Holly Rizzuto Palker and Eva Langston speak with Judith Smith, author of Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children Through Conflict and Change, about mothering challenging adult children, and how to find solutions through acceptance and no assignment of fault. Becoming an adult is not nearly as clear today as it was 50 years ago. Major structural changes are needed for mothers not to blame themselves and begin to discover answers on how to move forward.
Difficult is based on a series of in-depth interviews Judith Smith conducted with women (all over 60 years of age, across socio-economic and geographic locations). Despite the unique circumstances of the women’s lives, she discovered many commonalities in their stories. Nearly all had re-opened their homes to their adult children when they had nowhere else to go. Many of the adult children had mental health problems or substance abuse disorder—or both. None of the women had expected their own later years to be framed by being once again “parent.” Yet for all the many similarities, there were also unique circumstances in each child’s life. That’s what led Smith to search for a name to describe what she was seeing and to ultimately settle on the term Difficult Adult Child. She chose this name to acknowledge not just the challenges faced by the grown children, but the hardships passed along to the mothers who cared for them.
Judith is a licensed clinical social worker who offers individual counseling, webinars, and weekly support groups for mothers with "difficult adult children." After years as a researcher on child development, Judith began researching an understudied aspect of the life cycle -- mothering in later life. Her work focuses on the unique stresses that mothers experience when their adult children are struggling with serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or chronic unemployment and incarceration.She has been interviewed in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and on many podcasts including Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches.
Author Website: https://www.difficultmothering.com/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-r-smith-99a81134/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/difficultmothering/
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