Lessons and Reflections After 1 Year of The Parent Project
My friends and I met every week for a year to deliberately work on our relationship with our parents, these are the lessons I learned.
What’s “The Parent Project”?
The Parent Project is a result of 4 friends (Kimberly Han, Joseph Lam, Tong-Tong Li, and myself) deciding to work on their relationships with their parents.
We all committed to talk to our parents once a week and then debrief our learnings, share struggles/challenges with each other on a weekly livestream.
We started in July 2020 and wrapped up the project in July 2021 because it was such a success — we felt like we had built the relational foundations we wanted to build and felt like we “graduated” from our own program/experiment.
My Relationship w/ Parents Before TPP:
With my Dad:
Didn’t have synchronous convo with my dad in 10+ years
Mostly negative relationship w/ him in my teenage years, only a handful of email exchanges here and there as an adult
With my Mom:
Only called her whenever I needed something
Impatiently spent time with my mom whenever we did talk/hang out
Generally annoyed that most of our conversations were just about my mom nudging me to 1) date/marry a Christian girl 2) go back to school to get a degree 3) get a “real” 9-5 job 4) spend more time with her 5) go to church more
My Results
With my Dad:
Had a synchronous conversation with my dad for the first time in 10+ years
Called him ~7-8 times to talk about the past, the future
Visited him in Florida, saw him for the first time in 10+ years
Feel like I can say I “get along” with my Dad and now realize how much we have a lot in common
With my Mom:
Continued to realize how different we are, but more able to feel her care than before
More patient more frequently with her (definitely not perfect, but way better than I used to be)
Feel comfortable calling her out of the blue just to see how she is doing
The History of My Relationship With My Parents:
Age 0-11:
I don’t think I had any issues with my parents during these years. I was lucky to have a pretty stable childhood, I was allowed lots of range to be curious and have fun as long as I ate my vegetables, finished my homework, and wasn’t being an annoying menace at home or at school.
Age 12:
Something seemed to switch the moment I went into middle school. Grades seemed to be more important than anything else. Fun went out the window. Everything started to become about discipline, studying, and getting straight As.
I started getting depressed (not clinically diagnosed) eventually to the point of running away from home one time because my dad kept yelling at me because of my poor grades/scores.
It was bad enough that I could literally feel my body relax when my dad wasn’t home and then tense up the moment I heard the garage opening at night. My relationship with my parents were at an all time low.
Age 14-18:
The survival years. As a teen, I coped by holing myself up in my room as frequently as possible, stonewalled any attempt from my parents to talk, and just tried to stay out of trouble until I could experience the freedom of graduating high school.
95% of my responses to my mom were along the lines of “mm” “ok” “yup” nope” because I hated trying to explain myself and constant being badgered about chores and homework
I generally just tried to avoid interacting with my dad if possible
College + Early 20s:
I reluctantly engaged with my mom whenever she called or wanted to visit and spend time. Building a stronger relationship with her wasn’t as big of a priority to me at the time and it showed through my continued aloofness/impatience (not at all proud of this).
I also had poor boundaries at the time and often would cave into spending time with my mom because I didn’t want to deal with her guilt-tripping me if I tried to say no.
One classic example: my mom would text me saying that if she died, I wouldn’t even know (because of how little time I gave her). She then angrily tells me she’s going to come by to drop off some food. She comes by, brings a bunch of food (often things I didn’t like) which would prompt my reaction “Mom why do you bring me so much food, I can’t even fit it in the fridge/I don’t even like to eat?”
Yes, an incredibly privileged thing to say, but it was more about the lack of consent that bothered me most, since a lot of my teenage years were littered with crossed boundaries by my parents.
Mid 20s:
By this point, my career was a little more established, I felt more stable and grounded in many ways. I also had a great community of friends who were in various stages of improving their relationship with their parents and that spurred me to take some action on my own.
Here and there, I sent emails to my mom and dad (one was about how I never felt like they thought I was capable or smart and that led to my mom apologizing), attempting to slowly undo the pains of the past and reconcile with them, but there wasn’t any sustained focus.
Last 2 years:
In late 2019, I joined a 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership book club with Kimberly Han, Nick Naraghi, and eventually Joseph Lam. We spent many hours reflecting and working through childhood trauma, processing old break-ups, and other emotional wounds. Here’s a worksheet we referred to nearly every week.
