How to Cope With Difficult Parents – For Adult Children
When Your Parents Don't Understand You - or Make Your Life Hell
Knowing how to cope with difficult parents as an adult child will help you find happiness and peace in your life. These tips for dealing with toxic parents will help you overcome childhood difficulties and achieve your life goals.
Before the tips, a quip:
“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy,” said Robert A. Heinlein.
Easy childhoods can set you up to falter in adulthood because you haven’t learned the necessary life skills. But, having difficult parents can certainly set you back, too! To learn more about coping with difficult parents, read Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life by Dr Susan Forward.
And here are three ways to move past an unhappy childhood…
How to Cope With Difficult Parents – For Adult Children
Note that these coping tips are more psychological than practical.
For practical ways to cope with difficult parents, read 6 Tips for Toxic Relatives – How to Handle Family Problems.
Some moms are more apt to boil rabbits and stalk married men (like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction) than balance a successful white-collar job with a nurturing home life (like Claire Huxtable). Adult children of difficult parents need to know how to build good relationships with them anyway – even if we have a mother-in-law who doesn’t accept us – or we suffer the consequences.
I know firsthand what it’s like to cope with a difficult parent; I’ve learned to love my mother, who has struggled with schizophrenia for most of my life (which made for a very unhappy childhood for me). If you’re the adult child of an alcoholic, mentally ill, or toxic parent – these suggestions may help you connect with them and and help you move past your own unhappy childhood.
Remember: even the most unorthodox childhood can be a springboard to success – depending on your attitude and perspective!
Become Aware of Your Feelings
“When we’re not aware of what we’re feeling, the feeling becomes the master,” writes Sue Patton Thoele in The Courage to be Yourself. “A repressed or suppressed emotion builds up power until it’s impossible to contain and, as a result, erupts destructively.”
Take resentment, for instance. Maybe you feel rejected because your mother smothers you or keeps “lending” thousands of dollars to your brother. Maybe your mom nags you to lose weight, get married, clean your house, or get your hair out of your eyes (oh, to have a normal mother!). Avoiding your feelings of anger or resentment does pay off – otherwise you wouldn’t do it. Avoiding your feelings is easier, less painful, and requires less energy — in the short run.
In the long run, however, swallowing your feelings about your childhood or difficult parents can lead to anxiety, depression, physical illnesses, and unhealthy relationships. Violent eruptions become more likely, such as emotional meltdowns over computer glitches and screaming fits over lost keys. If you’re coping with difficult parents as an adult child, you need to find healthy ways to express your feelings.
Accept Your Feelings
Knowing and accepting your feelings brings freedom and a stronger connection with difficult parents. As an adult child, simply saying out loud, “It aggravates me when mom tells me how to discipline my kids!” can be liberating.
Resisting your feelings makes them stronger; accepting your feelings makes them manageable. Talk about difficult parents: when I was in high school my mother regularly visited me at lunch – she had long scraggly hair and wore dirty, baggy street-person clothes. I fought my humiliation and embarrassment for years and those feelings grew, just like compound interest.
When I couldn’t swallow my pain anymore (it was leaking out in self-destructive ways), I finally let myself simply feel my despair. And it was bad, but then the feelings became less strong. Now, it’s easier to connect with my difficult mom because…
It is what it is.
Practice Forgiveness
Oprah recently said that forgiveness is releasing the hope that things could have been different. True forgiveness is realizing the gift in a bad childhood – and learning from it. Every experience you’ve had makes you who you are and makes you more yourself. Your unique personality and spirit wouldn’t be yours if you had different parents or siblings – even if you got a bad deal. Coping with difficult parents is easier when you accept and let go of the past. Sometimes that means letting go of someone you love.
Forgiveness is easier when you accept that your parents did the best they could.
For more family help, Dysfunctional Families – 5 Tips for Solving Family Problems.
If you have thoughts or questions about coping with difficult parents, please comment below.
