Author: Dr. Kathy Koch
More than 67 million Americans are estranged from at least one family member, and 16% of those report that their parent is that family member. Dr. Kathy Koch, Founder and CEO of Celebrate Kids has a new book that addresses this trend titled, Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children. Here’s Kathy:
I can imagine, more than those statistics, you know someone who’s gone “no contact” with a parent or family member. It’s one of the most common and hardest conversations I have with people when I speak around the country.
I work with a number of Christian organizations that specialize in supporting people, and many who run counseling hotlines in these ministries say the majority of their counseling involves parents and adult children.
This is such a hard reality for the Church. There’s so much hurt in our congregations. Have you felt it? Seen it? Experienced it?
Many adult children say they go no-contact for their emotional health. A lot of them find support and encouragement to avoid their parents from their spouses, friends, counselors, and social networks. They’re often told they’re brave for cutting off their parents. It’s heartbreaking.
This causes parents to be confused and lonely, trying to process grief and shame. I’m sad for them, and I’m also sad for their adult children because I believe they’ll eventually experience disappointment, sadness, and loneliness. The emotional health they say they’re protecting may actually suffer. We’re not designed to be cut off from family.
I want to share three insights from my new book, Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children, that can keep your relationship healthy and restore it if it’s unhealthy.
First, if your children have distanced themselves, feel and process your grief. You miss your child and your role as an involved parent. Grieve the broken promises, unmet expectations, and unfulfilled dreams. When grief goes unacknowledged, it leaks out as control, urgency, criticism, and guilt, and these things cause adult children to pull away and stay away from their parents. Please, for the sake of your relationship with your children, acknowledge the end of the parenting season and grieve. Then, be ready to step into new roles of guide, mentor, coach, and cheerleader as you can.
Second, “parent” is always your noun, but you can only parent as a verb when your children invite you to. Adult children tell me they don’t need to be managed; they need to be respected. They don’t want to be controlled; they want to be supported. I encourage you not to offer advice before your adult child asks for it. Adult kids will hear it as criticism. They’ll conclude you don’t believe in them or trust them to do well. They’ll be disappointed and hurt.
If you were an active parent, maybe even a helicopter parent who reminded them to study and who dropped off permission slips when they forgot them, your adult kids tell me they don’t think you can parent any other way. They go no-contact because they don’t believe you can change, but they want and need to. They may want you to know about their business, but they don’t want you to be in their business.
If your children are still talking to you, and you see that you’ve been trying to manage and control them, start your next conversation by apologizing. Tell them you now understand how your advice comes across. Give them space by saying that you’re here to encourage them, but you won’t offer advice unless they ask. You’re a “parent-noun,” and you’re trusting them now that you’re no longer their “parent-verb.”
Third, influencing your adult children and grandchildren is something earned through respect. You’re not entitled to be their grandparents. Adult children don’t owe their parents closeness, access, or agreement. When parents play the entitlement card, adult kids shut down. Choose respect, and my research shows that influence will quietly return, and conversations will be possible.
Hope, the way I talk about it in my book, is a decision. No-contact can feel permanent, especially because the influence of social media and cultural currents is so strong and feels so definitive. It’s not. In my research, when parents change their posture, especially from correction to humility, persuasion to presence, fear to faith, and despair to hope, staying connected to adult children is likely, and reconciliation becomes possible if breaks have occurred.
I believe no-contact decisions by adult children grow from bad patterns of misaligned roles, unmet needs of parents, unresolved grief, and conversations that have been shaped more by fear than trust. I wrote this book to stem this tide. I hope you’ve found these ideas helpful and that my book will awaken a ministry in our Church for those who are quietly suffering from this cultural trend.
That was Dr. Kathy Koch, author of the new book Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children.