10 parental attitudes that lead to estrangement

Parents and guardians estranged from their grown children often claim they have no idea why their kids don’t talk to them anymore.

They say things like,

“I did everything for them, and they want nothing to do with me now,”

or,

“I’ve asked them what I’ve done, tried to find out, and they don’t tell me. No-contact is unhelpful and hurtful.”

I’ve been estranged from my biological mother since 2011 and have went no-contact with other relatives in the time since.

Here are reasons I can offer as to why children drop contact with their parents once they’re grown.

1. Not taking accountability

“I didn’t raise my child to be so disrespectful in adulthood. I don’t know why they’re like this, but I did NOT raise them to be this way.”

…yes, you did. Take responsibility for your actions. Look deep within yourself and see what could have caused your child to turn out like this.

I grew up always moving every 1-2 years, being promised we’d not move again until I graduated high school. My guardians leaned on my shoulder when they were sad, leaving me to have no one to go to for comfort.

I could go on and on. If you ask my estranged relatives, they think the problem is me. A few might say that I “always wanted more” than they could give and not elaborate by saying that children need to feel more important than your soap operas.

Your children will go to therapy for the things you didn’t go to therapy for — or they’ll pass that behavior on to their children. This is only one way generational trauma perpetuates.

Your kids pay the price of your emotional irregulation. The moments you lost your temper with them are blimps to you and their entire childhood to them, especially if it starts when they’re young.

Your anger and vitriol teaches your kids to fear you. Children fearing you are keen to hide things from you. Authoritarian parenting encourages kids to develop negative coping behaviors, which parents perceive as “bad” behaviors.

Estranged parents will blame everything and everyone else but themselves. Therapy isn’t the problem. Someone’s social media post doesn’t turn your grown children against you.

If a quote about healthy relationships inspires your child to think negatively about your relationship together, the quote isn’t the problem.

2. Not being equals

“My adult child is very disrespectful. He speaks as if we are equals, and we’re not. I birthed him. I am his mother. He is still my child. I repeatedly tried to help him to do better and what he needed to do. I kicked him out, and now he ignores my calls and texts.”

Controlling parents often don’t realize their behavior is controlling or wrong, especially if it’s how their parents treated them.

Thinking your child is disrespectful, regardless of their age, because you can’t control them doesn’t mean they’re actually disrespectful.

Birthing someone doesn’t mean they owe their life to you. You’re not entitled to be placed higher than everyone and everything else in their life because you brought them to life.

Lots of people get pregnant and have babies all the time. You’re not special because you had a child. It’s not a rare behavior to have a kid. Your kid isn’t an extension of yourself.

Society gives mothers a lot of credit for martyring themselves. A lot of this may have to do with societal conditioning.

However, that doesn’t mean mothers are flawless and blameless. It doesn’t mean their kids are disrespectful.

This attitude is sooo toxic, because it speaks to the mother’s desire to possess and control her children rather than looking at them as if they are fellow human beings.

If your child is old enough to kick out of the house, they’re no longer children in the literal sense. They are not below you regardless of eldership.

If you can legally kick your child out of the house because you don’t like something about them, that’s you discarding your property.

Feeling entitled to do this is entitlement and controlling behavior.

Parents are responsible for guiding their children — not controlling them. Even if your adult kids still live with you, they deserve respect — not to be controlled.

The desire to control your kid’s life is unhealthy on its own, whatever age they are. Your desire to control your kid is likely what led to the estrangement.

Instead of being a safe, comforting space for your child, you are cold like the world we live in. When times are tough, your kid knows they can’t rely on you to be a source of comfort.

If you desire mutual respect, reflect on your parenting for answers as to why it’s nonexistent.

3. Not treating adult children like adults

So many Boomers and Gen Xers on the cusp of the Boomer generation perceive Millennials as being young. We’re not. The youngest Millennial is 28 years old.

There’s also this concept of what an “adult” is, despite someone’s age. If you don’t have kids, you may not be perceived as an adult.

My aunt told me that if I did certain things, she’d stop treating me like a child and start treating me like an adult.

I said, “No. If you don’t respect me like you do any other adult, I’m not going to be around you.”

She called me disrespectful.

4. Not respecting their boundaries

“No” is the simplest boundary. Like, ever.

Yet, parents may feel negatively about being told no. They may even feel their children should never tell them no. And they may respond accordingly.

“You never told me what your boundaries were, so how could I break them?!”

Often, the people who are most confused about breaking someone’s boundaries are the people who didn’t accept the first “no”. Or who ignored it.

Continuing to contact or reach out to someone who has said they don’t want a relationship with you ignores their boundaries.

“I’m her mom. I have a right to know where she is, what she’s doing, how she’s doing. I’m not ‘harassing’ or ‘stalking’ her. Parents can’t ‘harass’ their kids.”

If you are looking at your estranged child’s socials, that’s stalking. Creating new accounts to see what your grown kids post because they’ve blocked you is stalking.

You have no right to contact them. This is another attempt at control.

Unwanted contact is harassment. Stalking is to secretly pursue or approach someone; it’s a form of harassment.

You becoming the thing that goes bump in the night only fuels the estrangement.

Boundaries control our own behavior in response to other people’s. A common response to someone who consistently invalidates you is grey-rocking. This can look like “shutting down”.

The purpose of grey-rocking is to become as boring as possible so the person backs off.

5. Blanket apologies

“I’ve apologized endlessly for any hurt feelings. I don’t know what I did, but I’ve told them I’m sorry. None of it worked.”

A blanket apology is an insincere apology that’s so vague it doesn’t cover anything.

