I spoke/hung out with both kids last night. We did make some forward movement, which I'm glad for. It became very evident that they are both in a pity party stage. I don't want or mean to minimize this. But idk how long it's beneficial to stay there. Negative, awfulizing their childhood. A "trauma/awful thing" my son remembers is having a sleepover here. I was in a back room by myself drinking and smoking. Door was shut, but my son and his friends were outside and his friend saw me drinking/smoking through a window. While I am very embarassed about that - is that really that bad? Non drinking me would have never been in that state with his friends over. I typically never drank or smoked in public so it would be out of character. But his "friend" prob 10 @ the time had never seen me (his soccer coach) in this state.
I had a girl I went to high school who went through very severe parental abuse. Disgusting things happened to her. This is trauma, or how "I" think of trauma. I know that I cannot define someone's trauma (my son) because there definitely was some trauma. Any words of wisdom to guide him/her out of marinating in this pit? My concern is that he's moving out of state for a bit for college. It's very easy to put this on a shelf and not talk about anything for a year. I am feeling like we've made some movement and I don't want it closed off again. It is very typical for both my kids to "feed off" of eachother with this negativity towards me. I don't necessarily want to control the narritive, but would like to keep it moving in a healthy direction.