Why Is It That Kids Don’t Tell Their Parents Anything Ever?
Is it shame, or fear: it can’t be fear of punishment because no one’s punished for anything anymore.
Why is it that kids, teenagers, and even young adults don’t tell their parents anything ever? Well the answer to that question has a lot of detail to listen and look deeply and mindfully because it’s a doozy!
Have you ever felt misunderstood from your own parents when you were our age or at any age in your childhood and while living with your parents? What was that experience like for you? How did that affect you? How does that affect you today? And how does that affect the choices you’ve made in parenting your kids from the beginning leading up to today?
What was it that’s inside you or something small and/or big from your past that made you choose this type of parenting? How come you now as a parent rather than a child, teenager, young adult have been struggling or refusing to be empathetic, understanding and supportive with your own kids?
What’s behind all of that stuff that brings you deep down to the core of your pain, your anxiety, stress, depression, suicidal ideation, and etc? The anger behind the anger as per what Cat Grant inspires and encourages us from Supergirl.
When you yell at your kids, teenagers and young adults, you are most likely so not angry, mad or upset with them, but more so the emotion you feel is from something you did yourself and blaming others for your mistakes, or even events and stressful and anxious moments from work and you are putting it all on your family or friends even though they did nothing wrong to be yelled at.
First off: blaming anyone does not work, it’s not the way to go. Thoigh I can say that it may give off a sign that you or someone who’s wrongfully blaming others may be some meaning as to real and emotional pain and a story that needs to be take serious and to be told. And not just that, taken seriously on the level of being empathetic, actually listening to their story and asking questions to clarify you are understanding everything correctly: you know one of the five steps to ending the stigma:
- Language matters
- Listen and ask
- Be kind
- Educate yourself
- Talk about it
Remember these for those of you who’ve heard about them from Bell Let’s Talk Mental Health Initiative. January 31 this year was celebrated and I known as: Bell Let’s Talk Day where all Facebook posts, Tweets on Twitter, Instagram posts, texts using the hashtag: #BellLetsTalk gives five cents to Mental Health organizations to help raise awareness and change in the mental health system.
Now, back to the main subject! Oh yeah, it’s now time to talk deeper about why we as teenagers, kids and young adults don’t tell our parents anything anymore. Do you have any thoughts rambling through your mind?
Write them down, share them with you counsellor, friends who you feel comfortable talking about this particular subject, anyone who you feel comfortable with.
You may be thinking when you first read the title and first paragraph of this post of what brought me to writing this post. Well it’s actually a question and the quotes quoted further in this post from episode 7 season 2 of 13 Reasons Why on Netflix! And I really have had many thoughts and questions on why parents are the way they are when it comes to the things we talk about that surround mental health.
And I thought of writing my experiences, thoughts, questions, analyzed notes, and much more and see what that can do! Who knows who will share their say on this question and other subtopics covered here.
Anyway, if there’s anything I’d like to say before I go deeper down, it’s to watch: Not Alone; a documentary on getting to learn about some people in high school who experience depression, suicidal thoughts/ideation, eating disorders, PTSD, sexual abuse and more.
Parents don’t know what happens at school.
Parents think they knew their kids and everything that they share with them with school and other areas of their life; but deep down, they so don’t. They think they know their kids but we want them to know we don’t even know ourselves, recognize ourselves nor know who to be with all that anxiety, stress, depression, and all else in our head that’s also affecting our work, behaviours in all areas of our lives and people just decide to lash out at us; telling us that they failed at parenting us into responsible, mature, selfless citizens of society and as human beings.
They are so wrong. You don’t know what goes on in our minds and if you made the choice in a moment to actually listen to the thoughts we have and the experiences we have that affect our mental and emotional well-being, you’d be scared, shocked, worried but most of all; other emotions such as: anger, being upset, furious and more in ways that leave out the deep stuff that truly help you understood things clearly: empathy!
It’s something that I have seen and analyzed from numerous experiences of different kinds myself of these few things that we as a society suck at and really lack enough of. Those things are:
- Empathy
- Less ignorance and more understanding and compassion
- Selfless acts of support and pure love (love is selfless)
- Maturity: lack the control and knowledge/education to take action or be selfless and listen to someone’s side of the story through empathy and understanding
These are a few but anyone can add any more. What are your thoughts on these items I’ve listed? What can you share with anyone here on social media and in the real world to help others understand? It may seem hopeless and we all have our fair share of hopeless moments. But how does anyone know when something or someone needs to be fixed or helped if no signs are shown or if no one notices them enough to take action?
How can you fix something if you don’t know it’s broken. Hannah didn’t tell us. ~ 13 Reasons Why
When you see someone switch a bruise or some injury shown and easily visible, it gets the attention it deserves. And when someone is seen with a cast on their arm or leg, everyone comes tuning towards you to sign it. But when you act in ways that show to any medical or mental health professional as mental illness or signs and symptoms of someone’s mental health at risk and unhealthy, you get looks from people and no empathy, selfless acts of compassion and care nor anything else anyone wants from someone like their friends, family, classmates and even strangers.
How does that make sense? How is that fair to anyone without making one situation or problem or issue in our world more important and more worthy of attention, care, compassion, empathy, and even sympathy for? It’s not and that’s one of the many things that needs to change in our society!
People think they know everything about everyone but they honestly and deeply don’t and they assume they do know everything without thinking for the fact that they haven’t taken the time to actually listen to their side of the story. Like many of us say and quote from what our own parents quote:
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
You think you know all about someone just by looking at them but until you make the choice and take the initiative and make a selfless act of listening to someone’s story, you will never truly know what’s someone’s been through nor all chapters of their lives! Listening is the best way to learn about the human experience as per quoted by Rosemary in When Calls The Heart, a Hallmark tv series with 5 full seasons and has been renewed for another season!
For being a fan of that show myself, I believe that it can teach us all many great things if we allow ourselves to! Just be opening up our minds, ears, eyes & nose to truly understand someone else’s experiences! And I also believe that Grey’s Anatomy is another great show with many great, wise, smart but intelligent and relatable characters!
There are limits to what we can do to help another person no matter how much we wish they weren’t.
How do you truly know when and exactly how to help someone without causing more war, anger, and more stress, anxiety and more problems to add to their own list? How? Well you can go to the library and educate yourself, look online, ask mental health professionals including your doctor, ask those you love and those you know who experience mental illness and in fact live with it themselves and see what you can gain!
It may be hard but how do you know it won’t work or if it will be too hard to adapt to if you don’t try. How do you know for sure if you’ll survive if you never try it out and find out for yourself? Get a better understanding? Has this helped you in any way to any level or degree? I hope so!
So there’s a limit to what we can do to protect them. Then there are some things you just can’t protect them from.
And yeah though you may be wanting to keep things from people to protect them but some things you just can’t, and you have to come to the terms and accept the reality of that! Because life and the world doesn’t work the way you want it to!
Life is unfair and some things are unfair but can always be changed. The world has changed and I believe as it does so, we need to realize we need to change to. We need to change ourselves as the world has brought to our attention, not in-spite of the world changing with any demands anyone may feel to change!
Are you afraid that we won’t understand? ~ Clay’s Father
More like afraid you’d understand it too well. ~ Clay
So you are protecting your secrets? ~ Clay’s Father
More like protecting you! ~ Clay
