I dread phone calls with my deep thinking daughter

[Isthatmyleopard]

My daughter is in her mid-20s and an incredibly deep thinker, she studied philosophy, religion and ethics and a MA in philosophy, she is considering a PhD. She was baptised/first communion as a child but we've had little engagement with the church lately, she however has returned, goes to mass often but not weekly. She is incredible, and I am very proud of her, but she never seems to be able to approach a topic lightly. It makes me dread phone calls as seemingly the most basic conversation can be turned into philosophy, theology or sociology. She isn't forcing a belief on me at all more so she is inquisitive, the adult version of a toddler who can't stop asking why and loves to play devils advocate, or have deep conversations about a totally abstract topic. In particular she loves to discuss how different philosophical schools of thought intertwine or compete with religion, the theology of various Christian denominations and the roots of breakaway churches/schisms. I often ask for a lighter phone call just about her life as she has friends and is social and sporty, but after a brief overview it always goes into ... and we spoke about this, followed by her asking questions on my thoughts on the topic. Even discussions about books go far deeper than I can handle. She also does it with sport, we both enjoy tennis but I can never just comment on a match without it turning into a conversation on the sociology of women in sports, the psychology of competition etc.
All that's to say I find it exhausting, if she were just sharing her thoughts I wouldn't mind so much, but it often comes with lots of questions such as what are your thoughts? Why do you think that?

Today we met for lunch and she told me it makes her sad I don't show the same interest in her interests as I do her brothers or call her as often, I explained why and that her brothers are more content with small talk so I find calling them requires less mental energy, she apologised and said she doesn't know how to turn off the deep thinking. She has a long term boyfriend who seems to be interested in the intellectual sparring so I'm not sure why she is so keen to get it from me.

AIBU to find this exhausting? How do I handle it before it damages our relationship?

they could copy leonards family from the big bang theory and write essay papers at christmas on different topics

But the job is just academia for the sake of academia, in something like philosophy/theology, its not like the "research" is something that advances society like scientific research, its more "here is my different opinion on something that was said many years ago".

Your daughter sounds wonderful.

It is not unreasonable to find deep conversation exhausting, but neither is it unreasonable to find small-talk hell-ish. I might struggle to keep up, but I'd love to chat with your daughter!

My eldest is like your daughter. But he isn't so much interested in a two way conversation. It's a lecture. His siblings have ASD so I try to accept it at that, he is talking at me. I enjoy it tbh. I don't have these deep conversations with anyone else he isn't really demanding my thoughts though unlike your dd. However he does like also bringing up contentious topics to rile me up just for fun.

I don't always enjoy politics and religion at 1am but I listen as I want him to come to me. You need some strategies. I can turn my brain off ( one particularly heavy session when he was about 14 on the word of God left me feeling like I'd been mentally assaulted). I don't need to match his mental gymnastics to follow. I have no real passion for the politics of money. So can reply accordingly. When he is riling me up, I shut his oxygen off.

Keep talking to her as it's another lovely thing to talk deep. No one else talks to me in the way he does. He is a gift and brings something no one else does. Doesn't mean I need to be 100% invested 100% of the time. I doubt he really notices if I zone out occasionally. The conv topic hasn't moved on. Bit like a phone call with a elderly parent, except he follows me if I wonder off....

Sounds a bit like my DP. It is exhausting when he’s on his high horse about something (politics, poverty, the state of the world…) and won’t let it go. He thinks, and I’m inclined to agree, that it’s likely he’s on the spectrum somewhere, but he isn’t pushing for a diagnosis as he doesn’t see how it would necessarily help. My sympathies op - but if she’s a lovely person in other ways, just go with the flow? Occasionally I try and shut the conversation down with my partner (when he starts repeating points, just in different words, lol) but he’s lovely in other ways so I can live with it.

