What's a Parent's Role?

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Parents assume the "ruin" is a single traceable event, such as a divorce, a move, or a harsh word.

The real damage is almost never the event itself; it's the feeling that was never acknowledged.

Adult children don't want a re-litigation of facts; they want proof that someone finally understands them.

When an adult child says, “You ruined my life” (or some close version of that painful sentiment), most parents brace for a specific charge. Parents share with me how they scramble backward through decades, trying to locate the “crime.” The usual suspects that pop up in these parents’ minds may include: “Was it the divorce when she was nine?” Or, “What about when we moved, and he lost his friends?” “Oh, wait, I still don’t know what I was doing when I made that hurtful comment about her weight in tenth grade?”

This instinct to find the event is exactly what keeps parents stuck. That’s because the event isn’t really the point.

It Was Never About the........

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