Yes, needing to talk to discrete friends about this is going to be important.
I don’t think anyone here is thinking about a “chatterbox gossip.”** No, we’re thinking of wounded people we know who incorrectly thought that sharing this kind of problem widely would help them work through it. It really doesn’t. People who aren’t close to the situation don’t know what use to make of the information.** As a society, we have no idea how to handle this kind of thing. Some get uncomfortable, some think you want them to take sides (which does not help), some who used spanking as a form of discipline or who got similar complaints from their own children will get defensive. Many will think you want them to do something, when their two bits thrown in is usually the last thing in the world you want. It just doesn’t work very well.
**Remember: yours is hardly the only family who is keeping this kind of thing quiet. There is a lot of shame surrounding bad parenting decisions, both in the parents and in the children. Lots of families have skeletons in their closets that are similar to or even more alarming than yours. **You have far more company than you can imagine. There are also a lot of reasonably healthy families that still go through some very tense years because the parents and children cannot settle on a workable set of rules for their new adult-child-to-parent relationship. Things are said that can’t be taken back, neighbors get their ears bent about how upset the parents are, and it can take many years for things to settle down.
I would not concern myself with people who fall into rash judgment because of things your parents say, except to conclude that you don’t want to trust them with your side of this story. **If they are concerned and want your side of the story, that is someone that could help your family. If they jump in with half the story and join battle without knowing what is going on, they’re better ignored. **
I think I would arrange to have a private half hour or so with your parents’ pastor, if you have had a relationship with him in the past. Do not be overly accusatory and don’t ask for him to take sides. Just gently explain why glowing praise of your parents has a different effect than he undoubtedly intended. You don’t have to go into a lot of details; just say there were aspects of your childhood that aren’t in keeping with the glowing picture he has, and leave it at that. Your goal is to let him know that praise of your parents to you doesn’t help the situation. After you have done that, leave what he does with your request that he tone it down up to him. Your goal is to let him know his messages are upsetting and not helping. That is all. Don’t try to defend yourself. If he has judged you rashly, that is his issue. Give it to God; don’t weigh your luggage down with it.
**Remember that if he honestly thinks they are fine people, praising them to you is something he’d expect to make you glow, too. **If your mom is really a wonderful person and everyone tells you how wonderful she is to them, too, it validates the high regard you have for her, and it feels good. Other times, teens on the outs with their parents forget that their relationship with their parents is really pretty good, and blow minor conflicts that come with their growing independence all out of proportion. People close to the family might praise the parents to the child and praise the child to the parents in order to help both parents and children keep their perspective through the difficult teen years. (When they really are blowing small things up into big things, sometimes this works. Yours is not one of those times.)
Most people who tell you how wonderful your mom and dad are intend to do you good, then. They don’t intend to hurt you. Most of the time, the best course is to assume they think you and your parents are just going through a difficult transition from your dependence to your independence. In a typical child-parent transition to adult-child-parent, their strategy actually helps. Your job is to learn the adult habit of learning to ignore people who want to help but aren’t helping in favor of getting real help from the small circle that really does have your back. (A circle like this is typically one to maybe four or five people.)
**You’ll spend energy you can’t spare and stir up pots that have nothing in them to help you if you try to set busybodies straight. ****Don’t worry about them. Turn to your support group, the people you can count on to listen without jumping in to fix things. Your one friend, your husband and a counselor could easily be enough for that. **As for the rest, try “Father, forgive them. Give me the strength to bite my tongue for right now. They have no idea what they’re talking about, but if I try to tell them that, it won’t help.”
