Reconnecting With Your Adult Children
Finding a way back from a rupture in your relationship is a process, not a conclusion
“My son and I have a complicated relationship,” Jason* told me on the phone. “I love him very much and I’d like to see if we can repair whatever has gone wrong between us. I really don’t understand what has happened. We were so close when he was little.”
In recent years I’ve received numerous calls from adult children and their parents trying, like Jason and his son, to find a way to reconnect and reverse some of the damage done to their relationship over the years. I’m always pleased to receive these requests. I suspect that the fact that I’m well into the aging process myself makes me more empathic to both sides of most family disputes. I sometimes sided with one family member or the other, but now, from a Third Age perspective, I tend to recognize that both people are feeling pain and that neither of them knows how to fix things.
As a child, I learned first-hand about the pain of families unable to heal from these rifts. My mother and her father battled repeatedly over subjects ranging from politics to personal beliefs to caring for my ailing grandmother. I adored them both, which intensified my distress over their battles. My mother actively encouraged my brothers and me to maintain a positive relationship with my granddad, even when the rift became so great that she and he stopped talking.
But I knew that the disconnect caused her a lot of pain. Her father was difficult but important to her, and I felt sad for her loss. Gradually I pulled away from him myself, because he was causing her so much pain. And then, when I was eighteen, he told me that I had to choose between him and my mom. There was no contest. I had already chosen her. I didn’t even feel sad, since I couldn’t imagine a father doing that to his daughter, or a grandfather doing it to his grandchild. My granddad was not the person I thought he was. Still, five years later I tried to reconnect with him, but he rejected my attempt. I was upset, but not surprised. I was lucky that his son, my uncle, supported me through the experience and continued for the rest of his life to give me the love my grandfather had withdrawn. I ended up feeling worse for my grandfather than for myself, since he had cut himself off from most of his family by then. He lived a long life without family support.
My desire to help families reconnect in adulthood is undoubtedly an outgrowth of those experiences. I know that the process of repairing and reconnecting with an unhappy or angry adult child is difficult. But I also know that there are good reasons to make the effort. Besides restoring an important connection at this time of life, and for some of us, making sure that we have access to our grandchildren, research has shown that it’s also better for our health.
There are times, of course, when painful rifts cannot be healed. The pain is too great, the lack of remorse on the part of the other is too huge.
Sometimes, bringing in a neutral third party in the form of a psychotherapist can help sort through the issues and open up a new path to relationship. For those of us in the Third Age, it can be worth it.
In an article called
Photo credit: Prostock-Studio iStock photo ID:1468483264
“Making Peace With Your Adult Children,” which I encourage you to look at, Kathy McCoy recognizes how difficult this process can be and offers some helpful suggestions for parents who would like to try to improve their relationships with their adult children.
I have found that for many parents and their adult children, one of the biggest stumbling blocks is something very much related to the old game of “hot potato.” Neither of us wants to hold the hot potato of guilt, shame, and a sense of having made serious missteps, so we push it back on the other. This becomes a never-ending cycle of blame.
In sessions with parent/adult-child dyads, I try to break into this game of pushed off responsibility. Old hurts, grudges, and anger get opened up from the perspective of two adults who, somewhere deep inside, care about one another.
One of the benefits of reaching this new, uncharted territory of the Third Age is the capacity to do something we haven’t done before. Maybe we can back down a little. Maybe our pride doesn’t have to interfere with our ability to admit that we have made mistakes, done hurtful things, even if we didn’t mean to.
Recognizing that often hidden love and owning not only hurt, but also feelings of guilt and shame, take these conversations into a new and more meaningful place.
While many adult children complain of hurts from childhood that their parents have never acknowledged or apologized for, there are often more recent injuries that also cause significant pain. For parents, there may be pain that beloved children have taken paths divergent from the parents’ beliefs and values. How do you get over these rifts in order to move forward into meaningful and rewarding relationships between adults?
For those of us in the Third Age who don’t want to follow the path my grandfather took, perhaps the most important thing we can do is reach out, listen to what our children have to say, take responsibility for what we’ve done, even inadvertently, and apologize. Of course, the apology has to be genuine. The worst thing you can do is say something that puts the blame back on your child. One common phrase that gets more parents into trouble than anything else I’ve heard is, “I’m sorry that you felt hurt by something I did or said…” That’s not taking responsibility.
The apology, which must be honestly made, must also take responsibility. For example, “I’m sorry that I hurt you. I really didn’t mean to, but I can see how what I said was hurtful.”
No caveats, no wiggling out, no putting the hot potato back in your adult kid’s hands.
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Having made that gesture, you can sit back and hope for the best. Or you can ask what more you might do to make things better. Over time, you can share some of your own hurts, which often happen when your child becomes an adult. But you can also be proud of yourself for acknowledging that you were the parent, and you had a responsibility to take care of your child. You can own your own part in a difficult process. And hopefully, you can look forward to a growing, more balanced, loving relationship in this new stage of your life.
Please share any thoughts, ideas, or experiences of your own, either in a comment or in chat. I love to hear from you, and I think you all get a great deal from one another's experiences as well.
All my best,
Diane
*names and identifying info changed to protect privacy
Helpful books:
Kathy McCoy: We Don't Talk Anymore: Healing after Parents and Their Adult Children Become Estranged
Steven Kenyon: Soulful Resilience: Shamanic Healing for Parents Estranged from their Adult Child