I was once told that being aparentis like living with your heart walking around outside of your body. If you have kids, it’s likely that they are the center of your universe, and there might be at least a small part of you thinking about them at all times. So the idea of not being able to contact yourchildrenmight be heart wrenching, but unfortunately, it’s not a particularly unique experience.A quarter of adults report beingestrangedfrom at least one parent, and while this might be a mother or father’s worst nightmare, it usually doesn’t happen for no reason. Moms and dads with children who have cut off contact have recently beenopening upon Reddit about what led to theirestrangement, so we’ve gathered some of their most honest responses below. Keep reading to find a conversation with Empty Nest CoachPamela Henkelman, and be sure to upvote the replies that hit home for you.This post may includeaffiliate links.
I was once told that being aparentis like living with your heart walking around outside of your body. If you have kids, it’s likely that they are the center of your universe, and there might be at least a small part of you thinking about them at all times. So the idea of not being able to contact yourchildrenmight be heart wrenching, but unfortunately, it’s not a particularly unique experience.
A quarter of adults report beingestrangedfrom at least one parent, and while this might be a mother or father’s worst nightmare, it usually doesn’t happen for no reason. Moms and dads with children who have cut off contact have recently beenopening upon Reddit about what led to theirestrangement, so we’ve gathered some of their most honest responses below. Keep reading to find a conversation with Empty Nest CoachPamela Henkelman, and be sure to upvote the replies that hit home for you.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Not me but I was on a Facebook group a few weeks back where this older woman in her 60s claimed to be estranged from her kids, and she didn’t know why. She assumed that the kids were hard to deal with and she did her best but no matter what they were always out to get her or feel that she was being aggressive.When someone made a comment or suggestion saying that the way she phrases things may contribute to it based on how she spoke, this woman flipped out on the person who commented. When I followed saying if that’s how she speaks to them, then I can see why they may feel that way, she flipped out on me saying I don’t know her story and that she was the nicest person she ever knew.Some people just genuinely don’t have the mental capacity to learn how to grow.
My kids still speak to me, but not much. I’m better than I was, but I was a c**p parent. Poverty was part of it. Hooking up with the wrong men, just to have a little more income, or not to pay for child care. Bed chemical decisions. I got myself cleaned up, got out of debt, got rid of the guy who was harassing my boy, and acting like the girl (our kid together ) could do no wrong. My parents were atrocious, and I really thought I was much better. Actually, I was much better, but I wasn’t enough better. It was hard for me to show love because I never experienced it myself. There were times i didn’t hear from my boy for years, and honestly, I know I deserved that. I wrote him a long letter, apologized for my faults, and honestly have tried to be better. We have a much better relationship now, and while we are not super close, we have something, and I’m grateful.
To gain more insight into this topic, we got in touch with Empty Nest CoachPamela Henkelman, who was kind enough to have a chat withBored Panda. First, we asked Pamela about some of the most common reasons why adults become estranged from their parents.“Dr. Joshua Coleman lists six common reasons for estrangement: tension with a son or daughter-in-law; mental illness, addiction or abuse; the child has a therapist; divorce; feeling too close to the parent; and disagreement about choices, values or lifestyle,” the coach shared.
To gain more insight into this topic, we got in touch with Empty Nest CoachPamela Henkelman, who was kind enough to have a chat withBored Panda. First, we asked Pamela about some of the most common reasons why adults become estranged from their parents.
“Dr. Joshua Coleman lists six common reasons for estrangement: tension with a son or daughter-in-law; mental illness, addiction or abuse; the child has a therapist; divorce; feeling too close to the parent; and disagreement about choices, values or lifestyle,” the coach shared.
May I?“I grew up an orphan during the Great Depression, and there was no way in hell that my kids would have an easier life than me. I would do everything in my power to recreate my joyless, deprivation-filled childhood for them, so that they would know first hand what I went through. I would offer no emotional or financial support, because I had none. I would crush any interests they had, and sabotage their every action with the ferocity of Genghis Khan. I would do things to them that in today’s world would be on the news. I would put on a cheerful and friendly face to the outside world, and immediately revert to my evil self at home. I never tired of raging and shrieking. I would be completely shameless at all times. I thought nothing of living a life of deceit, yet paint myself as a devout religious person. I lived a life of agonizing pain, never had a moment of love, laughter, peace, or safety, never knew where my next meal was coming from, so was it really so awful that I continued that tradition with my own kids?”I skipped her funeral.
Sometimes children outgrow their parents whose development is halted.
My mom loves the non apologies. “I’m sorry you’re upset.” “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” “I think we all need to learn to forgive.” Who knows what she says to my dad, who knows how to apologize, but, when the cards are down, is never actually apologetic.It’s exhausting.
