Episode Summary 06: When Holiday Gift Boundaries Don’t Work (What Does?)

I can at least see the path forward to hopefully get myself to a place where, like you're saying, the two are disconnected, where a gift is just a gift. It doesn't mean I haven't been seen or understood.

Hi, I'm Adrian in suburban Chicagoland, and this is Your Parenting Mojo with Jen Lumanlan. Jen is working on a series of episodes based on the challenges you are having with your child. From toothbrushing to sibling fighting to the endless resistance to whatever you ask, Jen will look across all the evidence from thousands of scientific papers across a whole range of topics related to parenting and child development to help you see solutions to the issue you're facing that hadn't seen possible before. If you'd like a personalized answer to your challenge, just make a video if possible, or an audio clip if not, that's less than one minute long that describes what's happening and email it to support@yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Have you ever gotten a gift that made you want to cry, but not in a good way? Maybe your mother-in-law sends stuff that you immediately donate, or your own mom keeps buying things that feel totally opposite to your values. And then you either think, what's wrong with her? Why can't she stop sending me crap that I've told her I don't want? Or what's wrong with me, and why can't I just gratefully accept what she sends? Here's what I've learned over the years. When gifts trigger us this badly, it's usually about something way bigger than the gift itself. Today, I'm sharing a short section from a coaching session with parent Sam, who has spent years wrestling with gifts from her mom. We explored why it's so destabilizing for her to receive the gifts, and a strategy she can use to find peace with this. After Sam introduced herself, I asked her to tell me if there was a specific gift that she wanted to share with us that was emblematic of gift-giving in her relationship with her mom.

I mean, there have been so many, so many bad ones over the years. I should have asked my husband to remind me of some of them before this call, but the dancing cactus was a pivotal moment. But I think that it's worth going back a little bit before that to get a little bit of context, because the gift-giving is the elephant in the room in our relationship between my mom and I. When I was pregnant with my first child, you know, and we were already getting a lot of like, can I send you this? I want to send you this. And then without asking, packages arriving to our home. Again, we don't live in the same state, so everything is sort of like there's distance involved. We could see the writing on the wall and the gifts received. And so, we, my husband and I put our heads together and went back to our parents with this kind of proposal of like, we know that you guys are so excited about your first grandkid and that you want to be really involved.

We appreciate the love and the support, and we know that it's hard not living closer. And so, we want, you know, to not stand in the way of your ability to give your grandchild gifts. And so, our proposal was, we will keep a wish list up to date that has things that we're needing, wanting, interested in, and we ask that you buy from that list. And that way we can, you know, like feel good about, we have a little bit more control over the stores that those items are coming from, supporting stores that are local to our community or that we have good relationships with versus big box retailers. We could also have a little bit of control over, you know, the like type of gift itself. We live in a relatively small home. We don't have a ton of space. And so are mindful of the size and the volume of things. It felt like it was like fairly collaborative, well-received. And I think we were feeling like, okay, we've cracked the nut. Like we've had in our marital life, in my life before marriage, a lot of bad gifts, but like new page, new chapter, we're going to figure it out. And it worked pretty well for a little bit until it didn't.

And then we just started getting Amazon packages arriving at our house at various times. And the real, the cactus moment was like one of those where there, I think was a visit coming up and a package arrived and announced maybe a day or so before the visit. We opened it up and it was this like crazy dancing cactus. And again, it's like, I can see it logically where I'm like, Sam, just let it go. You know, just like give your kid the cactus. And we did, but it, it just like really bums me out. It doesn't feel like it responds to like me as a person, that she doesn't see me as a person or respect me as a person. I love my neighborhoods by nothing group and usually find that to be a good way to like get things back to a home where they will be appreciated. And so that happened with the cactus and it really upset her. It hurt her feelings that I was sort of, that I was upset and that I was like, okay, I told you this is what's going to happen. And now this is what I'm doing. And I think there was some comment like, and now I can't remember if this was really sad or if this is just the impression I was left with, but something I was left with the impression of like, why can't you just let me be happy for a little bit? This is what brings me joy. Why can't you allow that?

