Narcissists are known for their charm and infectious enthusiasm, but a narcissist can be harmful to mental health and, at times, outright dangerous.
Most parents don’t want to believe there is nothing they can do to straighten out their adult children.
Now more than ever, adult children are living with and in need of continued support from their parents. Here are 4 ways to be sure you don't enable them.
Loving your adult child doesn’t mean doing everything in your means to meet their needs and protect them from failure or disappointment. Parents who enable their grown children are ultimately doing them a disservice. An online therapist can help parents break negative cycles of dependency and effect a more empowering dynamic.
When your teen son starts to distance himself from you, recognize that it's more about him becoming a man than it is to push you away.
6 tips for parents who are stuck in the manipulation cycle. How to manage manipulative child behavior when your child is too smart for their own good.
Loving your adult child doesn’t mean doing everything in your means to meet their needs and protect them from failure or disappointment. Parents who enable their grown children are ultimately doing them a disservice. An online therapist can help parents break negative cycles of dependency and effect a more empowering dynamic.
Your child’s negativity can feel like a magnet. The best thing to do is be conscious of what’s happening and don’t get sucked into that orbit of negativity.
Manipulative elderly parents aren't as uncommon as you might expect. So, how should caregivers respond to protect themselves?
Living with problem adult children requires a tender heart and a strong backbone. Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of parenting an immature adult.
Cutting the money cord can be difficult, but if you’re risking your own financial security, it’s crucial.
Stonewalling is a tactic commonly used by bullies wanting to control, humiliate, and frustrate a target who attempts to resolve a conflict through reasonable discussion or negotiation. Accusations …
Advertising photographer Paul Ripke's project "Man Babies" features portraits of parents with their children... with their heads swapped. Ripke enlisted
For starters, know that it's OK to set boundaries.
Talking to an adult child who has an addiction to drugs or alcohol can be difficult. Call [Organic] to get help.
Reading texts from a narcissist can sometimes feel like you’re reading a foreign language! They often aren’t logical or sensical, and it’s easy to lose yourself trying to figure out what it all means. However, learning to decode their texting habits can help you feel more prepared. Let's dive into some examples of Narcissist text
Like so many talkative, smart, socially awkward girls in the ‘80s and ‘90s, my ADHD was overlooked for too long. My childhood was filled with criticism and shame. I had no safe place — nowhere I could be myself and learn from my mistakes. I want a better childhood for my son, and so I fight against the learned behaviors and mirror neurons in little ways every day.
The image above is very artistic to me and also very timely revealing of the state of human lives with respect to human decisions, choices, policies and the general outlook of the kind of social systems that we have created and which we also fight tooth and nail to keep in place. Now let me...
Talking to an adult child who has an addiction to drugs or alcohol can be difficult. Call [Organic] to get help.
One of the most common examples of drawing children in to conflic is during a divorce. Both parents are vying for the emotional support of the children. They are consciously manipulating the children to align with them. This might take the form of comments like: “Your father was never a good husband, he was never around, it’s better that he is gone”. This leaves the children feeling split. Part of them might love their father, but another part feels their mother’s rage and doesn’t want to upset their mother. Maybe they feel her emotional vulnerability and are afraid if they support their father in any way, she will not cope.
HABA create sturdy blocks, outdoor toys and forest school equipment, woodworking tools for children, plus tough garden toys and classic wooden ball tracks. HABA blocks come in two varieties: simple wooden blocks in a natural finish and coloured puzzle blocks for problem solving and pattern-making. The natural blocks are based off a 4 x 4 x … Guide to HABA toys Read More »
Last week I talked briefly about how parents sometimes use financial support as a way to manipulate and control their adult children. I want to go into a bit more depth here. Parents who lack...
Living with problem adult children requires a tender heart and a strong backbone. Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of parenting an immature adult.
Codependent relationships often form as the result of trauma bonding between individuals who live in a cycle of abuse or mistreatment. It’s a method of coping with a stressful or unhealthy, traumatic, or abusive environment. It develops as a self-protective response to supporting or enabling someone’s addiction, mental illness, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. It results from taking responsibility, blame, or making excuses for another person’s harmful or hurtful behavior.Codependency is an emotional and behavioral illness that affects a person’s ability to have healthy, mutually satisfying relationships. Codependents are called “people-pleasers.” They willingly play by the “rules” of others and lose their identity in the process. As a result, they rely on others for their sense of identity, approval, or validation. This is called “seeking external validation. ”People-pleasers need to be needed. To others, they appear to be busybodies, involved in other people’s business, or with things that shouldn’t concern them. They may also appear as unselfish; as someone who can be counted on, or who never says “no.”When we’re children who don’t have mentally healthy role models and caregivers, we don’t learn or develop healthy coping skills to equip ourselves in adulthood. We may also learn codependent behavior from watching or imitating other codependents in our family. And future generations may learn codependent behaviors from us if the cycle isn’t broken.
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The moment I gave birth to my 9 pound, brown-eyed, overly-chubby, bouncing baby boy, I was in love. Like most moms, the joy of holding his soft hands in my arms and snuggling his sweet face into mine far outweighed the fears and worries that I knew would be part of our journey. As a then single mom, I knew that the mountain we’d climb over the next twenty years or so would probably be harder than I could even imagine, but nonetheless, he was all mine and I couldn’t have loved him more. I don’t know if it was my youth (I was only 18), my single motherhood, the lack of a mother in my own life, or my parenting ignorance, or a perhaps a combination of all the above, but over the course of the next many years, I created a habit of enabling my son that took many years to break. Like other enablers, I didn’t intend for that to be the case. I only wanted what was best for him. But I think my guilt over the lack of a biological father in his life, or maybe just sheer exhaustion, led me into this habit of enabling him. Because of my own journey, I can now recognize with sharp focus the parent who is enabling their child’s bad behavior and how even the smallest of children can be enabled or encouraged, but rarely both. Consider the following 10 signs you may be enabling your adult child. Photo Credit: Unsplash/Sorin Sirbu
