I was once told that being a parent is like living with your heart walking around outside of your body. If you have kids, it’s likely that they are the center of your universe, and there might be at least a small part of you thinking about them at all times. So the idea of not being able to contact your children might be heart wrenching, but unfortunately, it’s not a particularly unique experience.
A quarter of adults report being estranged from at least one parent, and while this might be a mother or father's worst nightmare, it usually doesn’t happen for no reason. Moms and dads with children who have cut off contact have recently been opening up on Reddit about what led to their estrangement, so we’ve gathered some of their most honest responses below. Keep reading to find a conversation with Empty Nest Coach Pamela Henkelman, and be sure to upvote the replies that hit home for you.
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#1
Father to the daughter that cut off contact with her mother, my wife, here.
Mother is (still) a narcissist, emotionally and mentally abused the kids until they moved out one by one. Mother also a functioning alcoholic.
The daughter (moved to a different state) cut off all contact with her mother, vowed to never let her see the grandchildren. Mother spent months raging, trying weak apologies, saying things like, "I'm sorry you're upset." and "You need to grow past what happened." and (to me) "She is stuck in the past."
Daughter and I are very close, I facetime with the grandbabies regularly, and visit on holidays.
Edit to add: thanks everyone for your insight and stories. I feel every one. To answer some questions:
Why am I still married?
My youngest daughter has one more year of college that I'm paying for, then that will be it. I make significantly more money than the wife, and pay for everything. However, my state is a 50/50 state for divorce, and I need that money to get my girl through college. Up for grabs is my military pension, 401k, IRA, house, and savings. I'm certainly not rich by any means. Cheaper to keep her for now.
Why didn't I leave way back then?
She wasn't a psycho all the time. The good times were great, amazing. I hoped that if I could just keep those going it's all work out. I was stupidly optimistic. I also came from a broken family, my parents divorced when I was young and I hated that. In my mind "divorce was bad" and I didn't want to inflict that on my kids. Now that I can look back I realize I should have left much earlier.
Too often it was like walking on eggshells in the house. She may snap on something, or get drunk then come out raging and gaslighting. I was always on edge. That was my norm. Being in the military has taught me to toughen up and do job. So that's what I did at home.
But toughening up meant keeping my emotions to myself. Burying them away, putting on a strong face. We'd argue and fight, she'd cry and yell. I could never get her to change.
People that are in abusive relationships get into a certain mindset. You ever hear a cabinet slam too hard? Ever have clothes folded at you? Hear dishes put on the sink a little too loud? You're suddenly on high alert, on the lookout for anything coming your way. Waiting for the steps down the hall and your door fly open. It's a terrible way to live.
I should have made many different decisions, been stronger, gotten help earlier. Maybe being always in survival mode doesn't let you think about those things. I regret many things and will always carry that with me.
But now I look to the future and the happy times I'll have with my kids grandkids. I want to be the papa and grampa I never had.
Thanks for reading this far, I'd love to give you all a big dad hug. Because you are worth it, and you deserve it. Take care. ♥️.
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193points
#2
Not me but I was on a Facebook group a few weeks back where this older woman in her 60s claimed to be estranged from her kids, and she didn't know why. She assumed that the kids were hard to deal with and she did her best but no matter what they were always out to get her or feel that she was being aggressive.
When someone made a comment or suggestion saying that the way she phrases things may contribute to it based on how she spoke, this woman flipped out on the person who commented. When I followed saying if that's how she speaks to them, then I can see why they may feel that way, she flipped out on me saying I don't know her story and that she was the nicest person she ever knew.
Some people just genuinely don't have the mental capacity to learn how to grow.
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145points
#3
My kids still speak to me, but not much. I'm better than I was, but I was a c**p parent. Poverty was part of it. Hooking up with the wrong men, just to have a little more income, or not to pay for child care. Bed chemical decisions. I got myself cleaned up, got out of debt, got rid of the guy who was harassing my boy, and acting like the girl (our kid together ) could do no wrong. My parents were atrocious, and I really thought I was much better. Actually, I was much better, but I wasn't enough better. It was hard for me to show love because I never experienced it myself. There were times i didn't hear from my boy for years, and honestly, I know I deserved that. I wrote him a long letter, apologized for my faults, and honestly have tried to be better. We have a much better relationship now, and while we are not super close, we have something, and I'm grateful.
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130points
To gain more insight into this topic, we got in touch with Empty Nest Coach Pamela Henkelman, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. First, we asked Pamela about some of the most common reasons why adults become estranged from their parents.
"Dr. Joshua Coleman lists six common reasons for estrangement: tension with a son or daughter-in-law; mental illness, addiction or abuse; the child has a therapist; divorce; feeling too close to the parent; and disagreement about choices, values or lifestyle," the coach shared.
#4
May I?
