Awhile back, the pre-meeting chat at my home group turned towards the recent accomplishments of someone’s highly accomplished kids. I made the appropriate congratulatory noises, and then my friend C. looked at me deadeye across the table and said, “You know, kids are how parents keep score.”

I felt that. I know she felt it too: she’s lost a child to the disease of addiction. Sometimes the happy news of others is hard to smile along with.

Ever have that experience? It seems to happen a lot around the holidays, as if the holidays weren’t bad enough. Someone gushes about their child’s latest manifestation of wonderfulness: the graduate degree, the playoff team, the new car or house or Fortune 500 job. I’m truly happy for them, usually.

And most of the time I can escape being asked anything in return. (Introvert hack #1: ask questions to keep ’em talking so that you don’t have to say anything about yourself. Most people will go on and on if you let them. Bonus: they’ll leave thinking you’re a great conversationalist.) But sometimes I can’t evade the counter-question: “And how’s your kid doing?”

Honest or polite?

Back when I didn’t care about being honest, this was a lot easier. Integrity makes some things a pain in the butt.

With casual acquaintances, it’s easy. It’s tougher with work friends and extended family. Fuzzy answers tend to draw a barrage of follow-up questions that are hard to handle tactfully.

The awkward part is that I work with a lot of people who knew Kid Qualifiers #1 and #2 when they were younger…y’know, before. These kind people genuinely want to know how those cute kids of memory are now doing as young adults.

Um, where do I start?

With the latest stint in detox? The ER visits? The jobs lost after showing up hungover too many times? The arrests? The pending court case? The self-inflicted injuries? The calls from strangers? The times when we have no idea what’s going on? The grief, the worry, the fear?

Or maybe with the hope…the hope that this time sobriety will last, the hope of keeping relationships alive, the hope that maybe this disease won’t take everything before the miracle comes.

Either way, “Fine” doesn’t cover it.

A lonely disease

Before I came into program, those conversations nearly killed me. This is a lonely disease. I had two strategies–avoid, or nod and fabricate–and both left me feeling isolated and wretched.

By the grace of God, one of these dear work friends happens to be an AA. He understands anonymity, and he’s safe to be honest with. There are no words for the relief that comes from telling the truth to someone who gets it. He’s a constant source of encouragement.

And now, of course, I have a whole worldwide fellowship of people who get it. That saved my life. And it gave me the courage to figure out how to be honest while a) not making anyone squirm and b) preserving my kid’s anonymity.

So, how’s your kid doing?

I’ve learned a lot from asking other Al-Anon parents how they handle this. The most helpful response yet: “Oh, he’s doing his own thing.” Honest, yet vague enough to then steer the conversation towards something else. One member goes with radical honesty: “He’s great! He’ll be eligible for early release sometime next year!”

Others opt for, “Fine.” And that’s okay too. Honesty is important, but we don’t owe anyone details, especially details that might compromise someone’s anonymity. However much I’m allowing it to affect me, it’s my kid’s story, not mine.

The real issue is that “How’s your son/daughter doing?” is considered a safe, socially neutral topic. Most people enjoy being asked about their kids. If I’m in the silent minority for whom that question brings pain, that’s not the fault of the person asking. It’s my job to find a healthy way to deal with it.

The Bad Parent

When my friend C. made that remark, she was voicing the deep pain that almost every parent of an alcoholic or addict feels: the pain of being judged. She’s right: people do keep score by their kids.

Our society measures parents by their kids’ success or failure. Parents tend to see their kids through the lens of ego–if my kid is doing great, it means I’m a great parent. If my kid’s not doing great, society is quick to label me a bad parent. I’m quick to label myself, too, and take on the soul-crushing guilt of another person’s disease.

Even people who are trying to be kind often secretly (or not so secretly) wonder: What did those parents do wrong? Or maybe they’re not so kind, and their judgment is more open. A lot of it comes from fear: people are looking for reasons why it can’t happen in their family.

And the blame-the-parents mentality is endemic in schools. I still have a few teeny tiny resentments towards the many people in the education system who gave me the Bad Parent Treatment, and I still bless that one assistant principal who treated me with respect and compassion when Kid Qualifier #1 ended up in his office.

Back when my kids were young and unblemished–ha, ha, just kidding! They had this disease before they could walk. But before things hit the fan in our family, I used to hear sad stories and think those same thoughts: Those poor parents. I wonder what they did wrong.

Yup, karma! Now I know. That’s what it took for me to learn compassion.

Keeping score

Beyond success or failure, there’s the Parent Scorecard. It varies from family to family, to be sure, but the basics are the same across the board. We all intuitively understand it; it’s built out of the expectations we’ve grown up with.

What scores points? Frequency of contact (“We talk every day”), knowing details of each others’ lives, attention on birthdays and holidays, and all the other marks of connectedness and closeness. (Services rendered is a big bragging point too, especially as parents get older–I mowed my mom’s yard every week for years just because she always mentioned it with pride to her neighbors. People pleasing is its own punishment, y’all.)

If you were to make a list of all the things the disease of addiction takes away from us, and lay it side by side with The Scorecard, it’d be close to a 100% match. Closeness and communication are the first things to go when alcoholism moves in. Keeping score hurts so much because it reminds us of all we’ve lost.

Changing the things I can

So I try hard not to play that game anymore. It was all part of the disguise, anyway. All I have to remember is my friend C. looking at me across that table. Waving my scorecard might prop up my self-esteem in the moment, but I have no idea how it may feel to the other person.

It’s a two-sided deal: if my kids’ disease isn’t my fault, their accomplishments aren’t mine either. If I truly believe that I didn’t cause it, can’t control it, and can’t change it, that goes for the good things in their lives too.

That doesn’t make sense to people whose egos are still wrapped up in their kids’ achievements, and I’m okay with that. It didn’t make sense to me either when I first got here. It took a long, long time for me to actually believe the Three C’s. I had to watch a lot of program people live them out, over and over.

It takes a lot of practice, but I’m slowly learning to be happy for my kids for their own sake when they do great things–to let their accomplishments be theirs, just as I’m learning to let their setbacks be theirs. It’s their journey, not mine. I can cheer for them and cry with them without making their lives an extension of mine. And without keeping score.

My worth as a person isn’t wrapped up in how my kids are doing. That’s liberating. It frees me to love them for who they are, whether they’re up or down. I’m grateful to this program for giving me that freedom.

Keep coming back!