“If your kids are unable to see you as worthy of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then you have to find redemption in that small crack in the continuum of catastrophe, as Walter Benjamin put it.” James Coleman, Rules of Engagement
“So, how’s your daughter doing?” I asked my new acquaintance behind the wheel of her car that she had previously called “my baby” (I was to realise soon what was lying behind that term of endearment).
I expected her to lighten up and talk about her 24-year-old daughter with pride and joy for at least half an hour incessantly (I know parents: we don’t even need an invitation to shower our audience with all the details under the sun about how delightful, extraordinary, absolutely unique children we have!).
The ensuing silence was a hint that something wasn’t right. Although focused on driving (thank goodness!), her pursed lips, clenched jaws, tense body confirmed my hunch.
“Hmm…I don’t know, she might be doing all right. She won’t talk to me. She hasn’t spoken to me for a year.”
Sadly, her story is one of the increasingly numerous stories of adult child estrangement that causes the most profound and unanticipated pain parents can experience except, maybe, the death of their children.
Stories like this make you wonder:
If the (supposedly) strongest bond, such as the one between a parent and his/her child is shattered, what can one expect of other relationships?
How can a parent cope with estrangement?
How does a parent approach reconciliation?
What makes adult children decide to cut off their parents?
Some data suggests that one in four American young adults will sever ties with a parent, more likely with the father.
A study published by the University of Nebraska indicates that 22.4% of adult children estrangement is due to the parent’s toxicity: “continuous situations of hurtfulness, anger, cruelty, or perpetual disrespect.” 14.8% of adult children break off with their parents because they have been feeling “judged, unloved, or unaccepted, often as a result of divergent values” (being a child born with a disability would fit in this category). Abuse accounts for 13.9% of estrangement – it may be emotional, psychological, sexual or physical.
Divorce, drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness, perception of egotism or narcissism, parental favoritism are other causes of estrangement.
Who is to blame?
Well, don’t hold your breath since I’m not going to point the finger at either the parent or the children.
With the exception of abusive or toxic parents’ case, I think the truth lies in the middle.
I also believe that loving, dedicated and supportive parents get the worst of it.
These parents bend over backwards for their children: they go to all their school plays, concerts and football matches, teach them how to ride the bike, travel with them, have sleepless nights taking care of them, throw birthday parties for them, send them to private lessons, play with them, laugh with them, dance with them, cry with them.
Furthermore, divorced parents fight for their children in court, overcome co-parenting challenges, put aside past relationship issues with their exes including strong negative emotions towards them (resentment, anger, disappointment, etc), cope with financial strains; some of them need to travel for hours to spend one weekend with their child.
Despite their good intentions, the same parents make mistakes and blunders and sometimes fail miserably.
Later on, they wish they’d known better.
They wish they’d acted differently.
They wish they’d had been the parents their children wanted them to be.
The adult children, on the other hand, have their own painful narratives about the past which is often in stark contrast to the parent’s version.
They may have been scared, humiliated, controlled by the parent. They may have felt abandoned, undervalued, overlooked. They may have believed they were not smart enough, beautiful enough, ambitious enough.
They wish their parents had been honest with them.
They wish their parents had been patient with them.
They wish their parents had loved them unconditionally.
How can parents reconcile?
I’m sorry to bring you the bad news, but it is you, as a parent, that will have to make the first step towards reconciliation.
As highly unfair, preposterous, inadmissable this may sound, this is the only way out of your personal hell.
Self-reflection is crucial – unravelling the past and admitting the part you played takes courage, honesty, resilience, patience, humility.
Needless to say, this self-reflective process goes hand in hand with you feeling unloved, abandoned, forgotten, unforgiven, misunderstood, enraged; with you blaming yourself, your children, their friends, their therapists, your ex, life itself. As if this isn’t enough, you long to see, hug, kiss, talk to your children.
Alas, it feels like a dead end. But it’s not.
Your gut instinct will tell you when you’re ready to initiate contact with your child: it may be a letter, an email, a phone or video message in which you acknowledge both your share of guilt and your children’s pain and show your willingness for open, honest discussion, even for parent-child therapy sessions.
If, despite your attempts for reconciliations, your child still won’t talk to you, then it’s essential for you to respect their wish. At the end of the day, it’s the decision of an adult, isn’t it? Accept it.
As Joshua Coleman wonderfully puts it, “we accept that being out of contact allows them time to work in feeling separate, more independent, less triggered by whatever ways we annoy them, hurt them, or frustrate them; it allows them time to calm the f… down whatever it is they’re so upset about, to become more self-reflective about the ways they may be overreacting or blaming us.”
Giving them time and space is healing and, hopefully, one day they will come to their senses.
In the meantime, you have a life to live without your child in it. The last thing you need is a victim or a martyr mentality. What you need to do is to learn to live with your pain and still enjoy your life.
Your children’s happiness is precious.
So is yours.
Resources:
Joshua Coleman, Rules of Estrangement”
“Giving Voice to the Silence of Family Estrangement,” https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/commstudiespapers/66/
What kind of relationships do you want? 