Do you ever wonder why parents and their children are so good at pushing each other’s buttons? When I was a teenager, my mom used to say things that would seem perfectly innocuous to an objective bystander, but irritated the hell out of me. Of course, I assumed that was because she was just so annoying . . . until I had a teenager of my own. Suddenly it was me who was pushing my daughter’s buttons, and you can be sure she was just as good at pushing mine.
Looking back, it’s obvious that none of this was intentional. Neither of us had any interest in irritating or hurting the other—in fact, we were actively trying to avoid it. But this only made our exquisitely accurate button-pushing that much more confusing. One day, after we’d spent an interminable car ride poking at each other’s sore spots, I blurted out that I didn’t want us to do this to each other anymore. She looked at me with genuine surprise, and for a moment I thought I’d broken through. Then she shrugged and said: “You’re my father—this is how it’s supposed to be.”
I used to think that my mother and my teenage daughter had little in common. Eventually, though, I decided I was annoyed at both of them for the exact same reason. It was that way they had of stating a dubious and unsupported opinion with utter confidence, then defending it with complete certainty. But it took me years to realize the reason I found that behavior so irritating in them is that I found it even more irritating in myself. I had deluded myself into thinking I was the apple who had rolled away from the tree—but there I was, sitting right in its shadow.
If your kid (or for that matter your parent) is really getting under your skin, here’s a thought experiment for you. Think of some tendency or part of your personality that you’re not proud of. Maybe it’s some flaw that’s been a part of you for a long, long time. Perhaps you were criticized for it when you were a kid. Or maybe it’s a defense mechanism that comes out reflexively, whenever you’re feeling scared or insecure. In any case, you know it’s not the best version of you, and you’ve wished more than once that it wasn’t there. As a matter of fact, most of the time you pretend that it isn’t there. You convince yourself that you’ve overcome it, or that it’s not so bad, or that you’ve managed to keep it under wraps. Then, in a moment of stress or anxiety, it suddenly grabs your emotional steering wheel and swerves you into a ditch, and you’re left feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
Now, think of times when you’ve seen that same trait or behavior in someone else. How did you react? How did it feel to confront the thing you like the least about yourself in someone else? The odds are pretty good that your emotional gatekeeper quickly rerouted your shame and self-contempt onto that other person. Did you react more strongly than you should have? Did you end up red in the face or hot under the collar? Did it expose a big fat button that was just waiting to be pushed?
This could happen with anyone. It could be a store clerk or someone at the DMV. But with our families—the people who share our genes, our history and our daily lives—the chances that we’ll also share some unflattering traits is much greater. The stakes are higher, too. It doesn’t take much for the hidden shame we feel about ourselves to transform into a hidden shame that we feel about our kids. If they sense that shame, and they almost always will, they’ll internalize it. Then they’ll pass it on to your grandchildren. It’s the unwanted gift that keeps on giving.
Shame is a monster that we keep in the basement. We try to forget it, but it lurks in the shadows, licking its wounds and skulking around at the bottom of the stairs. It feeds on darkness, and grows stronger the more we pretend that it isn’t there. Even as we deny its existence, we live in fear of what it might do. Until we acknowledge it and force it out into the sunlight, we’ll keep seeing its image in the people we love, and keep coming after them with pitchforks and knives.
Jeff Lee annoys his daughter a little less every year, in Seattle WA
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