We also asked Pamela about the toll that being cut off from their children takes on a parent. “Estrangement is the deepest pain for a parent. It causes depression, shame, stress and deep loss,” she shared. “Granted, if a parent isn’t safe, it’s wise for the child to keep their distance, but most estrangements can be worked out if both parties are willing.”
My daughter and I were estranged for 18 months. It.was.hell.It was also all my fault. I had crossed a boundary and god bless her, she called me on it and told me to go f**k myself.I was incensed! How dare she!Well she dare because she was right. And I had to go introspective and work on me. She reached out 18 months later and we have been in touch now and have a SOLID relationship.It is a communicative relationship. Understanding and just being compassionate to each other.
My mother literally couldn’t tell you. I don’t mean she doesn’t know, I’ve told her, but she’s clinically delusional-an actual narcissist. Straight up rewriting memories AS THEY HAPPEN to the point she thinks we’re plotting against her when we agree and she doesn’t. She claims my partner is why. She told my family I was on d***s. Ironic, since she’s on just about everything and can’t see our youngest brother without supervision anymore. I don’t know what she did for that, but due to my own childhood…I can guess and it’s not good.
Next, we asked Pamela if there’s anything parents can do to try to repair theirrelationshipwith an estranged son or daughter. “It’s the parent’s responsibility to reach out to the child. A parent needs to own their role in the breakdown, and this is why it’s difficult, because unhealthy parents will blame their children,” the expert says.“Unhealthy children will blame the parents. It’s a complicated relationship. Dr Joshua Coleman recommends writing a letter of amends to open the conversation,” Pamela continued.
Next, we asked Pamela if there’s anything parents can do to try to repair theirrelationshipwith an estranged son or daughter. “It’s the parent’s responsibility to reach out to the child. A parent needs to own their role in the breakdown, and this is why it’s difficult, because unhealthy parents will blame their children,” the expert says.
“Unhealthy children will blame the parents. It’s a complicated relationship. Dr Joshua Coleman recommends writing a letter of amends to open the conversation,” Pamela continued.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to much in the last 2 years. She’ll come to family (her grandparents aunts/uncles/cousins), but only replies to anything I say with one or two word answers.I wish I could say I don’t know why. But I do. Her mom said she feels I put her second after her mom and divorced. I keep trying to rebuild that bridge. Hopefully in time.The take away is this. It doesn’t matter how you perceive things, it’s how your child does. Don’t ever let them doubt how you feel about them.
I have no idea why i stopped talking to my parents.It wasn’t an incident. It was a slow moving snowball.But the main thing is how f*****g unprepared I was for life. I’m in my 40s now, and still trying to figure out basic things. Google is my parent at this point. I can’t remember the last time I asked either of my parents for advice/help.
Pamela provided an example of a “letter of amends” that a parent might write to their child once all contact has ceased.“Psychologist and author ofRules of Estrangement, Dr. Joshua Coleman recommends this script: Dear Son/Daughter, I’m writing to see if it’s possible to open up a dialogue with you. I know that you wouldn’t have this time apart from me if it wasn’t the healthiest thing for you to do. With that being said, I don’t completely understand why you cut off ties with me.““It’s clear I have significant blind spots in either how I raised you or things I’ve done while you’re an adult, and I’m writing to have better understanding,” Pamela continued. “Would you feel comfortable letting me know? I promise to read it from the perspective of listening and learning and not in any way to defend myself. Love, Mom”
Pamela provided an example of a “letter of amends” that a parent might write to their child once all contact has ceased.
“Psychologist and author ofRules of Estrangement, Dr. Joshua Coleman recommends this script: Dear Son/Daughter, I’m writing to see if it’s possible to open up a dialogue with you. I know that you wouldn’t have this time apart from me if it wasn’t the healthiest thing for you to do. With that being said, I don’t completely understand why you cut off ties with me.”
“It’s clear I have significant blind spots in either how I raised you or things I’ve done while you’re an adult, and I’m writing to have better understanding,” Pamela continued. “Would you feel comfortable letting me know? I promise to read it from the perspective of listening and learning and not in any way to defend myself. Love, Mom”
I had a daughter that my parents kept making plans to come see, but then cancelling the day before each time. The last time, when my daughter was already packed to go see grandma and grandpa, and we had been hyping it to her for weeks, they called and cancelled the trip with no excuse and then I later found out they went to a baseball game with their friends instead.I was used to this kind of abandonment and would laugh it off in the past, but as I held my 6 year old daughter while she cried her eyes out, I vowed she’d never know that kind of unreliability in her life.That was the last time I spoke to them. My wife wrote them a letter a few years ago, but they never wrote back. My daughter is 14 now and I am toying with the idea of allowing her to meet them since she’s more mature, but they’d probably just cancel again. .
