PenPenWrites

Angry parents grumble about a lack of a thank you for gifts given to an adult child or grandchild. We may grouse that our progeny call only when they’re stuck in traffic or carp about requests for the loan of a car but not for our companionship. It’s not necessarily a sign that our children and grandchildren are rude, uncaring individuals. If there’s a common thread amidst these frustrations, it might be this: A worry that we don’t matter, that we aren’t valued.

• As we age and as our adult children become more entangled in their complicated work and family lives, we may feel out of the loop. In fact, we probably are. I know I am. But that doesn’t mean our children and grandchildren don’t care about us. An unwritten thank you note, a phone call only when they have dead time in their car doesn’t mean we’re an afterthought.

We aren’t the only ones struggling with this. So are people thirty and forty years younger than we are. A website dedicated to mattering, The Mattering Movement, has this to say on the matter:

• Research shows that at the root of many mental health struggles in young people—pressure, anxiety, depression, and loneliness—is an unmet need to feel that we matter: that we are valued for who we are at our core, and that we can add meaningful value to the lives of others.

Could this concern about feeling irrelevant be at the heart of our anger at our grown kids or grandkids about not calling, not writing, not keeping us up to date on what’s going on in their lives? Take the lack of a thank you for a gift. It isn’t that we need to know they liked the sweater we sent or the check that we tucked into a gift card. It’s often the feeling of being ignored. We’ve reached out to them–and this is especially true for those of us who live a good distance away from our children–and they have not reached back. Not even with a virtual hug.

In a previous post, psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb took the thank you conundrum even further:

• No matter how much we tell ourselves that gifts aren’t about reciprocity, the reality is that they often hold emotional significance in which both parties are essentially asking to be recognized. The giver wants acknowledgment of their thoughtfulness and investment, while the receiver wants confirmation that they’ve been truly seen. Both are essentially asking, “Do I matter?”

Her advice on the thank you issue–and it applies to other frustrations as well–is not to attack, as in, “What is wrong with your parenting that your kids didn’t send me a thank you note for the books I chose for them?” Rather, it’s to reach out in a friendly, sympathetic way. Here’s an opening gambit Gottlieb suggests as a possible road forward:

• You might say, “I know I mentioned the gifts and thank-you notes before, but I realized that what I really want is to have a stronger relationship with you and your family. What can I do to make that happen?”

If you’re interested in further reading on the matter of mattering, here are two recent books on the subject:

• The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, by Roberta Newberger Goldstein.
• Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, by Jennifer Breheny Wallace.

painting: possibly S. Boza