Adult children - feeling a bit unloved

[mindsetchange]

Is this just the way it is, for a lot of us Mums of adult children? My kids are mid 20's. They have successful lives. They have good jobs and relationships. I am very grateful for that. But.... I don't feel important to them. Maybe that's how it should be?

If I send a Whatsapp message, it sits unread for days. They don't visit often. There is definitely nothing "wrong" between us, because when I do see them, we have a great time. There have been no fall outs or anything. I think they are probably just enjoying their very full lives and I've been left in the dust, so to speak.

I have a good DH, and a good life. I think I need to somehow stop thinking about them all the time. How does one do that? Can anyone resonate with this? I sometimes see women who seem to be the "Matriarch", but that is definitely not me. I spoiled them rotten (still do), I really went overboard to compensate for me divorcing their Dad (he cheated lots). Bizarrely, he seems to be on a pedestal as well.

I treated my mum similarly once I had left home, right up until I was in my mid 20's and had a colleague whose son had just gone to uni and she was telling me how sad she was and how much it hurt when she got ignored and it suddenly clicked that my mum would have felt the same. That colleague had also lost her mum to breast cancer and told me how important it was to keep in touch with your mum. I owe her a lot ❤️ Now I have a daughter myself, my mum and I message daily and have a weekly video chat 😊

It's normal I think for those in their early twenties, not that you are wrong to feel hurt by it! But it's a sign of secure attachment and a successful start to adulthood 😊

It doesn't matter how busy any of us are, we make the time for those we choose to. Always. So when a person (Whether we gave birth to them or not) chooses not to make time for us, it's because we've fallen down their list of priorities. When it's a parent, there's often a fair amount of taking for granted going on. Mums love is unconditional, right? It's fine to ignore her, because she'll still be there. No effort required like there is with friends.
But if you don't like the way you're treated, it can sometimes be an option not to tolerate it. Call it out. Ignoring you for 3 days is rude, so say so. You're a person as entitled to courtesy as anyone else they know.
But...that's only part of it I think. The other reason people don't bother with us is that they're not that interested in our offer to them. As unpalatable as it is, sometimes our adult DC just don't want to be with us. They love us, but by comparison to their friends, we bore them. This can pass as they get older and their interests come more in line with ours, so it can be waited out as a stage. But in the meantime, it can help to try to establish some areas of mutual interest. Go out together to do something rather than just have visits and chats.
And above all, keep up your hobbies and interests so you're a person outside of them. The slightest whiff of need makes most people want to run in the opposite direction.

@MsRosley I really disagree that adult children owe their parents anything. If their parents sacrificed too much of themselves to give you exceptional chances in life, that was a choice they made. You didn't ask for it or demand it - you were a child. It isn't now your responsibility to repay it. And if a parent resents you because of how much of themselves they gave to parenting to you or how many financial resources they overspent, that's not fair either.

You parent your kids because you presumably wanted them and you took on the responsibility to raise a child. But if you martyred yourself, you can't suddenly make your children pay you back for that sacrifice.

I hope I never give my daughter more than I'm happy to give, and I never make her feel responsible for the choices I made in my life for her because if I wasn't happy with them, I shouldn't have made them. She will owe me nothing.

My adult children certainly began to drift away once they left university and started work. At that point I moved house and returned to my birthplace over 100 miles away so some of the separation was my fault.

We connected several times a year for family events and if I needed their help ( live alone with some health issues) they would always come and stay.

However, during the first lockdown we set up a WhatsApp group with just the three of us and we agreed to make contact every day to make sure I was still alive! Sounds dramatic but at that time it was possible that I could have lain helpless after a fall or even worse. One of us just tries “ morning” or some other simple message every morning and the other two respond. It tends to me me who makes the initial call which I’m fine with as they are both working whereas I am now retired. The group chat is used for lots of other things now, sharing bits of news about or lives or making plans to meet.

in fact, if one of them phones me unexpectedly, I start to panic in case there is bad news!