My mother and I didn’t talk for a few years. When I went away to college she said, “If you get on that plane, don’t bother coming back home.” I fell in love while in college and got engaged and he abused me. I never told my mom because I didn’t think she cared. It was my brother that came to another state to check on me. I finally did come back home but things were never the same.
My mom and I stopped talking for a 14 year stretch. When my son was very little, we were on vacation with my mother. My wife and I had a small disagreement about his breakfast and afterwards, my mother pulled me aside and said I should take my son with me to a hotel for a few days to teach my wife a lesson.I disagreed, telling her that I didn’t feel that I should be taking marital advice from a woman who had been divorced 3 times.She didn’t take it as well as you might think. /sWe finally started taking again when my grandmother passed away and have been fine ever since.
Finally, Pamela added that repairing these relationships won’t be simple, but it may be possible. “There’s no easy way through this, but if both parties are willing to find commonality and extend forgiveness, relationships can be restored,” she told Bored Panda. “It takes patience and ongoing conversations once you’re communicating again. If the parent isn’t willing to humble themselves, it is hard for reconciliation to occur.”
In my case, the catalyst was January 6th. We had a family group chat and we were exchanging information about what we were watching with our own eyes. My oldest son started chiming in saying it wasn’t that bad and the news was overblowing things. Up to that point I had no idea how far gone down the conservative hole he had gone. Of course he waited until after I moved him into a new apartment in the middle of July, cosigned for the apartment and paid the security deposit before he decided to cut contact.He has gone no contact with the entire family with the exception of a conservative BIL, which we get along with fine. I thought we had shown all of our children how to get along with others even if their opinion differs. I guess that lesson didn’t sink in.
My parents are too old for Reddit. I estranged from them because they never, ever wanted me. My mother didn’t want kids but in that day, that wasn’t an option. They had my sister first and sort of “used up” their love on her. When I came along five years later, they didn’t have anything left. I didn’t find out until 35 that it wasn’t anything I did: my mother just really didn’t want kids. By then, though, I’d internalized close to four decades of being unwanted. I am terrified of being abandoned and have had rafts of therapy. My parents were never abusive. We had food on the table and clothes on our backs. I had My Little Ponies and She-Ra figures. I also attempted s***e for the first time when I was eleven years old. I started drinking when I was 15. My parents did not notice. They told me I was “the independent one” so I didn’t need their love. We also were not a demonstrative family. My family did not hug or kiss or touch in any way. I think I have hugged my parents maybe ten times or so. Both parents are quite smart and there was always a kind of… judgement? about people who couldn’t use their words and had to use their bodies instead. Like only poor or stupid people hug their kids. I could go through a list of what they did for my sister versus me, but fk it. I would be accused of hyperbole, or of making things up whole cloth. We were only nominally raised in the same household; her life had a very, very, very different trajectory. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t just the love that my sister used up - time, money, effort, ideas, conversation - I got none of those things. If it matters, I don’t blame Sister - we still talk. It wasn’t her fault.
I am one of those Moms who always felt that providing for my kids, taking them on vacations, buying them what they needed was enough, didn’t realize love and nurturing were essential ingredients. Now my daughter is 28 and cannot hold a job, emotionally insecure, depressed and blaming me for her failures. She made me realize ( and therapy helped ) that how my actions, behavior might make a child feel they are not valued or loved. I am remorseful and regretting all my actions but unfortunately cannot undo the damage caused.
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My father recently died with 2/5ths of his kids talking to him. Both of those two had considered cutting contact.I had a few emails exchanges with him before he died to discuss why he had never met my daughter. He made excuses for what he could and denied the rest. He couldn’t live with his actions, I think.Anyway, he told everyone that all his kids were just mentally ill and it wasn’t his fault. I think he honestly believed it.Then he ended up stealing 5/6ths of the money my mom had left to us kids (with him as trustee) and gave it to his second wife. Guy was a f*****g prince.
My daughter doesn’t talk to me as much anymore. She moved out when she was 22. I had psychosis episodes for 5 yrs all of a sudden (no history of mental illness like that, just your old run of the mill anxiety and depression) and after her having severe mental issues dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy, I got the mental issues and I had to be hospitalized for s*****e attempts. It traumatized her.I understand why she pulled away, even if it was for something I couldn’t help, and I don’t blame her. My last attempt was in Nov, so I hope with time we will be able to be close again. I text her every few days to tell her that I love her, and she responds in kind. We text about life a few times every few months, but we used to be best friends before the tragedy that upended her life and then mine. It altered the course of our lives.
