Why Do My Kids Disregard the Advice I've Given?

Most teenagers go through a period in which they are convinced that their parents are hopelessly old fashioned and conservative. Painful as this generation gap may be for parents to endure, it is normal but an important part of growing up. Teenagers need to sort their own identities and find out for themselves which of their parents' values they want to keep and which ones they don't.

Young adults often claim that they are nothing at all like their parents, that their ideas and values are completely free of parental influence. This is simply not the case. The more research we do in the family, the more we find that parents have a profound impact on their children through their lives.

I frequently see the influence that family values, traditions, behavior patterns and upbringing have on people's attitudes, personality and behavior. We are significantly influenced by our parents, both by their genetics and by eh beliefs, values, attitudes and types of behavior we learn from them. Who we are is the result of family influences that we have creatively developed for ourselves. Many of these influences are passed on from generation to generation through genetic code. Perfectionism and obsessive compulsive tendencies, for example, often show up in successive generations and have been traced to genetic influences.

Children reap the consequences not only of their parents' genetic material but of their parents' lifestyle choices as well, for several generations. Geneticists, for example, have discovered a four generation cycle in the occurrence of certain diseases within families. After the fourth generation, these diseases often do not occur in the next generation. There is no simple explanation for this phenomenon, but it is further evidence of our forebears' influence that we may not realize.

Many adults anticipate that when their parents die they will finally be free to live as they please. This is often not the case. Many who struggle with over bearing parents are still trying to free themselves from their influence long after their parents are dead. Our parents' death cannot free us from the internalized parent we carry in our minds. It is this internalized parent we strive to please and impress and whose blessing we long for. This is the parent who drives us and haunts and against whom we continuously rebel. Each of us must come to terms with this parent in order to be free, to live without guilt or resentment.