Category: Family Tips, Parenting Tips, Psychology Tips, Solving Relationship Problems
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I am 19 years old, and my father died when I was 4 years old. Prior to my father’s death, I believe that my family life was good. However, I have developed, over the years, a very dysfunctional relationship with my mum. I still live with my mum and my sister as I am in my first year of uni, everyday I feel like I am tredding on eggshells around my own mum. She can change her mood very quickly, she has never physically hurt me. But her words can be very hurtful and she is very secretitive, I can’t even ask her what she is up to the following day to make conversation without being met with rolling eyes, dirty looks, and blank answers. I had to find out she had depression by coming across pills, and she drinks ecessively throughout my childhood, becoming aggressive, rude and embarrassing.
My sister and I are not ‘allowed’ to be stressed or hurt about anything because my mum believes that no one else in this world is more unfortunate than her. When my mums mum died, my nan, my sister and I were told that we had no right to cry because we couldn’t possibly be more hurt than she was.
I love my mum, when she’s in a good mood everything is brilliant. But when she is in a bad mood I am her verbal punching bag. And I’ve developed anxiety because of this, I’m always anxious that my mums mood will change and she Will shout at me for doing harmless things… for making a silly mistake like forgetting to hang the washing out when she told me too. Sometimes I wonder whether I was a mistake, or whether I hinder her life because everything I do that cries out for praise is ignored, and our relationship is only ever good when it suits her.
I also feel trapped, because if I stay at home any longer I am going the relationship between us will further decay. But if I leave I presume she will convince me that I am either too inadequate to live independently or, she will make me feel awful and guilty for ever considering moving out just yet. I feel I can’t win either away, as I want to move on and maybe that will create a healthier relationship with my mum. But, at the same time I don’t want to leave her, as I love her, I just dont always like who she becomes. I just hope that one day my mum will realise that other people do suffer more than her, that drink isn’t the solution and that my sister and I are here to help her not to be shouted at.
Whenever I start to think about how dysfunctional my family is I always say but someone has it worse than you….which sometimes helps but most of the time doesn’t. I googled dealing with difficult parents and came across this website. Of course as I started reading other people stories and reliving my own I began to cry. If I didn’t realize it before I realize it now, I AM MISERABLE because of my family. I am the only child of my mothers and multiple half siblings. When I was younger before 6, my mother for reasons I have yet to understand, took me over to live with a family member who took in other kids from the family, it was like we were orphans even though we weren’t. My mother would visit but not everyday…I remember each waiting to for a sign that she was arriving and I would get hopeful only to find out it wasn’t her and then would be disappointed. Repeatedly this continue for at least a year. I hold resentment towards her for this because the place she took me a person there sexually molested me…and I have yet to tell my mother of this because I don’t want to make her feel bad. So then she removed me from this home and into the hands of close friends where I was put in the same bed as two boys one younger one the same age and that was a terrifying experience. During my time there I was almost kidnap, of which I told my mom immediately only to have her laugh at me. We moved in with my father when I was almost 7 and I was physically and verbally abused until age 18-20. When I was 18 I left and went to college and didn’t want to come back…but when we had holidays and the dorms were closed I had to return home. When I graduated college at 24 in 2006 I had to move home because I didn’t find a job right away. The verbal abuse continued but the physical abuse ceased because I threatened to call the cops. I was so depressed during this time that I didn’t want to live anymore. On top of that I had to listen to my parents verbally abuse each other day in and day out and that was so stressful. I somehow found a way to cope, resilience somewhat, and found a job and moved out in 2008…those the longest two years of my life. I remember when I first got my apartment I moved in before my furniture did, I remember laying there on the carpet and thanked God for the silence and how serene it felt. I was so angry at my mother for the many times she had failed to protect me. The majority of the time I was being beaten my mother was present and when my lip bled she would help me clean it up after completely emotionless. my parents and I were not close and would fight and go for months without speaking. it was like we spent more time not speaking than spending precious moments together. My eyes has opened and I see a liar and hypocrite out of my mother and father. My mother who gives me advice that she doesn’t apply in her live. She tells me to forgive people and stay humble when she’s the complete opposite. I tell her how can you criticize me for doing something that you do all the time? I hold resentment towards my father for physically abusing me and making my youth miserable. on top of that I wasn’t allowed to really be social when I until right before I left for college so now I lack some social skills and don’t make many friends…I have trust issues, don’t care to get married and/or have children. I feel like I need major counseling as I am so screwed up. But if you walked by me on a good day you would never know. Oh did I mention that my parents are still unhappily married and I am still in the middle of their fights? the other day I told them that I needed to pull away until they figure out a way to communicate and work out their problems and that I didn’t want to be in the middle of it anymore.
