I once asked a pediatrician friend of mine what her greatest challenge was in her practice and she responded without hesitation, “Dealing with parents who don’t recognize that they are the source of their children’s problems.” As a stepmother in a blended family,  I understood immediately what she meant.

Our family just returned from a week long trip in Northern California hiking the trails at Mount Lassen State Park and riding the rapids of the Trinity River in Willow Creek. We had a blast. We even experienced a Big Foot sighting! (Not really.) It was a fun trip and everyone had a great time. Everyone except Cheryl who didn’t go. She refused and stayed with relatives instead. Why did she not want to go? Well, its kind of a long story.

You see, Mount Lassen is a place Cheryl considers her mother’s “special place” because her maternal grandparents have a cabin nearby, which she has visited every summer for as long as she can remember. Both with her father, Paul (my husband), while he was still married to her mother, and more recently with her mother and brothers the last several years after their divorce. This year Cheryl’s mom was unable to go, so when Paul and I were planning our vacation, Paul thought it might be nice to visit Lassen (we did not stay at the family cabin) and also tour a nearby guest ranch where we would spend the day hiking, horseback riding and later have dinner in the lodge and swim in the geothermal heated swimming pool. Paul wanted us to experience something that their family had always enjoyed. Just like I took all of the kids last summer to visit my family back East in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. However, Cheryl did not see it quite the same way. Having a very strong loyalty to her mother, she somehow felt that visiting this place would somehow taint or ruin the memories of her experiences there with her mom.

I first got a taste of Cheryl’s emotional attachments a few years ago when I took all three girls, my two daughters, and Cheryl to San Francisco for a mini girls only vacation. As soon as we arrived, we dropped our bags in our hotel room and made plans to head out to tour Chinatown. My girls were very excited, but for some unexplained reason, Cheryl protested and put up a fuss. She. did. not. want .to. go. She pitched a fit all weekend. No matter what I suggested she complained. Finally, in complete exasperation, I sat her down and implored her to tell me what was bothering her. She tearfully admitted that she had been to San Francisco a few months previously with her mother and her then boyfriend (they had just split up) and that we were ruining her memories of her time there with them. At the time I chalked it up to Cheryl’s immaturity, she was 9, and the fact that she was still missing her mom’s boyfriend, whom she really liked.

Cheryl is now almost 13 and it is time for her to learn how to work through these issues and know that her special times with people will  last forever. I understand Cheryl’s feelings. I get the whole conflicted, divided loyalty divorce thing. What I also understand is that it is our job as parents to shepherd our children through life, to guide and shape their behaviors. To teach them compassion, empathy and generosity. To recognize that the  hallmark of maturity is being able to let go of things, to move on and to above all, learn to see beyond your own perspective.

Cheryl, who was allowed and encouraged by her mother, to retreat into her self-indulgent world, lashed out at her sisters saying she didn’t want them to go on the trip because she was afraid they would complain about the place. (So what if they did?) She blamed them in advance for ruining her experience. Her mother, if she had chosen to take the high road, would have said to her daughter, “You go on that trip and you have a good time. Share your special place with your sisters, just like they have in the past with you. And if they complain, so what.” Instead, she supported her decision because “feelings are valid.”  Yes, feelings are valid, but are they right? Is it OK to be selfish? OK to be unable to identify and work through your feelings, regardless of whether or not they are “valid”?   In the end, she  deprived her own daughter of a wonderful vacation, and even more significantly, of an important life lesson. Too bad.