How to Help Your Kid Forgive Their Parent Transcript
Preeti (00:00)
Hey everyone, it's Curt and Preeti from Maya4Life.com. Hey, Curt. So I had a tough conversation with a young person recently that I wanted to share with you and our viewers. I was talking to a young man in his late teens who has had a very fraught relationship with his father over many years. And mostly because his father has been in and out of his life and
and that's been disappointing and it's been tough for him. He loves his father very, very much and his father loves him very much. There is no doubt that there is enormous amounts of love between these two people. But this young man in the last year has set a boundary to not see his father because there was a series of events that transpired.
The culmination of which was a very painful event. there was no malicious intent here. The father was not doing something to this child to be mean, but the father's actions were very hurtful at the same time. And without giving up any confidences, this is something that happens often. Like people are good people who make mistakes. Oftentimes we're trying our best
and we don't quite get there. And over time, that can cause a lot of hurt and pain. I was proud of this young man for being able to stand up for himself and saying, this is not good for me. Something's wrong here. This is not how a dad is supposed to behave. That was really hard for him. He didn't want to do that, right? But in this conversation with him, I suggested, that at some point my wish for him would be that he'd be able to forgive his father. Not necessarily that they'd have a relationship again and ride off into the sunset. That's not for me to decide. But I put it to him, I said, hey, it would be really great if at some point you could do the work on yourself to get yourself to a place where you can forgive your dad for the mistakes that he made because it will be good for you.
because your emotional wellbeing, your emotional growth cannot be tied to another person. And being angry and upset and unforgiving of another person, even if you have set a healthy boundary and you don't have contact with them, they still have an emotional tie to you and you are still very much affected by this person and their past actions.
So Curt wanted to ask you, what do you think this young man should do and what would it look like for him to begin to forgive his dad?
Curt Dalton (02:29)
You brought up a great point first off that forgiveness isn't about the other person and as I would call it riding off in the sunset or the Disney movie at the end with the big hug. It's about letting go of that negative energy and thoughts and that history as we call it, intergenerational trauma or parental trauma and that he's just clearing the deck for himself. He's making himself well. He's making his future relationships better. He's making his relationship if he has or has kids better. It's all about him. It has nothing to do with his dad. So forgiveness is for the person who's doing the forgiving. If it does match up and there ever is, as you said, you know, a coming together and a mutual forgiveness and moving on, that's great. But in the end, it doesn't matter if the dad even knows or is part of it. It's to build up himself and to heal himself. And that could be done, again, in therapy.
We cover a lot of self -esteem things and generational traumas at the MAYA courses for teens. but as long as he has the amends as we call it, or he's had the healing, actually doesn't matter what the other person is. And in your case, it's a dad, but if it's a friend or a mother or a sister or an ex lover, you can forgive and it has nothing to do with them. doesn't mean you call them. It doesn't mean you have to walk up to them. It's for you. It's for you to build up your your big one, your higher self, and to let go and change that trauma or re -enacting that over and over in the next relationship.
Preeti (03:49)
Right. Holding on to this resentment is re -traumatizing yourself. And the thing is, that we don't have control of other people, places and things. We can't control even what our parents do. And if our parents do right by us, right, that we can't control, but we can control ourselves and our actions. So he did such a good job setting that boundary, but I wanted him to understand that he can continue to set that boundary and also continue to process what had happened between him and his father, and then do the work to get to forgiveness. And I actually did suggest that we go a little bit deeper in the MAYA program, because at MAYA, our program is designed to help you manage the really complicated things that are happening in your life. And if you're a teen and you're struggling with a major life issue, whether it's going to college, whether there's a sick family member, whether there's an issue with an estranged parent, we're here to support you navigate through that. And it's separate from therapy, it's different from that because what we offer at MAYA are practical solutions. What does it actually look like to move forward in your life with the information that some big change has happened? There's a saying that resentment is like drinking poison to spite another person.
But we all know that when we drink poison, the only person that gets hurt is ourselves. And that is the reason why forgiveness is so important. It's a reason why that it's emphasized in every religion, many philosophies, there's a million self -help books on forgiveness. And it's one of the reasons why we talk about it with our teens at MAYA. And we can also just remember that developmentally, forgiveness is a really advanced endeavor. This is all executive functioning, higher functioning, and frontal lobe. And so for our kids, that part of their brain is not fully developed yet. But we do believe that as adults, we're able to steer them in those directions and show them the positives, the pros of being able to actually get down, do the work.
know yourself and forgive the person that has hurt you.
Curt Dalton (05:52)
Yeah, and kids forgiving their parents and setting up boundaries for their parents is certainly a pretty traumatic event in life, depending on the age, even as adult children, if we're adults dealing with much older parents and something that you have to sometimes have help and talk to somebody through, whether it's through us at MAYA or trusted friends or therapists or sponsors, whatever you have. But those are some painful journeys sometimes that you need help with.
Preeti (06:15)
Hey Curt, how do we find, how do teens and parents find us at MAYA?
Curt Dalton (06:16)
All right. Good job.
Well, we're so famous on the internet now. You go to maya4Life.com, maya4life.com, get in touch with Preeti or myself. There's a lot of ways to contact us. We're all over the major social networks. You can watch our videos and check out some of the teaching modules we've been doing with teens. And like I said, we have some openings coming up for the newer classes. So check it out at maya4life.com.
Preeti (06:47)
Great. Thanks so much, Curt. You're welcome.
Curt Dalton (06:49)
Thank you, Preeti
SHOULD YOU APOLOGIZE TO YOUR KIDS AS A PARENT, WATCH BELOW..
Comments