Megan doesn’t want her daughter to be a theater major in college. Tim doesn’t think his son’s about-to-be fiancée is right for him. Samantha doesn’t want her son to join the Peace Corps. Each of these parents struggles with if and/or how to express their strongly felt feelings and opinions to their children. Each believes that there would be disastrous consequences if their child followed through with their choice.

Parents who are troubled and conflicted about what they see as the life choices their adult children are making describe experiencing a wide range of intolerable feelings. Typically feeling desperate, the initial question they present to me is, “How can I get my child to do what I know is best?” When I respond, I try to get them to consider my question: “Best for whom?” Surprised, they usually look at me as if there can only be the obvious answer: “best for my child.” But if I can help them consider how it is also best for them, they may ultimately have a fuller sense of what is driving their strong need to influence their child. It may also help them moderate their intense and frequently painful feelings. They will then be in a better position to choose how or if they should try and persuade their child to see it their way.

I am going to describe some work I did with Megan, who responded “best for my daughter” to my usual question.

Megan was open to exploring both why she thought it was best for her daughter and also why it might be best for her. She described how worried she was that her daughter, Annie, would never make it in theater: “She is going to suffer all the pain and humiliation of failure. I’m really frightened that she’ll never be able to make a living. She could end up living a terribly depressed and deprived life.”

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As Megan and I talked about her worries, she acknowledged that she would be relieved if Megan didn’t become a theater arts major. She recognized that she was very frightened. If she could influence Annie, her suffering would diminish and she would feel much less anxious and troubled.

As we explored Megan’s feelings, it was clear that while she understood that she wanted to get rid of her anxiety by persuading Annie to listen to her, she had complete certainty that her daughter’s life would be ruined: “She says she gets it, but I don’t really think she has thought about what it will be like to fail, to not be able to support herself after college.” This has created a serious conflict between mother and daughter. Megan was so sure it would be a disastrous decision that she wasn’t willing to pay Annie’s college tuition.

Megan and I did a lot of talking about her relationship with Annie. Megan was surprised at how much Annie was pushing back: “She’s always listened to me. She never fought with me about anything. We’ve had very few disagreements. I remember when I told her that I thought her friend Jordy, who I never liked, was a bad influence. She didn’t argue and just stopped hanging out with her. She took tennis lessons and talked about how much she liked the game. But I could see that she was pretty bad at it and she never objected when I suggested it wasn’t her thing. I don’t know, she’s always seemed fine with my ideas about what was good for her and what wasn’t.”

The more I learned about Megan and Annie’s relationship, the more it seemed that historically there was a dynamic where Megan exerted a great deal of influence and Annie complied. I wondered if there was some significance in Annie turning 18 and planning to go away to school that created a shift in this pattern. Annie was behaving in a more separate way from Megan. She was expressing more of an individuated self. Perhaps Annie’s new attempt at separation and individuation was something Megan was finding difficult.

As we continued our work, Megan began to consider that she was having trouble separating from Annie. One day in our session she began to cry: “You know, I suppose it’s always been about separation. I thought if she did what I wanted, followed my life plan for her, didn’t have conflict with me, we would always be Mommy and Annie. But she is growing up and she isn’t just like me. Maybe she is tougher than me. I get scared about risks. I suppose it might not be so terrible if she was less scared, more able to risk failure. I don’t know. The thing is, I don’t like her choice. I think it’s wrong. I don’t want to help her to do it.”

Megan’s tearful statement captures her intense conflict. Her strong need to stop Annie from becoming a theater arts major may not just be about her intense belief that it is a choice that would be harmful to Annie. The surprising pushback from Annie may have strengthened Megan’s feelings that the theatre choice is a bad one.

Megan has reported that Annie has become very angry with her and has told her that she is going to find a way to pay her own tuition. Megan, in disbelief, told me: “This is so not like her. She says I can’t stop her from doing what she wants for herself. She screamed at me, ‘I’m not going to let you make me doubt myself or make me feel guilty for choosing what I want instead of what you want.’ I can’t believe this is my daughter talking to me.”

Megan is feeling hurt and rejected by Annie. Until now, Annie had not had her own voice in their relationship, and it is difficult for Megan to see Annie’s assertion of herself as a positive behavior in service of the developmental tasks of separation and individuation. As we have been exploring her conflict, I have asked Megan to think about her impact on Annie. Megan has been so angry and scared about Annie’s choice that she hadn’t stopped to think what it would feel like for Annie to be unsupported: “I guess she could feel like I don’t believe in her talent or that she doesn’t have what it takes to succeed. But maybe she’ll think she has a mother who is trying to make sure she doesn’t do something ruinous.”

Megan and Annie’s struggles are representative of parent-child conflicts where parent and child feel strongly about influencing and being influenced. These conflicts are often not simply about the manifest issues at hand. Rather, both parent and child are responding to the indirect messages in the communications. To deal with these conflicts, it is important for parents and children to learn how to express the impact each is having on the other.

Parents may feel they are being protective parents who are taking good care of their children when they insist their adult child do it their way. They can feel angry, hurt, or confused by their child’s responses to their concerns. Adult children frequently report feeling intruded upon, infantilized, and/or controlled when parents attempt to have the final say in their life decisions. These children may begin to doubt themselves and can become anxious about failure. Or, they may become angry and recognize they are being deprived of learning how to become resilient and deal with failure. Many express that their self-confidence is being undermined.

When parents try to influence their children, it is important for everyone to decode what messages are being communicated and whether the intended communication is what is being heard. While parents may believe they are expressing “I love you and want to protect you,” or, “I am thinking about what is best for you,” their child may be hearing, “you don’t have what it takes to do that,” or, “you don’t know how to take care of yourself in risky situations,” or, “you are going to fail and not recover.” When the child rejects the parents’ influence, parents may hear the child’s response as, “I don’t love you”, “you don’t know me,” or, “I want to get away from you.”

Megan is working on taking Annie’s angry outbursts less personally and is trying to be more aware of the benefits for Annie in being supported by her. For now, Megan’s goal is to get comfortable with the idea of having a dialogue where she is open to hearing what Annie has to say about what she wants with the hope that Annie will be more willing to consider the risks and potential harm that could result from her choice of major. Megan also wants to try to have a conversation with Annie about their relationship and what it is like for both of them to deal with Annie’s separating and individuating.

As Megan has discovered, parents and their adult children who are struggling about whose version of the adult child’s life will prevail need to find a way to talk, listen, and hear each other. If they can accomplish this, they will be in a better position to benefit from the other’s views and have a better chance of accepting each other’s differing points of view without feeling dismissed and devalued. While this doesn’t mean they will agree, the unwanted and painful feelings that are generated in the struggle can become more tolerable, and the relationship will be stronger.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

A child changes everything. As a parent, you start seeing things from a completely different perspective. Whereas you would not have bothered before about cars driving too fast on a suburban street, now you find yourself yelling out, “Slow down, there’re kids in this neighborhood!”

Being a parent brings on a new sense of responsibility. At least one study shows that dads start spending more time at the office after having a child, working harder, hoping for a promotion. Another group of studies show that stress increases significantly for new parents, and some even suggest that, because of the added stress, parents are not much happier than their childless counterparts.

Ah, responsibility. You hold that little bundle of sleepless joy in your arms, and tell them, “I will never let anything happen to you. I promise. I will dedicate my life to you, and you will be the happiest person to ever walk this earth.” However, raising the smartest, happiest, and most amazing human being is a lot of work. Just keeping a child alive is huge responsibility!

The constant pressure can lead you to over-parent your child. Your desire to shield and protect them at all times allows the child little room for making mistakes.

Children, and people in general, learn best from experience. If a parent constantly guides a child to assure the child’s success, then the child may not know what to do when left to their own devices.

A common sign of over-parenting is when parents express worries in the form of instructions. For example: “Don’t fall!” How does that statement reduce the child’s chances of falling? Another one: “Be good.” Instead of helping your child succeed, these vague statements communicate mistrust in the child’s abilities.

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Another sign of over-parenting is when a parent rushes in to fix a child’s problems to avoid the child becoming upset. When a child loses a toy, they get a new one. When a pet dies, and parents are overwhelmed with their child’s feelings of grief, they might rush to the pet store for a new animal to replace their child’s best friend.

So, what’s a loving parent to do? What if the parent has a superpower to foresee danger. Should the parent not give warnings? Step in to save the day?