You need to see them as equal adults.
This. So much this.

I see so many parents (my own, my friends’) expecting to be treated as some sort of esteemed figure to be visited and consulted. I work 60 hour weeks and my retired parents still expect me to always travel to visit. Each has visited me once in 10 years (3 hour drive, and I have a bigger house than either of them). They treat me like I haven’t learnt anything since I was a teenager, especially on money matters. I have multiple professional qualifications and make a very good living advising on large financial transactions - I think I can handle my credit card. It’s so patronising.

If your business is quiet over winter, book in for a pub lunch at a weekend with your children at a venue nearer to them. Maybe even ask them for advice on something. It sounds like they don’t dislike you, but are just struggling to find a way to engage with you as equal adults.

Its not easy op. My friend told me to join more things hobbies etc! Mine are like what you described. She a bit better lately in college but might text if bus late. Drove me mad too when they dont reply. Then you worry.

You’ve not really mentioned your DH who is their step father and the relationship they have.

How do they get along with him?

How old were they when he moved in?

Id personally never actively seek to spend any extra time with my DF and my step mother.

It might be they think he’s wonderful and hopefully he has a great relationship with them.

In the end though, I only ever wanted to spend time with my parents, not step parents.

Like others I think this is really normal and a phase of life that will pass! I am super close to my parents and always have been, but I would say my twenties was the time period I saw and spoke to them least, and (in the days before mobile phones and of an expensive coin fed shared landline in a freezing entryway in a student hall) I could go weeks without speaking to them, because I was busy with studying and partying and trips away and friends and boyfriends and general drama/Very Important Things happening in my social life as someone else put it. Like if a friend broke up with her boyfriend of 6 weeks me and my friends would be summoned and spend a lot of time and energy in helping them through it for example which seems crazy now looking back but they’d have done the same for me🤣 (and sometimes I really miss those very close peer relationships and wish I’d been anywhere near as well supported by friends as a “full grown” adult following a divorce with a child after domestic abuse).

Basically I think peer relationships become the priority temporarily at this age. And the relationship with parents (and in my case younger siblings) is totally taken for granted especially if you’re not living with them and they’re not super local. I look back and feel quite bad about how much I neglected my relationship with much younger siblings let alone my parents in that phase of life but I was having fun and excited and happy and generally fulfilled and content living with peers at that stage, and yeah probably was a bit self-absorbed during that period of my life looking back (and I’m really not a selfish person at all generally).

As others have said it’s a compliment to your parenting that they feel secure enough to de-prioritise you temporarily while building their adult lives. And in terms of not receiving your wisdom/being naive/the spider thing!, again I think it’s a temporary phase of life where you feel almost invulnerable and tend to underestimate risks - I look back at some of the things I did in my twenties and I wouldn’t do them now! I also think we’ve been through a period of really rapid social, economic and technological change, and I sometimes think the world I grew up in is much more unrecognisably different to my teen than my parents childhood world was to me at the same age. So with you saying some of it may be generational, I think that might be part of it too, I’m very close to my teen but I’m aware that we look at certain things very differently due to growing up in totally different environments.

Ultimately I think don’t worry, it’s a phase and they’ll come out of it. However I do think maybe it’s worth specifically letting your kids know you feel a bit upset that your messages aren’t replied to for days and that you feel like you’re no longer an important person to them etc. I suspect they’ll be horrified, they just haven’t really tried to put themselves in your shoes (and I didn’t do this in my twenties when it came to my parents either though was very good at doing it for friends - not because the relationship was less important but maybe I took it for granted and essentially I still regarded it as an adult-child relationship at that stage not adult-adult yet).

I totally get why you’re gutted about your child planning to move so far away to settle and have kids etc. I think anyone would be. I do have some friends who did this and their parents do find it hard but they make it work with planned extended visits and it means you won’t be taken for granted as expected childcare etc. Also sometimes it all doesn’t work out as expected and people end up coming back to the UK in the end so you never know.

