Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Some let-downs sting because they felt like a promise, even when nobody said it out loud.
For some people it comes from the home they grew up in: a mother who always sided with her own mother, siblings who closed ranks the moment an uncle raised his voice.
Underneath, a rule can sit: “If my children are close to me, they'll stand with me,” or “Staying quiet while I'm criticised is taking the other side.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Replay the argument later, with the child's silence as the worst part
- Bring it up again with the child, hoping for a different answer
- Keep a quiet tally of whose side each person took over the years
- Act as though it was nothing, while it sits under the next visit
- Skip family gatherings so there's nothing to take sides about
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
'To be fair, he had a point'
There was an argument with your brother at the family lunch. On the way home, your grown-up daughter says, 'To be fair, Mum, he had a point.' You go quiet. You'd hoped she would say you were right. The rest of the drive feels very long. At home, you replay the argument and her words, and feel strangely alone in your own family.
Your kids should take your side
Underneath sits a rule: 'My kids should take my side in a family argument.' It sounds natural. Family should stand together, especially in a quarrel. But look at what it does: it turns your children into judges. Whether you feel supported now depends on grown-ups who may love everyone involved, and who simply see things from where they happen to stand.
Why their backing feels like love
We hold it because being backed by our children feels like being loved. Maybe you stood by your own parents in every single family quarrel. Maybe you feel alone in an argument and want someone close standing right beside you. Either way, wanting their support isn't selfish. It comes from wanting to feel less alone. That deserves kindness, not blame.
The sting that outlasts the argument
Every 'he had a point' stings longer than the argument. You start testing them with stories about the quarrel. You feel hurt when they stay neutral. You quietly wonder if they love the others more than you. Slowly family arguments pull in more people, and the closeness with your children gets tangled up in quarrels that were never theirs to settle.
Is needing their side worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has needing them on your side ever made an argument easier? Or has it mostly made it bigger? Grown children often love everyone in the family and don't want to choose between them. Either way, their fairness isn't the measure of their love for you. Holding this rule so tightly costs you more than it gives you.
They can love everyone
Letting go doesn't mean you stop wanting support. It means your sense of being loved no longer depends on them taking sides. You can let them stay out of the quarrel, and enjoy them just for who they are. That's where some peace comes back: your children can be your children, not your jury, and you can rest in that.
Basic respect and safety are never too much to expect; if anyone in the family is threatened, hurt or frightened, that is something else, and worth taking seriously.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleMy kids should take my side in a family argument.
A new rule to tryMy children can love everyone. That's not against me.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
Keep one family argument away from your children
- Step 2
Think of one good moment with your children
- Step 3
When you replay the quarrel, think of something nice instead
Want to talk it through?
“Which family argument still replays, and where was each of your children sitting when it happened?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A hope that surfaces when voices rise #
“My kids should take my side in a family argument.” It usually comes afterwards: on the drive home from a relative's house, in the quiet after a long lunch with an uncle went wrong, or once the cousins have gone and the cups are still out.
At heart it sounds like loyalty of the simplest kind: the people you raised, standing near you when it counts. That's why a silence from them at the table can land louder than anything the relative said.
When did this thought about your children last come up, and which relative was the argument with?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
The glance across the table #
Some parents notice it as a hot, sinking feeling at the table: a sharp remark from a relative, a glance across at a grown son or daughter, and their eyes on their plate. Outnumbered, in a room full of family.
Others feel it later, on the stairs or in the car, when one of their children says “everyone had a point” or “can we just drop it”. The sting can arrive before any thought has formed about what that moment was like from their chair.
The last time you looked to one of your children during an argument, what did you feel in the first second, before anything was said?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
Loyalty feels like the point of family #
This expectation tends to feel reasonable because loyalty can feel like the whole point of a family. Years of standing up for a child at school, with teachers, with relatives, can make it feel natural to hope they'd stand near you in return.
Some let-downs sting because they felt like a promise, even when nobody said it out loud. A child's silence in a heated room can feel like that promise breaking, though the child may never have seen it as a promise at all.
If being backed by your children in that argument had to be one small thing, a word, a look or a hand on the shoulder, which would it have been?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
The voice that replays the dinner #
“After everything, not one word for me.” “They always see the other side.” “It felt like three against one.” The voice tends to speak in the car home, or at night, going over the same few minutes at the table again and again.
Words like “always” and “never” tend to arrive when a hurt is fresh, and they can bring older quarrels in with them, so one dinner gets stacked on top of years of others. Some parents notice the child's silence becomes the part they replay most.
When the voice replays that argument, which moment does it stop on, and what did you hope your child would say right then?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
Where the picture of loyalty comes from #
For some people it comes from the home they grew up in: a mother who always sided with her own mother, siblings who closed ranks the moment an uncle raised his voice. In some families, who sits beside whom in a quarrel is noticed and remembered for years.
For others it comes from the opposite: having stood alone in old family quarrels, and hoping their own children would make it different. Some people trace a picture like this back to early years; some don't.
