The Reconnection Club Podcast

It's easy to resent feeling required to indulge the poor behavior of your estranged adult child. You feel like you're being mistreated, and yet you're supposed to jump through hoops for them? If you've ever felt this way when listening to this podcast or reading Tina's book (Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child), this episode is for you.

Estrangement from your adult child may or may not include verbal assaults from him or her, featuring foul language. If you're faced with this kind of behavior, given the current estrangement, what's the best way to respond? You don't want to push your child further away. But does that mean you have to tolerate whatever language they may fling at you in a text? In this episode, Tina offers a 2-part...

Do you let them know how their behavior is making you feel? Or not? Tell them just what it's like not to get a reply, time after time? Or pretend you're fine with it? When all you get from them on your birthday is a 2-word text at 11pm, should you say something? Knowing how and when to express your feelings about the estrangement to your adult child is not easy. What if expressing negative emotion...

Estrangement doesn't happen on a whim. If your adult child has cut ties with you at the moment, he has reasons that make sense to him, and that are probably long-standing. In order for the estrangement to end, those reasons usually need to be addressed and neutralized. Many parents rejected by their adult children are in such a hurry to end the estrangement that they don't take sufficient time to...

Your child has cut you off, but still speaks to your spouse. Or vice versa. Maybe your child is estranged from both of you, but both parents are not on the same page about how to respond. Should the two of you act as a team, taking a single stance together vis-à-vis your child? Usually the parent who wants a united front is the one who favors withholding attention, contact, or something else from...

Mothers and daughters have the potential for a very close, lifelong relationship. But not every mother-daughter pair enjoys a harmonious, supportive bond. You may have seen your friends get together with their grown daughters, and watched them with envy. Your daughter, in contrast, has become estranged. How did this happen, and why? If the mother-daughter bond is supposed to be so close, why do so...

"Why is it always the parent's fault?" is a question that often comes up when rejected parents are faced with suggestions to apologize, or to try to understand and validate an estranged adult child. It's understandable. When all the advice coming your way is to act with humility, instead of someone who deserves to receive an apology yourself, it makes sense to assume you're being blamed for the si...

It's common for rejected parents who are unwillingly estranged from an adult child to feel utterly powerless. And that's a horrible feeling in the face of a breach in an important relationship. But there are three specific assumptions parents make that leave them truly powerless. These insidious assumptions are: Your child's estrangement is entirely about something that happened in the past, Someo...

Most parents feel their estranged adult children's pain. Part of their own anguish is the knowledge that their child isn't happy. And there's a saying: "You're only as happy as your unhappiest child." But when an adult child treats you with rudeness or anger, it's easy to lose that compassion for them. Their behavior might trigger defensiveness or anger in you. And those will replace your softer f...

It's the festive season – always a complicated time for people experiencing estrangement from family. The holidays are full of friendship, gift-giving, celebrating and creating memories. But for parents rejected by one or more of their adult children, it can feel wrong to participate. Having a good time feels … unseemly. How can parents enjoy themselves when such an important relationship is in tr...

If you feel powerless in the face of your adult child's estrangement, that's understandable. You can't force your child to return your texts, let alone reunite. It's a horrible feeling, to have so little power over something so important. At the same time, powerlessness is a dangerous place to be for your mental health. Every one of us needs to feel that we have some power and control over the mos...

Your adult child, who's always been such an empathetic soul, has ruthlessly cut you off. How can such an empathetic person have no empathy for the parents who raised him? Doesn't he care that he's hurting you? It seems like a mystery. The problem of empathy is that it can't coexist with estrangement. To be empathetic, you have to stop being estranged. But if contact is painful for you, then it's a...

When your child decides to distance himself from you, whose problem is it? If you're like most parents who are unwillingly estranged from adult children, you walk through life these days feeling as if you have a big weight on your shoulders. But feeling the weight of a problem is not the same as owning it. In this episode, Tina explains why taking ownership of a problem is a necessary step toward...

It's painful when estranged adult children don't respond to invitations at the holidays. At this time of year, even a video chat would be meaningful in lieu of a family gathering. If you've issued an invitation and not heard back, you have plenty of company. It's frustrating and hurtful. Why do they do it? In this episode of the podcast, Tina suggests three reasons why an otherwise polite adult ch...

Parents of estranged adult children often end up sending gifts into a void. Not just at holidays, but all year long. Their giving is not boundaried, nor does it necessarily respect the wishes of their child, who in many cases has asked for no contact. If you've listened to Episode 10, you're already familiar with five reasons NOT to send gifts to an estranged adult child. But you might be left won...

When you go in for a vaccination, the nurse might tell you to relax just before he gives you the needle. Obviously, relaxing is not natural in a situation like this. And yet resisting the needle creates tension, and may even make the shot more painful. Resistance is not only futile, it often creates more pain than does acceptance. Thus, acceptance of a painful process can actually make it less pai...

Does your estranged adult child have a personality disorder (PD)? If so, how much does it matter? Armchair diagnoses of PDs such as Borderline PD or Narcissistic PD are often flung back and forth between estranged adult children and rejected parents, to explain the problems between them. Often, it may simply be that parent and adult child don't see eye to eye. But some PDs are real. What do you do...

It's not unusual at all for an adult child to cut off parents after getting into therapy. And the cut-off may extend to other family members and even old friends. When this happens, it's tempting to blame it on therapy. Your child was fine and so was your relationship, until he went into counseling. If it seems your child has been brainwashed by a counselor or therapist and that's why she's become...

You raised your children the same. They knew they were loved. You did your level best by each and every one of them… So why does one adult child become estranged, claiming an unhappy childhood, while their siblings are perfectly fine?  Can both or all of your kids be right about their childhoods if they claim different things? The surprising fact is, no two children have exactly the same upbringin...

Will your estranged child send you birthday wishes this year? Should you celebrate your child's birthday even though she's not currently speaking to you? How do you survive not only your own birthday without them, but theirs? Estrangement doesn't respect birthdays. In many or perhaps most cases, you'll be disappointed if you expect your child to contact you on your birthday, or answer a text from...

What is the "average" or "typical" length of estrangement between parents and adult children? Unfortunately, we're a long way from having definitive answers, even about generalities like that. In this episode, Tina shares information from the available research, then goes on to discuss four separate factors that are likely to affect the length of your estrangement from your child.

One of the hardest things about being estranged from your adult child is the feeling of rejection that often accompanies the enforced separation. It's not easy to live with the pain of rejection day after day. So in this episode, Tina offers five specific ways to cope constructively. You won't want to miss this show if the sense of rejection is getting to you. One of the hardest things about being...

It's tempting to say Yes when a kind friend or relative offers to talk to your estranged adult child. But if you're like many rejected parents, you hesitate. If someone contacts your child on your behalf... Will it actually work? Will it help at all? Or will it make things worse? These questions have no answers until you take the leap and see what unfolds. But is it worth the risk? In this episode...

Reconciling with your estranged adult child may be the brass ring, but once you attain it, you find that another phase of estrangement has just begun. Reconciliation is a process, not an event. It can be a phase that lasts quite a long time. It's challenging. It's confusing. That's why Tina created this episode. In it she shares a few simple truths about the marathon of reconciliation – things to...

Why can't your estranged adult child talk to you about whatever's wrong, instead of cutting you off without a word? That's a good question, and one that has real answers you might not have thought about. In this episode, Tina offers three explanations that make more sense than, "My child is rude," or "My child doesn't love me enough to talk to me," or "My child is being mean."