“Kloudiia
I read today’s The New Paper and was very impressed by your committment to help those singles and those whose marriage on the rock. I need your guidance and advise on how to help my girl who is only coming to 20 years old this year to be happy with herself and not to be so depressed over her current boyfriend who does not even bother to call her or care for her. I tried calling her but still she will keep running back to him. Everyday she will cry her heart out and sometimes does not even back home! I’m not sure where she is and this is driving both of us to despair!Â
I’m trying my best to get her close friends to spend more time with her and keep her occupied so that she does not think too much of her boyfriend. It really breaks my heart to see her crying herself and sometimes even refused to eat. This had been going on for about a few months. I thought she had let go but today I found her crying again and left home just like that.
I hope you can help me and advise me what I can do or do you think she needs professional help? I don’t think she is going crazy yet! But not too sure whether this is healthy for my girl.
Please please help me!!
P.S.Congratulations on your birthday. Hope to hear from you soon!
God Bless, Mummy in despair” - IL
Dear IL or Mummy-in-despair
You’re the first email I chose to respond here. Don’t ask me why, maybe because you’re one mummy in despair! (The rest of you who sent me your questions, I’ll do my best to answer them on a first-come-first-serve basis. Thanks for your understanding)
Though I’m not yet a mother, but the kind of pain you are going through is as if a knife is cutting through your heart, making it ache as you feel your daughter’s pain. Each time she’s crying, you are crying with her too, am I right? Such a pain is normal, especially when the one hurting so much is someone who has such a close connection with you, be it a spouse or child. But of course, a mother’s love for her daughter can be many times bigger.
Actually you should take heart that your daughter is crying, for crying is known to be one of the best, if not the best ways to grieve over a loss. Crying releases her emotions and helps to speed up her recovery process too. It has very good therapeutic effects for someone who has her heart broken.
At a young tender age of 20 years old, I’m sure she is like any other teenager who is venturing into her young adult phase. They will fantasize about love, and they’re probably in love with the idea of “falling in love” itself!
In her mind, she’s probably having lots of regrets (if she’s the one who initiated the break-up) or she could have this can’t-take-it-lying-down kind of anger (if he’s the one who wanted to break and she’s forced to accept his decision). How you handle her now can either expedite or slow down her letting go of this lost love.
What I would suggest here is to speak to her as if you’re a friend, and not an elder. How do friends communicate? They give each other support and they encourage each other in times like this. They tease, they joke.
Besides consoling each other, friends also share their stories and experiences unreservedly. As a mother, I’m sure you’ve had some similar experiences that you can share with her? Telling stories is one good way to convey a message. By listening to your stories, she won’t feel too “suffocated” as if you are there telling her what to do.
At this point in time, telling her to stop feeling sad and to forget about him will only make her feel sadder and miss him even more. Call it the “rebellious” streak in teenagers or the choice of words, but asking her to do something she doesn’t feel like doing will have the adverse effects of breaking rapport with her and giving her the misunderstanding that you are here to assert your authority as a mother figure and you’ll never understand how she feels.
You know, many times, a mother can have such an acute sensitivity about her daughter’s emotional and mental states that one as a daughter will never be able to imagine or understand. Use this sensitivity to your advantage by showing her lots of empathy so that she has this chance to realise how much her mother cares for her and not to command or boss her around.
Daughters and mothers share this most special and unique bond that nobody else in this world will be able to have, not even fathers and son. That’s a different kind of bonding, whereas mothers and daughters connect, from the day she’s in your womb till the day she’s born. When she cries, you cry too. When she laughs in joy, you feel as if you’re on top of the world, better than you finding happiness yourself.
Give your daugher a chance to know you are too an expert in love, and you too used to be like her, a young budding adult with lots of good dreams about dating and falling in love. Let her know how you felt then, and how you overcame your heartaches when you broke up with your first love. How about sharing your first puppy love with her? Trust me, this will definitely bring her much closer to you.
When she’s closer to you, and she also discovers a fact that generation gaps do not exist between both of you, she will be very willing to open her heart to you and listen to any advice you may have for her. Who knows, you may well be her love expert in all her future relationships, or even crushes she may have when she steps into the working world.
