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Two letters on a theme, not much to say here
Dear Amy: I’m responding to the letter from “Totally Confused Mom,” who has two adult daughters who won’t speak to her, claiming that they had terrible childhoods, and that one had suffered “trauma.”
You totally sided with these faux-victims. There is an epidemic of young people who, facing any challenge or adversity, claim they were “traumatized,” and blame the parents.
I can’t believe you fell for this.
– Outraged
Dear Outraged: If parents don’t expose and prepare younger children for struggle, setbacks, and failure, then as young adults they might perceive challenges as trauma.
On the other hand, any parent who believes they’ve provided their children with an ideal childhood needs to dig a little deeper.
HomeTribune Premium ContentAdviceAsk Amy: Advice for the real worldAsk Amy: Doctor suspects child has autism
Ask Amy: Doctor suspects child has autism
Ask Amy: Advice for the real world December 9, 2021Child with autism. (Dreamstime)
Dear Amy: I am a physician and live far away from my family.
My niece has a 3-year-old daughter.
Between distance and COVID, I have seen my grandniece only rarely.
About six months ago, while I was visiting, my family united at my sister’s house. Our cousin is a speech pathologist and is familiar with signs of autism.
She recognized specific signs in my grandniece, but she refused to share that with my niece because of a lack of intimacy between them.
My family debated whether we should bring this up with my niece, and ultimately her mother (my sister, “Annie”), told her about our concerns.
It did not go well: it was viewed as an invasion of privacy and as ill-intentioned negativity.
Since then, we understand the child is in speech therapy (with a very young therapist who we fear may not have enough experience to recognize the broader issues).
Otherwise, we are not aware that there is any effort being made to address the issue, and both parents contribute to the denial and wall of privacy.
In family gatherings, when my grandniece doesn’t engage, it is brushed off as “She likes to be in her own world” or “she wasn’t interested in what you were doing.”
Since I am a physician (but not with relevant experience), I struggle with whether I should discuss this with my niece and her husband, and if so, how to approach them.
We are all concerned that the window of opportunity to intervene in a meaningful way in the child’s development may be closing.
– Concerned Uncle
Dear Concerned: Your family’s concern – and your sister’s choice to convey it to her daughter – has not backfired. The parents may have reacted poorly and defensively, but the child is seeing a speech therapist and that is a positive first step.
However, you family members should not put these parents in a defensive crouch by judging their child’s behavior and diagnosing her during brief holiday visits.
As a physician and the child’s great-uncle, you are in an ideal position to continue to express interest in this young girl’s development.
You can do this through gentle and supportive questions posed to the parents. You start by noting positive aspects: “Look at how well she’s growing. Six months makes such a big difference!”
Then you can consider taking it further: “My sister said she’s seeing a speech therapist. What’s that like? How do you think it’s going?” You might then add, “Have you ever run this past cousin Rachel? You know that she is a speech pathologist. She might be helpful if you have questions.”
You can also say, “We doctors don’t always communicate so well; is your pediatrician good at answering your questions?”
If you present yourself as a supportive, interested and objective family member, these parents might lighten up and utilize you as a sounding board and resource.
Dear Amy: My husband has been involved with a former college classmate (female) who he reconnected with at a reunion a couple of years ago.
They are in touch every weekend, sometimes texting back and forth for hours.
When I have expressed alarm about this, he offers to show me their text exchanges, but I don’t want to start a fight.
Then he accuses me of not trusting him.
Can you help me find a way out?
– Upset
Dear Upset: Spontaneously take your husband up on his offer to view his text exchanges.
Also, because you don’t seem to trust him, his accusation is correct.
You should be brave enough to risk discovering whatever answers emerge from discussing this with your husband.
Dear Amy: Responding to the letter from “Totally Confused Mom,” whose adult daughters have turned on her, people today in their 20s and 30s all seem to have mental stress, trauma, anxiety, other issues with fancy names – and, of course, the source of their problems is always their parents!
Well blame has to be assigned somewhere and who better than the people who gave them all they could and would do anything for them?
How about we look at the other possible source for all the problems: too much screen time, less human interaction, almost no physical work except the fancy expensive gyms, more time to invent various problems and then, of course, blame parents.