I think the fact you were able to talk to her about it is such a positive sign! She's learning how to handle people as an adult and as her mum you can gently help her adjust to others' conversation styles as she finds friends who match her needs and learns to rein in being too much sometimes intellectually. Maybe you can just say something light in conversations like "this is going to deep for me now!!"?

TOO deep sorry

I think it has to do with maturity, or lack thereof- which is normal for a 20 something.
We all express this in different ways- I was into partying/raving and was completely uninterested in other people's lives.
As I've matured, I've become genuinely curious about the various people in my life, friends, shopkeepers, neighbours etc and as a result have meaningful small talk- which I would assert is actually the stuff of life!
As your daughter experiences more of life I have no doubt this will happen for her (especially if she ends up having kids- we all know how that brings us back to earth!)
I think it's lovely that she wants to phone and spend time with you as many her age would prefer to have little to do with their parents, but I appreciate it's very much on her terms and exhausting for you.
Best will in the world, she probably doesn't see you, "mum", as a fully rounded person yet but that will come.

thats me but strangely enough I never foisted it on others and was Abel to talk to anybody about their interests and keep the deep talk to my seminars

Were you always like this, OP? I'm curious if maybe you've changed over the years without being aware of it, and your daughter is trying to connect with an older version of you. Did you used to have deeper conversations with her about tv shows? Did you used to read more? Were you more passionate about tennis in the past? I notice you say she's reconnected with religion, which was a feature of her childhood but you've had "little engagement with it lately". I wonder if that's true of the other interests she's trying to connect with you over as well.

If that is all I was getting then I too would dread the calls. Imagine knowing that everything you say will be questioned, every opinion you hold interrogated to satisfy someone else's quest for meaning and understanding, that nothing you say will ever be accepted at face value. It would drive me to distraction. There's a time and a place for these conversations and sounds as though OP never has the opportunity to have a conversation on her terms. I have a good friend I see every couple of months. Conversations range from catching up about partners, pets, and work to, most recently, Japanese literature, Hegelian phenomenology, and the relevance of the work of Roland Barthes to one aspect of my friends job. Sometimes we spend the whole of our time moaning about work and you know what, that's fine.

I much prefer deep conversations to small talk but unlike your daughter I’m afraid to bring it up and almost no one starts the conversation with me. I’d love it if someone was the same as me. I find talking about trivial things boring.

Tell me you know nothing about research (in either humanities or the sciences) without telling me, etc. Sigh. If you don’t actually really know about something, why not find out a bit more about it?

you don't need to feel like a dunce. You could pick out part of a comment that has been made, comment being eg. ' I've noticed most 40 year old men tend to wear dark brown clothes whilst drinking whisky and discussing Einstein's theory ', you could say 'do you think there's a reason why they all seem to pick dark brown?
This is an absolutely stupid example but I can't think of anything better atm, but you see the drift. An intelligent person will stop in their tracks and seriously consider your question. This will change the course of the discussion to another less heavy but equally interesting track

My eldest son can be a bit like that.
I love him deeply but he literally frys my head sometimes.
I have reverted to when he was a toddler and talking at me, "sorry darling, mummys head is tired at the moment".
It works.

Honestly - no. Don’t do this!

I have the same interests as your daughter and have a PHD from an elite university and have published books in the field. But im from a non intellectual working-class background and have a lot of other interests so can talk about a lot of things and most peopel are surprised when they find out im an academic. one of my friends who I have been going on holiday with for years thought I worked in the university as a kitchen help!!

my husband is however very intellectual and this was our main bonding ppint which has caused problems in our marriage if you look up my other posts.

But, and I dont want to scare you in any way - after I submitted my PhD I ended up having a kind of psychosis based around my research. thinking about existential questions every day all day really messed with my head and thats as somebody who did lots of other things and had a whole set of friends outside of academia. I got very very poorly and it changed my life forever. I lost who I was. I was that toddler and I can even remeenr my mum saying ot me back then you are exhausting I cant keep up with your questions. and then she said I was like the little girl form outnumbered and then Saffy from ABFab. and I was by far the least nerdy of my colleagues. I was researching things on social class so I had to be able to connect with 'normal' people and I was brilliant at that until I started believing I was a being used by the devil and all my theological knowledge came back to bite.

so I would say maybe keep an eye on her mental health.

