Considering how commonplace the advice of “just LET your children TALK TO YOU about their INTERESTS” is on Tumblr, it’s astonishing to me how few people seem to realize/accept that that’s a two-way street, especially as adults.
I’m not telling you how to relate to parents who were shitty/abusive to you, obviously, but given a relatively healthy relationship or the ATTEMPT to build one as adults, you’ve genuinely got to let your older relatives talk to you in their own way about the things they’re interested in. Yes, sometimes it is painfully boring, yes, sometimes they do it in a slow or round-about manner or tell you way too much, but sometimes it’s boring listening to a twelve year old talk about fortnite. I still do it, because people, adult or child, need and want people to talk to about their interests.
My dad is into the cringiest possible anime. I am halfway to dissociation every time he spends 30-60 minutes walking me through the entire plot of an anime, one episode at a time. One time we had an eight hour car ride and that was the ENTIRE trip and by the end I wanted to DIE. But I still let him do it! Because he needs someone to talk to his passions about, and I care about him and know that being that person for him makes him happy and improves our relationship. Because of that, we spent the SECOND eight hour car ride talking about the history of unions, something I spent 27 years not even knowing my father had an interest in!
Let your parents talk to you about the dumb facebook videos they saw or the funny ancient wine mom memes they like or that time they went to korea and over-reacted to kimchi. Kids aren’t the only ones who just want their family to be interested in what they have to say.
this is such a good take.