Here are some suggestions on how to step back so your child can step up:

• Keep your fears in check. Having a child feels as if your heart is walking around outside your body—all you want to do is keep it safe. Instead of expressing your fears to your child, give things a positive spin. “Wow, those are a lot of heavy plates you are holding!” builds your child’s confidence. If your child needs help, provide specific suggestions. “Hold the plates with both hands” may be enough. If you find yourself providing too much anxiety-filled feedback, you may be overdoing it.
• Think about the realistic worst-case scenario. Fear keeps us safe. That’s why fear makes us think about the worst that could happen. But how hurt can your child really get if they run too fast or swings too high? How sick can they become from playing with someone who has the sniffles? Give your child room to learn their own limits. The child may need to fall once or twice to find out.
• Allow your child to experience upset feelings. Although you want to raise the happiest kid, your child will experience disappointment, frustration, and grief. When you experience these feelings, you don’t usually want someone to just fix it. It helps much more to be listened to and feel “felt.” Let your child tell you about their feelings. Connect with the child without immediate suggestions or solutions. For your child, it is often more important to know you are available than it is to know you will fix all of their problems. And, learning to remain calm when things aren’t going well builds the child’s stress tolerance.

Above all, remember that your child will benefit from learning to figure things out. A child will be more careful holding an ice cream cone after dropping it once. And if it’s their emotional well-being you are looking out for, keep in mind that the way in which your child is able to overcome difficulties is what will make them feel successful and empowered. Our children are often stronger, wiser, and more responsible than we think.

Fear is a pretty ordinary human emotion. When we experience it, though, it feels anything but ordinary. How we respond to our fears can shape the way we live our lives and the people we are.

As children, we learn a great deal about fear from our parents. A parent’s fear for the child helps the child learn not to run into the street, that the iron is hot, that the electrical outlet is dangerous, etc. However, a parent’s fear may also teach the child that it is scary to go down the slide, to stay with the babysitter, to go to school, to have a sleepover, etc. In these situations, the parent is often frightened, but he or she doesn’t want to feel afraid and doesn’t want the child to experience fear, either. So, to get rid of unwanted feelings, the message is “don’t do it.” This is a different message from “yes, it’s scary, but you can do it anyway.”

Taryn was a scared child who developed into a scared adult who makes safe life choices. She came to see me because she was unhappy with her life. At 29, she was a music teacher in a suburban public school, unmarried, who lived and worked in the town next to where she grew up and where her parents still resided. She had been an “A” student in high school, and went to the local state college where she got her master’s degree in music education. In our first session, she told me: “I really wanted to be a singer. But my parents always discouraged me, saying it was no way to make a living. They encouraged me to be a teacher. I got a scholarship for college, and it wasn’t hard to get my teaching job. I lived at home the first three years I taught, and now I share an apartment with a roommate. I feel so bored. I date occasionally, but every day seems the same as the last one. I just don’t know what I want; I just know I feel empty and blah.”

As Taryn and I worked together and I got to know more about her life, past and present, I could visualize Taryn as a precocious little girl: cute, smart, and lively. She had memories of happy times with her parents—being read to, singing in the car, feeling their pride in how well she did in school. She also had memories of sleep problems, fear of going to school, and a lot of worries. In particular, she talked about not being able to fall asleep on her own until she was 10 and her parents having to stay in her room until she fell asleep. She also had separation anxiety around school, sleepovers, and in general when she felt her parents were out of contact. She recalled: “When I was 12, my friends were going away to camp for two weeks and I started to think about going too. I remember telling my parents that I was worried that I would be homesick. They encouraged me not to go and said it was silly for me to put myself through the worry. When I decided to stay home, I thought they were more relieved than I was.”

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Taryn’s experience illustrates growing up with parents who are unable to contain their anxiety. To manage their feelings, anxious parents typically need their children to share their anxiety. As long as the child is anxious, the parent can feel less anxious and expect that the child will refrain from taking risks. The parent’s anxious demeanor and behavior communicate life lessons to the child: it’s not OK to take risks; it’s not OK to feel anxious; one must act in ways to get rid of the anxiety rather than feel the feelings and see what happens when action is taken.

Being a parent is by definition anxiety producing. No one teaches us how to parent. We have no road maps about how to respond to our children’s behaviors and feelings. Moreover, we have no set of instructions to help us manage our feelings. Frequently, we rely on our experiences in our families of origin to model what we should do and not do in raising our children. It is rare to hear of a parent who says to their anxious young adult child, “Don’t be an anxious parent like me. Try to contain your anxiety with your child and help him to get comfortable with all his feelings so he can go into the world and take risks. I didn’t help you with that, but maybe you can be a better parent.”

Some of us realize that it would be helpful to our children to provide them with an experience different from the one we had growing up. Glenn is the father of 4-year-old Callie. He is very aware of his tendency to worry and get anxious in the face of any possible danger. He is also aware that he is repeating with Callie the over-involved, hovering, scared demeanor that his mother had with him. In therapy, he wanted help with containing his anxiety and not communicating his fears to Callie: “When I take her to the playground, I can feel myself becoming scared and vigilant when she approaches the slide or starts running around. I think to myself, ‘Oh, no, she’s going to get hurt, I have to stop her.’ It takes so much self-control to keep my mouth shut and I don’t always succeed. I also am having conflict with my wife because I don’t want to put Callie in preschool. I keep thinking how sad and abandoned she will feel. My wife thinks I’m nuts. Maybe I am.”

Fortunately, Glenn has the ability to understand that his anxious behavior doesn’t serve Callie. He has been thinking about Callie’s future and his worries: “I can see myself holding her back in all kinds of ways. I know how scared I was trying new things. I can imagine going along with her fears. Like if she’s timid socially or nervous about trying out for a sports team, I know I’ll think of my fears as a kid and not be able to help her. I want her to be strong, able to go away to college rather than go to a commuter school like I did. I want a different experience for her.”

Even if Glenn is not yet able to change his feelings, he has been trying to alter some of his behaviors. We have agreed to work together to see if Glenn’s feelings can move closer to what he is able to know intellectually. Glenn is highly motivated. His ability to recognize the way his anxiety developed from his parents’ communications to him, his memory of his conflicts about wanting more but being terrified of the risks, and his desire to not repeat this pattern with his daughter are extremely motivating.

Worry, fear, anxiety—they serve as important warning signs that keep us safe. But if we think of the fight-or-flight continuum, parents who always signal their children to flee are, in many life circumstances, depriving their children of the diversity life has to offer. Not only are they being denied access to the wide variety of ways to participate in the world, they are being robbed of the ability to develop into individuals who are resilient, confident, and know what they want and how to get it. If parents can respond to a child with the reassuring idea that it is OK to be afraid and still choose to take risks and explore the world, they will be helping the child to learn that fear is to be respected and considered, but is not always a signal for saying no to the scary but exciting and fascinating new experiences that make us the unique individuals we keep becoming.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

In many families, the belief that children must honor their parents is a given. It may be seen as a tenet of the family’s culture, religion, or may be so fundamental that it is experienced as a rule of nature. In any particular family, the meaning of honoring one’s parents can vary from total obedience to respectfully listening to the wishes, perspectives, requests, etc., that parents express. In any particular family, the consequences of dishonoring a parent can range from mild feelings of anger, hurt, and sadness to intense anger, disappointment, extreme hurt, and disownment. (I am not considering the kinds of families which go to extremes which could result in honor killings.

In families with intense and powerful beliefs that children must honor their parents by sharing their points of view and behaving accordingly, children learn that any attempt to differentiate themselves from their parents by having separate, diverse perspectives or needs is unacceptable. Growing up, they learn what consequences to expect should they express their separate, differentiated selves when they are in conflict with family values. For children who struggle with these feelings, the dilemma of how to honor one’s parents and still be “true” to oneself is not easily resolved.

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It is hard to imagine, even in families and cultures with strict admonitions not to depart from parental ways, that children don’t have thoughts that differ from what parents want. To protect themselves and preserve the parent-child relationship, children develop ways of coping. Some unconsciously dissociate (not be consciously aware of) their conflicting wishes, needs, and thoughts. Others suffer quietly and internally with the conflicts between what they think and desire for themselves and their wishes not to hurt, anger, disappoint, or shame their parents.

In my work as a therapist, I often encounter people who seek therapy when they can no longer contain these conflicts and feel that any choice they make between what their parents wish for them and what they want for themselves is unbearable. (Here I am not considering people who dissociate.) Most of these people express loving feelings toward their parents. They are vulnerable to feelings of selfishness, self-betrayal, fear of angering or disappointing parents, and pain about hurting parents. There may be intense shame that their thoughts and feelings are not those of a good child and that their choices could dishonor and shame the parent in the family or community.

As a therapist who values self-determination, individuation, and agency, it is essential that I recognize and respect the value systems that people have internalized. There are no rights and wrongs here. Each person I work with needs to be helped to understand, as much as possible, what his or her conflicts are about, and which choices result in the most tolerable consequences. Therapy has to facilitate the process of making the intolerable feelings more tolerable.