Parents are not wrong all the time.
How about we sometimes ask the young people in their 20s and 30s to grow up and act like adults, and stop blaming others?
Now I dare you to blame the parents!
– Very Frustrated
Dear Frustrated: Who raised all of these tender softies?
https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/ask-amy-homemakers-devotion-is-waste-of-a-good-career/
https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/ask-amy-doctor-suspects-child-has-autism/
Original letter: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/ask-amy-daughters-say-their-childhood-was-traumatic-their-mother-is-devastated/2021/11/19/6719a2b8-471c-11ec-b8d9-232f4afe4d9b_story.html
You totally sided with these faux-victims. There is an epidemic of young people who, facing any challenge or adversity, claim they were “traumatized,” and blame the parents.
I can’t believe you fell for this.
– Outraged
Dear Outraged: If parents don’t expose and prepare younger children for struggle, setbacks, and failure, then as young adults they might perceive challenges as trauma.
On the other hand, any parent who believes they’ve provided their children with an ideal childhood needs to dig a little deeper.
HomeTribune Premium ContentAdviceAsk Amy: Advice for the real worldAsk Amy: Doctor suspects child has autism
Ask Amy: Doctor suspects child has autism
Ask Amy: Advice for the real world December 9, 2021Child with autism. (Dreamstime)
Dear Amy: I am a physician and live far away from my family.
My niece has a 3-year-old daughter.
Between distance and COVID, I have seen my grandniece only rarely.
About six months ago, while I was visiting, my family united at my sister’s house. Our cousin is a speech pathologist and is familiar with signs of autism.
She recognized specific signs in my grandniece, but she refused to share that with my niece because of a lack of intimacy between them.
My family debated whether we should bring this up with my niece, and ultimately her mother (my sister, “Annie”), told her about our concerns.
It did not go well: it was viewed as an invasion of privacy and as ill-intentioned negativity.
Since then, we understand the child is in speech therapy (with a very young therapist who we fear may not have enough experience to recognize the broader issues).
Otherwise, we are not aware that there is any effort being made to address the issue, and both parents contribute to the denial and wall of privacy.
In family gatherings, when my grandniece doesn’t engage, it is brushed off as “She likes to be in her own world” or “she wasn’t interested in what you were doing.”
Since I am a physician (but not with relevant experience), I struggle with whether I should discuss this with my niece and her husband, and if so, how to approach them.
We are all concerned that the window of opportunity to intervene in a meaningful way in the child’s development may be closing.
– Concerned Uncle
Dear Concerned: Your family’s concern – and your sister’s choice to convey it to her daughter – has not backfired. The parents may have reacted poorly and defensively, but the child is seeing a speech therapist and that is a positive first step.
However, you family members should not put these parents in a defensive crouch by judging their child’s behavior and diagnosing her during brief holiday visits.
As a physician and the child’s great-uncle, you are in an ideal position to continue to express interest in this young girl’s development.
You can do this through gentle and supportive questions posed to the parents. You start by noting positive aspects: “Look at how well she’s growing. Six months makes such a big difference!”
Then you can consider taking it further: “My sister said she’s seeing a speech therapist. What’s that like? How do you think it’s going?” You might then add, “Have you ever run this past cousin Rachel? You know that she is a speech pathologist. She might be helpful if you have questions.”
You can also say, “We doctors don’t always communicate so well; is your pediatrician good at answering your questions?”
If you present yourself as a supportive, interested and objective family member, these parents might lighten up and utilize you as a sounding board and resource.
Dear Amy: My husband has been involved with a former college classmate (female) who he reconnected with at a reunion a couple of years ago.
They are in touch every weekend, sometimes texting back and forth for hours.
When I have expressed alarm about this, he offers to show me their text exchanges, but I don’t want to start a fight.
Then he accuses me of not trusting him.
Can you help me find a way out?
– Upset
Dear Upset: Spontaneously take your husband up on his offer to view his text exchanges.
Also, because you don’t seem to trust him, his accusation is correct.
You should be brave enough to risk discovering whatever answers emerge from discussing this with your husband.
Dear Amy: Responding to the letter from “Totally Confused Mom,” whose adult daughters have turned on her, people today in their 20s and 30s all seem to have mental stress, trauma, anxiety, other issues with fancy names – and, of course, the source of their problems is always their parents!
