Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict

by Joshua Coleman

Reconciling an estrangement requires an attitude unlike any you’ve ever experienced before. It’s not easy, and frankly, my methods aren’t for everyone. I’ve had parents fire me because they refused to reach out to the adult child in a way that I believe is critical for a potential reconciliation. I’ve also fired parents because they wanted to use the family therapy as a vehicle to blame their adult children rather than empathize or take responsibility.

My method requires a willingness and certain bravery on the part of the parent. You must strive to see yourself as your child sees you, and actively look for evidence that what they’re saying may have a kernel of truth.

From my many years of experience, I can say that how a parent responds to this particular recommendation—that they try to empathize with the child’s complaints or perceptions, however at odds these are with their own—is crucial: it often determines whether they ever see their children or grandchildren again.

“It’s not exactly that you have to apologize,” I tried again. “It’s more like this: you’re saying that you didn’t know when you were raising him that you hurt him. And now you do. Now you wish you’d communicated differently. You don’t have to say that you’re a bad person or a bad father. Just that your behavior had an effect on him that wasn’t your desire.”

For some parents, feeling empathy for their child’s allegations is a slippery slope, a route to experiencing long-warded-off feelings of hurt or fear from their own pasts. Their unconscious schema is that it is better to keep all of that neatly tucked away and sealed shut:

I was also starting to feel discouraged. Most estranged parents will walk through fire to have a family session with their adult children. But Frank wasn’t able to take even the most basic step. And I felt sad for Rachel. She didn’t have the strength to tell her husband: Nothing is more important to me than having my child and my grandchildren back in my life. If you don’t try to change, I’ll leave you. Or I’ll make your life so miserable you’ll give in and do as I ask you to do.

sometimes it makes sense for one parent to establish a separate peace with the child as a bridge toward a future relationship with the other. From my perspective, the fewer degrees of separation, the better.”

most parents who make these changes feel like it’s worth it if it means getting their child and grandchildren back.”

I’m sometimes contacted by adult children who want to do due diligence and determine whether their position of estrangement is reasonable or severe. I don’t think adult children are obligated to have a relationship with a parent, especially in those cases where there’s a history of abuse. However, I do think that both parents and adult children should try for some period of time to empathize with the other’s position in order to see if a more mutually satisfying relationship can be built. Parents should do this because the buck stops with them,

Adult children should do it because working through childhood issues provides a better foundation for healthy relationships and the ability to parent. In addition, most parenting occurs in a fog where seemingly good decisions can later appear clueless, selfish, or damaging—and the parent deserves a chance to repair.

But directly confronting a hurtful parent...

Estrangement is often a similar attempt to reduce the hold that the parent continues to have over the adult child. However painful the separation, many adult children report that ending the relationship with the parent was the only way they could find to take control over their own lives.

was reasonable to ask her mother to take responsibility for the hurt she had caused as a condition for reconciliation.

In Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, she describes the power of having her mother acknowledge the ways that she neglected her. I know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been, she became that mother for the first time.

These are hard sessions for both parents and adult children. Hard for the adult child to take the risk of baring their emotions to the very person who, they believe, caused their suffering. Hard for the parent to confront the possibility that he or she has deeply hurt, betrayed, or failed his or her own child. Hard, hard, hard. But: worth it if each can get to the other side.

Parents have to go first. They have to give their child the space and time to talk about why the estrangement was necessary. They have to sit there and tolerate the pain, sorrow, and guilt it evokes; they have to empathize, mirror, find the kernel if not the bushel of truth.

If reconciliation doesn’t happen, sometimes it is because the parent is unwilling to engage in the kind of humility, self-reflection, and effort that are required—as

A common thread in the perspective of estranged children is allegations of harm committed by the parent. This is challenging terrain for today’s parents of adult children because much of what younger generations consider hurtful or neglectful parental acts would barely be on the radar for parents of almost any generation before. However, it’s important to understand that however loving, dedicated, or invested you were, your adult children have their own scale to weigh your behavior as a parent, one calibrated in a way far different from the one you brought into the nursery. Their measurements are based on a much more curated concept of childhood, where identities and emotions are more investigated, more complex, and more parsed.