I feel your pain but I was Abel to not be like this with people outside of academia

this is perfect

well I've done it many times, not because I want to change the track of he ongoing discussion, but because some relatively trivial thing has been said that awakes my interest and curiosity. I have also found that these diversions often open the discussion to very interesting and unexplored avenues to which most people want to contribute.

if you want to chat with me I am happy to have a private message

You would rather engage in small-talk with your own child?: The minutiae of Aldi vs Tesco and how many flags are in your street? This is the stuff of work conversations with colleagues, when you cannot escape and would rather look at that nice tree.

You should be grateful that she still considers you smart enough to engage in academic discourse. You should also be grateful that she looks up to you and wants to impress you.

A bit of projection here, but it's really sad when you realise you own mum is as thick as mince, doesn't want to do any mental grappling and just wants to talk about "Married without sight", even though she knows you haven't seen it. I will never forget the time I told her the dog died, she gave me a platitude and said "Janice has just collapsed in the diary room, I've got to go".

A telephone call is not really the place for this type of conversation though, so you should limit phone calls and meet up more often, or maybe text each other links to articles, or share books. Maybe steer the conversation to an area you're interested in. You are very lucky to have her. make her feel lucky to have you.

oh come on, the world doesn't need any more philosophy/theology research does it.

Repeated attempts at intellectual sparring and quizzing someone about a subject they know nothing about and therefore can’t respond to isn’t ok. Neither is ignoring someone’s requests for this to stop.

Small talk is not 'contentless' and shows you don't really listen. I have only ever done small talk with some of my colleagues, however through their chit chat about their day, family, work etc. I understand how they view and react to certain situations and therefore their underlying philosophy and outlook on life. And I find this interesting and worthy, because people are as interesting and as worthy as each other however they choose to communicate.

I would suggest the people who think small talk is contentless and meaningless actually don't understand the subtleties of small talk, and how people use it to express emotions and deeper thoughts on things. They're missing out on a really natural and accessible way of communicating with others, and I think really narrowing down their options of who they can effectively communicate with. You can discuss a subject in many ways, not just through 'I'm having a deep and meaningful on this set subject'.

I also believe this way of thinking is a similar 'superior' attitude that European people had when they met Indigenous people in other countries... They thought that these people lacked intelligence because it didn't mirror the way of thinking and communicating. For instance it was genuinely thought that certain tribes of the American plains (can't remember their exact names sorry) didn't have the concept of 'history' or the past at all. That is because the Europeans failed to understand that these tribes past was communicated in a different way. It was associated with the landscape they lived in and the names they gave to features in the landscape which all had stories associated with them. They used these in conversation. So by saying the name of a certain hill let's say, for these people it instantly brought to mind the story associated with it. These were things seen and names mentioned in every day life and used to make decisions, teach morality, explain how someone felt in their current situation etc. So their 'history' was a living thing used all the time, and used in a very different way to Europeans (I have probably described this very badly but it's how I remember it). But because they didn't communicate it in the very set way we have of talking about history, 'this happened at this date and involved these people', Europeans decided they didn't even have the concept.

If they'd bothered to listen properly to the every day conversations and not just dismissed this as being of no importance, they would have realised this every day talk contained their history and important 'deep' concepts.

You would rather engage in small-talk with your own child?: The minutiae of Aldi vs Tesco and how many flags are in your street? This is the stuff of work conversations with colleagues

Ds and l have had some hilarious conversations about Tesco v Aldi. As for flags, we are united in our dislike of them. This led into a short convo about history. But not deep and meaningful. Just fun.