Has it ever seemed like your parents are trying to use you to fulfill the old, unaccomplished dreams they may have had way back in their own youthful and seemingly-promising childhood?

Well, if this has ever crossed your mind, then welcome to the club.

And guess what else? Your suspicions may very well be correct. I’m not gonna pretend like this is a good thing - because I’ve seen some of the damage that comes from this particular phenomenon.

You see, my own parents seem to think that it is too stereotypical for me to accuse them of attempting to live their desired lives through me and my two sisters. Well, I honestly don’t think that it sounds any less stereotypical when my mom says to me, “You’re a teenager. Aren’t teenagers supposed to be rebellious?”

Yeah. She’s been saying that to me since I was twelve years old. And my dad...well, he’s got that whole “Straight A’s are the most important thing in life” mindset.

Can anyone relate to that one?

Anyway, I don’t know if I’m the only person whose parents have pushed me into doing things which I absolutely DID NOT want to do, or have told me exactly what I should want to achieve in life.

If this has ever happened to you, and you’ve complained about it to anyone, does this phrase sound familiar? - “Your parents just want what’s best for you.”

I might faint if I hear this one - “Your parents know what’s best for you.”

Seriously, if ANYONE - parents or not - came up to me and said, “I know EXACTLY what every person has to do in order to lead the right kind of life,” I would faint at that, too. It’s a more polite alternative to laughing.

A while back, my parents made my sister and I join our school’s orchestra.

“It will make you smarter!”

“It looks good on a college application.”

“It teaches you to use your right brain and left brain.”

“Every other instrument is too easy.”

“The Chinese do it. The Chinese have already figured out all these things you need to succeed in life.”

Those are exactly the things my parents told me. And they actually talked down to ME for thinking differently.

My older sister wanted to sign up for band. And she actually managed to. But apparently our parents changed their mind, because before school started, my mom secretly switched my sister to orchestra behind her back. My sister ended up staying in that for four years before quitting - and even THAT happened after months of crying and pleading for my parents’ approval. My sister didn’t go into music afterwards. As for me, I wanted to do something else from Year One. When I asked my dad if I could learn how to play the guitar instead of the violin, his response was, “Yeah, and you’ll be jumping up and down like a hippie.”

How logical do my parents’ arguments seem, exactly? And my parents have never learned how to play an instrument in their life.

I could write a whole book full of stories like this - and now that my older sister and I mature, my parents get more aggressive. And their claims are coming across as less experience-based and more desperate. Really - my parents have never really done any of the things they keep telling my sisters and I to do. My mom said she wishes she had the same opportunities when she was kid that are available to my sister and I now. My parents really did seemed convinced that what they were having my sisters and I do would make us “ideal people”. 

So, do you see a theme here? Well, guess what? There’s an actual WORD which describes the situation in which parents try to live through their children.

Vicarious.
Really. You would probably be able to see parents living vicariously through their children practically ANYWHERE you go. Sports games. Musical performances. School. Beauty Pageants. Pretty much anywhere that could show off a kid as something “exceptional.” Anywhere that would make a parent proud to boast, “That’s my kid!”

My parents always pressured me to go above and beyond.

“You should try to be better than everyone else.”

“If you start early, you’ll be ahead of all the other kids.”

Always comparing.

There are actually studied which show that when parent set certain standards for their children, the goals often relate to long-lost goals that parents find too late to reach for themselves.

"Some parents see their children as extensions of themselves, rather than as separate people with their own hopes and dreams," according to Brad Bushman, PhD, one of the executors of a research article from PLOS ONE titled “My Child Redeems My Broken Dreams: On Parents Transferring Their Unfulfilled Ambitions onto Their Child”, displaying studies done on parents who use their children to fulfill personal goals. "This might put pressure on children to try to live up to their parents’ unfulfilled ambitions, rather than pursuing their own ambitions.

Some children inexplicably answer their parents’ call for a sense of achievement - but this unwanted weight may be heavy for a child to bear.

And get this -  “the parent becomes depressed when their offspring succeed in living up to the parents’ expectations of them.” says David M. Allen, of Psychology Today.

Translation - these delegating parents become JEALOUS of their kids for being able to achieve something they themselves could not.

I understand what some people might say to all of this - that parents will always want, and know, what is best for their kids, and the kids just haven’t realized yet that their parents are really doing them favors that will set them up for an exemplary life. End of discussion.

An even though this may (probably will) raise some arguments - I don’t think that parents always know what’s best for anyone, much less their own children. If I believed that, I would also be accepting my own parents’ stories of a “perfect” life, where I would be and have everything that my parents ever wanted.

But I don’t believe in fantasies.