Independent Children: A Double-Edged Sword
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Last Show with David Cooper. Where bad therapy meets good radio. You spend 18 years raising independent, ambitious kids. Congratulations, your job paid off. They're thriving, they're successful, and they move halfway across the country and they're too busy to call you. If you do a great job parenting, what happens when that engineers your loneliness, especially if you feel like you've sacrificed your life for your children? I'm here with therapist Laurel Vander Torn, who runs Laurel Therapy Collective in California and Florida to discuss just this. Laurel, welcome to the show.
What is the dilemma of raising independent children?
Hi. There's a kind of a paradox in modern parenting where if you do a great job and your children really launch well, that you can then find yourself lonely. And I know this isn't new. This is kind of like empty nest syndrome. But is this more common nowadays?
Yeah. What struck me about the particular article that you're referencing is like, yeah, this parent absolutely did what they set out to do to instill values in their kids of hard work, ambition and self-efficacy, you know, kind of independence. And then here she is really missing her kids. I'm assuming it's a mom. Maybe it isn't. Yeah.
This line, though, I sacrificed everything for you.
How does successful parenting lead to feelings of loneliness?
That one, that's all too familiar. It's like, I didn't ask to be born. Do you owe your parents a phone call every week, every few days? I now feel like I do because I like them a lot and I want to be in touch with them, but I didn't always feel that way.
Uh, no. It really depends on what kind of adult relationship you have with your parents now, because not all parents have done a bang-up job. And not all parents are, you know, for whatever reasons, maybe their particular trauma history, their emotional maturity and capacity, ability to show up and be consistent. A lot of people have resentment toward parents or a really complicated relationship there. So I would say, no, you don't owe anything. But if you've established a relationship that feels good, then yeah, you can.
This kind of like secret psychological contract that a kid never gets a chance to agree to or not because that's your parent that you need to like stay in touch and be grateful and all these things. And yes, I think you should do those things. But do you have to do those things?
No.
And can you experiment with not doing those things when you first move out of your house, which is kind of my story. It's like, yeah, in my 20s, I didn't talk to my parents much as a form of maybe rebellion. I don't know. Sounds silly and immature at the time. It sounds silly and immature now. At the time, it felt right for me.
But it's developmentally appropriate. I mean, when you look at the developmental tasks of every age, honestly, most of them are getting farther and farther from your family of origin in a very like Western traditional culture sense. There are some cultures where that's not the case. But, you know, the primary task of adolescence is differentiating yourself. That's why we do like the blue hair and the kind of little rebellions that aren't actually harmful as a way of exploring who am I separate from my parents and my family. And that continues in a more mature way in your 20s. Who am I in the world as an independent adult? Now, there are plenty of family systems where there's enmeshment or there's a family crisis.
I have a friend whose mom had a major stroke a week after she graduated college, and that sure interrupted that process for her.
What is the relationship between independence and emotional distance?
But it's kind of normal stuff.
When parents say, I want my children to be independent, I raised them to be independent. Do some underestimate what independence actually looks like? It can look like emotional distance.
It can if you don't also instill a value of family and community. When I was reading the article for this taping we're doing today, it sounds like that was the only thing the parents set out to instill in her kids. And they sure absorbed it. Independence, success, ambition. But it's not either or here. Like all of us contain multitudes.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:36
2
What is the dilemma of raising independent children?
0:36–1:23
3
How does successful parenting lead to feelings of loneliness?
1:23–3:40
4
What is the relationship between independence and emotional distance?
3:40–6:07
5
How can parents cope with the empty nest syndrome?
6:07–10:15
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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