166 - ketab farsi

166
24
Adult Children And
Their Parents
By: Mastaneh Moghadam, LCSW*
“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide
forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
~Elizabeth Stone
Every single one of us is a
product of Parents. Parents,
who have at the very least, given us
life, fed us, clothed and sheltered us.
Hopefully, they have also nurtured
us, educated us, protected us, taught
us right from wrong, sat up with us
when we were sick, laughed with
us, cried with us, and have done
their best to love and support us.
So, now that we are older…what
are we to do with them? Do we
thank them and bid them farewell?
Do we show our appreciation by
living our lives the way they want
us to? Do we listen to them or run
from them? Become their friends or
their enemies?
Ideally, the hope is that
every child has been raised in a
healthy family environment with a
great deal of love and balance. The
parents in this family have given their
children equal amounts of attention,
freedom to express emotions,
age appropriate responsibilities,
and respect. They have modeled
appropriate boundaries and have
earned their children’s trust by
offering them a sense of security
and consistency. The parents
have allowed their children to
experience life by making their
own decisions, their own mistakes,
and allowing them the freedom
to be the individuals that they can
be. And having experienced such
a solid childhood, ideally as adults,
our relationships with our parents
include mutual love, respect, trust,
and appreciation. We accept them
as individuals with their own
opinions and imperfections, goals,
and values and in return, they do
the same for us. They listen to our
ideas without judgment, they share
their wisdom without enforcing
their beliefs upon us, they value
the people that we are and support
our decisions, weather they agree
with it or not. We look forward to
calling them, speaking with them,
sharing new experiences with them
and reminiscing through old times.
They have become our friends, our
confidants, and our biggest fans…
and we all live happily ever after…
does this sound like a fairy tale to
you? Is this (or at least something
almost like this) your reality?
For many of us our
childhoods were filled with
imbalance and (at times) chaos.
We may have grown up with
parents whose own personal
weaknesses and personality flaws
lead to family structures where noncommunication
and secrecy were the
norm; anger and judgment ruled the
house. Where power structures were
unequal, rules and expectations were
inconsistent, and respect was nonexistent.
Where love and attention
was a commodity that was hard to
come by and interdependency was
encouraged. And now, as adults,
our relationships with our parents
seem to be filled with feelings of
resentment and anger, sprinkled
with guilt. We find ourselves in a
cycle of power struggles, and fights
over control. We may find ourselves
constantly looking to our parents to
be saved or to save them, neither of
which feels satisfying nor makes
us happy. We may decide to “give
in” and just do as they say and in
essence become a martyr to their
needs. Or, at the other extreme,
make sure to do everything the
opposite of what they want, often
destroying ourselves just to see
them suffer. Does this sound like
anyone’s reality?
Perhaps, for most of us, the
reality of our relationship with our
parents lies somewhere in between
these two scenarios. However, if
you find yourself drawing parallels
to the later more than to the former,
you may be wondering what has
lead you there. Well…you’re
Iranian. No, no – while that is not
entirely the reason why, we do have
to take a minute and look at our
culture of origin.
The Iranian Culture’s
values and norms are historically
more oriented towards the
concept of collectivism rather
than individualism. Collectivism