Difficult Parents

As your self-absorbed parent grows older and becomes more dependent on you, hurtful relationships may resurface and become further strained. In the tradition of Children of the Self-Absorbed, author Nina Brown offers the first book for adult children of aging narcissistic or self-absorbed parents. You will learn practical, powerful strategies for navigating the intense negative feelings that your parents can incite as well as tips to protect your children from the criticism, blame, or hostility that may exist between you and their grandparent.

Full of actionable advice and insider tips, When Your Aging Parent Needs Help provides practical and flexible steps that move concerned families toward effective elder care action, while respecting a parent's dignity and autonomy.

Do You Have An Aging Parent Who — Blames you for everything that goes wrong? Cannot tolerate being alone, wants you all the time? Is obsessed with health problems, real, or imagined? Make unreasonable and/or irrational demands of you? Is hostile, negative and critical? Coping with these traits...

As John Henry Clark notes in his book, Dying, as we get older we start to think about our own mortality. Those thoughts become even stronger as our parents age. It’s usually around this time we realize that time is no longer on our side, and if we really want to know more about our parents and the legacy they want to leave, we need to talk to them. Now. That’s exactly what Clark decided to do. Now in his fifties – with his father in his seventies – he sets out to record his father’s memories and his conversations with him and to put them into this touching slice-of-life memoir. ...

Instant Help for Parents of Adult Children 400+ copies bought this month Stop Raising Adult-Children: Break the Cycle of Blame and Take Your Life Back If you feel trapped supporting an adult child who won’t launch, paying their bills, absorbing their anger, and sacrificing your own peace, you’re not failing as a parent. You’re caught in a cultural pattern no one warned you about, and there is a way out that doesn’t require abandoning your child or yourself. Today’s parents are raising legal adults who still expect to be treated like children, while blaming their parents for every ...

This book is for you if you love your parents, grandparents, or other elderly people and genuinely want to help and care for them, but find yourself struggling with challenges such as: Your efforts to help them are not appreciated. They constantly complain or display a pessimistic attitude. They appear inflexible, stubborn, and unwilling to change. They struggle to learn even the basics of digital equipment. They fail to understand your point of view. They ignore health precautions prescribed by doctors. They engage in risky activities that could endanger their health. They sometimes treat ...

The best news on the planet is that your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be happy. In fact, author Karen C.L. Anderson will take it a step further and say your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be free, peaceful, contented, and joyful. You can emotionally separate without guilt: Inspired by her own journey, Anderson's Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters shows women how to emotionally separate from their mothers without guilt and anxiety so they can finally create a life based on their own values, desires, needs, and preferences.

Counselor Jim Newheiser understands the many types of challenges adults may face in their relationship with their parents, whether it be their parents' financial strain, a struggle to properly care for their home or their health, conflict related to care for the grandchildren, or destructive relational choices. He helps listeners understand their responsibility to honor their parents, and to be prepared to help with their needs, but also to recognize their first responsibility to their relationship with the Lord and their own marriage and children.

Your mother posts on Facebook about being a "blessed mom" while you're having panic attacks at the thought of calling her. Sound familiar? "After everything I've done for you..." "You're too sensitive..." "No one will ever love you like I do..." "I was just trying to help..." These phrases echo in your head long after the conversation ends. You apologize for existing. You feel guilty when good things happen to you. You're exhausted from managing everyone's emotions except your own. And the worst part? Everyone thinks she's wonderful. Have you ever found yourself asking: • Why do I feel ...

You love your mother, but she drives you crazy. She controls, criticizes, and butts into your life constantly. Then when you try and set boundaries, the pushback and resulting guilt are so bad you tell yourself...it's just not worth it. Is your mother narcissistic, borderline, or just plain difficult? Are you empathetic, sensitive, and kind? If so, chances are you have fallen into one or all of the hidden psychological traps that constitute the Good Daughter Syndrome.

The book highlights the importance of setting realistic boundaries and consistency, showing how to involve your child in setting these limits to promote ownership and cooperation. Positive discipline techniques, such as natural consequences and reward systems, are explored in depth to help you guide your child's behavior constructively. The key to the approach is empathy. You'll learn how to see the world through your child's eyes, validate their feelings, and build an emotional vocabulary that helps them express their complex emotions. Effective communication strategies, such as active ...

Being a parent is one of the most rewarding experiences in life, but every family faces challenges that can be frustrating and overwhelming. For more than 25 years, internationally renowned clinical psychologist Thomas W. Phelan's 1-2-3 Magic has helped millions of parents, teachers, and caregivers raise independent, emotionally intelligent children and build happier, healthier families - all through an easy to understand program that you'll swear "works like magic".

Understand your childhood, reclaim your power and create a future free from the patterns of the past. Break free from the patterns of emotionally immature parenting. If you’ve ever felt unseen, like you weren’t good enough, or that your struggles don’t quite fit into books about childhood...

Difficult brings to life the conflicts that arise for mothers who are confronted with the unexpected and burdensome dependencies of their adult children associated with mental illness, substance use, or chronic unemployment. Through real stories of mothers and their challenging adult children, this book offers accessible, provocative, and, at times, shocking illustrations of the excruciating maternal dilemma: Which takes precedence—the needs of the mother or of the distressed adult child? Difficult addresses a family situation which too many keep secret. 

In Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children, Sheri McGregor, MA, helps parents break free from emotional pain - and move forward in their own lives. As a loving mother to whom the unthinkable happened, McGregor knows the horrible shock that wrings a parent dry, triggers denial, blame, anger, and shame. With empathy and understanding, as well as tools, the latest research, and insight from more than 9,000 parents of estranged adult children, McGregor helps parents of estranged adults plan, prepare for emotional triggers, and prevail over pain.

Want to improve your relationship with your problematic parents? This honest and supportive guide, written by an experienced teen therapist, will help. This book is for you―not your parents. Step-by-step, using approaches that are relatively easy but bring big results, you’ll be guided in...

You hung up the phone and sat there for a second. Nothing dramatic happened. No blowup, no obvious wound. Just that familiar hollowness you've carried since childhood and never quite found a word for. This book is the word. It isn't about monster parents or nightmare childhoods. It's about something far more common and far more confusing — the parent who loved you and still couldn't see you. Who sacrificed and controlled in the same breath. Who made it exhausting to be known by them, and sent you into adulthood fluent in everyone else's emotions but a stranger to your own. Emotionally ...

Having a narcissistic parent can create long lasting effects on our self-esteem, confidence and subsequent relationships. Raised By Narcissists will teach you to acknowledge and begin to heal from the difficult experience of narcissistic parental abuse, reclaim your experience and move on to build a better future.

Ever since his mother was killed in the line of duty in Iraq, Derrick has been absolutely certain that the apocalypse is coming. And he's prepared: he's got plenty of canned goods, he's fully outfitted with HAZMAT suits, and he's building himself a sturdy fallout shelter. When his neighbor Misty insists on helping with the shelter, Derrick doesn't think it's such a good idea. Misty's just had a kidney transplant, and her reaction to her brush with death is the opposite of Derrick's. When Derrick's promised apocalypse day begins, Derrick and Misty have to figure out a way to survive.

You didn't choose this parent. But you can choose what happens next. Maybe they explode without warning. Maybe nothing you do is ever right. Maybe you walk on eggshells just to keep the peace — and feel guilty when the peace doesn't hold. Living with a difficult parent is exhausting in a way that's hard to explain. You can't just leave. You can't make them understand. And the people around you don't quite get it — because from the outside, everything looks fine. Here's the truth no one says out loud: You cannot fix your parent. But you absolutely can protect yourself. Not Your Fault is ...