Dear Carolyn: In three years my husband and I will be empty-nesters. At that time, we plan to move back to our home state, where weve already invested in a house to retire to. We spend time there in the summer with family and I get to know people in town.
This sounds great, but I truly love our current town of 15 years where Ive made many good friends and acquaintances. How do I overcome my feelings of grief at leaving my current location? How do I stop feeling angst about something good weve planned for many years? We planned the other location because its on a lake, which we anticipate will draw our kids to visit. I know having my kids leave the nest is an inevitable transition, but the added change of location has got my feathers ruffled. Fretting the Future
Answer: Is moving your only option? Just one of many possible alternatives: Can you rent out the lake house for break-even or profit, use it yourselves only for summers/ holidays (i.e. when family would normally gather), and keep living in a smaller/less expensive place in your current town?
Its risky to move for a reason that hasnt happened yet. Maybe your kids would rather visit their town of 15 years than the lake you picked out.
Of course, its possible this is just typical transition anxiety, and youll be fine once youre resettled; leaving any location where youve found happiness is going to be painful. But if youre not as excited about the plan as you once were, then its OK to remind yourself that the plan isnt in charge, you and your husband are, and to reopen the discussion accordingly.
Dear Carolyn: Our 9-year-old daughter feels we favor her 6-year-old brother. She feels he gets more attention and love from us when this is assuredly not the case. Shes had this concern since he was born and its ebbed and flowed over the years.
Any objective observer would say that, except for the first year or so when he was a baby, she consistently gets more attention because shes older, involved in more activities, has more social connections and needs more academic and emotional support.
Weve been very careful not to feed into her bean counting by pointing out all the times when she gets more attention than her brother, but last week, after a tearful hour of her expressing how she feels, we felt it was important for her to look at this objectively and illustrated all the special attention she got over the course of the last couple of days. It seemed to settle her for the moment, but were really averse to this as a support strategy, as it causes her self-esteem to be driven by external factors rather than internal ones and we just do not want to encourage bean counting.
Last night it came up again and all I could say was that its just not true. Im sorry she feels that way but theres nothing there and she needs to train herself to shoo away these negative thoughts when theres no truth to them.
Thats assuredly not the right answer, either. She does believe we love her but just feels shes not loved as much as her brother and it makes her sad/mad/frustrated. I feel like were failing her because we dont know how to help her see that we dont love her brother more. Not Bean Counting
Answer: I dont doubt you on the balance of love and attention. However, in (reasonably) responding to your daughter the way you have, youve unwittingly made the problem worse:
She believes you love her brother more, thats Bummer 1 for her. Now youve added Bummer 2 by consistently and repeatedly calling her wrong and correcting her every time she tries to be heard.
This might seem like an immovable obstacle, since what are you going to do, assure her shes right when shes wrong? But you can validate her, genuinely, if you break her concerns down to smaller parts.
There is something shes seeing that is true to her. The conclusions shes drawing might be incorrect, but at some level her senses are going to be right and, again, she craves that simple validation. You did X, brother did Y, someone else did Z, and she saw it, and her angsty responses to them cant be denied away.
So, honestly and appropriately validate her X, Y and Z without also buying into the conclusion shes drawn from them. You can find out what X, Y and Z are by asking: Hm, why do you say that? Is something specific bothering you? Tell me more. In other words, listen before you dismiss.
