THE FUSE

When an adult child says, “You ruined my life” (or some close version of that painful sentiment), most parents brace for a specific charge. Parents share with me how they scramble backward through decades, trying to locate the “crime.” The usual suspects that pop up in these parents’ minds may include: “Was it the divorce when she was nine?” Or, “What about when we moved, and he lost his friends?” “Oh, wait, I still don’t know what I was doing when I made that hurtful comment about her weight in tenth grade?”