Providing Emotional Support

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When I was in my preteens (9 to 12), my parents would often tell me: "You need to provide us with emotional support in times of trouble, not stress us out by acting up." I never understood what they meant by that, but I knew that I was failing to live up to that. First of all, the meaning of "emotional support" completely eluded me, and when I asked my parents what it meant, all they told me is "it means helping us instead of making things harder." This didn't make it any clearer, and since the internet was barely starting out at the time, I couldn't just look it up on Google or Wikipedia. So my question for all of you is this: do you think it's right to ask kids to provide parents with emotional support.

I think it's important for all members of the family to support each other emotionally, and it doesn't matter whether the support is coming from the parent or the child. As a member of a loving, caring family it is important to be there for each other. Celebrate each others successes and support each other when we fail. Otherwise, what's the point of having a family.

I wonder if your parents were, instead of asking you for emotional help, were actually asking you to be more cooperative and work as a team. Of course, I don't know your situation or your family dynamic, and I don't mean to offend you in any way. Often my son, an Aspie, does things that make it difficult on everyone. Instead of being cooperative and trying to help the family out, he does things to make it worse for himself and for us (his parents). I understand some of this is due to his way of thinking, and we do try to accomodate for this. However, there are other times when we know he can do better, but refuses to try to do his best (because he either wants to be lazy about it or flat out just doesn't want to). At these times, I ask him to be more cooperative and quit making everything so difficult on everyone else. His behavior and mood does affect everyone else in the household. He wouldn't want me or his father to be moody and disagreeable with him, and we expect the same from him.

no, or I don't really get what that means. Parents are parents, they are not their kids' clients and children don't owe anything to parents, necessarily.
Interdependence is a fact of harmonious society, though. Knowing that what we do affects our neighbors, positively and/or negatively. That means we should teach all children to try and "get along" as much as possible. To realize that dealing with personal comfort issues without hurting others makes everybody happy. eg Don't lash out when your senses are overloaded, find other ways to cope.
Sometimes parents want hugs or apologies or to be left alone for certain reasons. It's nice when kids can help provide that, but it shouldn't be a mitigating factor in whether the child is good or not. One thing that I couldn't provide as a kid was to do something 'nice" or "expected' without being asked. I don't know why, but I still have a hard time with self-pacing or self-initiating.
I also couldn't display affection and would get punished and criticized for it. That made it even worse because I didn't feel like hugging or kissing and then felt like it was the Big Deal. I associated it with punishment and ridicule and rejection of my character.
I also associated it in other people as false expression.

your parents were telling you not to be naughty but in a nice way..probably what a shrink told them to say...it sounds shrinky to me..i wouldnt say it to a 12 yo.

How can this be a nice way? It sounds cryptic and ambiguous. And if a shrink did tell them to say it, then he/she must have been NT.

give them an F for phraseology............i think it is ok for parents to ask for help from their kids once in a while....i think it helps to show them that you, too ( parents) make mistakes and need help sometimes.
where things get messy is when parents expect too much out of their kids ~ i was a latch-key kid from the age of 8...and expected to "help out" by starting supper....

Providing emotional support sounds vague and weird. That is a different thing than being a well behaved or harmonious family member. I could see this perhaps with an older child in a situation where everyone needs to pull together - but if this has not been practiced before than it is not going to be a "natural" response. Kids need to learn that if a family is going to "work" than there are certain responsibilities or expectations that every familiy member has to contribute. It can really give a child a sense of accomplishment if it is done appropriately and needs to be modeled by the parents as well. Dad cheating on mom, ect. is not going to instill a sense of belonging and working together for a higher purpose than your own satisfaction. This needs to be done early though so that a child has clear expectations and not as a surprise or something they are automatically supposed to do when they are 12. So alot of this is what message has the kid been getting previous to the big annoucement that they are supposed to be helpful or responsible (lol).

No - it's not the child's job to provide emotional support to his/her parents.

It's the parents' job to provide a child with emotional support.

Aspie1 - it is very ambiguous, but the way I interpret that would mean your parents were asking you to be the parent and not just "behave."

i would never tell my son to give emotional support but only to behave and be respectful to everyone in the household.. but since this was posted by an aspie i might want to think maybe your parents were trying to get you to show emotions to the rest of your family. i know that my son can be very crass at times and cold.. this is an aspie trait that i can see.. very robotic.. maybe your parents tell you to show your feeling for the rest of the family other than your anger that so many aspie teens express because they think their parents are against them.. the one thing I have learned on here is that so many of the teens and young adults on these forums rip their parents to shreds..

No, an adult can never insist that another person give them emotional support - although if you care about someone, you would want to give them emotional support in difficult times. Parents should be supporting their child, not the other way around.

Your parents are being a bit vague about what they actually want from you. I think they are saying that they sometimes found your behaviour hard to deal with, and when there were other stressful things going on as well, your behaviour made them feel even more stressed. As Aspies, we need more concrete explanations. Rather than saying, "don't act up," they should have told you exactly what you were doing that they didn't like. Then you would have known what you needed to change.

Well, what else should they do when parents call their son a "parasite", just because they're not getting the emotional support they demand? On the upside, whenever they call me that, I give them a comeback: "then call an exterminator". (Apparently, "emotional support" wasn't what I thought it was: I still remember how ten years ago, when I tried to comfort them when they were feeling sad, and they told me: "we asked for emotional support, not the touchy-feelies".)

Last edited by Aspie1 on 06 Sep 2006, 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The way I phrase it is: "Don't make my job harder." I.e. if you refuse to brush your teeth, you have just made my job harder because now I must figure out a convoluted way to get you to brush your teeth.

I keep my standards low- basic hygiene and no violence.

I voted for the second option.

I never really understood what emotional support means... now in my adulthood I think it means "Listening to someone and caring about their feelings and that they are alive, and not wanting them to be hurt."

Doesn't really sound like your parents knew what they wanted either. If someone is feeling sad and you try and comfort them how is that not providing emotional support. One thing though - have you tried to ignore their little comments. Sometimes if a person tosses out a bone and the dog doesn't chase it then it isn't fun anymore.

"have you tried to ignore their little comments. Sometimes if a person tosses out a bone and the dog doesn't chase it then it isn't fun anymore"

Both responses infuriated my dad. If I showed that his comments hurt (cried or was silent) my dad would go into a rage and accuse me of all sorts of stuff. If I was surprised but calm, he accused me of not caring or thinking he was stupid. Sometimes a blank look on my face would warrant, "You are looking at me like I'm stupid! Go to your room!"

So, yeah, "emotional support" is tough enough when you're not in tune with emotional expression, but even harder when your parents don't know what they want. Or what they want is really a game.

I've always felt like my mom has never provided me with the emotional support that I feel I need - in fact, when things are not going well for me, I can pretty much count on her to make me feel worse.

Parents should take Parenting Classes, before they decide to have Children. If it turns out that they would prefer the "Typical" child over the "Problem" child, than they shouldn't have Children.