‘90s FAMILY : That Let-Down Feeling : Even the most loving parent experiences disappointment when a ‘perfect child’ is less than perfect. But that’s nothing compared to the stress the kid endures

Jeff would rather get screamed at, grounded or even denied dinner for a night. Just about anything, says the 17-year-old high school senior from the Westside, is preferable to that ugly phrase he sometimes hears from his parents: I’m so disappointed in you.

“Because it makes me hate myself,” Jeff says.

In Long Beach, a 12-year-old girl ponders her “always disappointed” mother. “When Mom says that,” she adds, scrunching her face, “it hurts like the kind of cuts you get from falling off your bike.”

Hurt also stings most disappointed parents, experts say, though few can express their feelings in the raw way that kids do. Parents tend to dismiss the mental aches, the gnawing guilt, the resounding nag that sneaks into their thoughts: I expected so much more from my child.

Even the most loving of parents, experts say, struggle with these feelings; particularly in today’s harried society, in which busier and longer workdays and a tight job market muddy the traditional roles of mother, father and child.

The distinction between adult and child is blurring, says Steven W. Vannoy, father of two and author of “The 10 Greatest Gifts I Give My Children” (Simon & Schuster, 1994). The hurried, worried day-to-day pace of today’s families is forcing children to shoulder more adult responsibilities--ones they often botch because they lack the skills and maturity.

It’s a time, Vannoy and other experts say, when Mom and Dad leave a 14-year-old home alone into the late hours while they plow through an increased workload; a time when a single dad tells a 12-year-old to watch her three younger sisters while he pursues romance; a time when a stressed-out mom routinely unloads her problems on a 10-year-old.

The result, Vannoy says, “is greater disappointment on the parents’ part,” because the pressure for kids to bounce between acting their age and behaving like adults often distracts and diminishes their abilities.

“Parents are often too overwhelmed to realize it,” he says. “This includes parents with the best intentions, parents who love their kid more than anything.”

Brian Stone sputters about a dozen “yeses” while he listens to a paraphrase of Vannoy’s explanation. It’s one of the reasons he and two researchers from the University of Illinois studied 636 kids, grades five through seven, who were left home unsupervised for two or more days a week.

The recently released study found that latchkey kids are twice as likely to experiment with drugs and less likely to earn top grades than their supervised peers. “A lot of good parents don’t realize that their child might take it personally when their parents leave them alone,” says Stone, assistant professor of school psychology at Wichita State University in Kansas.

They usually don’t understand that many of the disappointing things kids do, Stone says, are ways for the children to communicate their concerns.

Children especially need a sense of approval from their parents, experts say, adding that most kids are unaware of this need. It’s hard for a child, at whatever age, to feel happy if a parent is disappointed in them, says Jennifer Munnell Rapaport, licensed clinical psychologist with practices in Woodland Hills and West Los Angeles.

“It can really hurt,” she says.

Thomas, 17, never meant to upset his mother by failing a couple of classes, quitting the piano after 10 years of practice or growing his clean-cut hair into, as his mom called it, “a hooker’s ‘do.” But he acknowledges that he “kind of likes watching her go berserk.”

He says he likes it because he’s hurt that his mother is prejudiced against gays. “I’m gay,” he says, explaining that his close friends know. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell her because she’d be so upset and disappointed. I don’t know if I could take that kind of rejection. I’d rather take whatever stability I can get, if even for the moment.”

For Lomita High School senior Karl Yeh, 18, family stability comes from him relentlessly earning A’s. “I sense my parents are nervous I’ll only do so-so,” says Yeh, who worries what they’d think if he doesn’t get accepted this year into a top-notch school, such as Stanford or Princeton.

If he doesn’t get accepted, “I know they’ll be disappointed.”

But his mother, Ching Whan Yeh, says she couldn’t be disappointed in her son “as long as he tries and works hard at school. And he does. It’s OK if he doesn’t get into Stanford or Princeton. I’d be pretty happy if he got into UCLA or Berkeley.”

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The months before and years after youths graduate from high school--and especially if they never do--is the ripest time for parents to feel disappointed, says Michael Johnston, counseling psychologist at Cal State Long Beach.

“It has to do with kids establishing their autonomy and values, making career choices and finding their identity,” he says. “This can be hard for parents who, for example, have always wanted their child to go into premed or law, but (the child) has decided to start a business.”

Many parents unknowingly try to fulfill their needs and desires through their children, adds Myrna Silton-Goldstein, a Santa Monica psychologist. Often, this triggers disappointment when their kids are less than perfect.

“It’s difficult for (parents) to determine if they’re disappointed with the child or themselves,” she says. Also, “a lot of people compliment parents when their child does well and criticize them when they do not.”

In her gut, Betty says she feels “horrible and sick” admitting that the main reasons she’s disappointed in her son “is because I had such high hopes for him.”

Not that her only child has ever done anything major like drugs. On the contrary, he graduated from college with honors. “All his teachers said he could be U.S. President if he wanted,” she says. “But he doesn’t do much except eat my food, sleep in his room and work” part-time at a discount store.

“I love him,” she says, “but I’m really disappointed in the man he’s become.”

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Megan Schowengerdt understands. But the Glendale mother of one hopes parents like Betty don’t berate themselves. Instead, she says, they should attend one of the increasing number of parent support groups sprouting in Southern California and nationwide.

“(Disappointment) is one of the many emotional tugs that come with having a child,” says Schowengerdt, 36, a member of the Foothill Parents’ Group in the San Gabriel Valley. “Sometimes only a parent can understand what another parent is going through.”

The parent group Gina Cooper Edwards, 36, attends is like a “life-support machine. . . . If I didn’t have it, I think I would’ve died by now,” says the Las Vegas mother of two sons.

Almost a year ago, Christopher, 5, who has severe behavioral problems, “was at his worst,” she recalls. He cursed, socked her, played with knives, jumped out of a moving car and, once, dangled half his body off a cliff’s edge.

“When I saw him, the first thing I thought was, ‘At least, he’d go happy.’ What kind of parent would think that?” she asks. “The group reassured me that I was still a good parent, that I just needed a break and things would get better, and they did.”

But still, “I don’t always know what to do when he misbehaves,” she says. “But (the group) helped to teach me not to focus on my disappointment about parenting--I was supposed to have the perfect child. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But now I focus on how much I love him.”

When English teacher Crandallyn Murray Graham catches students “in a big one,” she doesn’t hesitate to tell them she’s disappointed. “I also tell them that I don’t like liars,” says Graham, who has recently received two national awards for her work at Samuel F.B. Morse High School in San Diego. “Then I tell them that anyone can make a mistake, and I’m still proud of them as long as they don’t lie again.”

Similarly, when Graham’s two adult daughters recently made disappointing announcements--one to concentrate on acting rather than college, the other to transfer out of a university midyear (ultimately, she didn’t)--she was “completely comfortable telling them how I felt. I knew I had to.”

It’s something Graham learned in 1982, after a 17-year-old robber strangled to death her 9-year-old son.

In the weeks following the slaying, “I learned a lot about being a parent. I pulled my daughters close to me and told myself I’d be honest with them, I’d never hold a grudge against them and I’d make sure they always knew that I loved them.”