I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, both my parents are alcoholics. They would drink and fight to the point where the neighbors would call the cops to come to our house. Once I turned about 11 yrs old, I started calling the cops on them too. Today I am 28 years old, my parents have been divorced for 13 years and I am still in the middle of every fight. I am getting married in 2 months, my father doesn’t even know my fiancé; who I’ve been with for 5 years, and my mother is refusing to go to the wedding if my father is attending. I have decided it’s in my best interest, for my own sanity, to cut ties to both of them. I have done it before over the years and I was always happier when I broke off communication to them. Somehow, someway they manipulated their way back into my life by going through family members and whatnot but I realize now that I am better off having no parents than having toxic parents. Thankfully my fiancé has an AMAZING family and I am happy to spend time with them.
When I was a single mother and didn’t really have any friends to visit, I used to ring my mum pretty much every day and would always be told not to ring so much because they were busy working, I was really depressed and lonely. I used to always ask if she was busy and if I could visit her. She’d always say she was busy and was working, but I’d go over her place any way just to get out the house.
Wed always make plans to go shopping, but majority of the time when the day would come shed say she wasn’t feeling well enough to take me shopping. Or before shed make plans with me for certain days shed always have to ask my step father if she could go out with me or if I could go over there.
Sometimes I’d make plans for her to have my daughter over her place and again the day would come and shed have to cancel but would always have to check with my dad before making plans to have my daughter over whether she could actually have her or not.
Even if we did make plans my dad would always say don’t be out all day, we have to do work for the business. It’s like every time my mum and I were going to spend time together he’d always like to try and stop it, or gets jealous or something.
But overall long story short my mother would always be too busy with work, too tired at night after working to visit me and my daughter, or would say she doesn’t feel well enough to do anything. But she has time on a Wednesday and Tuesday night to go to 8ball playing competition games, or always had time to visit her friends but not myself or my daughter. Everytime I call her up for help with anything all she ever says is why can’t this person do it or why can’t that person do it.
But then I met my new partner in 2010 we have been together since the 14th feb 2010 and are still together today.
Me and my partner’s mother Lee, have a really good relationship we go shopping every Thursday together, do lots of things together she is very supportive always there to listen to me, and says I am like a daughter to her, and treats my daughter as she is her own blood granddaughter.looks after my daughter during the work while i am studying and my partner is working.
One day my daughters biological fathers, mother Ann who I also have an excellent relationship with her and so does my new partner, she had my daughter over night but was having a lot of troubles with her back, and asked if we could go and pick her up. I said I would but my partner said he didn’t really have the petrol to get there. So we rang my mother to see if she could help pick my daughter up.
My mother said she was suffering with chest pains and had been to the doctors, she said the doctor had told her to go to the hospital. So she couldn’t help because she had to go to the hospital.
My partner said quietly in the background ‘always got excuses about something’.
She heard him and then said over the phone ‘Tell him if he doesn’t shut up I will come over there and knock him one’. Which I felt was just not appropriate to say to anyone.
We then rang lee and asked if she could help and was happy to do so.