Sam has this history of trying to set boundaries around gift giving and her mom keeps crossing them. When we talked more, I learned that Sam has two moms and this particular mom didn't live with Sam and her other mom. And that distance, both physical and relational adds some complexity to their relationship. I asked Sam to try something that might sound a little bit unusual. I had her actually embody her mom for a few minutes to try to see what needs her mom might be trying to meet by sending these gifts. And what came up through this was absolutely fascinating. Her mom is trying to stay relevant in her grandkids' lives. She's trying to feel competent as a parent when she can't show up by being physically present. And even when she is physically present, she can't cook or babysit. She wants connection and excitement. And most of all, she wants to matter. When Sam came back into her own perspective, I asked her what felt different.

I have so much empathy for her and I also still want to be seen. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And that seems really hard when we want things that seem like they conflict from one person. The awesome thing about working with needs like we just did is they're not tied to any specific person or practice. When we're kids, we do have a really deep need to be seen and known and understood and loved by our parents. And you didn't get that from her, right? We haven't talked as much about your other parent. Maybe you were able to get some validation, you know, to be really known and loved for who you are from that parent. I hope so. But at least from this parent, that was lacking. And for kids, that's so hard because, I mean, really what we have is our parents, our caregivers when we're young, right? Now we're older, we have relationships potentially with siblings, with friends, with partners, with a therapist, right? We have a lot of other people that we can turn to get that need for belonging met, to get that need for acceptance to be understood, right? And so potentially that might be a role that your partner could fulfill to really deeply see you and know you.

And maybe even in that moment when that cactus shows up, right, you unwrap that Amazon package and you're like, ah. And maybe your partner comes over and gives you a hug or, you know, does something that is the signal just between the two of you that says, I see you and I see that this is hard for you and I see that this is not what you would want to receive. And I'm wondering if it's possible that you could meet that need firstly through your relationship with other people and secondly, advanced practice is to meet it for yourself. And so maybe you can have this conversation about each of your needs and maybe something will loosen up in that conversation that you might find that is a path forward. Maybe you won't. My hunch is given how many times you've tried to do this, it's possible that you won't. And at that point, really what you're doing is you're not making a decision in your head. You're mourning, right? You're mourning the loss of the relationship with your mother that you wished you had and that you're now acknowledging you're never going to have.

She's never going to be able to fulfill that role for you where she truly sees you for who you are in all of your amazing weirdness and loves that, not just can parrot the words out of her mouth that she knows she's supposed to say, but that her actions truly embody that. You're just not going to get that relationship with her. And so mourning the loss of that is an embodied process. It's not a, I'm just making a decision. This doesn't matter anymore. And that I think is a really big distinction, a really important distinction. And that might involve some kind of ritual, right? Letting go a ritual. I'm guessing that you're the kind of person who kind of appreciates a good ritual. You might, maybe with your partner, with a friend, almost design some sort of mourning ceremony where you symbolize letting this longed-for relationship go. You know, you've tried so many times to show her, this is who I am. Please see me, please see me. And she just can't do it. What is it like to see it from that perspective rather than the, I'm just going to decide to let it, that this doesn't matter to you anymore?

I think it makes sense. It feels really beautiful. I love the idea of holding hands with my loved ones and going through something where you just let it go. Because I can think of some of our closest friends that get to hear about this all the time and have their own complicated relationships with their parents. But I think would be really people who I do feel very seen by. So I think it would feel very cathartic to, yeah, like you say, in some ways, kind of like close the chapter on keeping that door open and wishing for this thing that she can't give me.

I just want to pause here. I'm just hearing that shakiness in your voice.

Yeah. Because the other thing that I'm feeling is I don't want to accept that she can't be the person that I, I don't want to say need or expect, but that I believe that she could be. In some ways, it feels a little bit like giving up on her. But I'm also not like, it's also not like by keeping the door open and continually hoping to be seen by her that I'm helping her see me any better. It's kind of like I'm leaving the door open and I'm also getting mad at you for not knowing how to walk through it. And I wish there was a way that I could. Yeah, I don't want to give up, but I can't push her through the door.

And so you may decide to send her this, right? And that may spark something beautiful and new in your relationship. And that would be the ultimate best outcome, right? If she were truly able to see your needs and she gets that you truly tried, maybe you got like 50, 60, 70% of the way there and she can identify some more needs that we missed and didn't identify. And you can have a conversation about that and maybe come up with some strategies that could actually meet both of your needs, right? That would be the best possible outcome. And I guess I want to be clear in the sort of mourning, letting go aspect, we're not letting go of the whole relationship, right? We're still interacting with her. We're still having a relationship with her.

