Boomer parents, who were much more involved/closer/huggy with their children growing up than their own parents tended to be with them, are having a hard time getting that when it comes to healthy parenting, there comes a time when it’s important to get on with your own life—and they, theirs. That doesn’t mean that you can’t relate to them in special ways, but it’s a cruel joke, indeed, that if you want them to be healthy, you can’t relate in the same old way!

Trying to do so has created a class of parents that Dr. Joshua Coleman describes simply and elegantly as “hurt.” It was his book that inspired these thoughts: When Parents Hurt. I’d seen an advance copy, now the book has now been published by Harper Collins, and it’s worth pursuing.

Here’s the rub. even Doc Coleman, who is very good about explaining that maybe how your kids turned out/feel about you really ISN’T your fault, says that if you want the possibility of a happy ending, it’s all up to you. That’s right. Doctor Coleman explains that the only way to even broach mending the shortcomings is for you to do the hard work of confronting the deficiencies (real or imagined) of the past, making amends, rectifying wrongs, changing, etc.—not them!

For instance, you grown child comes to you and says: “I feel like you really don’t give a shit about me!”

What you’re tempted to say: “Is this what I get after all I did for you?”

What you should say: “I’m really sorry it came across that way. The last thing I want is for you to feel like I don’t care about you…I’m sure it’s not easy for you to tell me these things. Of course, we both know you’re feeling betrayed and hurt, etc. etc.”

In other words, the good doctor wants you to take the high road, look at the relationship through the child’s perspective, (that’s how Coleman puts it) transcend one’s ego, deny one’s own reality, one’s true feelings, one’s honest voice (that’s how I put it) if you hope to potentially have a better relationship with your adult child.

At bottom, he wants the boomer parent to become psychologically and spiritually mature, able to put another’s’ needs before one’s own, delay gratification, and so on. I believe him, that this is ultimately the only way that parents and adult children can improve their relationships. It’s just so unfair! I mean, what happened to modern technology and science—and the notion that we boomers were the center of the known universe, empowered to get whatever we wanted out of life, sooner or later?

To my mind, the real happy ending would have excluded the apologizing, confessing, listening with an open mind and setting one’s own ego aside part. In fact, our kids would still be coming to us to be their everything, mommy and daddy cheering on the sidelines, helping with the homework, entwined in each others’ lives on a daily basis.

It’s just not fair! Simultaneous whining and maturity—an uneasy truce with life’s injustices--and the boomer generation’s next big challenge.

Carol Orsborn