Jacquelyn Mitchard’s May 2 column, A mother faces life’s toughest challenge, has this startling beginning.
My son hates me. His friends and his brothers and my husband tell me that he is speaking his own rage and regret. But I know that he hates me. He may not always hate me; but since he is probably more like me than any of my six children – that is, stubborn as a dog shaking a bone in its mouth – he’ll probably hate me for a good long while.
She contrasts this damaged relationship with her son to a friend whose son died from cancer. Her point? That no matter how much she agonizes over her own son, at least she has a chance at having a relationship with him because he’s alive. True enough. It’s a gutsy column, in that she’s revealing to the public a painful situation in her own family that’s not yet resolved. No other nationally known columnist does this, that I know of, and I admire her for it.
What’s troubling is what she says about her son. I winced twice as I reread the column, trying to put myself in her son’s place:
> His friends and his brothers and my husband tell me that he is speaking his own rage and regret
I’d be mad at being psychoanalyzed in public, i.e., being told what the true motives of my behavior are. And I’d feel betrayed by my friends, brothers, and step-dad… and therefore mad at them. And mad at my mother for her part in their betrayal.
> I love him. I will always love him, just as Mary Alice will always love Mark. Mark was a sterling student, never gave his parents grief and had a unique generosity and compassion for people. I wish my son would treat me that way, someday. Perhaps he never will.
I’d be mad at being compared unfavorably to someone else’s wonderful son. And I’d likely interpret the “I wish my son would treat me….” as my mother laying a guilt trip on me, which would also make me mad.
Whatever’s going on with their relationship is undoubtedly complex, and I’m presumptuous to try to make sense of it from these little tidbits. But it seems to me that Mitchard is unwittingly making things worse. This is probably not just a rageful kid with mistaken ideas about what happened in the past. More likely, what happened in the past has triggered a pattern of interaction between mother and son, and it’s this pattern of current behaviors for both of them that’s really keeping them stuck. Maybe other family members get caught up in it, too. Maybe there’s stuff from the son’s relationship with his dad that never got resolved before his dad died. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as what’s going on now to maintain the rageful interaction.
So my advice to Jacquelyn: be curious about what it is you’re doing now that’s contributing to maintaining the stuck situation between you and your son. What you wrote in the column is a clue. There are probably dozens of other little things like that.
You’re correct to realize that he might never change how he relates to you. He just doesn’t have much of a chance if you keep adding fuel to the fire between you, just like you don’t have much of a chance if he keeps up his hurtful rages. But since you’re the mother, you first.