Abandoned

Parents invest heavily in their children. They give up their sleep, their time, their money, sometimes their careers. They struggle, they worry, they pray. Regardless of whether they do an excellent job or a poor job at raising their children, they tend to give everything they have to this great endeavor. Parenting is a service of the heart and soul.

Unmet Expectations

Unfortunately, children are sometimes disappointed in their parents. They’ll say something like: “My mother’s very selfish. She’s out with her friends, traveling with my father, taking a million classes. She’s hardly ever available to watch the kids.”

Grown children sometimes feel that their parents didn’t do a good-enough job of raising them and/or are failing to be good-enough parents now that everyone is fully grown. In their opinion, their parents needed to have better marriages, be more emotionally healthy, be less controlling and more understanding, give more of everything, be wealthier or more accomplished, be more socially accepted, and otherwise be more successful human beings.

“I had three small children, was finishing my master’s degree and was working full- time. My mother had the nerve to criticize me for not making homemade challah! Her lack of understanding was over the top and after that remark I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to her again. I haven’t had more than a two-minute conversation with her ever since she said that.”