“Lucy” is a 26-year-old Asian woman who came to my office racked with conflict. She and her 29-year-old brother were born in the United States; her parents were born in Asia, where they met and married. They came to the U.S. before the children were born. Most of Lucy’s aunts and uncles emigrated around the same time as her parents and she now has a large extended family, mostly in the Northwest. Lucy came to New York to go to graduate school for fine arts. She met Peter, who is not Asian, in one of her classes two years ago, and Peter has asked her to marry him.

Lucy told me, “I love him so much, but I think it will kill my parents. I haven’t told them about him. When I’ve gone home for vacations, they always want to fix me up with someone from my culture, but I’ve managed to get around it. I also haven’t let Peter know how much of a problem it is for me. I don’t think I can keep up this charade. I keep thinking maybe I should just marry him and never tell them. I don’t know how Peter would feel about that. I can’t imagine giving him up, and I feel so selfish. But if I tell them, I can imagine my mother sobbing hysterically and never getting over the hurt. I can see my Aunt Lynn saying something mean to my mother about how she has such a dishonorable and disrespectful daughter. My mother will die of shame. What am I going to do?”

“Wow,” I said. “You are up against a lot of powerful forces that are tearing you apart and making the possibility of coming to a decision a horrible proposition. You can’t win. But you obviously can’t continue to stay in what must feel like a terrible war going on inside you.”

“Yes, that’s it!” Lucy said. “How can I possibly make any choice and be OK with it?”

“I don’t know that you will ever be fully OK with any choice you come to, but I’d like to help you be OK enough with how to proceed with your life,” I said.

Lucy and I used our sessions to explore her understanding of her family, her culture, and their values. We clarified the powerful nature of respect and honor for the wishes of the elders in the family and the importance of tradition. Lucy acknowledged that her wanting to marry someone from another culture was especially threatening. It not only was going against what her parents wanted, but this particular act—marrying a non-Asian man—would be seen as a public announcement of going against parental wishes.

“I didn’t have the words for it before,” Lucy said. “It seems this is not a private conflict between me and my parents. It is there for all to see. I am such a bad daughter. My brother and all my cousins have married within our culture. It will bring such shame to my family. I don’t know if I could do this to them.”

I asked Lucy if she was worried about anything other than the impact on her parents and family if she were to marry Peter. She thought for a while and started to cry softly. “I love them so much,” she said. “I worry that they will never forgive me, that they will hate me. I’ll be all alone.”

Lucy began to sob. “What if they refuse to be my children’s grandparents? What kind of family will I bring my children into? How can I do this?”

It was apparent that Lucy had kept her family totally in the dark about Peter. I wondered if they were as clueless as she thought. I also began to wonder with Lucy about some theoretical possibilities (not suggestions): What would she guess would happen if she casually mentioned that she had a date with this man Peter to her mother? Her father? Brother? A cousin? Would there be different responses? Would anybody seem interested or excited for her? These questions created some thoughts that surprised both Lucy and me. She realized that there would probably be different responses. She was pretty sure her cousin Cindy would be really into it and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Then she thought her brother might be OK with it, too. She felt her father would get cold and withdrawn to express his anger, and she was certain that her mother would be inconsolable, hurt, and ashamed.

As Lucy and I continue to examine the issues and explore them from all angles, it doesn’t feel as hopeless as when we first began talking. Lucy is planning to talk to her brother. This is an opening up by including a family member in the secret of Lucy and Peter. Perhaps Lucy will find an ally in the family. She has a fantasy of introducing Peter to her brother. Another breakthrough has been that Lucy has told Peter about her conflicts and her worries. His comforting response and willingness to let her find her way through this dilemma has strengthened her resolve to find some emotionally acceptable resolution for herself.

In our explorations, it was clear that growing up, Lucy had been successful hiding differences with her parents. When she felt strongly that she wanted or thought something that they would disapprove of, she kept it a secret. She had never really disobeyed them in any serious way. She had always been able to contain her conflict and struggle internally.

Considering marrying Peter was the first time she could not keep her conflict inside. Now that her struggle is more out in the open, she is in the process of determining how and if to keep it private or if it is safe enough to make it more external. Her consideration of including her brother, for example, could lead to a conflict between the two. The fact this is a consideration for Lucy moves the conflict resolution process to a new arena.

It is hard to imagine that Lucy’s family will come to fully embrace Peter and/or that Lucy will feel totally untroubled by a choice to marry Peter. Although it seems that Lucy is trying to find a way to be OK with marrying Peter, at any time in Lucy’s struggle to decide what and who to honor, she could choose her parents. For example, Lucy has told me that she could never marry Peter and not tell. She also could never tolerate her parents disowning her. So there is still work for Lucy to do to as she focuses on resolving her conflict. Hopefully, it will result in an outcome that feels acceptable.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

A great deal of what we bring to our roles as parents comes from the way our own parents treated us. This includes the big areas of values and morality, as well as the smaller corners of daily life, such as determining who is responsible for which chores. This is what makes a family a family: the shared values and traditions passed along from one generation to another.

But perhaps there are things our parents didn’t know that might have been helpful to them in raising us. There are things you can learn that will help make you better parents than your parents were, for all their good intentions.

They relate to understanding your child’s emotional and psychological development. If you have a clear understanding of what your child is capable of doing, understanding, and conceptualizing at a particular age, then you will be able to reach the child at his or her own level of capability with your words, your actions, and, perhaps most importantly, your expectations.

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There are some obvious milestones in the development of a child from birth through late adolescence. These include first steps, talking, learning to socialize with other children, completing homework assignments on time, identifying and developing personal talents, meeting the expectations of coaches and teachers, and figuring out enough about personal identity to be able to face the world as a fledgling adult when the day comes to leave home.

What are the concurrent developmental phases that accompany the outward markers of growth and change in your child? These are the areas where insight can help you match your parenting with the child’s age and capabilities, so that you have less stress and the child has optimal support.

Erik Erikson, a great 20th-century psychologist, described what he called the psychosocial stages of development (see Erikson, E.H., Childhood and Society, 1950, or Identity: Youth and Crisis, 1968). His thoughts resonate today and include the following broadly outlined phases of normal development.

In the early years, the child is learning key aspects regarding trust: Who is a reliable and consistent caregiver? Am I safe here? These questions and their answers are experienced pre-verbally, which means that the way you care for your infant through the toddler years—your attention to the basic needs of hunger, thirst, touch, sleep, and physical comfort—all create the child’s sense of how safe he or she will feel in the world. If you are thoughtful and concerned for the child’s well-being at this stage, the world will become a place of caring adults. If child care is intermittent or inadequate, the child’s notion of safety will be compromised. This is a time for consistency.

In the early years of childhood come the first attempts at autonomy. This is when you see a toddler begin to leave the shelter of Mommy and/or Daddy and reach out to make connections with other people. Toddlers can do this only if they feel confident that Mommy and/or Daddy will be there when they return. If they are unsure of this, they will be reluctant to begin to explore the world. Your best efforts here include understanding the child’s needs for security and encouraging the child to move into the world beyond the family structure, knowing that you are there in the background.

Once you have a preschooler on your hands, you are looking at a child who is beginning to see that he or she can actually affect the world. You see attempts at managing the actions of pets and other children. In play, you can see stage managing that demonstrates this newly discovered power of influence. If a child is supported in this and encouraged to step out into the world, confidence will develop. If the child is told he is too bossy, and scolded rather than shown more appropriate behavior at this stage, guilt and shame can develop, along with a reluctance to participate in challenges.

You can help during this phase by understanding that your child’s need to begin to separate as an individual with power in the world is a key component in developing the independence that you eventually want for your child. Your guidance here is important because encouragement and gentle course correction will help the child learn which behaviors are acceptable to you and to others, and which are not.

Once a child starts school, the greatest developmental task is the development of a strong sense of self as a competent person. This comes from successful academic and social experience. Your encouragement in helping a child believe he or she is capable of meeting the demands of the classroom while also navigating the social environment is of great importance during these years. You help a child with homework, but you don’t do it for him/her. You listen to the grievances of playground politics, and instead of immediately taking only your child’s side, you offer for consideration various interpretations of the behaviors of other children, to help your son or daughter begin to see that there are other ways of looking at the same situation besides his/her own. It is still appropriate to support your child emotionally and to make certain that any obvious wrongs are righted, but the real learning at this age is in understanding the social landscape and taking care of oneself while honoring the points of view of others.

With the onset of puberty and adolescence, the game changes for your child on just about every front: the very earth that once felt so familiar beneath his or her feet is now shifting like sand. Not only does the world look different, but he or she has to figure out who he/she is in relationship to it. This is the task of adolescence. This is the chaos you witness in your teenager. It is a time of trying on various roles and affecting different behaviors, in an effort to identify which ones are the best and most accurate representations. This can be a maddening time for parents who just want to tell their children to knock it off.

