Tough Love: When Being a Parent Means Saying No

I have one sister. She is 42 and lives in the South of England with her husband and four children who are aged between 6 and 13. She and I are proof if any was ever needed of the fact that nature wins out over nurture. Physically we are very similar and have voices that people find hard to differentiate on the phone. But in terms of personality we are like chalk and cheese.

One of the ways in which we are so very different is in terms of our attitude to money. I am a very frugal person. My husband has often laughed at me over this and at times has found my parsimonious ways very frustrating. So recently when he confessed that one of the things he admires most about me is my thrifty nature I was somewhat surprised at his comment. He explained that he is in fact very glad I am this way as his natural tendency is to live for the moment and that it is thanks to me that we always have some money set aside for those rainy days that inevitably happen.

From a very early age money would burn a hole in my sister's pocket and if she had any then she just had to spend it. When we went on vacation my father would give us some spending money. At the end of the week I would still have most of my allowance left, unspent waiting for that rainy day moment. My sister would splurge on the very first day of our vacation and then spend the rest of the week bemoaning the fact that she could not buy anything else. Then as she grew older, my sister began to perceive money or rather the possessions it can afford you as a status symbol, a sign of her importance in the world and a measure of her social standing.

Her husband is cut from the same cloth. The first time I met him it was a hot summer's day. We were out in the garden and so, feeling more than a little warm, he took off his shoes. I noticed the label. They were Church's shoes. Very expensive shoes most people cannot afford. But yet here he was, a young college student, wearing these expensive designer shoes. His family were not well off so it was clearly not his parents who had shod him in such finery. At their wedding the best man joked about my sister and her husband being a match made in heaven, sharing a taste for the luxuries in life. He said he could not afford a designer gift for the couple so had acquired some designer labels to attach to the cheaper version of the gift that he had purchased and hoped that might do. Everybody laughed.

People always say that being alike is a good thing for two people in a marriage. That can be true, but in some regards, where both partners are somewhat extreme in some way or other it can be a bad thing. Because then neither one is able to provide some much needed balance when required. My brother-in-law appeared to have landed on his feet as a financial advisor. My sister lived a blessed life or so it seemed. A porsche to drive, a fancy house, fancy parties, getting photographed in OK magazine attending some party organized by minor royalty for which her shoes alone cost $1,500. But always it seemed it wasn't enough. They kept needing newer cars, bigger and better homes, private schooling for all four children, fancy vacations and more. I knew my brother-in-law supposedly had a good job but still I could not reconcile the life style they had and the money they spent with what I estimated he might be earning.

Then two years ago the house of cards fell apart. The precarious balancing act that had been going on could no longer be sustained. My brother-in-law had run out of ways in which to rob Peter to pay Paul. He ended up being declared bankrupt. He had run up the equivalent of $3.5M in debt as a result of some bad investments and because he and my sister were spending money they did not really have to spend. My sister and her husband split up. The mansion was sold. her half of the proceeds from the sale bought my sister a modest home which the courts eventually declared she could keep. The children were moved to state schools. The fancy cars were sold. Throughout all of this my parents supported my sister. They were there to pick up the pieces. To help out emotionally and financially. Every time more bad news came (I have very briefly summarized what happened but it unfolded bit by tragic bit) they were there, to listen, to dry my sister's tears, to help and pay for her move, help her with just about everything. My sister unloaded all her grief and worries onto them. My Dad ended up in the hospital as a result with a suspected heart attack. Eventually the symptoms he exhibited went away. When he recently came to visit me after a year of being unable to travel owing to his health crisis he admitted that his problems were all stress induced.

My sister and her husband got back together again after a few months, once he persuaded her he could resurrect his career and get them back on their feet. It appeared in the ensuing months that somehow he had in fact managed to do this. Slowly but surely the old spending habits and patterns returned. A family trip to Dubai staying in the fanciest of hotels. The children were all moved back to private schools. The car that my parents had given my sister when she had to sell her own car was quietly exchanged for a brand new sports car. My sister did not offer to pay my parents back for the car they so willingly gave her or for any of the other many bills and expenses they had paid on her behalf during the preceding financial crisis. In January they had a very expensive home renovation done creating a brand new office out of what was a former play room, getting a complete kitchen makeover and even building a shower downstairs for the two pedigree dogs they bought to use.

All these things I kept hearing about. Until last week when all my worst fears that this was yet another bubble about to burst were confirmed. My brother-in-law's business was again in trouble. It seems that after all they went through two years ago he and my sister have learnt nothing. There is no money put by. When the good times started to roll again they spent every last penny they had and plenty more pennies they did not have. So now the drama unfolds all over again. Calls to my parents from my sister almost daily about their latest woes. The bills they cannot pay for things like the lease on the fancy new sports car. Then my sister arrived at my parents house last week. When she managed to get my poor father on his own (she never does this in front of my mother who is a little more hard headed) she burst into tears and told him that they could not afford to pay the private school fees due at the end of the month for all the children for the fall semester. She asked my father if he would pay them instead. Actually she did not really ask him to do it, she simply expected him to.

Skyping with my parents and listening as they talked I could tell just how very worried they are about my sister and her children. I can see what this repeat cycle is already doing to them, in particular to my father, who admitted that since that day last week he has not slept. I know already what it will continue to do if allowed to progress unabated. My sister had driven to their house to collect her two oldest children who had stayed that week with my parents. My parents learnt a great deal during those few days. About how my sister has repeatedly lied to conceal from my parents all that she and her husband are still spending. About the fancy dinner parties they continue to have, the extravagant gifts, the outings to expensive concerts and more. About the expensive vacation they are all going on next week despite apparently having no money. My sister clearly regards my parents as her buttress, the go to place for financial and emotional back-up. She is like the child in the candy store who stamps her foot, eyes filled with tears and demands to have ALL the candy and simply does not see why she has to make choices. My parents did not spoil us as children, quite the opposite in fact and so my sister was not raised to think this way. It is just the way she is.

So I told my parents what I think. That it is time for the sake of their health to tell my sister that the gravy train has run its course. That she cannot simply unload all her problems onto them and expect them to clean up her mess. That making a mistake once - if you can call what happened two years ago a mistake which really I find hard to do - is one thing. Making that same mistake over and over again is quite another. That she has to take responsibility for her own life and for that of her children. That what she tells my father every single time she turns up and cries on his shoulder, that she knows she needs to start making her own way in life, is something she now has to do. That she is not being a good daughter behaving as she does towards my parents.

We talked for a long time, my parents and I. My father said I was right, that he could now appreciate the fact that my sister is just trying to offload all her troubles and responsibilities onto them. I am not sure if he can be heard hearted and do as I have suggested. I know it will very much distress him to do so, because he loves my sister every bit as much as he loves me. I know there are times over the last few years he has not liked her much but he has and will always love her. But I also know that if he does not do this and continues to allow her to offload on him that it will hurt him physically and mentally even more.

I spoke to my parents for the first time not as their daughter but as a parent myself. I told them this is how I would feel if Mirabelle behaved this way, that there comes a point when the best help you can offer your child is effectively no help. To say no. To offer tough love. That if it were Mirabelle I could not allow her to completely destroy her father's health because she cannot stop spending money she does not have. Because she has not learnt how to be a responsible parent to her own children.

I am very upset about all of this. I thought long and hard about whether to share this story and about whether or not to speak out with my parents in the way that I did. I have never done so before, never told them what I really think about how my sister has behaved. I hope I did the right thing.

Source: http://agingmommyblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/tough-love-when-being-parent-means.html

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