What if You’ve Raised a Horrible Child?
“Dear Dennis, you gave birth a master manipulator…you raised a horrible [freaking] person, the nerve of you Dennis,” Kendrick Lamar, Meet the Grahams
Last week we kicked off Part 1 of our 3 Part Series exploration of themes from Kendrick Lamar’s single Meet the Grahams. Possibly the most infamous drop of Kendricks’ during his beef with Drake, this song was released within an hour of the music video reveal of Drake’s single Family Matters. In Meet the Grahams, Kendrick addresses members of Drake’s family directly and ends with a verse written directly to Drake. And as of the time of today’s post, Meet the Grahams has garnered over 67 million plays on Spotify alone.
This week, for Part 2 of our 3 Part series of exploring themes from Kendrick Lamar’s single Meet the Grahams, we are focusing on two specific lines in the song. While addressing the parents of an alleged “master manipulator,” Kendrick sings, “you raised a horrible [freaking] person, the nerve of you…” This sentiment is a reality of many parents who look at the life their child is living and think “I raised a horrible [freaking] person.” And it’s challenging to navigate this realization.
If you’re a parent and you’re trying to make sense out of your identity as a parent in light of your child’s decisions to harm self, community, or others, you may be asking yourself questions like: “Where did I go wrong? Is this all my fault? Is it all their other parents’ fault? What if I had only done that one thing better? Am I a horrible person too?” Wrestling with these kinds of questions often leads to parents of adult children seeking therapy at Future Full of Hope. We join with our clients to process their pasts, embrace their present, and create their futures. As you process your past, you learn to make sense out of your parenting history and the nature of your relationship with your child throughout your child’s childhood. You gain awareness of the way that your parenting may or may not have impacted who your child is today. When you learn to embrace your present, you learn to recognize your greatest successes as a parent, to acknowledge possible shortcomings, and to work on accepting the reality of who your child is without taking ownership for their decisions. When you create your future, you learn to forgive yourself, to make community restitution (emotional or otherwise) and the clarify the nature of the relationship that you have with your child (and with other people) today.
If you’re wrestling with your identity as a parent in response to your child’s decisions, you may also want to consider some of the below tips to cope with your experience:
Separate your sense of responsibility for your child’s choices: At some point, your child has to be held accountable for their own behavior. You are not solely responsible for every choice they make.
Acknowledge your successes and shortcomings in parenting: You are, however, responsible for the ways in which you cared for, supported, harmed, ignored, or neglected your child as they grew up. The choices that you made shaped them into the person they are today.
Learn from your successes and mistakes in parenting: And then make changes to the way that you engage in your relationships: For example, if upon reflection, you think you were often harsh to judge your child, use today to practice patience and compassion in your relationships.
Recognize the complex amalgamation of your child: The answer to the question of “nature vs nurture” is yes - you can find peace in working toward the reality that your child is who they are due to a number of factors, which includes in part your relationship with them.
Forgive Yourself: Your feelings are okay, but continuing to shame and blame yourself ad infinitum for mistakes you may have made in parenting does not serve you or the world you’re living in.
Seek Support: If You’re a Parent, when your child makes a decision to harm others it can be stigmatizing for you too. Your immediate support system might immediately distance themselves. Your friends might no longer answer texts. Parents may no longer check in. Your connection to other people is essential to your own experience and even if difficult, your initiation in utilizing or establishing supports is your responsibility. whether that be through therapy.
As a reminder, these are just tips for coping and are not a replacement for therapy. If you’re a parent of a child who’s done harm to others, broken the law, demonstrates choices and behaviors of low moral character, or demonstrated otherwise poor behavior, participating in therapy at Future Full of Hope can help you to make sense of your experience. Start today.
If you’re ready to start therapy to make sense out of your sense of identity as a parent, follow the link below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with Kevin
AI Disclaimer: This post is original and written by Kevin Boyd of Future Full of Hope, PLLC. No AI tool was leveraged in the development of this post