If ever there is a time for patience in the life of a parent, this is it. This is a period of intensity on all fronts: emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Everything is in play. Nothing is certain. The best you can do at this time, in the interest of your child’s healthy identity development, is to continue to provide a safe and supportive emotional environment upon which your child can rely while everything else may seem to tip sideways.

The challenge, of course, is to remember that you didn’t learn anything about being yourself because your mother or father told you who you were. You learned by going through the very same process your own child is going through. If your parents were not patient with you, you might remember the feeling of searing wounds that felt as if they would last forever.

If you remain conscious of where your child is developmentally at any particular age, you can tailor your behavior and guidance to meet his or her needs and abilities to absorb your help. It is not so difficult a task if you bear in mind that a child matures slowly over the years under the warm light of your support.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart, however; challenges will most certainly arise. The easiest way to think of this is that your child is a young person who needs you to be the adult so that he or she is free to be the child. It is safety and security that give your child the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and grow. You provide this best by understanding the developmental phase of your child at any particular age.

Feeling good about oneself can be a lifelong struggle for many children of divorce. When the parent who leaves becomes less involved, interested, and loving, many children develop an intense need for admiration, recognition, and connection. They can become stuck in an endless quest to gain approval and love by trying to be the person they think Daddy or Mommy wants them to be rather than having the freedom to grow, develop, and individuate.

I have worked with many people who experienced divorce as young children. For most, it was the father who left the home, became unavailable physically and/or emotionally, and therefore became the object of desire for the child. The work in therapy for these adult children of divorce is about developing positive self-regard in order to feel deserving of creating separate lives and building relationships that are satisfying and a reflection of their own wishes and desires. The therapeutic work can be both a painful and pleasurable process of discovering one’s own thoughts, feelings, and mind, separate from the idealized parent.

Lucy (not her real name) came to our first appointment and began to describe how unhappy she was with her life. She was in graduate school, in the second year of her MBA. “I hate it,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I decided I wanted to go into finance. I mean, I do know what I was thinking. I was thinking how happy my father would be that I would be just like him, a financial analyst. But now I’m in the middle of my last year and he never really asks about what I’m studying or about my internship. Sometimes he’ll lecture me on the kind of job that I should be looking for when I graduate, but we never have a conversation. All my life I’ve been trying to please him. I even moved to New York just to be near him—he left me and my mom and my brother when I was 8. I’m fed up! I hate him! No, I love him. He’s a wonderful man, but he doesn’t love me, never did. I don’t know what to do with my life. I guess I’m depressed. I’m sorry, I’ve been talking nonstop. Can you help me?”

I did believe I could help Lucy. We began our sessions, and Lucy proceeded to talk about her life. I learned that when her parents divorced, her father moved to the city from the suburbs. She saw him every other weekend until she was about 11, and then less often after that until high school, when it was not even monthly.

“I was so bored when Jed [her brother] and I visited him,” she said. “Jed is two years older, and he stopped visiting before I did. My father had a girlfriend, Mara, from the time I was 9. She had a son, Billy, who was 4 or 5 when they all moved in together. My father always seemed so involved with them. I never knew what to talk about. Mara was so pretty, and my father seemed so in love with her and Billy.”

I asked Lucy to talk more about what it felt like for her that her father had this new family.

“He never looked at me with the same smile or pleasure the way he looks at them,” she said. “I really loved him, but never felt he loved me. If I could just figure out how to make him love me and think I was special like them, then I could be happy. I thought maybe if I was prettier, like Mara, or made him laugh, he would love me too. Late in high school, I had the idea that I would go to college and major in business and maybe then I would have something to talk to my dad about. It didn’t work. I kept going back for more and I always ended up feeling rejected. You would think I would have figured it out and not have gone to grad school for business too. My problem now is I don’t know what I really want to do. I don’t know what I like; I don’t know how I’m ever going to have a boyfriend. I don’t know …”

Lucy’s description of her experience of herself in relation to her father was similar to the experiences of other children whose fathers left and started new families. As Lucy and I continued to talk together, it became clear that she desperately wanted her father to admire and recognize her as someone special. She felt constantly that she didn’t measure up, especially to his new family: “I thought, ‘What is wrong with me? Why is he always so distant? Why aren’t I good enough?’ ”

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Lucy’s feelings of self-hate and despair about getting what she needed from her father kept her involved in a constant search for connection and recognition from him. When she decided that the way to get his positive regard was by going into finance, she never stopped to consider her own wishes and desires. When she began therapy, she had reached a place where it was no longer tenable to continue this pattern of seeking her father’s approval. But now what was she going to do, and how would she begin to develop positive feelings about herself?

As we worked, Lucy decided to take a leave of absence from graduate school. She wanted some time to explore what she might like and what she could be passionate about. This was not so easy at first. Lucy recalled that in high school and in college, she wrote for the school magazines and loved her English classes. In a session several weeks later, she was excited when she told me about a writing workshop she found at the local YMCA. She planned to try writing again. Then, the following week, she came to session and said, “I thought I would try the workshop. But that’s really not such a great idea. For me to be admitted, they want me to submit a writing sample. Who am I kidding? I’m not much of a writer.”

Lucy and I explored her anxiety about putting herself in the world to try new things and face the possibility of failure or rejection. As we talked about this fear, Lucy began to connect these anxieties with her experiences with her father.

“He never made me feel interesting or competent,” she said. “Even when I did something good, he would find something about it to criticize. I always see him as so smart and so handsome. I always thought everything he said was right. I guess that made me wrong a lot of times. I still see him as right about everything. I feel stupid and awkward when I’m around him. I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about myself everywhere most of the time. When this writing thing came along, I had a moment when I felt differently. I remembered how I talked to you about my writing and I remembered how much I loved it. I got so excited, and that’s when I looked for and found the workshop. Then I reverted back to my old ways. But I am going to try and steel myself and send in the writing sample and see what happens. I can’t keep myself stuck in this ‘I’m not good enough rut.’ ”

Lucy and I continue to talk about her worries of failure and rejection and her fear of taking risks to try new things in the world. Lucy tries to keep in mind that she is repeating the relationship with her father when she lets herself be guided by her old feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem, and low self-confidence. When Lucy joined an online dating site, she withdrew after emailing back and forth with an interesting man who asked her out. “He’ll never like me once he meets me,” she said. “I’m just not interesting enough.”

As we kept talking about expecting the world to be like her father, Lucy’s face lit up and she said, “You know, maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was my father that wasn’t so great. I never realized this before, but he didn’t know how to be a good father to me! Maybe he’s the incompetent one!”

As Lucy continues to grow and develop, she is becoming more aware of her special attributes. At the same time, she is becoming more able to see her father realistically rather than idealizing him as the special one. She is doing well in her writing workshop, now in its second year. She has sent a short story out in the hopes of getting it published. She has dated several different men and is beginning to think about what they have to offer her rather than what she doesn’t have to offer them. Lucy is changing the nature of her attachment to her father. She craves his approval much less and rarely looks to him to define what is good and valuable about her. She is becoming a person with her own wishes and desires and needs. She is becoming a person who can increasingly value herself in positive ways. She is on her way to a satisfying life.

Over the course of a decade working therapeutically with adolescents and their families, I have observed countless young people as they reach a highly anticipated milestone in their lives: turning 18. I have also observed the parents of all those young people as they attempt to adjust to the transition that occurs when their “baby” officially becomes an adult. It has been my experience that a child’s 18th birthday is an especially potent event for families, and the ways in which families respond to this event, for better or worse, can form the basis for the launching of their child into young adulthood.

Of course, we all know why the 18th birthday is a really big deal: it’s the one on which Western culture bestows young people with most of the rights they will enjoy for the rest of their lives. These rights include moving about at will without restrictions, curfews, or the like; choosing friends and partners of whom the parents may not approve; signing contracts such as military enlistments, marriage certificates, and leases; borrowing money via loans and credit cards; obtaining or declining medical and mental health care; and quitting or enrolling oneself in educational programs.

Along with those rights, a number of new responsibilities are also bestowed upon each young person on his or her 18th birthday. For example, the young adult must actually uphold any contract that is signed, including paying back loans and lines of credit. Another new responsibility is that, legally, a person—even one who is still in high school—is treated as an adult rather than a juvenile within the legal system. The 18-year-old’s behaviors and choices carry consequences that are far and above what they have ever before experienced.

With all of the cultural and personal implications that hang on the 18th birthday, it is no surprise that navigating this milestone can challenge families. This is an event that can change, literally overnight, the power balances, rules, and expectations between parents and children. Families may spend months or even years nervously anticipating this change; conversely, they may be blindsided by the realities of parenting a child in this brand-new context, and find themselves dealing with unexpected consequences.