My mother then rang lee, and said thanks for picking Chloe up, lee said I don’t mind and my mum said are you sure I feel a bit guilty now. We found out later that my mother didn’t even go to the hospital and said she felt too stressed to go to the hospital.
Next time my mother came over she said hello to my partner, he didn’t answer her.
She said she was that upset over this she almost left.
Then when my partner had to go away for work for a week my daughter and I went to stay with lee at her place, my mother asked when we’d be home she said i want to visit you but I know how Daniel feels about me, I said well we will be over lees for the week you can visit there she wont mind, she said ok I will visit you there tomorrow.
Then tomorrow came and she didn’t visit. Later that week I got a message saying you always have time for everyone else but not me, I wrote back well I said you could visit on Monday but you never came over, she said well I cant believe you just said that. I said ive always tried to make plans with you but your always busy working, I said all you ever wanted was to see me happy with someone doing things with my life and now I have a life your not happy.
And there has been many situations like this since I have been with my new partner. it seems like she is jealous of everything now, but when I was never busy she didn’t have any time for me or my daughter and now we are doing things even though she isn’t busy nights in the week she doesn’t have time or doesn’t feel well enough to visit us. but if we are busy it’s a crime and we don’t want to see her.I don’t visit her or my step father anymore at their place because every time I did he would always change and make the time I spent there horrible.
I need advice on what I should do.
I am 34 and my parents are very strict and conservative. Some bad financial decision moved me back to my parents place, and even touhg I love them and I respect them a lot, and also thank them for letting me stay for a few bucks, I truly can not dissappear the bad feelings that sometimes I have against them.
Specially my dad is very methodical and hipocrite, with double moral, adding to that the fact that they never accepted my homosexuality, I have been living a few hard months.
I will move as soon as I can, this is a toxic relationship, where they preten to tell me what exactly I have to do, and they mean no harm, but the way of mind closeness, with the arbitrary decision over all of my life, for example, how to dress, how to talk, where to go, etc, it really sucks!
I googled “How to deal with difficult parents” and was directed to this website. Misery loves company, what can I say. I am 48 and today my mom indirectly told me that she thinks my wife is a freeloader who wants her money. Of course she never trusted any of my decisions, and this is just the latest example. My brother has always been the apple of her eye and his kids are favored over my sister’s kids. I am very successful yet no matter how successful I am, I will never be seen in the same light that my brother is. Reading everyone’s comments made me feel better. I know I am not alone and I also know a lot of you have it a lot worse than me.
A monk once said he was very grateful to his parents because they gave him two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth. In other words he was grateful, they gave him life, but he did not have the time or energy to get sucked into all this terrible guilt and suffering. Hard as it is we have to move on
I wish that we all find ways to become free of this suffering.
okay… so im 21 . I dont really remember EVER being happy during a child. While growing up she always brought in different men and ALWAYS fought with them …. like fists fights all the time as a child i remembered hate seeing that..and now I am still living with her now and plan on moving out because it is just to crazy to stay here with her. She accuses me of sleeping with her boyfriends and they arent even cute…she is sooo insecure. vshe doesnt have any friends or goes out…she doesnt have any hobbies… she calls me names like B**** which really hurts me and im not. Whenever her boyfriends want to come out she tells me to cover up when imnot even showing anything… and i just want to be comfortable you know in my pajamas and relaz without having to worry about her nagging at me all the time. As a child she abbused me witht he belt. She’s pulled me by my hair at one point and left me with bruises. She consistently yells and whnever she gets in a fight wit her boyfriend she takes things out on me when she has no one else to talk to. I’ve never really had my father around…which is fine now i accept that… but i dont know how it is to be a mother.. i nkind of just want her out of my life now… after what she put me through as a child i just dont want anything to do with her anymore. She really is mommy dearest and she is so self centered….she ALWAYS thinks im talking about her when im talking over the pone which im not!!! she ‘s not even interesting to talk about until now i cant take it anymore… she is such a B**** I hate how she doesnt even help me out with school or anything.. i nver had a college fund … i got a junkie ass car that i cant even fix and its broken now she doesnt want to help i never had birthday parties or a quince or sweet 16 or whatever she never put me through any kind of extra curricular activities as a kid…she always talked shit about the friends that i had… now i dont have any friends because of her. things are just weird between me n her ..
