Over breakfast recently, I felt like my mom was ridiculing me in front of a cousin I recently met. She’s commented disapprovingly before on the fact that I cover my mouth if I am chewing and decide to talk. This time, even though she wasn’t eating, she put her hand over her mouth and kept it there for two or three minutes. It was a very odd but effective way to make her point. I felt like I was back in school and was being shamed.
Before I share how sweetly this exchange ended, I want to mention one of the many ways that parenting is so much harder nowadays. It will help to frame my mom’s reaction. As I’ll briefly explain, intergenerational cultural differences have made it harder to both get support from our parents and to support our children.
For centuries, parents raised children to be in a world that was very similar to the one they grew up in. This was so much so that in some cultures, the family’s last name indicated what they did for work, e.g., Carpenters, Bakers, Taylors, etc. Instincts change slowly, so parents still have a strong sense, often subconsciously, that their children should behave like them.
One of many specific examples is the acquisition of language. Historically, language was learned from adults almost exclusively. Nowadays, children learn language from their peers as well as adults. That means that parents are often in the historically unusual position of not understanding the words that their children are using. This has many implications, including parents feeling frustrated by not understanding or approving of the words their children are using.
I am sure you can think of many examples of how kids are different than you were as a child. The point I want to make here is that these differences increase the tension between the generations.
In my situation, I think that my mother was having a strong, subconscious reaction to me behaving so differently compared to how she was raised. Her family, like many others, grew up talking whether they were still chewing or not. At some point in my adult life, I picked up the habit of covering my mouth. I’ve noticed her disliking other new habits of mine, and I have empathy for her, as I sometimes notice myself reacting to some of my children’s habits. For example, I noticed irritation when I first noticed the novel way one of my kids does the dishes.
Historically, kids didn’t have many outside influences. Now, their influences span the globe. It’s a type of culture shock that we previously only experienced when we traveled and spent time immersed in another culture. As digital immigrants raising digital natives, it’s common for our kids to behave in ways that are alien to how we were raised. It feels wrong, yet we often don’t know why.
My mom also had good reason to feel cranky that morning. It was day 8 of sitting around after being told she couldn’t weight-bear for two weeks due to hurting her knee in a bike accident. (The photo for this blog post shows her the day before. At 82 years of age, it's impressive that she's out biking in the first place!)
Later, I realized that she may not have meant to ridicule me, even though it felt that way at the time. It could have been a creative way of her telling me she thought my behavior was odd. Fortunately, I have been using tools to help me to be more responsive and open, rather than reactive and defensively concealing my vulnerable feelings. The resulting interchange went surprisingly well.
In the moment, I allowed myself to feel the ugh reaction in my body. I was able to tolerate the feeling while making a mental note to do the Work of Byron Katie on this situation later. That tool, when practiced in a community with others, has astounded me for its power to help me access my creative brain and respond from a growth mindset rather than fighting what is from a fixed mindset.
Fortunately, like yoga, the more regularly and often we do The Work, the more flexible our minds are. I’ve been doing it for close to a decade and my reaction in the moment was a fraction of what it used to be. That helped me to tolerate the ugh feeling. I have done The Work on my mother and others and recognize over and over that when I think she’s being mean, there’s often much more going on. I consistently can find that there’s a way I’m also being mean (in my thinking if nothing else), and/or about to be mean by lashing out at her without giving her the benefit of the doubt. That experience helped keep my irritation to a bearable level rather than spilling over in a verbal attack of her.
Within the hour, I decided to tell mom how her comments felt to me. Instead of sharing my angry thoughts, which can make people defensive, I’ve learned to share my vulnerable feelings. I told her I felt like she was making fun of me when she responded the way she did. I shared that I planned to do the Work on the thought. To my delight, she was able to hear me, and she apologized. Even though I’ve had a lot of success when I’ve shared vulnerably in the past, I was pleasantly surprised and deeply gratified by how well things went with so little effort. I felt closer to her after the exchange.
I see now that once again, despite it initially looking so different, my mom was showing up in the most beautiful way for me this morning. After years of thinking I needed her to change for me to be happy, she has reminded me again that my real power is in focusing on my behavior. She is a social worker, and as a child, she used to tell me that no one could “make me angry.” It’s taken me decades to see how wise my mom is. I’m profoundly grateful for learning this lesson, and I hope that my sharing is helpful to you. Please share your comments or questions below.