A lot of kids commenting here. I’m a dad who’s estranged from my adult daughter. It’s been complicated. Her mom is a narcissist and bipolar. She left me with the kids when they were becoming teens after some massive weight loss. Went to chase a man. Unfortunately my daughter didn’t fall far from her mother’s tree. Tried everything with her, but she acted out, ran away from home, almost tore apart my 2nd marriage, etc. It was a nightmare. Constant lashing out, constant quitting school, constant burning through jobs, constant stealing from the house. As an adult she stole 5000 from me, and only really reaches out when she needs rescuing from her bad decisions. I developed PTSD from all my time dealing with her poor decisions and it lead to my heavy drinking and some health problems. She blames me for all her bad decisions and it’s horrible. Last time she reached out to me was father’s day with a wall of text calling me a deadbeat.For context, I have an older adult son living with me and going to college, and I adopted my 2nd wife’s daughter. We all have a pretty solid relationship. It just sucks I can’t have one with my older daughter, it literally was killing me.
Answering on behalf of my grandparents:They know why. My grandmother sent a letter to my brother telling him that they don’t accept his gay lifestyle despite being proud of him for other things. My grandfather signed it.That side of the family blew up as they refused to apologize because they didn’t see it as wrong; simply an expression of their faith.The relationship between my grandmother and me/my dad/my brother is ruined. The relationship with my grandfather is much more complicated than it should be. He signed the letter, but there’s some weird emotional abuse there that’s hard to explain - he feels he owes his life to my grandmother because of circumstances when they got married, so he goes along with whatever she says, no matter how he feels in private.Anyway, they’re fully aware of why they’re estranged. They just see well it’s an expression of our faith as an apology and a sincere mea culpa, and no one else in my family does.
I do not believe my mom has enough self awareness to understand why we haven’t talked in years. I stopped contacting her because she lied, weaponized information, isolated my half sister from me and never had me as any kind of priority.
I was an a***e, s****y parent and an alcoholic. He stood over me during an argument when he was 18 (he was 6'4 and I am 5'6) and scared the st out of me, so I kicked him out. That was 14 years ago and he hasn’t spoken to me since. I have not been able to apologise, to show him how much I have changed for the better, nor how different I am with his younger brothers (also adults now, teenagers at the time). I miss him every single day, however, it’s his choice and I have to live with that. Thankfully his brothers and I have a wonderful relationship, it took a lot of hard work, and tears, but I am so grateful they are a huge part of my life, along with two grandchildren now.
My son went NC with me because he feels that it’s best for his personal growth and his peace of mind not to be around people who behave badly or have negative attitudes or dysfunctional ways of relating to each other, and yes, those things have been true of me. I believe that he and I may have differences in our sense of proportion, but it’s really only his perspective that matters because it’s his happiness at stake.I don’t want to be the reason that his life feels any more fd up than it already is.It makes me sad in a way that I can’t even express. I can’t change the past. I was trying so hard to change the present. Now it feels like the light has gone out of my life. It’s so fd up to know that the best thing you can do for the person you love the best, is to leave them alone.
My father would go long stretches not talking to me, then would ask why I’m not talking to him.
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When dealing with family dynamics, it’s crucial to recognize the common threads that often lead to tension and estrangement.
My daughter cut me off because of masks, vaccines and politics. My grandkids live 10 miles away and I haven’t seen them in 3 years. Thanks MAGA.
My daughter cut off contact for 3 years with no explanation. When she got back in contact she let me know she had been having severe mental health issues. A few months later, my son broke off contact with no explanation. 6 months later he told me he was struggling a lot with mental health issues. I wish I understood better what I could do to ease their pain. It breaks my heart.
I am/was a terrible parent. I rarely spent anytime with my children. I deserve my children not speaking with me.
Neglect.
My brother and my dad don’t talk.My brother can be an unpleasant person. I don’t think he got what he needed growing up because no one really understood what he needed. He was frustrated and angry all the time and never could see people as worthwhile, he looks down on everyone still. He could charm you if he wanted something.My dad got tired of lending him money that he’d never see again and had to think of enjoying his retirement.My brother looks at every vacation they have as money that should be his. They are being boomer capitalists and don’t love him enough, clearly wanting to see him suffer.I can understand it sometimes, to be struggling so hard when others have it easy can feel cruel at times, but mom still sends him regular money while keeping it from her husband, which is a fun secret for a sweet lady to have to sit with and he’ll Still claim that he’s gotten no help ever. I don’t think there’s a such thing as enough help. He needs more than we can give him. He’s not doing OK and I wish that I knew how to help him in a meaningful way that would stick.I would talk to him sometime, but he makes it clear he finds me annoying, and I find that unpleasant. I put myself out less and less over time.He finds med mixes that help for a time. Sometimes he’s okish. .
Was gonna say a whole bunch of personal stuff but will cut it at don’t lie to your children then perpetuate b******t transparent lies while trying to reconnect.
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