I am over 40 and have lived with my parents all my life. My mom passed away about 5 years ago, my dad staring seeing someone 3 days after my mom was put in the ground, he started seriously dating her 3 months later and asked her to marry him. They married exactly the same day that Mom was put in the ground, one year later. They divorced 5 months later, there were issues. I stayed with them, was the hardest thing I had ever done, as I loved my mom very much, I had planned on leaving December of the year they got divorced. I changed my mind, not because I did not have money to move, but because I would feel guilty if I left my dad. After I reached 21 I wanted to move out but Mom and Dad would make me feel guilty if I left. Since my dad’s divorce, he has had a few women come and go, he tells me he wants me to stay with him, even if he remarries, I told him, that I could not live with another woman, that I will leave, he gets very upset. How do I handle these issues of anger, I don’t want anyone moving in and yet I can’t leave, I know my Dad and I know he can not hold a relationship. He wants me with him and his woman all the time, he wants me to have dinners with them, do outings with them. I asked him why is it so important that I be there all the time. He had no answer for me, and gets upset with him. But everytime I think of having to meet some woman, I get this anger in me, that grows and drives me crazy.
I’m a twenty six year old guy that has difficult parents.
I recently had to move back in with my parents after quitting a job. The job required me to lie and intentionally provide bad services to customers. Our customers had to pay thousands and thousands more than they should have. Sounds like a bad deal, right? As a result I’m living with my parents.
My parents act like I don’t exist. My parents work most days so I don’t see them very much(a lot of the time this is a good thing). When they come home they immediately turn on the tv and watch it until they go to bed. Occasionally I’ll try and talk to them while they are watching tv, but, I’m usually told to shutup. This kind of treatment made me pretty angry, because it has been going on my entire life. Well, I let em have it pretty good one night and they deserved every word. Since then, they claim I have a rage problem. I was level headed enough to entertain the thought and bought some anger management books. In reading these books I learned alot about anger management. The most important thing I learned was that I didn’t have a problem. Whenever I have a problem with my folks I always try to talk the problem out. Even if the problem is small their response is usually a life altering ultimatum. They’ve threatened to throw me out of the house countless times. EX. My mom was supposed to babysit my nephew and had conflicting events in one case.She needed me to help her out. I had plans and told her I couldn’t do it. Her response was to threaten to kick me out of the house and never help me again. Needless to say, an extreme reaction.
My parents take financial advantage of me by putting me in crazy situations. Once they figure out a way to corner me I have to give them my money. After my money is gone they leverage me because I have no money. I’m starting to wonder if I should just move out and make it work. I don’t think I have enough money to make it work,but, know this cycle will continue. I know I won’t get anywhere while I’m living with them, they won’t let me. Every time I start to do well they suck me back down. The sad part is, they are wealthy and I’m a poor, working, studying young adult. They are mooching off of me. It makes me sick.
I have to buy my own food because they don’t eat at home. Then they eat my food.
Every book I’ve read is telling me to move out. I just haven’t been able to scrape together enough cash to make it happen. I guess I’ll just have to work harder, because it needs to happen.
I have toxic parents too, something I have only just let myself believe and I’m 45!, always blamed myself for the relationship disaster with my parents, with consequent serious low self esteem and debilitating shyness. They also make a scene/create a drama during happy times. This is really sad as I am now too old for the stress and I have had to distance myself from my Mum and can no longer see my Dad. The hurt goes deeper because the upset comes when times are good and its like a slap in the face, when they don’t speak to me for months and spread malicious gossip through the rest of the family. Just during the last twelve months I have had to make the decision to keep my distance for good for my own sanity. Toxic parents cannot change. You have to toughen up, let go of the unhealthy dependency that often goes with abusive parent/child relationships, face outwards and live your own life. But also be aware of the damage caused by an unhappy child/parent relationship, being aware of how you feel is good advise and accepting the past which cannot be changed. I have to do a lot of positive thinking to keep on track and its tough somethimes,but it is worth it for my childrens sake, a lovely husband and a successful career – Just completed a degree!(and the parents are not talking to me – again – but hay, their loss not mine!)
