There are lots of guidebooks for parents of young children – but what happens when your offspring hit adulthood? A psychotherapist shares her guiding principles for raising grownups
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hen one of my daughters turned 18, our relationship hit a crisis so painful it lasted longer than I knew how to bear. I was a psychotherapist, trained in child and adult development, yet I was utterly flummoxed. Decades have passed since then, but when I recently spoke to her about that time, a flood of distress washed through me as if it were yesterday.
This is how my daughter, now a mother herself, put it when I asked her to describe that era:
“I was furious and desperate and lonely. I fought with you and Dad in a way no one in the family had ever fought with you before. I remember screaming at you while out on a walk, as you desperately implored me to be quiet because people could hear. I wanted them to hear. I wanted to smash this image of us as a happy family to pieces – and I was incredibly successful in doing that.”
