Dads and Adult Children
I meant to get this blog out before Father’s Day but a day late isn’t so bad. My own father passed away 18 years ago. We were closer when I was little and not the oldest of six but an only child or the only girl for four years. As I grew up, I was merely the maid and nanny and truth be told, he was always trying to work overtime and frequently did at his factory job in our auto town in Michigan. Both parents had a tendency to shower what little time and attention they had on favorites and I wasn’t one. But we had good adult to adult relationships once I was married and on my own. I escaped my family pressures by going away to college and thought I was going into chemistry until I nearly failed the class. Then I found psychology and was hooked. Since I was on my own, I was lucky to get a job as a nurse’s aide now called medical assistants. Within a year of my selecting psychology as a major, my father had a heart to heart with me. That alone was so rare, I remember it vividly. We were sitting in the dining room and he asked why I didn’t go into nursing. I had viewed my job as just a job. I liked it but separated a job from a major in college. Two different universes. I said I didn’t think I could ever have the stomach to start an IV on a patient which RNs did. He was very encouraging and I was a little angry that he bothered to care after neglecting me all those years. I certainly didn’t need his advice now that I was on my own.
Yet when my psychology degree didn’t net me a psychology job and I finally got the connection between college and work, I began to seriously think about his advice. I did what I counsel students and parents of young adults not to do and that is to think of college as something not related to work or vaguely so. Had I looked into the jobs I could get with my college degree, I would have seen that it wasn’t the way to go. Hoping to return to college to become an RN, I encountered college administration resistence to allowing those back in who already had a degree. It is easy today but it wasn’t back then. I had to go on for an advanced degree and went to law school. Ironically, my mother had told me when I was in middle school getting all A’s, that my grandfather would probably put me through college if I became an attorney. Unfortunately, he didn’t see me go to college let alone law school.
The point is that here you have two male family members who did influence me. When parents tell me that their kids or adult kids aren’t listening. I tell them it is wrong. I see it in all kids. You are their role models and what you say makes an impact. I was listening to career coach Marty Nemko on his San Francisco Bay area radio show talking about the contributions fathers make on kids and on their families last night. It often isn’t emotional help but father’s as coaches and as mentors have been critical throughout our human history. Even if the relationship is accrimonious. The one thing I try hard in my coaching to do is get the fathers talking to their young adults. Often they, better than the moms can give direction in a calm and thoughtful manner without being too over involved and angry. Young adults hear you better when you aren’t demanding or nagging. We just don’t see the active listening that gives us a clue that something is registering. But it is registering.
So Fathers, you are needed for your guidance and feedback. Get involved. That one conversation with my dad took root eventually and my grandfather’s wish only came through in his dauthter and it still took root. Help your young adults explore career paths and look for jobs in areas that interest them. That can be the beginning of the adult to adult relationship in the parent/child relationship. And hopefully it will keep adult children from moving back in with you!