Because today’s parents have often invested more in their children, financially and emotionally, than previous generations, they may feel entitled to a kind of availability that is at odds with what their adult child can reasonably or sanely provide. This entitlement can make parents communicate in ways that work against them—and, in turn, cause the adult child to push back. A negative feedback loop sometimes ensues: the child moves further and further away to escape the feelings of guilt and responsibility for the parent. As they feel their child becoming more and more distant or angry, the parent pursues them even more aggressively.

While some degree of loyalty and obligation to parents were de jure for prior generations, today’s parents live in a familial meritocracy where they’re required to be constantly attuned to the mood and needs of their adult children in order to earn a continued connection to them. This requires a level of psychological sophistication and communicative dexterity that would have been unheard of in any other generation of parents.

sensitive but not intrusive, tolerant but not neglectful, supportive but not smothering, forgiving but not indulgent, current on child development though not a pedant, a good playmate but not trying to live their lives through the child, and a good mentor, without using the word mentor.

You strengthen your own authority by showing your willingness to see it from their perspective and finding a kernel of truth in it. And as tragic as it is, this is their current view of you, so telling them they’re wrong won’t get you anywhere; it will just make them more angry and shut down. Your willingness to show empathy and self-examination will help them feel like they can relax their guard a little and consider letting you in more.”

Estranged parents always want to know how long it will take before it ends. Sadly, we never know. Our children have their own timeline; parents sometimes have only so much power or ability to influence it. Your main task is to make it clear that you’re available, you’re willing to work on yourself and the relationship, and you’re willing to respect your child’s needs for a relationship that’s more in line with their ideals.

today’s therapists and self-help authors want to help their clients become more resistant to the forces of guilt, shame, and worry about others that stand in the way of their developing their talents and pursuing their dreams. To that end, family members have increasingly come to be viewed as facilitators of (or obstacles to) a fully realized life, rather than necessary and forgivable features in an expectably imperfect existence. While the family was once where individuals located themselves in a chronological or social order, it now comprises the institution from which they must be liberated.

Listen in a nondefensive way to whatever Jeremy has to say. Try to find the kernel of truth in his assertions, however hurtful they may be. Even if his words are at odds with your memory and self-reflections, try to hear it as his perspective and not a matter of right or wrong.

Telling an adult child “I did the best that I could” may be small consolation to someone who suffered for many years as a result of the parent’s behavior.

Depressed mothers can be more needy, anxious, and sometimes disparaging. Therapists might interpret this depression as narcissism or some other personality disorder.

What some adult children find oppressive about their parent may not be the parent’s personality disorder, as is so commonly highlighted in therapy offices and on forums, but the weight of their own feelings of empathy.

her ability to just listen, reflect, and find the kernel of truth helped him to see that she was stronger than he had given her credit for. And it also helped when she was able to tell him that while she did miss him and would like to be in more contact, she didn’t need him in the way that he thought she did—to give her life purpose—and that it wasn’t selfish of him to be more focused on his own life and less focused on hers.

While parenting is in many ways a never-ending series of small mournings, a change in a child’s gender is hardly the least consequential.

the question is whether anything is served by your continuing to assert your version of the past once he’s clearly rejected that version. In finding a way to ally with his perspective, you’re not saying, Yes you’re right; you’re saying that he might be right, and if so, you were unable to see it at the time. That allows a bridge between your own reality and his. And nothing good will be exchanged between you until that bridge is built.”

All parents have their blind spots. Just because a parent tells me that their version of the past is accurate doesn’t mean that it is. From that vantage point, helping the parent write a letter that empathizes with the adult child’s perspective creates a way to correct for the disparity in their memories or assessments. There are separate realities in every family: A parent can reasonably feel like they provided their child with good, even ideal parenting—and their child could still reasonably wish their parent had made different parenting decisions. Accepting the adult child’s viewpoint encourages them to reduce their feelings of opposition or defensiveness. This creates a better opportunity for a more collaborative or nuanced version of the past to occur.

We can do harm to our children and to our relationships with them by our unexamined prejudices, our off-the-cuff remarks, our strongly worded opinions. Our children can harm us in the same way, of course. But if a closer relationship to our children is the goal, we are required to see the world through their eyes, to live in their skin, and to exist in their reality, even temporarily.

They’re changing. We’re changing. There are things we may not like about them nor they about us. Our task is to find ways to let our love and support be the guiding lights of engagement.

