Arguing with your parents: causes and solutions
Getting into an argument with your parents is no fun, no matter who is right or what the cause is. Feeling that your primary caregivers are suddenly against you, at any age, can make you feel unsteady. The feeling that you are on your own. Because the relationship with your parents is often the strongest, most people find it important to resolve this argument. But how do you do that?
In this article, I discuss causes of arguing with your parents and possible solutions.
Causes of arguments with your parents
Throughout your life, you may have arguments with your parents, but the causes can vary greatly. Sometimes it’s due to the way your parents treat you, and sometimes it’s due to the way your parents treat each other and how that makes you feel. There are several possible causes that can lead to an argument with your parents.
Education
The upbringing you receive—or even the lack thereof—can cause you to distance yourself from your parents later in life, which can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding and, ultimately, arguments about the time you spend with them or how you choose to live your life.
You may be making very different decisions than your parents envisioned for you. You will become a musician, while your parents wanted to make you a lawyer or doctor.
Or, on the contrary, you may feel that they have done the whole parenting thing wrong and find it hard to put that behind you. This is a feeling many people suffer from in adolescence. Usually this feeling disappears again as you move on with your life, but if this feeling does not disappear, it is important to do something about it.
Puberty
One adolescent is not the other, so it may well be that you don't get into arguments with your parents at all during adolescence, but arguing adolescents are a relatively common phenomenon in families.
The friends you have, the clothes you wear and the tidy state of your bedroom. These can be all kinds of causes for arguments with your parents during adolescence.
This struggle is generally a struggle for control. During adolescence, children are more focused on developing their own identity, but parents sometimes find it difficult to give their child that space.
Failure to provide that space over time can result in conflict.
Parents argue with each other
If your parents often argue with each other in front of you, this can cause you to think it's normal to argue. In fact, research shows that children who eventually become violent toward parents have often seen their parents argue with each other first.
As a result, you have not developed good discussion skills, because your example is precisely that of your parents arguing with each other. This also makes it more likely that in addition to arguing with your parents, you are more likely to argue with your partner or other friends.
In some cases, a child may actually make a very conscious decision not to become that way later, but it can go the other way as well.
One parent cheated
Cheating is something that is incredibly insidious and can make you really disappointed in your parents or one of your parents. Of course, this can result in arguments because you also feel the betrayal of your parents' failed relationship.
This can also significantly damage your sense of trust in others.
Bad relationship with your father
Fathers play an incredibly important role in your development, something that is not recognized enough. Unfortunately, research shows that a bad relationship with your father can result in (striking) arguments with your parents( 1).
Solutions for arguing with your parents
Researchers indicate that in an argument with parents, you have individual solutions, as well as solutions that involve everyone who participated in the argument. In this blog, I focus on the individual solution.
Otherwise, you may have additional arguments again about your parents having to participate in resolving the conflict. This is a step you can take, though, if individual resolution does not help.
Tip #1: Stop arguing
Especially once you pass the age of 18, you are legally responsible for your own decisions. Do you want to do something different from your parents? Then that's your right.
Keeping talking about your decision and arguing about it may give your parents the idea that you are still open to reason and that they can still change your decision through argument.
This can undermine your confidence in your decision, even though you want your parents to trust you to make adult decisions. This, in turn, can lead to disappointment.
You’ll essentially start by saying “no.” Saying “no” to your parents and truly making your own decisions—even when they disagree—is nerve-wracking and often requires self-confidence.
For example, an acquaintance of mine has his own business. While he was with an entrepreneur for an assignment, that entrepreneur spoke to him that he could also work for him as an employee. This he refused, even though he was just starting his business. The chance that his business would be a success in the sense that he could make a living from it was not at all certain at that time.
When he told this to his mother, she got mad at him. How could he have turned his back on this financial security? Why hadn't he said "yes"?
Precisely because of the confidence he had in his decision, he did not really argue with his mother about the decision and whether he should still take the job and then have his business in addition to it.
Finally, he is now 4 years along. His business is running well enough and his mother is proud of him. Despite misunderstanding the decision to live his life his way and to disregard his mother's advice.
So just by not entering into the conversation, you can avoid the negative feelings in an argument.
You can work on your self-confidence in multiple ways in order to be stronger when you are just not ready to discuss your decision.
Tip 2: Accept your parents as they are
Your parents need to accept you as you are, but you also need to accept that your parents are the way they are. Family is not something you seek out, like friends. Chances are a family member, such as one of your parents, has a trait you find annoying.
Perhaps you feel that your mother is always keeping up appearances or you have a father who has a totally different political opinion than you and you just can't relate to that.
Perhaps your parents also make decisions you don’t agree with, such as which nursing home they want to move into. Even then, trusting your parents can be important to prevent feelings of anger and disappointment during the discussion about this decision.
Just by accepting your family, you also learn how to better deal with colleagues you didn't choose either.
Tip 3: Stay calm
If you do end up having this discussion, listen to what your parents have to say and make your own points clear as well. To avoid an argument, it’s important to stay calm during this conversation.
Do you find it difficult to stay calm? Then you can work with a hypnotherapist to visualize the discussion with all the emotions that come with it. During such a visualization, a hypnotherapist can teach you calming techniques that will greatly reduce the chances of the discussion degenerating into an argument with swearing and ranting.
After all, chances are you're going to figure out that the argument never ends. "oh here we go again...sigh" and because of this, your attention is not on the discussion. By staying calm you listen better yourself and therefore you can also make your point better to your parents by hearing sooner where their misunderstanding is that you need to remove.
Are you interrupted while explaining your point of view? Then you can say "I understand you, but please listen to my point of view."
Tip 4: Say sorry when you're wrong
Did you do something that made your parents mad at you? Like borrowing money without having the means to pay it back? At least say sorry if you were really wrong.
Accept it even when they say sorry. Not accepting apologies when they are rightly given only leads to more conflict in the future.
Sometimes, however, you have to accept your parents as they are, and if sorry is not in their vocabulary, sometimes that's bad luck. Then the best remedy is to agree to disagree.
Would you like to learn more about acceptance and staying calm through hypnosis? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis and check out the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
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