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Link zum Teilen: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-kinder-verantwortlich-fuer-eltern.htm |
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Are adult children responsible for their elderly parents? What adult children owe their parents
1. Adult children are responsible for supporting their parents, but not for their meaning in life - just as parents are not allowed to determine the meaning of life and career choices of their adolescent children.
2. Some parents, especially if they have symbiotic psychological structures, are in danger of pushing their children into a substitute parent role for themselves and increasingly taking on the role of a child themselves. This can be extremely stressful for their children.
3. Some elderly parents then interfere massively in the lives and possibly in the families of their children - e.g. by lecturing them. Some elderly parents are very good at making their adult children feel guilty by accusing them of ingratitude. Some try to bind their grandchildren to themselves through gifts and other methods and play them off against their parents. For such children, a healing ritual may be useful: ("The Lake of Tears" in German language >>>)
4. A therapeutic family tree can help to understand the reasons for the parents' possible child role and to use therapeutic healing rituals to resolve these problematic roles and to separate oneself from the parents in a healthy way: >>>
5. Often the elderly parents are not prepared to recognize and deal with their problematic role. But the adult children can carry out the necessary healing rituals for themselves: >>>
6. Such healing rituals help to separate oneself in a healthy way by being able to say NO at the right time but accepting one's life from the parents and respecting them.
7. Respecting the parents and honoring them as parents (cf. the 4th commandment in the Decalogue) does not mean obeying the parents and fulfilling their expectations in every respect. The necessary gratitude of adult children must not lead to allowing parents to interfere in the children's families or to pushing them to take on inappropriate care of the elderly parents' leisure activities.
8. Some elderly parents enter into rivalry with their daughter's or son's spouse. They are often devalued.
9. To prevent this, for example, the son always goes to his widowed mother after work before going to his family. However in the long term, this damages his marriage.
10. However for example, if an adult son despises a parent, his unconscious love for this parent can lead him to take on the parent's devaluation of his partner out of unconscious solidarity and then devaluing his wife himself.
11. If there are several children, it is important that the financial burdens in particular are distributed fairly. If there is a "main heir", e.g. if the parents had a farm or craft business, this person will of course have to bear the main financial burden.
12. In some families there are “sandwich children” or a favorite child and "shadow children". If a child was less loved in the family or was neglected in some other way, this child is often willing to take on the care of the parents - in the hope of receiving the love that he or she did not receive in childhood. However, this is a problematic mistake that can lead to two people becoming unhappy and dissatisfied later on; because then both the caring person and the person in need of care will have longing hands that are not filled. It is therefore important for such adult children not to take on the main task later on when the elderly parents become in need of care.
13. In relationships between a woman from Europe and a man from countries in the global south, it is to be expected that the families there, who have always been the only "social network", will interfere heavily in the relationship, and usually think and act in a very symbiotic way. In such cases, many discussions are necessary! Above all, it is important to talk about the partner's feelings of guilt that arise due to the need to distance themselves from their family of origin.
Manfred Hanglberger |
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Link zum Teilen: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-kinder-verantwortlich-fuer-eltern.htm |