In some families, the 18th birthday is treated as a full stop to adolescence, and the newly minted adult is expected to (or believes he/she is ready and able to) immediately begin fulfilling many adult-like roles. The adult child may be expected to, for example, begin paying rent to the parents, purchase his or her own vehicle, or find a full-time job.

In other families, the cultural and legal implications of a child’s 18th birthday are treated as irrelevant inside the family fold; the family attempts to keep everything regarding their child, from rules and curfews to roles and communication styles, exactly the same as before.

In still other families, both the anticipation and actual event of a child turning 18 can become a flashpoint for family upheaval and conflicts. The newly adult child may use turning 18 as a springboard for rebellious or ill-advised shows of independence. Likewise, the parents may threaten the adult child with being kicked out, losing financial help, or other withdrawals of support in an attempt to enforce compliance with rules and expectations.

The “real world” is at once enticing and terrifying for emerging adults.

Many young adults have described feeling as if they’ve been thrown into the deep end of a pool once it sinks in that they are truly considered adults, and may often feel quite unprepared to meet the demands of the “real world.” At the same time, they are excited to flex some of their new independence and privileges, and may at times feel driven to act out adult-like roles and scripts the moment that they have the legal ability to do so.

One primary reason for this is that at 18, the young person’s brain is continuing to develop and does not yet function as a fully mature brain does. The brain’s reward system, governing the way that novelty- and pleasure-reinforcing neurotransmitters such as dopamine are released, peaks in activity in the late teen years. The prefrontal cortex—which aids with decision making, problem solving, and impulse inhibition—is not at its full level of function until the mid-twenties. The fact is, a young adult on his or her 18th birthday is not magically wiser, more resourceful, or more emotionally mature than he or she was the day before, and won’t think and act like a fully mature adult until a few years later.

To complicate the picture, there are almost always needs and dependencies that persist between the 18-year-old and his or her parents. For example, an 18-year-old who is still in high school cannot work full time even if he or she wanted to, and even those out of high school usually continue to be financially dependent. Shared health insurance, car insurance, family cell phone plans, and other matters of money and information mean that negotiating the leading edge of your child’s independence can be tricky at best.

Although we in Western societies now experience a more extended period of adolescent development and dependence than ever before, and although we are now more aware of the realities of brain development, the fact is that 18 continues to be the age of majority in the United States. The mismatch between the legal freedoms and the young person’s capacity to exercise them responsibly can create rough waters for families to navigate. Power struggles that exist between the child and the parents around the time of the child’s 18th birthday can quickly escalate into the child threatening to leave, and/or the parents threatening to kick the child out. The child may choose to do things that are legally acceptable, but are not acceptable to the parents who support him or her.

Every family will handle this transition differently, according to its own unique set of strengths, expectations, and history. However, there are a few rules of thumb that parents can keep in mind which may assist them in managing this major milestone.

The boundary around the family must be flexible—neither too diffuse nor too rigid.

First and foremost, resist the urge to threaten to kick your child out. The subject of your young adult child leaving home will often arise sometime within the months around his or her 18th birthday. You may find your child saying things like, “I don’t like your rules. I should go live with my friend where they don’t have these rules.” Often, by talking about (or threatening to) move out, the child is testing out ideas about being an adult, without any actual intention of following through on those ideas. The 18-year-old usually does not have the experience, wisdom, or resources to leave the home in a safe or well-planned way—and he or she knows it.

If your child does threaten to leave home, as the parent it is imperative that your response be one of reassurance that the child is still a part of the family and that the family home continues to be his or her home. Remember that your 18-year-old is struggling to adjust his or her self-concept to include adult-like roles, and mentally trying some of these on for size is developmentally normative. However, when parents respond to limit-testing behaviors by threatening to kick the child out of the home, the child feels insecure about the stability of the family system and his or her role in it; the boundaries become diffuse and the child becomes unsure about whether he or she can count on remaining a part of the family on which he or she remains largely dependent.

Another problem with parents threatening to kick the child out is that systems under stress tend to escalate to the most intense point of conflict during each conflict cycle. Once parents introduce the possibility of kicking the child out, it is likely to become incorporated into every argument that follows—either by the parents or by the child in anticipation of the parents’ threat. This escalation pattern severely disrupts the stability of the family system.

So it’s important that the boundary around who is in and who is out of the family system remains well-defined so that the young adult child feels secure about his or her place in the world long enough to figure out his or her next steps into adulthood. However, it is also important that the family boundary not be so rigid that it inhibits the child’s necessary practicing of adult-like behaviors in safe and appropriate ways. Families who refuse to allow their 18-year-old to make an increasing number of choices and reach increasing levels of independence can inhibit the development of responsibility, self-sufficiency, and life skills that the young adult child will soon need. Therefore, ongoing adjustments to certain family rules, such as curfews, jobs/bills, and friend/partner choices, are essential.

Use negotiation skills to co-create a new set of roles and rules that meet the needs of all family members.

How, then, can parents approach these transitions? One way to help your child learn how to be an adult is to treat him or her like one—at first emotionally, and later more practically. Speaking respectfully to your child, accepting his or her opinions as valid, and encouraging him or her to do the same to you are ways to introduce your child to adult-like, egalitarian relating. Negotiating new rules, privileges, and responsibilities together—“family meetings” are helpful for this—allows both the parents and the child to mutually create adjustments to the rules that are thoughtful, sensible, and predictable. Many families find it helpful to write down the new rules and display them in the home so that all parties remember them (and remember that they agreed to them!).

If any family member feels that the current rules and expectations are not working, they can call a new family meeting at any time to review and possibly revise them. If parents and child reach an impasse, try to be as creative as possible to find ways to meet the needs of all family members. Young adults may be happy to agree to increasing levels of responsibility in the home in exchange for increasing levels of trust and privilege. The family members should keep in mind that flexibility, communication, and negotiation with a goal of mutual agreement will take them smoothly through this period of transition.

It can be helpful for these discussions to begin well before the 18th birthday, so that there is plenty of time for the family members to think ahead, anticipate, and become mentally ready for the changes to the power balance and expectations that will likely occur. A discussion that occurs over the course of weeks or months is more likely to involve all family members, cover more contingencies and “what-ifs,” and result in a smoother transition through the actual birthday.

However, it is never too late. If you find yourself with a child who is already 18, or even 19 or 20, and are experiencing a difficult family adjustment into your child’s young adulthood, it is still advisable to approach your child and create an open dialogue about the rules and roles in the family.

Thanks for your question. This is a fascinating dilemma, in that many who wrestle with similar issues often have trouble achieving anything, let alone the impressive roster you list above.

I think my first suggestion is to simply get curious about what is happening here. I’m a fan of what I call “emotional mindfulness,” meaning paying close attention to what happens, exactly, when you choose and take action toward a specific goal. When you start job hunting, are you filled with excitement? Anxiety? Dread? Pressure? Are you motivated to not let others down, and does it feel like the very goal itself is instilled by others’ priorities rather than your own? And if you don’t feel pride, what is it you feel? Pressure? Irritation? Emptiness?

Actually, everybody wants to please others to some degree, especially their parents. I’m reminded of this every time my baby daughter does something amusing; I smile or laugh, and she responds in kind. We are born wanting what Kohut called psychological “mirroring,” or having our progress mirrored in the pleased expressions of our folks. In fact, Kohut (founder of self-psychology) called the need for mirroring one of the essentials of human development. But there are other developmental needs, including individuation, or finding your own path, vocation, and values that give you satisfaction. Do you feel the choices given to you by parents, or “society” in general, are too narrow?

You seem to derive little or no pleasure from your very real achievements, and seem to almost blame yourself (“What’s my deal?”). Again, I’m curious as to the disconnect, and to the overall context in which this is happening. I’m sure it’s not your “deal” alone. Perhaps you’ve come to believe, through your experiences, that there are high expectations on you, and a risk of not fulfilling them.

You’re at an age where it’s appropriate to begin a more adult individuation process, to begin to explore what makes you happy, and ask existential life questions such as, “What’s so great about a 9-to-5 job?” and, “Do I really want to be a cog in the big machine?” and, “Is there more to life than wife and kids and paying bills?” and, “What’s it all about for me?” In this sense, your question reflects a very healthy awareness and a hunger for self-expansion, and that’s a good thing. However, the risk is that others may have a different reaction to “the new you.”

Every individual is different, but I traveled a lot when I was your age, wrote (unproduced) plays in cafes, made short films, and lived in Europe for a year. I’m not recommending this by any means, but I experimented quite a bit … with filmmaking, travel, volunteer work, dating, meditation, and so forth. It really helped inform my decisions later on when it came time to “grow up” and hunker down on career and marriage. My parents weren’t always thrilled, but so it goes.

