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Granny's Advice By Rosaleen Dickson, BA, MJ
- Dear Great Granny.
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I am very new at this. I am hearing impaired, so there is a limit to my socializing, but I do not feel lonely. I am a
retired Student Life Counselor from a school for the deaf in the States. I thought I had heard it all. Believe it or not, I cannot solve my own problems!
I have 5 grown children -- several of them highly sucessful, all of them married and with lives of their own -- so to speak. My problem is: my daughter, who just turned 42 years old is a family trouble-maker and she gets online and stirs up problem amoung all of us -- playing headgames, lying (she has always embelished, all of her life), and playing havoc with all of us, until we get together and realize what is happening.
She pulled away from the rest of us, due to her joining a Sourthern Baptist movement. We do not judge her for her choice, but we wonder at her claims to be a born again Christian, when all she does is cause trouble. She has no friends in her own hometown, has to go on line for companionship. After she "comes home" for a visit, it takes years for us to recuperate and straighten out all the lies, half truths, misunderstandings, etc.
"Silence is golden", is my motto, but my other children come to me with questions and tales.
Do you have any advice at all? My trouble making daughter has couseling but it is from her church staff and I am not sure they are as liberal as they should be.
Thankyou for listening,
- Dear troubled parent,
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This one troublemaking daughter is lonely, insecure, and needs you all so badly that she uses her antisocial behaviour to get attention. It is succeeding, but not enough. She will never stop until she feels that you all accept her and love her for what she is.
I believe you should counsel all your other children to try their darndest to give her their attention their love even when
she is causing them to hate her, and their support in her religion no matter how unreal it may seem to them.
Probably just the opposite of what you would be inclined to do. Instead of ignoring her and trying to distance yourselves from her, because of the harm she causes, you would all be best served by going overboard in the other direction. If you are successful in making her feel worthy, she might not find it necessary to create havoc for attention.
Without delving into why or how she became the kind of person she now is, you can just start from here and now and make her realize you all consider her to be worthy. Knowing that she lies you can all carry on as though she had not spoken, but always try to move the conversation into something she knows about and can feel good about.
Whatever she is doing, don't criticize. Take an interest but don't try to change her beliefs. Let her dwell on her feelings
as a born again Christian, and show some genuine pleasure that it makes her life fuller. You don't have to lead her life, but you can appreciate it.
These are just my suggestions.
Truly yours,
GG
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