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Adult daughter criticizes mom -- for everything

By Amy Dickinson, Tribune Content Agency on

This is a problem. If you see degrading treatment as somehow "parental," then perhaps there is something to your own parenting which might have contributed to this behavior. It's something to think about.

One bonus of having adult children is that parents can expect their children to (finally) behave like adults.

Is this treatment that you would tolerate from any other adult? I doubt it. And so you should not tolerate it from your own daughter.

Why are you sharing an Amazon Prime account? Why are you communicating with her best friend? These are two choices that you could quickly change.

You should stop adjusting your own behavior to please her. Convey that if she wants to have an active relationship with you, she will have to adjust her own behavior.

Dear Amy: I taught my children to write thank you cards after receiving gifts for birthdays, holidays or whatever the occasion. My grown children, our parents and siblings have carried on this tradition of thoughtful etiquette. However, we also send gifts to several nieces and nephews (and their children), who live out of town. We don't receive a thank you note, email, phone call, text ... nothing.

 

Some live great distances away and we wonder if the packages even arrived. I have emailed a niece who lives in Europe to see if my package arrived for her family of four ... and then she replied "yes, and thanks."

I enjoy gift-giving, but I do want a thank you, by note, email, call or even a text. Is this too much to expect?

I'm tempted to discontinue gift-giving to these relatives or perhaps sending them thank you notes and stamps as Christmas gifts next year as a hint. Do others experience this? Am I expecting too much? What do you think?

-- Gift-giver

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