Project 366 / 223 — Talking, communication and parents

Historically there seems to be an issue with parents talking and telling those close to them what they really think and really feel. Our great grandparents didn’t communicate with our grandparents which, in turn meant that they didn’t really talk to our parents. If we’re lucky our parents broke the mould but if we were unlucky, like my sister and I, the trait continued.

I’m guessing that each generation thinks it’s one better than the last and ours is no different. But if each generation feels that then why is it that only ours feel like it is making real changes?

My mother pent up a lot of animosity towards her father over his life but decided to wait until he was suffering with senile dementia and alzheimer’s before plucking up the courage to tell him how she felt. She also told me that she’d tell my father what she really thought about him when he got to the same stage.

Why? Why wait? Why not tell that person what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling? So you’re going to just sit there and suffer in silence of the rest of your life?

My Dad doesn’t communicate at all. It pains him to talk and as a result he’s one of the hardest people to talk to. He says that he finds it difficult to open up and to express his feelings. Well whatever happened to just trying?

Yet our parents find it incredibly easy to talk to everyone else. To tell all their friends how proud they are of you, to gloat over your successes and to show off. Yet this is never communicated directly to you. Instead you’re chastised, criticised and spoken to like you’re still a child.

All we can do with our generation is to bring our children up differently. To bring them up how we would have liked to have been brought up. That’s talking to them, praising them, telling them that we love them, encouraging them, cuddling them, playing with them and including them in everything that we do.