When Parents Hurt Author: Joshua Coleman PhD | Language: English | ISBN:
B001E70RTM | Format: PDF
When Parents Hurt Description
This unique book supports parents who are struggling with the heartache of having a teenager or an adult child who is troubled, angry, or distant. Such rifts can cause unspeakable sorrow that parents too often must bear alone. Psychologist and parent Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., offers insight, empathy, and perspective to those who have lost the opportunity to be the parent they desperately wanted to be and who are mourning the loss of a harmonious relationship with their child. Through case examples and healing exercises, Dr. Coleman helps parents:
- Reduce anger, guilt, and shame
- Learn how temperament, the teen years, their own or a partner's mistakes, and divorce can strain the parent-child bond
- Come to terms with their own and their child's imperfections
- Maintain self-esteem through difficult times
- Develop strategies for rebuilding the relationship or move toward acceptance of what can't be changed
- Understand how society's high expectations of parents contribute to the risk of parental wounds
By helping parents recognize what they can do, and let go of what they cannot, Dr. Coleman helps families develop more positive ways of healing themselves and relating to each other.
- File Size: 318 KB
- Print Length: 322 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0061148431
- Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2009)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001E70RTM
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,829 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #12
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Parent & Adult Child - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Parenting > Teenagers - #33
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Parent & Adult Child
- #12
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Parent & Adult Child - #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Parenting > Teenagers - #33
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Parent & Adult Child
I've been trying to finish this book and to write this review for some time. This is an important topic, one that doesn't occur to us when we are parents of kids who are growing up. As we read them stories as they go to sleep, drive them to band practice, teach them how to make cookies, share in the joy of their success at a skill or cry with them over a disappointment we don't think of the possibility that some day they will say, "I don't want to have anything more to do with you," and then you will never hear from them again. This does not cross our minds back then. Why would it? It seems IMPOSSIBLE!
I have a large selection of books on the subject of family estrangement. Some are written by parents. Some by mental health professionals who have also experienced estrangement. Some by people who just think they know what they are talking about and that they are qualified, for some reason, to give advice.
I think that Joshua Coleman's book, When Parents Hurt, is the most compassionate, the most understanding, and the wisest book on the topic of conflict and estrangement between parents and grown children. He covers many contributing factors to estrangement including differences in personality, overinvolvement by parents, perfectionism, mental illness, divorce, family history.
He covers more ground than any other book on this topic that I have read. He does so in a kind and compassionate way, attempting not to point fingers. He offers suggestions to parents for ways to communicate that might lead to resolution. Although the suggestions that he offers would be most helpful to those who are still able to communicate with each other.
About a year ago, I read "The Price of Privilege" on how parents sometimes with the best of intentions make mistakes in raising their privileged kids. One thing lead me to another, and here is another resource that I have found extremely helpful.
In "When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along" (312 pages), author (and well-known psychologist) Joshua Coleman addresses many different scenarios with the general theme of older and grown kids not getting along with their parents, whether married or divorced, and how to deal with that. As the author notes: "While there are thousands of books telling you how to better raise your children there are none written on a topic that is just as important: healing the wounds of the parent. If this is your goal, this book is written for you." That sold me on the book, right then and there. The author does a superb job in setting the table, dissecting the different types of parents (authoritarian; permissive; authoritative). One of the things that resonated well with me as I was reading the book is that the author sprinkles the book with real-life examples from his practice, providing insight on what he reasonably could have said but how that would have been counter-productive in that particular situation.
Very interesting are the author's observations regarding the lengthening of adolescence in today's society ("65% of men reached adulthood by the age of 30, while only 31% od men had by 2000"), and the profound effects on parents-cids relationships, such as extending the need to "rebel" into mid-to-late twenties. "Why? Because your adult child is still working on separating from you. It's love, not hate, that causes her to mistreat you. Now, don't you feel better?" observes the author dryly.
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