Well blame has to be assigned somewhere and who better than the people who gave them all they could and would do anything for them?
How about we look at the other possible source for all the problems: too much screen time, less human interaction, almost no physical work except the fancy expensive gyms, more time to invent various problems and then, of course, blame parents.
Parents are not wrong all the time.
How about we sometimes ask the young people in their 20s and 30s to grow up and act like adults, and stop blaming others?
Now I dare you to blame the parents!
– Very Frustrated
Dear Frustrated: Who raised all of these tender softies?
https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/ask-amy-homemakers-devotion-is-waste-of-a-good-career/
https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/ask-amy-doctor-suspects-child-has-autism/
Original letter: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/ask-amy-daughters-say-their-childhood-was-traumatic-their-mother-is-devastated/2021/11/19/6719a2b8-471c-11ec-b8d9-232f4afe4d9b_story.html
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And now we see that Amy intends to continue her pointless tradition of publishing inflammatory follow-up letters that literally nobody wants or needs to see. Sigh.
Anyway, I was just chewing somebody out over this issue elsewhere. They called familial estrangement a "fad" that the kids will regret when they realize they need their mothers after all, and just no. Nobody wants to cut off their parents, even when those people are objectively horrible. There's no fad, though I imagine it must be comforting to pretend your children are silly and faddish than to face up to the fact that it's your fault that you're going to die alone.
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So, like you, I generally assume that if people cut their parents out of their lives that they probably have a perfectly good reason for it, and give a serious side-eye to anybody who suggests that, in general, they don't.
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Me too, for similar reasons.
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I mean probably they were those faddish 'modern' children who didn't respect their elders - grandma bobbed her hair, and a great-aunt had her photo taken in a *one-piece bathing suit* - so I guess the complaint is still valid.
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The letter in the middle is also enraging, with the family all discussing in absentia whether a child is autistic and her parents are doing enough "to address the issue", and judging her in person as to whether she is "engaging" etc.
(My kids are both autistic, you bet I'd be keeping up a wall of privacy and denial with family who are judgemental like this.)
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Setting aside for a moment my desire to set this commenter afire, I wonder if one of the reasons (besides sheer stubborn viciousness) people think this way is that we now discuss publicly so many topics we didn't used to. People would just suffer in silence with the emotional scars left on them by childhood abuse, whether inflicted or abetted by parents, but our culture has been developing past that regression. It's easy to confuse a rise in reportage with a rise in incidence, and if one is determined to be a doubting asshole, to then confuse a rise in reportage with a rise in being "soft" and "faux victims".
*contemplates*
*returns to trying to set that commenter ablaze with my mind*
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good night. why even publish those letters? im glad so many boomers think we're all faking it i guess.
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This made everybody happy and worked very well.
I suspect the difference is partly the internet - which makes it so much harder to cut people off, and so much more expectation of being constantly in touch. Partly I suspect it's smaller families - if you have six kids, you can drop four of them and still get plenty of narcissistic supply from the others (and the kids themselves can trade off who is not speaking to you this year, so none of them has to be around you more than one year in five) - but if you only have one or two you can't afford to drop any. And partly it's that abusive parents these days are such fragile special snowflakes compared to what they were back when I was growing up, and they have no self-respect...
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*snork*
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Concerned Uncle: "We told her there were problems, and she told us to butt out. And now she's seeing a speech therapist but it's The Wrong Speech Therapist! And we assume there's nothing else being done, because we (who aren't close to the family and have been proven to be nosy jerks) aren't being told there's anything being done! Also, I am An Expert, except I'm not actually expert in this specific thing. I should nonetheless be listened to in all things and told everything at all times. Help me?"
Amy: "Here, let me tell you the basics of how to communicate, that you should already know but don't. Hope you can pick up humility along the way!"
Anyway. Usually I don't like Amy, but that one worked pretty well by assuming the dude *has* professional bedside manner skills but just doesn't bother to use them with family, and appealing to his grandiose side.
Also: "On the other hand, any parent who believes they’ve provided their children with an ideal childhood needs to dig a little deeper." -- Amen.