Of course, relationships with our parents inevitably came up and that’s where I made much more deliberate progress in building empathy for my parents as normal human beings with strengths, flaws, and good intentions.In June 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote an email to my dad forgiving him for his past mistakes and in his email response, he, for the first time that I recalled, said that he was proud of me
I’m pretty sure penning that letter healed something in me.
And I’m pretty sure reading those words from my dad also did some healing in me.If you have more traditional Asian parents, you’ll have additional context as to how crazy those lines of email are.
And of course, the most recent and significant tipping point was The Parent Project. Our weekly debriefs and weekly calls to our parents led to an incredible amount of progress.
In the next section I’ll share the key lessons I learned after nearly 100 hours of group processing and weekly conversations with my parents.
Key Lessons After 1 Year of The Parent Project:
Baby steps
Don’t try or expect to transform your relationship with your parents overnight!
Just commit to interacting with your parents on a cadence that feels manageable (that you can do consistently) and allow the interactions develop over time.
The first time I called my mom out of the blue, she just asked me what was wrong because it was so out of the ordinary that I’d call her without needing something from her. It felt like a huge uphill battle from the get go.It’s not about perfection. I wasn’t always perfect in conducting myself, but things still improved. What’s more important is that you continually learn and continually try
Overall, the first 3 months felt the hardest because didn’t seem like there was much progress. It felt like 1 step forward, 2 steps back sometimes. It wasn’t until month 6-8 (that’s 20-30 calls in!) where it really felt like things had changed for the better and it wasn’t a fluke. Somewhere between month 4-5 was where things seemed to get more hopeful and promising.
Create the space for it
Historically, whenever I spent time with my mom, I’d be constantly watching the clock. I was rarely fully present because I was just bracing/waiting for when she would say something that would rub me the wrong way and overall feel like I was wasting time.
Setting a clear intention to spend a specific amount of time with my mom led to more patience on my side, more desire to understand, more curiosity, and probably a more pleasant experience for both of us. The key here is a *specific* amount of time that is sustainable — for me, this was 20-30 minutes with both parents (sometimes it’d be longer, sometimes it’d be shorter)
Change it up
The same behaviors will get the same results. Try something different!
Maybe try a phone call, hang out in person, do an activity/game together, maybe change the kinds of things you talk about
For the first 3-4 months of The Parent Project, we used the Parents are Human game as a starting point. After that, we felt more comfortable just letting conversations take its course
Do it in community
It’s not always easy to understand why your parents act the way they act, having peers who are removed from the situation makes it easier to “get out of your head” to build more empathy for your parents. Empathy is what makes it easier to have patience when your parents act in ways that annoy/trigger you.
Doing it in a peer group made it easier when things weren’t looking bright. It gave me hope that Kim was making progress with her relationship when I wasn’t (“there’s hope for me” / “if Kim can make progress, so can I”) It gave me hope that even though Joe had already progressed so far with his relationship, sometimes, he ran into frustrations (“JJ’s been at it longer and even he hits some bumps… this is a part of the journey, this is expected”). It just makes the journey feel less lonely and bearable.
When things were hard/discouraging, I still called my mom. There were definitely times I wasn’t excited to do it, but I knew that we were going to talk about it during our livestream. Yes, I wanted to improve my relationship with my parents, but sometimes what was more true was: I didn’t want to disappoint my friends on a commitment we all made together. This served as a motivational safety net
Expect to do the Heavy Lifting of “Change”
If you decide to embark on this journey, remember, YOU are responsible for changing yourself.
There were a lot of times it felt easier to blame my parents for how they were showing up. But ultimately, I’m far more likely to change given that I opted into this project.
If you decide to opt into this journey, remember, you are probably the one that is more capable and ready to change. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot and start expecting your parents to be more X, be more Y.
No Regrets
To have gotten to a place where I feel like I can be more relaxed and open with both of my parents is priceless.
To have shared laughs, common ground, and a sense of mutual respect with my dad for the first time in ages is priceless, and happened far sooner and easily than I would have predicted.
To know that I gave both of my parents a real, deliberate, consistent effort, makes me feel proud, like after a difficult work out.
Thank you for those you who have been following along in The Parent Project journey. We’re in the midst of figuring out the next phase of our group. If you have any burning questions about our experience, please feel free to reach out.
If you end up taking any action because of this reflection and/or our livestreams, please do share as it helps continue to inspire us and feel like the decision to do this publicly has made a difference! 🙏
What resonated with you? What questions come up for you?
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