We're just, in a way, letting go of this idea that she's going to be able to show up for us in this way that we so long for and have longed for. And it's in that longing that we're creating so much suffering for ourselves, right? When you say, a while ago, you said, when the gifts show up, I know she doesn't mean to hurt me, but that's how it makes me feel, right? When it's framed as that's how it makes me feel, you have no agency in this. There's a gift and your automatic response is, right? That tightness, that tension, that she doesn't love me, she doesn't get me. And that's the piece that we're letting go of. And that's where the gift becomes something much more neutral. Oh, here's a cactus with wavy arms. Okay, it doesn't have a meaning attached to it. It's not telling me anything about how much she loves or accepts me. It's just a cactus with wavy arms.

No, I think it makes a lot of sense to me as the outcome. It does sound a little hard, but I can at least see the path forward to hopefully get myself to a place where, like you're saying, the two are disconnected, where a gift is just a gift. It doesn't mean I haven't been seen or understood. Well, I'm trying to think of how you said it. Like basically that I don't need her to see me, know me and love me, which is like, that's a pretty heavy thing to say about a parent. In some ways that feels like so heavy and disappointing. And in other ways, it actually feels very validating to be like, that's why it matters so much to me, because it really does come down to like that level of, you know, the hierarchy of needs, like something so fundamental. And yeah, while I would love if we could shut off the gift spigot again, I can't control outside of myself. I can't keep her from sending gifts. I can try to feel differently, react differently to them because my relationship to them can be different.

Sam's voice got shaky right there because she was touching something really deep. This idea of letting go of what we wish our parent could give us is not a light decision that you make in your head. It's grief. It's mourning the relationship you wanted and acknowledging that you're not going to get from your parent. But this is what's different from mourning someone who died. We're not closing this door forever and locking it. We're just not going to stand there holding it open anymore, getting ourselves exhausted, waiting for the other person to walk through. Either of us could choose to push on that door later, but for now we're freeing up all of that energy that we've been using to hold it open. And when we do that, well, the cactus with the dancing arms can just be a cactus with dancing arms. It doesn't have to mean anything about whether your mom truly sees you. If you're dealing with something similar in your own parent relationships, I want you to know that this is not a silly thing when it comes up around these holiday gifts. When we can't get our parents to see us, it touches something really fundamental in us.

But we don't have to keep suffering in that longing for things to be different. We can see that need and acknowledge it and meet it through other people in our lives. And sometimes that's finally what gives us peace. In the full conversation with Sam, you will hear how she embodied her mom to identify her mom's needs. Sam had a really hard time accessing her own body. She's much more comfortable in her brain. But this exercise helped her to find empathy for her mom that she just wasn't able to access by telling herself, I should be grateful for this gift. We heard about Sam's recent work trip to Oaxaca where she spent time with craftspeople who work with techniques that have been passed down through generations. She got so emotional telling us about it and it helped us to see the integrity with her values is really a core need for her.

We also heard about the tension that Sam felt when her mom told her with words that she'll always fit in and be a part of the family when her mom's actions seem to say something quite different. I also share some ideas for elements that Sam might decide to build into a ritual to release this vision of her relationship with her mother that you could consider using as well. We also considered some additional strategies Sam could use if her need for ease was important to her. And if she was sick of dealing with the buy nothing pipeline. If you're in the Parenting Membership already, the full conversation with Sam is available to you immediately. And if you join the Parenting Membership through our special Black Friday deal, it's also available to you immediately even though you get to relax and you don't have to do anything at all with the rest of the membership until the New Year. And then you get content to help you with your biggest parenting struggles, coaching just like I did with Sam and access to an amazing community of parents who share your values as well. Starting in January, twenty-twenty six, you'll be able to sign up for the Parenting Membership anytime, but the best pricing by far will be during our Black Friday sale from November 25th through December 1st, twenty-twenty five. All the details on that are at yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership. And I will see you there.

If you'd like Jen to address the challenge you're having in parenting, just email your one-minute video or audio clip to support@yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.