I'm OK, You're My Parents: How to Overcome Guilt, Let Go of Anger, and Create a Relationship That Works - Hardcover

Dale Atkins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805073531 ISBN 13: 9780805073539

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2004

Synopsis

A guilt-free guide for adults seeking more satisfying relationships with their parents

In a recent study, half of all Americans rated their relationship with at least one parent as either “poor” or “terrible,” and more than a third felt this way about both parents. As life expectancy continues to rise and the parent-child relationship extends further into adulthood, this problem is becoming more prevalent than ever. Now, psychologist Dale Atkins presents a step-by-step plan for adults trying to come to terms with parents who are only human—before it is too late.

In I’m OK, You’re My Parents, Atkins applies the same intelligent, no-nonsense approach that’s made her a frequent guest on top-rated TV shows. She urges a restructuring of the relationships between adults and their aging parents and gives practical, specific advice on how to exorcise the demons of anger and resentment, untangle financial arrangements that cause stress and feelings of powerlessness, set limits on your parents’ demands for time and attention, turn a spouse or friends into a powerful resource, overcome your own resistance to change, and discover the redemptive power of humor.

This book draws on Atkins’s twenty-five years of experience as a relationship expert to present a comprehensive guide to repairing difficult relationships, gaining control, and building a life that you and your parents can live with for years to come.

About this title

About the Author

Dale Atkins, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and media commentator who appears regularly on the Today Show. The author of five books, she has contributed to such national magazines as Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, and Parents. She lives in Westport, Connecticut.

Reviews

Psychologist and media commentator Atkins draws on her experiences with clients to offer a prescriptive program to adults who have difficulty dealing with their parents. She describes a variety of common ways adults handle these relationships, such as still craving approval from parents, preferring to have as little contact as possible with them and feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a caretaker to aging parents. Atkins is extremely helpful when discussing these situations. She uses specific examples to help readers identify. She explains, for instance, that daughters and sons may be sending messages with their body language: "realize that changing your body language with [your parents] can be one of your most effective tools of persuasion, because body language is, for the most part, subliminal. Your parents may not know what's different about you, but they will register this change deep down." Atkins's detailed suggestions of behavior modification are sound, but her suggestion that readers do a fair amount of psychological exploration may turn off some. The book's last section, however, on troubleshooting, brims with valuable advice. It offers advice on what to do when "They Manipulate Me with Health Crises (Real and Imagined)"; "They Make Themselves a Little Too Much at Home"; "They Think I Am a Bad Parent"; "They Manage to Slip an Insult into Every Conversation"; "They Want Too Much of My Time"; and other common complaints. 10 b&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Atkins, a licensed psychologist, media commentator, and frequent Today Show guest, draws on 25 years of clinical experience to provide helpful advice for adults seeking more satisfying relationships with their parents. In easy-to-read, jargon-free language, she shows how readers can rid themselves of residual childhood anger and resentment, free themselves from destructive financial entanglements with parents, avoid manipulation via health crises, and gently set limits on parental demands for time and attention. To build a loving relationship with parents, the author asks that readers take stock of and alter their own behavior, which, she suggests, will trigger positive changes in parental behavior and will help readers build loving relationships in spite of past experiences. Atkins provides exercises and clear explanations that will help calm many a volatile adult child-parent relationship and prove helpful to many readers. Recommended for libraries with a high number of patrons providing parental care. Kathleen Hughes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From I’m OK, You’re My Parents:
“I’d kill him,” said Luanne, “but that would nullify the will, right?” I told her it was a good sign that she was still able to joke about the situation. At least that meant she hadn’t given up entirely. Her husband, Kurt, though, sat stone-faced.

Luanne was talking about her father, a well-known lawyer. The problem was that he was using his money to manipulate them, and he was doing his usual crackerjack job. Kurt was
struggling in his advertising career and Luanne’s father seemed to be making the most of that.

“He’s fantastically rich and he dangles her inheritance in front of us all the time,” Kurt
sputtered. “Whenever he thinks we aren’t seeing him enough or giving him enough time with the grandchildren or when he feels we haven’t been sufficiently reverential, he drops little hints about adjusting his will. I try not to react, but I feel so humiliated I can’t sleep.”

What they didn’t say until I coaxed it out of them was that they already regularly took money from her father, always let him pick up the tabs at their frequent dinners together (he always chose the place, naturally), and allowed him weekly toy-shopping sprees with the twins. Strange, isn’t it, how money, which is supposed to buy freedom, so often winds up purchasing little more than slavery?

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805073531
• ISBN 13: 9780805073539
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336