Love is the most extra-ordinary thing in this world. It heals and it inspires. It has nothing to do with the era you live in or which country you are born in. You feel the same kind of “sourness” in your heart when your boyfriend left you and you feel the same excitement and anticipation when you enter into a new relationship. Such emotions don’t change over time. You have been through all these stages, so who else but you will be the best person for your daughter to get over this period and move on?
Lastly, if you like to have some extra support or some professional coaching to help your daughter, you can always contact me to arrange that. Besides dishing out free advice like this, I’m also a Love Coach by profession!
All the best to you, IL. I’m sure you’ll be a mummy-in-delight in no time, wouldn’t you agree? 
Love, Kloudiia
[tags]Love advice, teenagers, break up, heartache, moving on, letting go, relationship advice, lost love, boyfriend, parents, mum, puppy love, infatuation, crush[/tags]
4 Responses
2007 Jan 10
I totally agree with what Kloudiia has suggested. It’ll certainly helps a lot to break that self-perceived generation gap by first sharing your own experiences, how you felt, how you dealth with your emotion and hurts, what were the supports you received or had, will certainly helps to allows your daughter to understand that you know exactly what she is going through.
However, I just like to add that, your approach to her will be critical. Like Kloudiia suggested, be a friend to her, not a mother, not a ‘boss’, not a domineering one, not an authority figure. Your tone, your choice of words, your gestures, will also plays a part on your daughter how she will percieves you.
Also, I do suspect that you might have a little challenges in getting your daughter to sit down and listen to your stories, and sharing. Instead of forcing her to sit down and listen to you. May I suggest that you can start by leaving a little notes to her every now and then, letting her know that, no matter what happens, you are still there for her. Encourage her, reassuring her, and let her know that you are willing and ready to spend time to talk and share with her. Also, do tell her you love her and how much it hurts you to see her cry and left home without a word, and how helpless you felt when you does not know where’s her about, etc etc. Slowly, I believe she will be willing to sit down with you and start to share with you.
Be loving, be caring, give her lots of hugs, cry with her when need be, don’t be afraid to show the ‘weaker’ side of you by crying out when you share your stories, and cry along with her when she shares her part of the story.. her feeling, her hurts and pain. Don’t be angry with her if she ever involves in intimacy before, but rather to give her the assurance that it’s a process of a relationship, and you don’t blame nor angry with her.
Lastly, at such a tender age, she is really in the stage of searching of an true identity of herself, her self-worth, self-esteem, acceptance by friends, peers. She might find it ‘stressful’ when her peers are all attached while she doesn’t, assurance needed to be given to her that it’s actually perfectly normal that to be single and non-attached.
Wish you all the best, your daughter too.
2007 Jan 10
Very Good Post
2007 Jan 11
IL’s anxiety and concern as a mother is purely out of a mother’s love. If I had my own daughter I would have been equally upset when faced with this situation.
However, what I feel is IL can be there for her daughter in another manner. IL need not necessary “dictate” her daughter’s love for this man. Things have seen itself in such a manner, that she has the tendency to run off from home, the last thing we hope to see is – the daughter being “pressurized” so much that she decides to run off from home for good. Sometimes, we exert pressure on others so much indirectly that we do not see it, even when we do it out of sheer love and concern. Therefore, I second Kloudiia and Bored Dad’s suggestion for IL to consider her approach.
IL also mentioned her daughter is only coming 20 years old this year. In my opinion, she is still very young. It is heartbreaking for a mum but sometimes, we ought to let her “get hurt” so she will learn. It doesn’t feels good to see a daughter get hurt, but every hurt that comes, she grows wiser. Just make sure the moment she needs you, you are there – as a mother, as a friend.
2007 Jan 11
Bored Dad: “assurance needed to be given to her that it’s actually perfectly normal that to be single and non-attached” – this is great.
Applies to the adult singles too. That’s why even when we were still running our dating agency, we always advice our members not to rush into marriage. You are not judged by how successful your marriage is. Thanks.
ED: “It is heartbreaking for a mum but sometimes, we ought to let her “get hurt†so she will learn. ” – good point. Sometimes we won’t learn until we fall down and get hurt. It hurts, but it will heal.
But if they don’t fall down in life, they won’t know what hurt is like because they only hear it from their parents that “hurt is painful”.
That’s why modern day parenting requires a very good balance in the delicate issue of which areas to be stricter and when to let go and let their children experience lives in their own ways.
JD: Thanks.