What gives you pleasure or motivates you? Are you concerned that, should you pursue a more individual path, others won’t approve? If that’s the case, it’s a good time to start individuating, and finding your own way and learning to tolerate disapproval. I have found, both personally and with clients, that the people who love you do so unconditionally, regardless of your résumé and achievements. Most disapproval is temporary; people adjust. If not, a conversation needs to happen regarding the rigid “requirements” one feels to continue receiving approval. Self-denial and approval seeking are high prices to pay, and in the long run not a psychologically healthy recipe for love and life.

Perhaps, as with many your age, what lights the inner spark is not yet known to you. If that’s true, that’s OK, but it might be time to do some soul-searching, or consult with a career counselor or even a therapist to look at other options you might find interesting … because now is the time to experiment and explore avenues (safely) that you might not have considered. Perhaps there is some kind of pressure to do what’s expected of you, leading to a feeling of emptiness and/or resentment. Do you feel others will be “disappointed” if you don’t do the expected thing? Is there a risk in doing things for yourself rather than for those in your life? Are you concerned they’ll “reject” or abandon you in some way?

The other possibility—and again, this is highly speculative and to be taken lightly, since I don’t know you at all—is that there is some dysthymic or depressive symptomology here, or other organic condition which might be undermining average serotonin or dopamine processing in your system. You might want to get a checkup to rule out anything medical or psychiatric first.

The first step in any change is the kind of awareness you’re bringing to the situation. Try if you can to be patient and compassionate with yourself, and see this as a process. The question you raise is a crucial and common one at your stage of life; you might not get the answer as quickly as you like, but stay with it and keep seeking—this is precisely the kind of exploration that can open more doors (and perspectives) than you might think. Thanks again for writing.

Kind regards,
Darren

“You’re so selfish!” I hear this phrase too frequently when working with people who have trouble with separation and individuation. When children hear from their parents that they are selfish, it is typically understood as, “You are thinking about yourself when you should be thinking about me.”

In my psychotherapy practice, I meet many adults who grew up having internalized the experience that they are selfish if they choose their own needs and desires over those of their loved ones. Many continue to deny their own wants in favor of what they believe is best for their parents. Some have transferred their worries to include other relationships and, in the extreme, may avoid feelings of selfishness by providing for everyone else’s needs rather than their own. In most cases, people who believe they are selfish believe they are bad people. This guilt interferes with the ability to develop into separate individuals who know what they want and are comfortable getting it.

The power of guilty feelings about selfishness makes it very difficult to consider that selfishness is not by definition a bad thing. Selfish implies exclusive or excessive interest in oneself. It is unfortunate that parents who use “selfish” in an accusing way tend to use the term if the child’s focus on self in any way (not exclusively or excessively) conflicts with the parent’s needs.

I am going to briefly describe two people with whom I have worked who were severely limited by their inability to individuate because of their guilt over perceived selfishness. In our work, an important goal has been to understand selfishness as exclusive or excessive and to feel emotionally entitled to prioritize one’s own needs some of the time.

“Kate” felt trapped. She came into our session looking very agitated. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “I told Alan and the kids I had to visit my dad on Thursday night to help him make decisions about selling his apartment. I promised I’d come for dinner. My daughter Kim has a soccer game, and Alan is mad that I’m choosing my dad. He says I neglect our family. No matter what I do, I feel so selfish. They don’t get how painful it is for me to choose my dad over them. But when my dad needs me, if I say no, I feel the most selfish. He’s so helpless and upset when I’m not there for him. I know my mom will have some ideas, but he really relies on what I think. He’ll get anxious if I don’t come and advise him about this. I tried to tell him that I needed to come on another night, but he said, ‘It has to be Thursday. I’m your father, Kate, how can you be so selfish?’ ”

I reminded Kate that she was responding to that word again: “selfish.” I asked Kate what happens to her when she thinks she is being selfish with her father. I asked, “What buttons get pushed? What is the experience of thinking that you are selfish that makes you feel so trapped and unable to say no?”

Kate responded: “I feel like such a bad person. There is so much guilt. How could I upset my father? He gets so disappointed in me. I can’t stand that I could be such a bad person. You know, when I was a kid and this kind of thing happened, he would get a little teary and walk away from me and leave the room.  I felt like I hurt him so much. In those moments I thought he would never come back. It felt like a punishment. I guess I still become that scared little kid every time he asks me for something. I have no choice but to give in to his wishes. I’m not sure I even know what my own wishes are.”

Kate had come to therapy because she was having problems in her marriage. She frequently got caught up in trying so hard to please everybody that she never seemed to express or know herself. Her husband complained that he felt like there was no one there. In our work, Kate came to realize that in early relationships with her parents, she had been so attuned to their needs and wishes that she had not developed her sense of an individual self. She was beginning to recognize that in order to protect herself from feeling like a bad person, she had unconsciously neglected the development of her own desires and feelings. This was now creating a problem in her relationship with her husband.

When childhood years do not provide the conditions for separation and individuation, the repercussions for adult relationships can be serious. In particular, anxieties about selfishness toward parents can generate intolerable feelings of shame and badness that can exert a powerful influence in adult life.

“Tess” came to therapy feeling depressed and anxious. She was 25 years old, working as a clerk in a bookstore. She felt isolated and lonely. Her main social contact was her parents. Tess looks back on her childhood with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she has fond memories of enjoying school, being close to and having fun with her friend Isabel, loving her piano lessons and practicing. At the same time, she said, “Maybe I didn’t have enough friends or should have gone to extracurricular activities in school. But I didn’t really mind. I liked being by myself, and kids were nice to me. I just didn’t talk a lot or do a lot of stuff with them.”

I asked Tess, “So what makes you seem so uncertain about whether you had a positive experience growing up?”

Tess was silent and thoughtful and then said, “I guess I thought things were pretty much OK, but my parents, especially my mom, always seemed to think I should be doing different things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was always telling me I should call other kids or join a club or invite kids over. She compared me to herself and how many friends she had. She said she was worried about me since I seemed so socially awkward. Actually, I felt OK, but I had the feeling she thought there was something wrong with me. I was right. When I was about 12, I overheard her talking to my dad. Really, she was crying, not talking. She was very worried. She called me antisocial and said I was going to have real problems. The worst part of that memory is her crying something like, ‘I feel so hurt, she’s so different from me. She doesn’t seem to care about how this makes me feel.’ I was shocked! I ran up to my room and started to cry. I felt really scared. I didn’t know I could make my mom feel so terrible. I think that was the beginning of feeling it’s not OK to be me and that I was selfish not to be the daughter she wanted. But I also felt like if I was me, they would think these terrible things about me. After that, I just tried to please them, especially my mom. But I spent so much time trying to please them, I never thought about what I wanted.”

As Tess and I continued to talk, we became aware of how she was extremely reliant on her parents for feeling good about herself and for guidance. Tess was struggling with what to do with her future. She was considering graduate school in speech therapy or education. She also talked to me about her love for poetry and how maybe she would like go back to school for writing. “My parents think I’m better off with something more practical, so they suggested speech therapy or education,” she said. “I got some information about programs, but I can’t seem to get myself organized to apply. Speech therapy is my mom’s field, and it makes her so happy to think that I would be a speech therapist. I feel so good when she is happy because she approves of what I’m doing. When I think of pursuing poetry, I feel so selfish and so guilty. I know it brings up feelings in my mother of me being so introverted and awkward and makes her so miserable. I know I rely on her too much, but I hate to give up how good it makes me feel when I make her happy. It feels less scary when I go to them, maybe because then I don’t have to feel so bad and selfish if I consider what I want. … Maybe I don’t even want to be a poet.”

Both Kate and Tess were stuck in the dynamics of their early relationships with their parents. For both, the impact of their parents’ anxieties, aggression, and judgments had made it emotionally necessary to comply with demands regarding who and how they should be. Both had parents who were narcissistic and needed their child to be attuned to and accede to their wishes and desires. Not to do so was experienced as the child’s selfishness and wounding to the parents.

Hurting a parent can feel like inflicting a wound. This can make a child feel that the parent is impaired and unable to take care of the child and/or that there will be some retaliation. Terrible shame for being so “bad” and “selfish” is experienced. Kate and Tess, in order to protect themselves from these intolerable feelings and sustain a relationship of positive regard from parents, gave up knowing what they wanted and needed. In the safety of not knowing, they never fully developed their sense of self. They are unable to be clear about what they want for themselves, and rely heavily on parents for recognition and self-esteem.