Imagine your best friend betrayed you by sleeping with your spouse. They don’t know you know, and you refuse to tell them. You’re obviously angry, so your best friend tries to fix it by apologizing. “I’m sorry,” they say, “for everything I did.”

…what did they do? What are they apologizing for, exactly? Why are they apologizing?

Are they only trying to save face? Are they hoping you’ll do something if they apologize? Sometimes, people apologize to get something in return.

Coming from someone who betrayed you, or has done something to upset you so much, an apology can be a form of control.

Knowing this, you are more cautious of apologies you accept.

Blanket apologies are worthless. Apologies without explicit, obvious changes in behavior — without action — are fake. Pointless, even. They mean absolutely nothing.

Apologizing to “fix” the relationship is insincere. It’s a Band-Aid to a wound that needs stitches.

“But a spouse is different from a parent-child relationship!” you shout.

Yes, you’re right. Betrayal by the people who are supposed to love and care for you — that’s probably the worst betrayal in the history of betrayals for a child.

6. Conservative politics

Conservative households are full of so much hate and criticizing everyone.

To be a female in a conservative home is to sacrifice your identity outside of your relation to the conservative men around you. If you don’t submit and conform, you don’t gain access to the resources you need to feel safe.

In order to obtain or keep that status, women must maintain themselves to attract men. The male’s quality does not matter.

This is why so many Christian women marry and have kids so young. It’s why the girls in these households focus on having a future with a man instead of imagining a life where they’re happy by themselves.

You’re not allowed an opinion. Well-behaved women don’t make history — and they shouldn’t.

Our fathers, grandfathers, and even other conservative women within our family lean well into the Christian Nationalist identity.

Used to, that was all you could do to protect yourself. Now, though, more people offer resources to the outliers.

7. Unmatched values

My family thinks the LGBTQ+ community is a cult.

They also think mental health = spiritual health. They think autistic people are possessed by the devil. 💁‍♀️

After Trump was elected, I realized how many of my relatives lost God and found Trump. I realized how thoroughly they ascribed to his every word.

Trump could lie, and they’d take it as fact. I also noticed they doubled down on not wanting to be fact-checked. If I googled something they said, they got upset and asked why I always had to challenge them.

My biological maternal relatives love guns and trust guns. They believe more guns are the answer, rather than less. My stepfather and maternal brothers have proudly posed with their AR-15s. They post videos of themselves shooting their guns, hitting targets.

I’ve heard them talk about shooting anyone who comes on their property. My stepfather shot one of my cats years ago and tried to hide it from me.

I can’t, don’t and will never trust them with my life.

8. Dysfunction

Dysfunctional families rarely admit to being dysfunctional. If they do, they’re probably prideful about it.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family is exhausting and unstable. At some point, people tire of constant instability.

Therapy doesn’t drive a wedge between you and your adult daughter or son.

Therapy teaches your children that they deserve better.

Therapy teaches us we don’t have to maintain relationships with people who don’t treat us well.

It taught me I hoped and begged for a mother who spent time with me and truly cared about me. I hoped and begged for a family who would get to know who I am — ME! instead of who they wanted me to be.

Therapy helped me stop chasing unrealistic hopes like that and ask, “Wait…why am I waiting for the day I’ll be someone worth getting to know to them?”

“Why am I begging them to love me?”

“Why am I begging them to stop idealizing me and accept me for who I am?”

Therapy taught me how to detach myself from unhealthy relationship dynamics. It taught me how to identify healthy relationships. I’ve learned how to pursue healthy relationships.

9. Abuse

I could posit all the points on this list are a form of abuse, since they can easily affect a child’s necessary development.

Instead, I’m going to directly address a possible reason for grown child estrangement that often gets swept under the rug: abuse.

Physical, emotional and sexual abuse all affect people in different ways. Not everyone who grows up in an abusive environment decides to leave that environment.

Honestly, leaving an abusive situation is terrifying — and not for the “leaving” part. In my experience, living a life free of abuse is the most terrifying part. Navigating life outside of abuse is so hard. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know how to do much of anything.

Parents are supposed to teach their kids how to survive as adults. They’re supposed to provide a comforting environment to nurture the child’s brain development. Children need to develop secure attachments with their parents in order to feel confident and form healthy bonds throughout their entire life.

Abuse completely screws all of that up.

Abusive parents seldom admit to abuse. They become defensive when confronted. They might even say they did their best. This goes back to lack of accountability.

10. Entitlement

Parental entitlement is a major problem. The thing about being entitled, though, is lacking awareness.

Every single list item here has to do with entitlement.

Entitled people lack the ability to take responsibility for their actions and hold themselves accountable. They often lack emotional intelligence. They push back against anything that triggers negative, uncomfortable feelings they’re not used to feeling.

It all destroys relationships.

Therapists like to say that parent-child estrangement can be resolved. What they don’t tell you is that it’s more nuanced than that.

When you have an ongoing pattern of control, manipulation and negative emotional responses — and don’t hold yourself accountable — the relationship is destroyed.

The only solution is to move forward in life and work through this new trauma. No-contact is the final stage of attempting to repair a relationship.

If you seek therapy and really work to figure out what led to these issues, you might be able to fuse the thread back together.

Otherwise, your best hope is put towards becoming a better person than you were in the past. Your child has communicated to you why they want nothing to do with you…you didn’t listen.

People whose parents were kind and warm don’t grow up to not want a relationship with them.

Kids who felt safe, loved and listened to by their parents don’t grow into adults who want nothing to do with those parents.