SLS, I cannot believe it, you have just described my life, we are even the same age. only I’m still pregnant at the moment, my mum is making dramas, ignoring me, telling other family members lies so they are on her side, and its making me ill, as I want to cut all ties now, I have put up with this time and time again, but my boyfriend is so lovely he’s desperate for me to try (yet again) he thinks I will regret cutting my parents out my life (my dad is worse) but I am and I don’t want to upset my boyfriend by not trying, I’m exhausted with the constant worrying when and what the next drama she’ll create, its making me so depressed and ill, I just want to enjoy my liflife for once.
Your article was helpful and made me realize I am not the only person living with parents that are just not there for me.
I grew up with a narcasisstic mother who only thinks of herself. She is cruel and if you do not agree with her or make her center of attention you will pay the price. My father has just given up and makes me angry for never sticking up for me. I am successful today as an adult and happily married. My husband and I are expecting our first baby together. My mother always creates drama during happy times! At five months of pregnancy my mother picked a ridiculous fight and refuses to speak to me and my family (she is threatened by my happiness). It has been so hard on me and my husband. I feel so happy in my personal life with my husband and baby on the way but feel as if my mother should want to be there for me and to meet her new grandchild. I go back and forth to end the stand off she has created but have dealt with this crazy behavior of hers for over 38 years now! Christmas, my Birthday, and two hospital stays have passed and I have still not heard from her. Part of me wants my mom to apologize and be there for me and the other part wants to never look back at the horrible treatment I have experienced from her all of my life. Life is hard living without loving parents makes it even harder. I will never act like this towards my children and believe this has made me the empathetic loving person I am today!
Thank you for your article. It is nice to at least know others struggle like I do.
My storey:
I grew up with an alcoholic father and cyclical mother (sometimes she was great). I have worked past my childhood (I think). Where my challenge comes in is my adult life. I am an only child and am 31 now and live a country away from my parents. I am successful by most definitions, but still struggle with challenges in my own life to keep me on track. 6 years ago, my grandmother passed away and my mother “lost it”. I took care of everything regarding my grandmothers passing and tried repeatedly to help and talk to my mother. After a series of drunk nights from my mother including some suicide attempts and a most concerning shooting between her and my father on Christmas eve, I cut down my interaction time selfishly because I couldn’t take the stress anymore and it was too much. My interaction was about once ever 2 mos. This was fine with me and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. A couple years later I moved internationally, at this point life with my parents got worse again. My mother wants my calls weekly but I have nothing to say and I get upset by most of them. Then recently she had a nervous breakdown and her therapist has been emailing me issues I am supposed to fix. The challenge I have is sadly I don’t believe the stuff my mother tells her therapist because my mom has a pattern of chronic lying. Similarly I know my parents fight, have a bad relationship, and have many many financial issues (of which they don’t help themselves). I spent the first 25 years of my life taking care of them and trying to help their relationship and give them financial advise to no avail. They made me who I am of which I am greatful but…. I feel like enough is enough and at some point they need to take care of themselves I have tried, a lot and I just don’t know what to do anymore. They don’t want to hear my logic and I can’t take the stress they bring to me. I feel like an awful daughter so it’s like I have no way to win. I either talk with them and feel like crap or don’t and feel like the bad daughter. I just want to live my life. There is more, as I am sure there is with everyone else, but in short I just don’t know what I should do. For my sanity I keep the communications minimal but there is no one to take care of them an they haven’t prepared for any kind of retirement.