationship with me or be your true self and I will ridicule, disapprove of or reject you. The child’s dependency on the mother is then exploited and he/she will have difficulty trusting others and developing close relationships in adulthood. Some of the characterisitics of a difficult mother include erratic and intense outbursts of anger, rigid and inflelxible expectations of her child or chronic neediness and unhappiness. The child grows up to be the caretaker or the parent of the mother and even in adulthood can have great difficulty resisting a mother’s manipulations and control. Often a grown child will beg mom to please “accept me as I am and stop needing, controlling or being angry with me.” Truly learning that your mother is no longer in charge of you can be hard , even when you know in your head that it is true. Learning that others will not treat you as she did is also hard. Challenge the voices in you that predict everyone will treat you similarly and you will always have to placate others. Be sure that you are not drawn to relationships that feel like a repeat of your childhoood as there are other ways to be with people than the ways of your original family. If you have difficulty with these issues, ask for help if you need it.

Helping Teens Through The Downturn

Dr. Mary Gresham — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:08:01 +0000

This is a particularly difficult time for teens whose families have been hit hard with the economic changes. Why especially hard for teens? This is a time when teens want to break away from their families more and turn to the peer group. Yet if the family is in crisis, it becomes very hard to break away just when everyone needs to pull together. So the changes work against the developmental task of the teen years. It is also possible that being with the peer group would involve money that is no longer available .To go out to eat or on field trips or other youth activities requires money that the other kids may still have and your teen will be left out. Sometimes families have to relocate and the teen loses the peer group that is so important and finds it hard to break into a new one. And of course, teens are often materialistic and group status may depend on wearing certain clothes, shoes, etc. In addition many teens are aware that plans for college may have to change and this can be upsetting especially if older siblings have not had to deal with this stress.

The Iowa Youth and Family Study project was started during the period when many families were not able to keep the family farm ( late 80’s) and had to weather a serious economic downturn. 500 7th grade students were followed over a period of 20 years, making this one of the most comprehensive studies of family life done. What do you imagine caused these teens the most trouble? The emotional distress of their parents!!! They were able to adapt to the changes in circumstance but if the parents were irritable, depressed , withdrawn, fighting with each other, etc. , these teens did worse than the teens whose families pulled together and weathered the changes with greater acceptance and calmness.

See also the current February issue of Money magazine for an interview with me that talks further about helping teens through this time.

Helping Your Child During Tough Economic Times

Dr. Mary Gresham — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:11:10 +0000

If you are one of the many Americans currently facing a downward turn in your lifestyle, you may be concerned about the impact on your children. Whether the changes are due to the high costs of living, a job or business loss or an unsustainable mortgage, your life and therefore your children’s lives will be changing. Recent research in the field of behavioral economics tells us that losses are twice as painful as gains are pleasurable. Learning how to cope with loss is a major life skill and challenge and your children will be watching to see how you handle it. This is how they will learn to confront losses in their lives since they will be modeling after you if they are 6 or older.
It is important to make room for the initial feelings of loss especially sadness and disappointment. If your child has to give up a summer camp or activity or a home and room that they loved, they can be encouraged to be sad along with you. It is important to move on from this initial response into a period of coping and resilience. This is the most important thing that you can give them, an example of facing and weathering the challenges of life with courage and integrity. How do you show this? By talking in the family about things that we can do together to get through this. Children age 6 and up want to contribute to the family as well and will develop a sense of being a valued member of the family if they are allowed to help. How can they help? The can contribute by being willing to go on a picnic instead of out to eat; by paying attention to reducing the use of heat, AC and power if utility bills are high or by helping with a moving or garage sale. There are many ways they can be included in the changes of the family.

One of the benefits of being allowed to help is to develop a greater sense of control over family problems, instead of feeling helpless. When they are told there is nothing they or anyone can do, they get a message of helplessness. Perhaps the problem is the loss of your home. In that case they can help by packing their things and being willing to make new friends in the new place. This gives the child a place to focus instead of just acting up over the changes and creates the beginning of a feeling of efficacy in the face of stress.