But change is possible. Through their struggles, they can succeed in letting go of seeing themselves as selfish when they have a need or desire which differs from someone they love. This will allow for the emotional freedom to know what they want, think, and need. They can become their own, unique, individual selves.

When parental involvement is limited, children typically receive scant mirroring or encouragement. They have no one reflecting back to them that they are worthwhile, admirable, or interesting. When parents are over-involved, their excessive control over how their children define themselves in the world provides few opportunities for the child to self-reflect and have his or her own positive thoughts and feelings. In both cases, the development of self-confidence and self-esteem are compromised.

At the age of 25, “Carol” came to therapy feeling depressed and anxious. She had little sense of what she wanted for herself in life and no belief that if she knew what she wanted, she had what it took to get it. She had been a sociology major in college and was now working as a salesperson in a women’s clothing boutique; she had a few girlfriends and dated very occasionally. Tearfully, Carol told me, “I am so unhappy. I look around and see other people my age having fun, loving their jobs, feeling good about themselves. I feel like such a nothing. I don’t have a clue about what I want to be when I grow up. I’m scared to death when I go on a date that the guy will find me stupid and boring. I feel so awkward and uncomfortable around people.”

I asked Carol about her family. “My parents were divorced when I was 8,” she said. “My father remarried a year later, and I lived with my mother. I saw my father and his wife every other weekend at first and then less and less. My mother never remarried, but she was married to her job. I didn’t see her much since she always seemed to be working. I had a lot of babysitters when I was young. I had no siblings and was by myself a lot. Maybe from middle school on, I didn’t have many friends, so I would just go home by myself and watch TV. I was an average student, but really, I guess I was apathetic. Sometimes I think I’m smart; I don’t know. I didn’t care much about anything.”

Sounding sad and angry, Carol continued: “As long as I went to school and got Bs and Cs, my mother didn’t say much. She never helped me with my homework. She never asked me about my life. She was cheery and not mean, but not very involved. My father became mostly a phone call. He paid for my college but was totally uninvolved. I talked to the guidance counselor and chose a bunch of colleges to apply to, but really, I didn’t care much. I was kind of scared to go away on my own, but I never told anyone. I got through college OK, but it wasn’t any different than life before. I had a couple of friends, but I didn’t get involved much. I don’t know what else to tell you. There really isn’t much of interest about me or my life.”

“Sally” was also an only child who, unlike Carol, had parents who doted on her. She was a high achiever in school, which earned her substantial praise and admiration from her parents. When Sally came to therapy at age 23, she, too, was depressed and anxious. When I asked Sally to describe her family, she told me, “I have a very close relationship with my parents. I love them so much and rely on them for everything. They are always there with their ideas and opinions and suggestions. It’s very confusing to me that I feel so miserable so much of the time. My parents are such cheerleaders for me; I don’t know why I don’t feel better about myself.”

Over the many months that Sally and I explored her negative feelings about herself and her lack of self-confidence, a pattern of relationship between Sally and her parents began to emerge. It was quite clear that Sally’s parents were very engaged with her life and always had been. Sally related, “When I was in elementary school, my parents would simply beam when I told them my grades or the compliments I got from teachers. They were very hands-on. When I wanted to take music lessons, my mother, a musician herself, discouraged me, saying that it wasn’t something I really excelled at, so why bother—it would only make me feel second rate. They had definite ideas about what I should do and guided me about everything. When I wanted to join the swim team, my father convinced me it wasn’t a good idea because I wasn’t a top-notch swimmer. I remember feeling a little badly, but I figured he knew best.”

Sounding proud of her parents’ involvement, Carol told me, “Both my parents helped me plan my college education. They chose the college, and we all agreed that I would go on to law school after graduation. Somewhere in college, I started to get depressed and I couldn’t think about law school. I would tell them I was feeling down, and they would say how that didn’t make sense, that I had so much going for me. I know they wanted what’s best for me. I really didn’t want to go to law school when I graduated, but they told me it was foolish, I would make a great lawyer. I didn’t think so, but it’s so confusing because I’m clueless about what I do want to do. I have no real idea of who I am. I am my parents’ daughter, but I guess I don’t feel like my own person.”

Both Carol and Sally experienced severe low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence. For Carol, the emotional absence of her parents from her life, and the minimal appreciation and recognition they offered, contributed significantly to her inability to develop a separate self with feelings of value and confidence. Without the experience of parents responding to a child’s spirit and achievements (whether taking first steps, laughing at their jokes, making a diorama, or going on a first date), children are deprived of the building blocks for self-confidence and self-esteem. To feel “I can do it,” or even more important, “You are proud, pleased, and delighted with me,” is a crucial experience that Carol never had.

A parent’s pleasure at a child’s achievements and with the person becomes a platform from which a child ventures out into the world with the knowledge that he or she will be OK. Sally’s parents seemed to convey a total belief in her ability to be successful in the world. Or did they? Sally’s experiences and choices in the world were overseen by her parents, who communicated they always knew what was right for her. Feeling protective, they tried to eliminate anything that might cause Sally frustration or feelings of being less than excellent. However, they never gave her the emotional space to make her own choices, to make mistakes, and to learn that she was resilient. The only way she knew how to assess and think about who she was and how she was doing in the world required reliance on her parents’ view of her. As Sally and I talked, it was clear that she couldn’t rely on herself or her peers in decision making, or even to feel good about herself. It was not surprising that Sally hadn’t developed the ability to think about herself as an individual separate from her parents or to know what she wanted to do with her life.

For both Carol and Sally, talking in therapy opened up new possibilities for thinking about self. Carol became aware of her anger toward her parents and realized that blaming them was keeping her from taking charge of herself in the world. After expressing much resentment and sadness about the experiences she missed out on since childhood, Carol started to push herself and risked trying new things. Even though it made her anxious, she went online and began dating. She decided to try and reconnect with people who were “almost” friends in college. She started to talk to me about taking some courses to explore some possible career paths. It was scary, and each step caused great anxiety. But each success added to her feelings of self-worth and self-confidence.

Sally started to recognize that she had been idealizing her parents and is slowly becoming more comfortable with seeing them as humans with frailties. This allows her to accept her own lack of perfection and tolerate the frustration of trying new things and not easily succeeding at them. She has been calling her parents less frequently and risking making decisions on her own. She has also been sharing more with friends, something she didn’t do in the past. She is clear she doesn’t want to go to law school and has been considering going back to school to become a teacher.

The self-esteem and self-confidence of both women were affected by the over- and under-involvement of their parents. While it helps that children know their parents are there to support them practically and emotionally, parents also need to be comfortable stepping back to allow their children to make decisions, struggle, fail, and succeed. This balance between providing support and giving children the freedom to discover their own individual desires, strengths, and weaknesses is the basis of how children develop self-confidence and self-esteem.

Come September, many young people will be leaving home to go away to college. Students and parents are excited about this new journey. But in addition to the excitement, there is often anxiety about moving out of the comfort zone of home and family. While the focus is often on the separation anxiety the student experiences at this milestone, too often we neglect the parents’ separation anxiety.

From watchfulness to surveillance, parents retain a varying degree of control over their high-school-aged children. But when a child goes off to college, the ability to know what is going on in that child’s life depends on the child’s willingness to communicate and share information. Since it is developmentally appropriate for college-aged children to be separating and individuating from their parents, we can expect that many children will share less than parents might be hoping to learn. Not knowing, in areas where there was previous information, makes parents more anxious.

Parents express many different worries about how their children will manage when the parent is no longer so present in their lives. Anxieties may be about drugs and alcohol, or there are concerns about social and academic problems. Parents with children who may already be dealing with emotional issues, eating disorders, or learning disabilities can feel especially anxious.

It is to be expected that a parent would worry about how their child will manage on their own in college. This is appropriate and shouldn’t be confused with a parent’s separation anxiety. When a parent feels the need to contact the child repeatedly, can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking and wondering how the child might be feeling or what the child is doing, the parent may be experiencing separation anxiety. When we think of the child’s separation anxiety we understand it to be about the feeling that “I won’t be alright without my attachment to my parent.” For the parent, it is much the same: “I won’t be alright without my attachment to my child.” Parents experience their anxiety as being about the worry “Is my child going to be okay?” But what they often fail to be aware of is that they may be even more anxious (consciously or unconsciously) about their own well-being. They wonder, “Am I going to be okay?”

Learning to Detach and Individualize

In my therapy practice, I have had the opportunity to work with many parents who have struggled with the separation and individuation of their children. One father, “Seth,” began therapy when his daughter, “Kristin,” was applying to college. He spent many of his sessions talking about Kristin and her college application process. He was very troubled about Kristin keeping him out of the decision making.