I think you need to be more proactive, and let them know a bit how you’re feeling. So arrange a day out to go visit each of them in turn and take them out somewhere nice for lunch. Tell them a bit about how you’re feeling, and make a plan to do that once a month or once every other month or whatever feel like a good balance to you all. And sometimes arrange for them both to come to you, and pick them up from the station.

They probably just think you have no time for them so they’re getting on with their own lives. You never know, they might be feeling a bit rejected too if you’re always working. And absolutely no advice ever unless specifically asked for.

Hi OP, I was very like this until about 30, now 32.

I just matured and grew out of the parting stage, and back to the value of family.

I think the same happens to most adult children so just keep showing them love and don't complain about it. My mum often asks me to go to events with her that we both enjoy and this did help to establish s new routine.

I really think that in our 20s, we're the flying arrows our parents have fired (loosely referring to Kalil Gibran here, I think).
In my late 20s, I became a mum and that really pulled me back into mum and dad's fold, for whom I had developed an entirely new appreciation. Nothing like having a shrieking baby to get you appreciating your parents!

I just think the 20s are about our need to carve out and claim this life as ours and proclaim autonomy over ourselves. And relationships/sex dominates EVERYTHING. We just don't realise it at the time. But it's such a huge part of young adulthood. The mind travels south. It's harvest time! 😆
I admit, I too have my moments when I feel downright unsure of what and who I need to be to DC1, who is in his early 20s. But then I see him, hug him, we nosh and we talk and I remember how steadfast and indestructible our love is. I can fluctuate with the moods and the seasons and life's trials and tribulations, but that love of ours is firmly fixed. It anchors us.

All we can do is love our young adult children, trust in their love too, and watch them do their thing, cheer them on, be there when they need us. There's a distance, it's undeniable, but it's only because in middle age we can't fly as high as they can. Gotta watch them do what we once did and observe them with pride and joy. Be on the ready to catch their fall.

Would you not feel even a little disappointed though if you raised an adult child who didn't have any appreciation for you? Who simply grabbed whatever you offered as their right without any sense of gratitude?
Because while children don't 'owe' their parents, it would take a very selfish and cold person to waltz off into the sunset without a single thought for those that have loved and cared for them all their lives.
I think most of us just prefer to think we have raised children who are decent people and better than that. How they treat us is less important for the benefits it brings us, than as an indication we got that right.

My dd is a bit like this too, she wouldn’t message me unless I message her. Kind of feels like I’ve done something wrong but she’s had a good child hood and we were really close.
I call me mum a couple times a week and see her often, I can’t imagine not being in close contact with her however busy I am.

@DragonFly98

whats sad about taking time to develop yourself and do the stuff you enjoy once your kids are independent?!

I just wanted to add something my mother told me when I first held my baby DC1. She said to me, "He is his own entity. He's of you but he's not you. You'll name him but he becomes him." That's always stayed with me and helped lift me whenever I feel a bit, "Ah where's my boy who wanders around every street from Camden to Cricklewood but doesn't make his way to his own front door?".

THiS!!!

dont see how anyone can argue with this!!

Oh my goodness, have you checked with her that she wants you around to help with kids for that long? I lived abroad from 21 to 34 and had 2 DC (a long long flight away). I have a great relationship with my parents and was happy when they came to visit but if they had planned to decamp every year to 'help' I'd have been horrified. We had routines, friends, lives and they wouldn't have included our patents for protracted chunks. However, they did lovely things like take all the kids (mine and my sister's) on holiday somewhere fancy without us, and we saw them at least twice yearly for holidays when we could spend time properly with them. I am so glad that they didn't need to be needed - it would have made me push them away more. They developed their own lives and that was great. Now my own DDs are leaving (one at uni, one about to go, both v independent) and I plan to start loads of projects and do all the things they didn't like doing, like long hiking holidays.....