Since Sam has to come home to Maria each night, his path of least cognitive dissonance is to accept her version of his parents as the correct one. In taking on her behavior, he further lessens the dissonance because he reduces the notion that her behavior is wrong. He also avoids having to deal with ongoing feelings of guilt, sadness, and regret toward his family. This is his way of saying: “Of course Maria is treating you terribly. I am, too. That’s what you’ve created! Maria is right and you’re wrong!”

For the estranged child, rejection of the parent can be tied to expressions of autonomy, power, or even a healthy retribution for long-held and unexpressed feelings of hurt or anger. It can be a way to rebalance authority by making a greater claim to equality with the parents, a final step on the path to adulthood.

estrangement offers a rare opportunity to define oneself anew.

This may be especially compelling to those who felt overly dependent on a parent, or who grew up feeling defective, shamed, or deeply misunderstood in a family. Contrary to popular belief, this can also occur in homes without obvious dysfunction or pathology.

there is something clarifying about asserting your freedom to hold a position, even an extreme one. It can help you to perceive the future more clearly. Otherwise, you might view that position as too dangerous to explore. It’s the upside to our culture’s complicated emphasis on assertiveness and rights in family relations: You don’t like it? You’re free to go. Sometimes just affirming that truth to yourself or to the other gives you power. And once a position is clarified, it’s easier to know whether you want to act on it or not.

always tell parents to start by just empathizing. Reflect back what your adult child says and speak to the kernel of truth in their complaints. The more you can show yourself to be a co-investigator of their complaints, rather than a defendant, the more quickly you can learn what they’re feeling about you, and more important, they can learn what they feel about you.

Don’t they already know? No, not always. What stays in the dark grows in the dark. If it’s too forbidden to say, it might become too forbidden to understand. Saying it out loud—and seeing that you both survive—provides an opportunity for you both to see how you feel and, once stated, to see if that’s how you really feel.

It never hurts to spend a lot more time empathizing before telling people what they don’t want to hear.

“I think I have to help you with your out-of-control guilt,” I said, stating what I thought was the obvious. “Is that what it is?” She looked surprised. “He says I made him this way.” “He either genuinely believes that or he uses it to manipulate you into doing what he wants.” “But what if I did make him this way?” She smiled through tears. “He’s been diagnosed with bipolar and has been treated for it. He’s mentally ill. You didn’t cause him to be bipolar,” I said softly. “He says I did.” “Sounds like he says a lot of irrational things when he’s in a manic phase. The problem is that you buy into it. That’s not good for you or him. It’s not good for you because it makes you feel like you were a terrible mother, and you weren’t. And it’s not good for him because you end up rewarding his mistreatment by giving into his demands. Even if you had been a terrible mother, it’s not good for either one of you to continue in this way.”

All of us are constantly guided by a confluence of forces that operate largely outside of our awareness. These include genetics, peer group, good luck, bad luck, the people whom we marry or divorce, the liabilities and challenges brought to us by our own parents, our siblings, our children, and our place in time. So in the same way that it’s wrong for adult children to believe that their parents were able to make better decisions—and simply chose not to—it’s wrong for parents to think that their adult children are able to do it any better. We can be mad at them for not being kinder, more forgiving, more accepting, more grateful, less harsh and rejecting. But that’s different from thinking that they’re able to become anybody other than who they already are.

So many relationships—especially with family—end because of a misguided notion about the importance of expressing everything you think or feel. Better to be strategic and restrained than vocal.

She also needed to back away from the confrontational approach she had been using.

“The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.”

Refuses to make amends. Won’t reconcile with the daughter-in-law or son-in-law. Won’t change behavior that is reasonable for the estranged child to request, such as working more on their anger, getting into a recovery program, or learning how to communicate in a way that is less alienating or hurtful to the estranged child.

Avoid what marital researcher John Gottman refers to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt. Studies show that no marriage can survive a steady diet of those emotions.

There’s a very strong sense in our culture that if a relationship doesn’t make you feel good about yourself or makes you feel guilty or bad, then completely cutting that person—even a parent—out of your life is not only a reasonable decision, it’s a courageous decision. So from that perspective, guilt is your enemy. The more you make your child feel guilty, the more you’re going to shut them down and drive them away.