Sadly, with tears in his eyes, Seth told me, “She comes home and closes her door and goes on that computer and researches where she wants to go. Her mom and I ask her about her choices, we tell her we need to be part of the process; we remind her that we will be paying a good part of the tuition. She just gets irritated and says she wants to do this on her own and she’ll let us know what she decides.”

Recently, Seth came into my office for his therapy session looking very distressed. He immediately said, “I can’t believe that girl. All of her college acceptances have come in and she has decided to leave New York and go to school in Arizona. That’s much too far away. We’ll never see her! I told her she couldn’t go and she got so mad. She started screaming at us. She said she hated us, that we were terrible parents and never let her have what she wants! She was so mean!”

Seth started to cry softly and, almost in a whisper, said, “I’m so scared. I love her so much, I can’t stand this. It feels like we’ve lost her forever. She’ll never come home. If I don’t agree to pay, she said she would pay herself. She did get good financial aid from them and I don’t think I can play the money card. What am I going to do?”

I asked Seth, “What makes you think Kristin is lost to you forever?”

Seth answered, “We used to be so close when she was younger. She was daddy’s little girl. Her mom worked more than I did and I took her to soccer, to swimming; I helped her with her homework every day. She would tell me about everything — even the boys she had crushes on! Then in her sophomore year of High School, she got more secretive. She started going out with Jeremy and was becoming more social. I could understand that she needed some space from me. My wife and I used to talk about how grown up she was getting. We started to check what she was doing and who she was talking to on her cell phone and computer. There are a lot of scary possibilities out there. She never found out we were keeping tabs on her, but she started to become easily irritated and annoyed around us. She would get on my wife’s case about the food she was cooking and she gets annoyed with me when I ask her about almost anything.”

Seth began to sob, “I can’t eat, can’t sleep. What will I do without her? She is my only child. So much of how I think about myself has to do with my being a father. If I lose her, can I still be a father? What kind of a father could I be without my daughter?”

I reminded Seth that we had been talking about how it made him anxious to think of his daughter having a life so separate and different from his. A lawyer, Seth had followed his father into the law and joined his father’s practice after completing law school. After he married and Kristin was born, he moved into an apartment in the same building as his parents. He understood that his model of parent-child relationships was a reflection of his own experience.

Seth acknowledged what we had been discussing: “I know I grew up very close to my parents, especially my father. I would never talk to him the way Kristin talks to me. I always respected him and needed him for guidance and that gave me such confidence and comfort. It’s not like I thought Kristin had to become a lawyer, but I did hope she might. But she has no interest in it. She wants to major in art, which is fine, but I really don’t get what her art is about. She makes these things out of paper and wood. I try to act interested, but, really, where is that going to get her? How will she make anything of herself? How can I get her to pay attention to what I think? I’m her father.”

Separation Is Not Rejection

Seth’s struggle illustrates many of the issues parents have to contend with as they try to become less anxious about their children differentiating from them. Seeing one’s child as different, as having a separate self with separate desires and ideals, can give a parent the feeling of being rejected. When parents have this experience it is essential to be clear that difference does not signify a child’s rejection. What keeps parent and child attached is not sameness. Sameness can often give parent and child the feeling of closeness, but a very different kind of attachment occurs when there are two separate, different people who are connected by the feelings they have for each other.

For the parent who has felt this sameness with their child but now recognizes that their child is differentiating, there can be painful and frightening anxiety as they try to figure out how to understand and relate to this separate differentiated person. For parents who have not differentiated from their own parents, this can be especially difficult.

Seth is beginning to consider that he can come to know and appreciate his daughter with all her differences. As he begins to relax with the belief that he can know and love this separate person, he is becoming aware how scared he has been that maybe she wouldn’t continue to love him. Seth is only one example of a parent struggling with separation anxiety. One reason I believe Seth is less anxious now than when we began our work is that he has been able to identify that he is feeling separation anxiety.

Many parents who are worried when their children go off to college, are not aware that they are experiencing an emotion that is not simply based on the practical worries of safety or performance or the well being of their children. They have not recognized that they have been afraid that their children would move away from them emotionally, become different in a way to make their attachment feel less close and loving. Realizing this, thinking about separation and individuation as a developmental necessity, not a personal affront or wrenching loss, can help many parents resolve much of their anxious feelings.

I was talking recently with a friend about surviving the “terrible twos” and she made a joking comment about how she couldn’t wait to do it again in the teen years. That got me thinking about the parallels between those two phases of life and how we react to them in similar ways.

In part, the “terribles” are a social construct. We are primed to expect as parents that those will be the most difficult stages of our parenting. Popular culture proliferates this idea through television shows and movies. Parents share “war stories” of toddlers and teens acting out. That said, there is some truth to the hype. In both phases, kids seem to challenge authority, push limits, and demand control and privacy. Frustration tolerance (for both kids and parents) is low. Relationships can get strained. Parents may feel pushed away. I’ve heard parents refer to both stages of life as a time when some alien creature seemed to come in and take the place of a previously loving, cooperative child.

What we don’t really hear a lot about is the important function that those phases serve in our children’s development.

For both the twos and the teens, the testing of limits, challenging authority, and trying to establish control all serve important developmental functions. Psychologist Erik Erikson, in his eight-stage model of development, identified specific tasks we navigate as we grow and develop. He suggested that successfully mastering the skills in each stage leads to healthy growth and development, whereas not doing so leads to issues that could impede healthy development.

According to Erikson, toddlers around age 2 are tasked with developing independence and a sense of control over their bodies. Potty training is an important piece of this puzzle, as is learning to control elements in their environment. If the 2- to 3-year-old is able to develop a sense of his or her ability to regulate his or her body, to do things for himself/herself, and to feel confident in his or her ability to do both of those, he/she develops a healthy sense of autonomy. If the child is not able to, shame and doubt in himself/herself and his or her abilities may result. So, when that previously loving, snugly, even-tempered little one starts refusing to comply with basic requests, when there is a major meltdown of nuclear proportions due to Mom or Dad putting the sock on the wrong foot first, these are actually signs that your child is exactly where he or she needs to be.

For teens, the task is to develop a strong sense of individual identity. Teens are trying to figure out who they are and what their place in the world, independent of others, should be. Establishing an identity for most teens means defining what they are not. Usually, that includes establishing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are not their parents.

Sometimes the only way for them to declare that they are their own selves is to pull away from their parents. They may challenge expectations and rules. It’s not unusual to see a teen reject an activity or a goal because he or she fears that it was what the parents wanted for him or her, not what he or she wanted. The drive to figure out who he or she is, what he or she wants, what he or she believes, and what matters to him or her are all important elements of this stage. Usually, this means challenging conventions, testing out different identities until he or she finds one that fits, and pushing against authority as he or she seeks independence. It can lead to withdrawal, mood swings, and parents not being sure which child is going to show up at the table for dinner.

These stages are important. These stages are hard—for both parents and kids. The distancing that can be necessary for independence and autonomy to develop can be really painful. We, and they, feel the loss keenly. The undercurrents of our conflicts usually contain the messages “I want my child back” for parents or “I’m feeling alone and scared” for kids. The behaviors might manifest differently (a toddler tantrum is very different than a teen tantrum), but our role as parents is the same.

Just when our kids are pushing us away the hardest is when it is most important for us to reassure them that we aren’t going anywhere. We need to give them space to explore, but not withdraw from them. They can push and yell and pout and cry and withdraw—but if we can be constants for them, if our parental love can be consistent, stable, and unconditional, we help them have the confidence to navigate these important tasks, and we help ensure that they will find their way back to us eventually.

How do we do this? One way is by allowing them more choices (though choices we can live with) and helping our kids accept the consequences of those choices. This can be as basic as letting the toddler choose which pants to wear (as opposed to whether to wear pants at all), or the teen to choose when to do homework (as opposed to not doing it at all). We give them increasing autonomy over choices in their world that are age appropriate, that are not likely to have dire consequences, and that give them a sense of having some control over their own lives.

The second task for us is to avoid judging their choices. Sometimes they have to learn the hard way. The teen who chooses to do homework late at night, falls asleep, and doesn’t finish does not need to be scolded for choosing poorly. Instead, we can ask how that worked for him or her, if there’s anything he or she wants to change, and how we can help. That keeps an open dialogue, conveys that we respect his or her ability to make good choices, and can reduce defensiveness.

It isn’t easy. Often, we’re feeling hurt and scared and helpless too. It helps to remember, though, that it isn’t about us. We aren’t terrible, mean parents because we made him or her wear shoes on the correct feet or held him or her to a curfew. The challenge is to hold boundaries with a firm but loving hand and not react to the testing of those boundaries with fear, anger, frustration, or sadness. If we respond to our children with consistency, patience, warmth, and compassion as they work through these stages, we might find that the twos and the teens aren’t so terrible after all.