“I grew up an orphan during the Great Depression, and there was no way in hell that my kids would have an easier life than me. I would do everything in my power to recreate my joyless, deprivation-filled childhood for them, so that they would know first hand what I went through. I would offer no emotional or financial support, because I had none. I would crush any interests they had, and sabotage their every action with the ferocity of Genghis Khan. I would do things to them that in today’s world would be on the news. I would put on a cheerful and friendly face to the outside world, and immediately revert to my evil self at home. I never tired of raging and shrieking. I would be completely shameless at all times. I thought nothing of living a life of deceit, yet paint myself as a devout religious person. I lived a life of agonizing pain, never had a moment of love, laughter, peace, or safety, never knew where my next meal was coming from, so was it really so awful that I continued that tradition with my own kids?”
I skipped her funeral.
116points
#5
Sometimes children outgrow their parents whose development is halted.
97points
#6
My mom loves the non apologies. “I’m sorry you’re upset.” “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” “I think we all need to learn to forgive.” Who knows what she says to my dad, who knows how to apologize, but, when the cards are down, is never *actually* apologetic.
It’s exhausting.
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94points
We also asked Pamela about the toll that being cut off from their children takes on a parent. "Estrangement is the deepest pain for a parent. It causes depression, shame, stress and deep loss," she shared. "Granted, if a parent isn't safe, it's wise for the child to keep their distance, but most estrangements can be worked out if both parties are willing."
#7
My daughter and I were estranged for 18 months. It.was.hell.
It was also all my fault. I had crossed a boundary and god bless her, she called me on it and told me to go f**k myself.
I was incensed! How dare she!
Well she dare because she was right. And I had to go introspective and work on me. She reached out 18 months later and we have been in touch now and have a SOLID relationship.
It is a communicative relationship. Understanding and just being compassionate to each other.
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85points
#8
My mother literally couldn't tell you. I don't mean she doesn't know, I've told her, but she's clinically delusional-an actual narcissist. Straight up rewriting memories AS THEY HAPPEN to the point she thinks we're plotting against her when we agree and she doesn't. She claims my partner is why. She told my family I was on d***s. Ironic, since she's on just about everything and can't see our youngest brother without supervision anymore. I don't know what she did for that, but due to my own childhood...I can guess and it's not good.
84points
#9
I want to add what drove me away, as a kid.
I was never protected. They protected their church and its members from me— from my truth-telling. They never protected me from them.
They didn’t let me feel my feelings. I had to bury every hurt, every fear, all my sad feelings. They left me to deal with what was happening to me all by myself. I was the loneliest kid in the world in a family of 8.
They didn’t heed warnings or get us adequate help when s**t came to light. They broadcast their own hurt, and made it known our hurt was a burden, so we didn’t dare add to it, and again, suffered by ourselves.
When chickens came home to roost and my emotional and physical health went to hell, they judged the s**t out of me.
When I started to leave my agoraphobic cocoon and live life again, and got f*****g assaulted by a predator, when I called them crying about it, they blamed me.
When I left the church that contributed to the life time of abuse, they ostracized me. My dad verbally berated me and called me vile names on the direction of my mother. My mom spread so much s**t that ALWAYS made its way back to me. (Moms, do not do this to your children.)
When I started trauma therapy, they called me crazy. They went on a PR campaign within the family smearing me. (Wonder why??)
I have been betrayed so many times by my parents, and I am covered in visible and invisible scars because of it. They treat me like I’m an embarrassment, like they wish they could change everything about me.
They’re the ones who drew the line in the sand. They made it impossible to be in a full relationship with them and still love and honor myself. .
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82points
Next, we asked Pamela if there's anything parents can do to try to repair their relationship with an estranged son or daughter. "It's the parent's responsibility to reach out to the child. A parent needs to own their role in the breakdown, and this is why it's difficult, because unhealthy parents will blame their children," the expert says.
"Unhealthy children will blame the parents. It's a complicated relationship. Dr Joshua Coleman recommends writing a letter of amends to open the conversation," Pamela continued.
#10
My daughter hasn’t spoken to much in the last 2 years. She’ll come to family (her grandparents aunts/uncles/cousins), but only replies to anything I say with one or two word answers.
I wish I could say I don’t know why. But I do. Her mom said she feels I put her second after her mom and divorced. I keep trying to rebuild that bridge. Hopefully in time.
The take away is this. It doesn’t matter how you perceive things, it’s how your child does. Don’t ever let them doubt how you feel about them.
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74points
#11
Father of three adult daughters here. I'll give the situation as it exists now then try to explain how/why it got there.
-- Oldest had completely cut me out of her life. We were always distant, even when she was younger, but it got much worse as she got into her 20s. We didn't speak for years. She is now 33 and we occasionally message when she initiates the convo. The coldest has thawed some but it is still delicate.
