The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I'm new to AlAnon, and I'm learning every day about how ALL the relationships in my family are screwed up.
My 15 year old daughter has a pattern of making specific commitments to me and then not keeping them. So I've checked up on her... nagged her... managed her life for her.
For a tiny example, she's taking an online class this summer (for $160 out of my pocket) and has 'committed' three times to different dates she'd finish it. But here it is with school starting next week and she still hasn't finished it. And, as soon as she came back from her dad's today, one of the first things I asked was how much progress she'd made.
I get, at least a little bit, that I can't control her. And I get, in a bigger way in my gut, that I don't want to be this involved in her life.
I just can't figure out how to let go.
She was away at her dad's for the last month, and I felt so much peace. Now she's back, and my gut is all tight again. How do I detach from her and still be a parent?
I know this is really tiny potatoes compared to some other situations, but I literally have no idea how to be around her if I'm not an overinvolved, controlling mom.
I can completely understand where you are coming from! I have a 20 year old AD who never completed school.
She was only 1 1/2 credits short of her HS diploma, and she could still get the diploma if she would finish those online classes.
She had two of her 1/2 credits 95% done, and stalled out. Those online classes have been sitting untouched for over a year now.
I drove myself nuts, nagging, micromanaging her life, and the only thing it accomplished was she dug her feet in harder and I grew increasingly frustrated.
I had to detach for my own sanity, and allow her to feel the consequences of her decisions. If she didn't finish the classes, the consequences would be negative.
Now she's resigned to working minimum paying jobs because no one else will hire her without a HS diploma or GED.
I never got to see either one of my daughters get their diploma, and that was tough.
It was a grieving process. I had to let go of the dreams that I had for both of my daughters, and accept that they each have their own paths.
Even though she's 20, she still lives in my house, and although I can't do things like ground her, I guarantee my new computer has parental controls and I can lock her out of it when I am gone.
Internet is a privilege here, not a given. She has to go to the library if she wants to check her email.
I told her I will give as much as she pitches in, which is nada.
I don't do her laundry.
I don't jump at her beck and call anymore.
She earns her own money, and if she runs out, too bad.
She has a car payment and insurance payment she is responsible for.
The hardest part is allowing her to make her own mistakes and keep my mouth shut.
__________________
"If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience." - Woodrow Wilson
Dealing with children is sometimes a very difficult task. I have spent most of my son's life trying to manage his life and taking care of the mistakes he made. This only left him with the inability to make his own decisions and be responsible for the outcome.
Once I started backing off and let him live his own life, letting him make his own decisions and let the consequenses of those decisions whether bad or good belong to him alone he started growing up.
If we never make a mistake and suffer the consequences we never learn how not to do that again. As a mom it is very hard to see your child stumble and struggle to get back up but in the end it's the only way that child will ever learn to stand on their own two feet.
It's pretty much as basic as tieing your shoes. If someone else always ties your shoes for you then you will never learn to tie them yourself.
Hang in there your doing the right thing.
__________________
Everything I have ever let go of has claw marks all over it.
Well lots of us have to deal with varying levels of commitment from people. I have to say detachment is a really good tool. How important is this is another tool. I can allow another person to obsess me in a minute. That's one reason why I have to have the yardstick of taking care of me, how well am I doing, what am I doing, when am I doing it. The focus has to be "me" rather than the other person.
There have to be measured felt responses when others do not live up to their commitments. For me sometimes that means the end of the relationship. There has to be a consequence if someone does not do something in a timeline I've set.
