Are you maintaining a bond with your young adult? Read on to learn more and take the quiz at the end of this blog.
There is a disturbing trend of young adults cutting off their communication and relationships with their parents. With young adults, one in four has cut off communication with parents. Although many will reconnect, it may take months or even years, and some individuals will remain estranged. One mother and client of mine had a daughter who cut off communications with her, citing that she and her husband did not want either parent interfering in their marriage. There was no evidence that this mother was trying to control or influence their marriage. This mother states that it feels worse than a death since you know your child is alive, but refuses any contact with you. How can one get over this? The short answer is you don’t.
What Can a Parent Do?
What can a parent do to ensure, or at a minimum, act in ways that will foster a continuing contact with adult children? There is bad news and good news in response to this question. The bad news is that when our kids become adults, we can no longer tell them what to do or even require them to maintain contact with us. The good news is that there are practices that can foster an ongoing relationship with our adult kids. At the end of this blog, you will find a link to complete a checklist on behaviors to engage and sustain contact with our adult children. Use this as a way to both gauge your progress and identify areas where you could improve in fostering the bond you want to maintain or attain with your adult child.
However, before you click on this link, I want to emphasize the importance of maintaining a sustainable connection with our kids.
- First, we are wired to be in a relationship with our kids throughout our lifetime. Cutting off contact between parents and adult children is not a natural or normal occurrence.
- Second, both parties suffer when this happens.
- Third, my experience after forty years of practice, as well as my colleagues, is that we spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with depression and other mental health challenges that are rooted in unresolved causes of estrangement from family members.
- Finally, I would propose that, along with the typical developmental tasks of the young adult stage — identity, independence, intimacy, and purpose — resolving parent-child estrangement should be added to the list.
Reconciliation may not always be possible, but coming to terms with and letting go of resentment, hurt, guilt, or other emotions that may keep you in an unhealthy mental state and hinder the resolution of the parent-child relationship needs to be addressed. This is why I describe my mission as one in which I help parents launch their young adult into self-sufficient adulthood while maintaining a caring bond with them. If I am working with a strained relationship between parents and an adult child, and the child cuts off the relationship even though they may be financially independent and self-sufficient, that is a failure to launch. It’s also a failure on my part in not ensuring the bond that both parties ultimately long for.
Take the Quiz to See How You can Better Engage with Your Adult Child
As parents, we can always do better. Our kids need to experience our efforts to be better parents and send a message of how we love and value them and will be there for them. Take the quiz, find out where you are doing well as a parent, and where you can do better.
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