Teaching Children About Money

Dr. Mary Gresham — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:31:38 +0000

It is important to be able to talk openly with your children about money and the money in the family. Sometimes the only time children hear the word is in the context of conflict, as when parents are arguing or they are being denied a treat. Having open talks begins to break the money taboo and teaches them that this an acceptable subject for a conversation, not just for an argument.

The concepts important to teach include how to spend wisely, how to save, how to invest and to accept that there are others in the world who have a different amount of money, both more and less than they do. Discussing feelings such as envy , greed and fear in relationship to money is also helpful. Many parents are beginning to use a system of allowance that includes money to spend, money to save, money to invest and money to give away as a method of teaching mental accounting. I do believe that children should receive an allowance that is not tied to chores; I believe that they should be required to do chores without receiving money for them, just because they are family members who have something of value to contribute. In addition they should have the opportunity to earn if they go above and beyond the assigned chores and do “jobs” around the house.

It is also necessary to teach how to use electronic money when that time comes, probably during adolescence. Loading allowance on a prepaid visa begins to teach them how to track electronic money, which is much harder to track than physical money or checks. Using the computer for financial tasks is yet another area of education that should be undertaken.

There are websites designed to help children understand the world of finance. Quickenkidsandmoney.com costs a yearly fee but gets good reviews. Others that can be useful are younginvestor.com; handsonbanking.org; and kidsbank.com.

If you have other concerns about raising fiscally responsible children, please contact me at mg@doctorgresham.com.

How Parents Teach About Money

Dr. Mary Gresham — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:49:56 +0000

In this article I use the term “women” to discuss the part of our population that was socialized with traditional feminine middle-class values. However this information may apply to men who were raised in this manner and may not apply to women who were raised in other cultures or with non-traditional socialization. So let me say at the outset that I realize I am making generalizations that do not apply across the board and may not apply to many women…..but you may be in relationship with someone who was raised in these traditions and that may be of use to you.

I will begin by sharing with you some of my own confusion as a woman raised in the 50’s and 60’s. Anyone raised in my era may realize that we were raised by a generation that grew up in the depression…and it is important to understand that piece of our bringing up. In my own life it has played out by parents’ confusion : providing me with food, shelter and education was supposed to show their love and guarantee me a happy life. Even today parents get confused about what else is required of them in the parenting process. As I am able to see them within their own history I become much clearer about the messages they sent to me regarding what kinds of appreciation and affection I then owed them and how much sense it made to them. My father was clear to teach me that as a woman I needed to prepare to support myself financially and make a good career for myself. My mother was clear to teach me that as a woman the most wonderful thing that could happen to me would be to marry a generous man and have the freedom not to work. I doubt that my parents ever really discussed how and which messages they would send to their daughters about money and work and were not even conscious that they held few of the same opinions. Few of my female classmates were preparing for professional careers in the 60’s, although many of them have come to that place later. At the time I was among a minority going on to graduate studies. As I married and became a parent, my conflicts about work and motherhood were quite intense and left me unhappy in both areas. It has been with much agonizing that I figured out how to work this through to satisfy both parts of myself.

Even now many enlightened parents never discuss with each other whether they are sending conflicting messages to their children on the issues of work and money. The most powerful messages are not always the ones that are verbally expressed but are more likely to come from our parent’s living of their lives. If one of you spends and the other complains about the spending then, you have divided the money tasks in a way that promotes conflicts within the family. This sends a message to your children that one must choose whether to be a spender or a saver as opposed to showing that both spending and saving are important money tasks to be done with integrity and consciousness. This is a common family split in our culture. In general one member of a marriage is likely to be allocated a childlike, impulsive, spending role and the other is designated as the responsible, parental money planner. At times parents may agree to change roles but often they do not take the time to be sure that both parents are teaching and exhibiting all the major money tasks mentioned in the previous article.