feeling very put off by my kids

Last night I took my 18 year old daughter to a DUI victims panel. She has been charged with DUI and one requirement is that she attend a panel and hear firsthand from DUI victims how drunk driving has changed their lives. Both of the speakers lost loved ones to drunk driving, one a 19 year old son, and the other a brother.

I stayed there in the spectator area and listened to the presentation also. It was very intense. The two speakers have suffered such loss and that will always be there for them. The situation of the speaker with the teenage son--it is every parent's worst fear. The speaker with the brother--it was 16 years ago he lost him and still he broke down in front of the audience and cried.

I felt moved by both of the presentations and cried at both. I saw a number of people in the audience wiping tears.

Between the two speakers there was a break, and my daughter and I stood together. She could see I had cried. She said maybe I should just leave for the next speaker since I didn't have to be there. I said, no, I wanted to stay. She didn't understand why I would want to be there. She did not seem outwardly moved at all by the presentation. She had not cried and seemed unaffected, although she agreed it was intense (the only thing I said about the panel to her during the break). After the second speaker, her reaction was the same (she had a lack of reaction).

Earlier I had told my younger daughter (age 14) that older daughter and I were going to this panel. She was very interested and it seemed she thought it was kind of cool. She wanted me to videotape the event on my camera so she could see this (of course I said no). She was especially interested in gory details of the crashes. It's hard to describe, but I sensed in her a desire to hear these people and laugh at them. As if the thought of people getting up and sharing their grief was cause to make fun of them. (When she has seen me cry before, her reaction has been to make fun of me, and she was showing the same affect toward this.)

I am feeling very put off by the reactions of my 2 girls. Are they without empathy or feeling? I just feel yucky about them. I know everyone reacts differently and some people are more outwardly emotional than others but still have hidden feelings. I have certainly hidden my feelings many times. But I am having this yucky feeling that my girls are unfeeling monsters that I have raised and I am wondering what I did wrong.

I know that's an awful thing to say about one's own children. It's something I have never felt about my kids before.

I think at the ages of your children they dont see the reality of death. They are both rather young.

> I think at the ages of your children they dont see the reality of death.

Maybe they sense it and do not want to sense it.

yea sun, i think it has to do with the age - the compassion for others, personally speaking, was something I always had to some degree, but I became more sensitive as I grew older.. more thoughtful of others.

I don't think either that they are unfeeling - it wouldn't surprise me one bit if your older daughter was just hiding her feelings so as not to be "embarassed".

Maybe you could open up a dialogue again about the whole thing and see what comes up?

Sunny, I agree with the others here. Their ages are key, and denial of the reality of death isn't at all unusual. Some carry that for a long time in their lives, the fear is so great.
And it's so classic, the "THAT will never happen to me!" (no matter what the "THAT" is).

Maybe making it more personal by letting your daughters know how devastated you would be if something happened to them might help them understand your empathizing with the speakers.

I remember when my Dad was teaching me to drive. I was driving in a neighborhood where there was parking on one side of the street. Some little kids were playing with a ball up in their front yard or on the sidewalk. He cautioned me to be on the lookout for kids chasing their toys or riding their bikes out between the parked cars and unexpectedly coming into the street. I told my Dad well they would be wrong and it wouldn't be my fault if something happened. He quiety said to me "That may be, but I know you and if something happened I don't think you could live easily with it." So he turned it from being about caring about the kids who might run into the street (I believe I was jealous of 'those kids' getting his attention and caring) and he made it personal, about me and how I would feel. It was a rare and very memorable moment with my Dad.

I think that reaction would scare me too, have you talked about it with them?

No, I didn't. I think I am scared of what I might hear. I guess I want to keep this idea I have that they are good people, care about others, etc. I think it is probably true. There were good points made here about their age being a contributor. The response of my oldest to the DUI panel, I think, may partly be because she feels a bit unjustly accused of the DUI. There were some discrepancies not in her favor in the police report, and the police officer also lied to both her and me, so she feels burned by "the system," and so was perhaps going to have a chip on her shoulder about going to the DUI panel and learning or feeling anything. My youngest, the one who wanted me to videotape the speakers, hear the gory details, and thinks the grief of others is funny, is of more concern to me. But this is how she is, and I have known this for years, and worried about it for years. I try to not get stuck in that and think the best, do what I can to be a good parent and get outside advice to help me with that, encourage any glimmer of empathy I see in her (rare in any teenager, I know!), get her outside help (she has a therapist), etc.

Thanks, all, who commented. Sometimes it helps to let our fears be heard.

(((((Sunrise))))) I think that this is one of those opportunities in life that you have to talk to them and express your beliefs and concerns, in calm place. On the one hand, it's wonderful that your daughters have reached this age and not lost someone they loved.

In my own life, even though I'd lost people close to me I didn't have the empathy that I should have at the time. One example is our former accountant. He really screwed up our taxes some years ago, his mother had a brief illness and died during tax season. While I did have sympathy for him, my primary concern at the time was my taxes. (His mistakes did come back and cost us a great deal of money and hassle with the IRS several years later). At the time I thought "he's a middle aged adult, you work through it." I didn't understand how much losing a parent could rock your world until I lost my own father unexpectedly. When the IRS contacted us about the errors, was a much different person. I could then understand what the poor man had gone through.