Which family argument from your own growing up first showed you what loyalty at the table looks like, and where were you sitting?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
The rule that reads every silence #
Underneath, a rule can sit: “If my children are close to me, they'll stand with me,” or “Staying quiet while I'm criticised is taking the other side.” The first sentence is the one people hear; the rule underneath decides how every silence at the table gets read.
Inside a family it rarely looks like a rule. It looks like the basic shape of a family, and in some moments it is close to fair. That's what makes it worth looking at, beside your grown children and the quarrels they find themselves near.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; some don't. Either way, it can be looked at.
Where in family life today does the rule about children taking your side still fit, and where not?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What one quiet dinner can carry #
It can mean a visit dreaded for weeks, a family meal spent watching faces instead of eating, a call with a grown child where the old argument sits unspoken under every sentence. None of it loud; all of it carried.
Something can shift between you and the child, too. When siding with you stands for being close to you, every neutral word from a child can sound like a choice against you, and the bond with that child can end up carrying a quarrel that started with somebody else.
Over the last year, which ordinary moment with one of your children was coloured most by that family argument, and what else could that moment have held?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years of replaying that dinner #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “my kids should take my side” is loud. What is in it: the calls, the messages, the old argument, the things left unsaid? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Perhaps replaying the dinner where nobody backed you up while the kettle boils, a call with a grown child kept short and careful, a family group chat read for who said what, a visit planned and then quietly pushed back.
Nothing here needs an answer, and the picture is yours to set down at any point. What, if anything, stands out when you look at it?
What fills that day, and what waits?Talk about this ›
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Backed in which shape? #
Being on someone's side can take more than one shape. A child who stays quiet at the table and phones the next morning, one who keeps the peace with everyone, one who says “I love all of you”: from across the room, each can look like a side taken or refused.
Each person at that table may carry a different picture of what loyalty asks, and grown children can find themselves between people they care about. That doesn't make your hope wrong, or right. It makes it one picture among several in the room.
What else might a quiet face at the table have held, besides a choice about whose side to take?Talk about this ›
What is already there
What your children bring away from the table #
Every so often, it can be warm to notice what already comes from your children, however small or uneven: a cup of tea brought without asking after the guests leave, a message the next day, a laugh shared about something else entirely.
This isn't a duty or a debt, and it doesn't cancel the hurt: a fair hope and a warm noticing can sit side by side. The small unasked things, on ordinary days away from any quarrel, may be the ones most worth seeing.
Some days nothing comes to mind, and that's fine too.
What do your children already bring, on an ordinary week away from any argument, that you would like to notice a little more?Talk about this ›
Making peace
Making peace, and keeping what is fair #
Making peace with this expectation doesn't mean deciding it asked too much, or deciding it was right. It means the gap between the backing you hoped for and what happened at the table stops running every visit and every call with your children.
What is fair in it can stay: wanting to feel your own children near you, wanting to be heard in your family. What can ease is the grip, so one quiet dinner can stay one dinner, not a verdict on what you mean to them.
Basic respect and safety are never “expecting too much”, in any argument, for you and for everyone at that table, your children included. Some things are kept quiet in a family for good reasons, including safety, and that is allowed.
Picture a family meal at peace with this hope: where would you be sitting, and what would you be enjoying?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer line for the drive home #
Instead of arguing with “My kids should take my side in a family argument”, some people keep a line like this ready: “I hoped they'd stand near me that night, and I'd still like to be close to each of them.” It doesn't need to win, only sit beside the old one.
It may feel thin on the night of a quarrel. Some people find a sentence of their own makes a little room next to the old one over time; others find it doesn't, and either way is fine.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that is honest about the hurt and still keeps you close to each child?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some quarrels can go back in the cupboard #
Not every family argument needs settling, or replaying, before the next visit. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a while, and set down, like the good dishes put back in the cupboard in Nagpur or a folding table returned to the garage in Ottawa.
Some things are kept quiet in a family for good reasons, including safety, and that is allowed. A hurt kept to yourself is still a real hurt, and still worth knowing.
Putting it down for the evening doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means the argument doesn't have to sit between you and your children every time the phone rings.
If it loosened
And if the need for a side eased a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the expectation a notch quieter. The hope to feel backed is still there, but one quiet dinner is one quiet dinner. What is the first thing that feels different, even slightly?
Small things can be enough, such as remembering the dinner along with the one moment someone did look your way, a call with a grown child that's just about their week, or a visit enjoyed for the food and the faces. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up belongs to you, and is worth noticing. Next, a look at what making peace with this hope could mean, and what is already there.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Give the old argument a short name of your own, and notice when it walks in
- When the argument replays, notice which moment it keeps returning to
- Notice one small thing you wanted for yourself today
- Ask yourself quietly: what did I need in that moment, underneath the side?
- Picture the dinner from your child's chair, just for a moment
Small, private and all optional. Try whichever feels doable.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- Which family argument still replays, and where was each of your children sitting when it happened?
- What did you most need to hear from your child in that moment, word for word?
- Who stood beside you in family quarrels when you were young, and what did that feel like?
- If the need for your kids to take your side eased a little, what would you notice first?
- What small moment with one of your children, away from any argument, would you like to enjoy more?