How are we supposed to know if we are to blame ourselves?

Question by grannywinkie: How are we supposed to know if we are to blame ourselves?
Say that your child (age 25 or so), begins to show signs that they dislike you. You have talked to others about the problems you had with the children but those conversations were attempts to find ways to manage. Prayers have gone up for years. Of course, there are the problems that many face when being caring parents. so, how are we to know if we should search everything in our parenthood to see if we need to apologize for the umteenth time? Wouldn’t apologizing feed their drug addiction symptoms? If the child lets you know they do not want your love, how do you know if you must search every place to see what you have and are doing wrong?

Best answer:

Answer by Rock Star
I guess it depends on the situation. I have a hard time with this myself…only I’m 27. My father treated me badly when I was younger. He heaped emotional abuse on me…tried to put guilt trips on me to make me feel guilty into doing things. He physically left marks on me a handful of times…throwing me against the wall or pinching me so hard that several blood vessels break…

He is a completely different person now, and he kind of blocked out what he did, or rationalized it to the point of where it was okay, or it was my fault that I was punished in that way. Even though he is different now, and I enjoy spending time with him…I still have the hurt feelings any time I think about him. I don’t currently think of how he is now, I always think of how he was then when I think of him.

I think that if he apologized for what he did, and was truly sorry and admitted wrong doing, that I could move on…but it’s nothing that I want to bring to his attention…I want him to care enough about our relationship to admit what he did was wrong without me having to prompt it from him.

I would suggest apologizing for anything that you know of that was wrong of you to do…if you weren’t wrong in what you did, then don’t apologize…but try to quietly be there for your child so that they know you care. Call them every so often to see how they are doing…

You could try talking to them and saying…I don’t understand why you feel this way…what can I do? And see if they’ll open up to you and let you know why they feel that way. Maybe they feel that something you did showed that you didn’t love or care for them, and maybe your intentions were something else that you could explain.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!