[Blindtlk] Being Disrespected: How to Handle

[Gary Wunder]

Hello, Brandon. I am fifty-nine years old, and though I know that my parents
respect me very much, I still don't have the same kind of relationship with
them that I do with friends and other family members. They are parents. They
are used to caretaking. They are absolutely certain I need their advice. It
doesn't matter whether the advice has to do with a cobweb they think I don't
know about or how my grandson buys too much at the store and how they helped
me by putting some of the things from the shopping basket back on the shelf.

I notice that I am speaking of my parents as they, although my mother died
about six years ago. When she came to my house it was not uncommon for her
to walk around with a paper towel grabbing up dog hair. It didn't even
matter that my father laughed at her for doing it. She was going to be
helpful.

I don't know how we do it, but I think many of us figure out that
relationships with parents are never going to be relationships among equals.
My father believes that I can write far better than he can. He thinks that I
have people skills that are better than his. But he still thinks I am naïve
when it comes to matters of race, gender, politics, how to spend money, how
to discipline children, and what is involved in having a marriage where the
man is the man and the woman is the woman. Most certainly I tolerate
comments and behavior from my father that I would not tolerate from anyone
else. There are things that I let go by without arguing that I would go to
the mat with others about.

None of this deals with your question about the house except to say that
perhaps the most kind, loving, and helpful parents can at times be high
maintenance. I remember what I regard as a particularly funny line from a
situation comedy that I saw almost 40 years ago. A young woman tells a
friend that she is afraid to go home and spend the night with her parents
because her mom is such a caretaker that the main character is afraid that
she would wake up in the morning to find herself in diapers. This is
obviously an exaggerated situation comedy that has nothing to do with
blindness but everything to do with parents finding it hard to regard their
offspring as truly independent adults.

Warmly,

Gary