Do you drive to see them? I know you wrote about their living arrangements, but can you not arrange to meet either of them for a meal, or a day sight seeing or mooching about? Rather than texting, can you not face time them, so you can see their faces. Maybe they wont answer there and then but it might prompt them to return the call.
Before they moved closer to me, I used to go and visit my parents every couple of months. 3 hour journey. They took their turn in coming to see me and my family. Other than that we used to face time once or twice a day.
I have all this coming with my kids. My daughter no spends a lot of time at her BF who lives an hour away. It's quite serious so I have resigned myself to the fact that she may move there eventually. When they both leave hime, I shall relish the fact that I no longer have to think about what to make for dinner. I shall have more nights on and out with friends and my house will be a lot tidier. Every cloud 😊

I have not rtft so apologies for that.

the thing I would ask you op is don’t you remember being in your twenties? I used to eye roll for England when it came to my mum (she was a single parent). The only kids I see who don’t do this is if their parents have serious money or power - the kids of rock or film stars who seem to cling to their parents as they lap up the star treatment. Most
other people are more dismissive - until they really grow up and, as already mentioned, have kids themselves and especially when their kids get to the eye rolling stage. Most people want their kids to fly the nest and lead their own lives. Their ability to do that is the biggest sign of your success as a parent

your kids are doing brilliantly. The kids of a lot of people I know are still at home in their twenties because they can’t afford to move out.

I do find as well, that they don't really value my opinion. They think I'm a worrier, or a bit OTT, but I think they are quite naive in many ways (I don't say this, of course). But if I give advice, I can sense the eye roll. It makes me feel insignificant, rather than an older and wiser family member.

I'm at the start of getting this eldest just started uni - and it does make it hard though I'm not offering advice more asking if she is okay and does she need anything you can heard the eye rolls. On first visit asked if she need us to bring anything in effort to be helpful and response was to bring up me inadvertently leaving some plasters and other minor inconsequential items behind - which doesn't answer my question and make me feel like I;m in the wrong.

Everyone says it's normal - though some of the family saying that got weekly phone calls - we've tried to find times when she's not busy but still made to feel like we are imposing.

Assume it will pass or not but I do have fear as there is lurking family who like to cause issues and are there for fun stuff but are fuck all help in bad times and have very much form for sweeping in taking over fun stuff and leaving me especially but also DH with the crap stuff to deal with. They've already swept in before us and done fun first visit - which upset younger siblings who couldn't drop off due to school more than Dh and me but still felt off.

I wondered if your Ex is like this - a malevolent floating spector that gets to do fun stuff leaving drudge to you and who it's hard to say no to for the kids but it's easy to say no to you as your expected to understand.

I’m 33 now but in my twenties I went home every sort of 8-10 weeks for the weekend. Sometimes my mum offered to pay my train fair (didn’t have a car).
agree with others there needs to be food on offer. Can you offer to go ans pick them up from their city? Or the train station at the very least.

also the idea you can’t go to them because you can’t go inside their houses is odd. You can go for a lunch at a pub?

@Humbugg

“agree with others there needs to be food on offer.”

why does food need to be on offer? One of OP’s daughters is moving to Australia im sure she’s capable of buying and making her own food. She is an adult afterall.

plus you don’t wanna set up an expectation that each time you see them you’re gonna buy them a meal out or whatever

Stepfather moved in with us when the kids were 11 & 10. We had a few bumps in the road when they were young, bog standard stuff, but absolutely fabulous relationship now. If anything my DH sides with them, if I look as though I'm worrying too much about something.

Their Dad also has a long term partner (not married), and they like her very much. I have only met her once. She was very quiet, but seemed lovely.

You will scream but hopefully you won't kill it. 😀

You will never find a venomous spider in Australia, the kind to send you to a hospital, happily standing on your walls. Huntsman's are terrifyingly looking but they keep in check mosquitos and are also the gentlest of creatures. They just look big and awful but are fabulous for the environment.

Thank you PercyPigs - I could have written near the same about my parents.

Add in that when I do go to see them, they don’t actually want to do anything except sit in front of the tv. It feels like a waste of 10 hours of driving and precious time off work but they just don’t get it.