Whether your adult child lives in the same city as you, 100 miles away, or on the other side of the globe, it’s always possible that you could be faced with sudden, unexpected contact. What if he calls or texts you out of the blue? What if you bump into her at the farmer’s market? …
While you can’t force your child to communicate with you, there are skills you can employ the next time you do have contact that will help them want to talk to you. This episode outlines three things to get good at if you want to become your child’s (or anyone else’s) favorite confidant. If you …
A good apology is the ultimate relationship repair tool, and a must for anyone estranged against their wishes. Still, many parents are hesitant to embrace the idea of apologizing to their estranged adult children. I’ve thought a lot about why this is, and have come up with what I call the “Four Horsemen of the …
This episode was inspired by this post in the Community forums inside the Reconnection Club: “Sometimes I wonder if my daughter is getting some kind of ‘cheap thrill’ at my expense. I keep contacting her but she doesn’t contact me. Yet she throws me a ‘crumb’ in response. She knows I want to see her, …
Working your way back to an adult child when they’ve cut off contact is a time-consuming process. This is maddening, when all you want to do is to reconcile and reconnect as quickly as possible. But haste makes waste, because being in a hurry almost always means making mistakes. This is true for any important …
Estrangement from an adult child is what author Pauline Boss called an “ambiguous loss.” She wrote a book by that name in 1999, and although she didn’t talk specifically about estrangement, the circumstance definitely qualifies as similar to a familiar member being missing in action, or having a disease like Alzheimer’s, in which case they’re …
Most estranged parents feel like time is a thief, stealing opportunities and happiness while they’re estranged from an adult child. This makes parents feel a bit desperate, so they reach out in ineffectual ways. But the reality is, you can only do so much. You can’t push the river. Fortunately, in addition to be a …