-- Middle girl is my carbon copy and we had a good relationship when she was younger. When she hit late-teens we drifted apart. Now she is 28 with four kids, only the oldest of which I've ever met. Not allowed to see the others. We rarely if ever message each other.
-- Youngest daughter treated me like I walked on water. Did so until just a couple of years ago. Recently (just a week or so ago) she informed me she no longer wants any contact with me.
As for the how/why part, I was raised in a single parent home. My mother did her best to provide for our needs but she was cold and distant. No hugs. Any event in school I was automatically blamed before she had any details. If it was proven I was innocent, she would brush off her previous accusation by claiming she was sure I probably did something anyway. Lots more I can add here. Some of it too sensitive to share even in an anonymous board.
I hated the way she was and vowed I would do things differently when/if I had children. Well, I had children. While I did attempt to change my behaviors from what I'd experienced, I slowly added my own ingredients to this soup.
Essentially, I ran our home as a military installation. My girls were quickly and harshly disciplined for even the most minor of offenses. While there were occasional spankings when they were little, the discipline evolved into very binary (go / no go) rules. For instance, you are expected to get this minimum score on a test at school or you can't go to your friend's house on the weekend. You didn't make that grade, you were not going. If you cried and begged and pleaded, you were still not going but now I would restrict / remove some other thing you wanted for not accepting your fate. And so on.
When they did things that were good, I would more or less dismiss this as me not rewarding them for what they should have done anyway.
Basically, they couldn't win.
I believed at the time that I was building strong girls into strong women. It feels as though I've done the exact opposite.
On the rare occasions I do hear from them, and the subject of the past comes up (this is very rare) I get the "I don't hate you but I don't want you in my life." speech. It's deserved but that doesn't lessen the sting.
My hope for the future is, as they grow older, time passing will allow them to be more comfortable around me. As they are all adults now, my desire to control them as I did when they were kids is gone. I simply want an adult-child/parent relationship. I guess I haven't earned that right, but I still hope for it one day.
This comment is late in this post's life so it probably doesn't really get seen; nevertheless, it has been cathartic to type it out.
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74points
#12
I have no idea why i stopped talking to my parents.
It wasn't an incident. It was a slow moving snowball.
But the main thing is how f*****g unprepared I was for life. I'm in my 40s now, and still trying to figure out basic things. Google is my parent at this point. I can't remember the last time I asked either of my parents for advice/help.
It wasn't an incident. It was a slow moving snowball.
But the main thing is how f*****g unprepared I was for life. I'm in my 40s now, and still trying to figure out basic things. Google is my parent at this point. I can't remember the last time I asked either of my parents for advice/help.
66points
Pamela provided an example of a "letter of amends" that a parent might write to their child once all contact has ceased.
"Psychologist and author of Rules of Estrangement, Dr. Joshua Coleman recommends this script: Dear Son/Daughter, I’m writing to see if it’s possible to open up a dialogue with you. I know that you wouldn’t have this time apart from me if it wasn’t the healthiest thing for you to do. With that being said, I don’t completely understand why you cut off ties with me."
"It’s clear I have significant blind spots in either how I raised you or things I’ve done while you're an adult, and I’m writing to have better understanding," Pamela continued. "Would you feel comfortable letting me know? I promise to read it from the perspective of listening and learning and not in any way to defend myself. Love, Mom"
#13
I had a daughter that my parents kept making plans to come see, but then cancelling the day before each time. The last time, when my daughter was already packed to go see grandma and grandpa, and we had been hyping it to her for weeks, they called and cancelled the trip with no excuse and then I later found out they went to a baseball game with their friends instead.
I was used to this kind of abandonment and would laugh it off in the past, but as I held my 6 year old daughter while she cried her eyes out, I vowed she’d never know that kind of unreliability in her life.
That was the last time I spoke to them. My wife wrote them a letter a few years ago, but they never wrote back. My daughter is 14 now and I am toying with the idea of allowing her to meet them since she’s more mature, but they’d probably just cancel again. .
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66points
#14
My mother and I didn’t talk for a few years. When I went away to college she said, “If you get on that plane, don’t bother coming back home.” I fell in love while in college and got engaged and he abused me. I never told my mom because I didn’t think she cared. It was my brother that came to another state to check on me. I finally did come back home but things were never the same.
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61points
#15
My mom and I stopped talking for a 14 year stretch. When my son was very little, we were on vacation with my mother. My wife and I had a small disagreement about his breakfast and afterwards, my mother pulled me aside and said I should take my son with me to a hotel for a few days to teach my wife a lesson.
I disagreed, telling her that I didn't feel that I should be taking marital advice from a woman who had been divorced 3 times.
She didn't take it as well as you might think. /s
We finally started taking again when my grandmother passed away and have been fine ever since.
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60points
Finally, Pamela added that repairing these relationships won't be simple, but it may be possible. "There's no easy way through this, but if both parties are willing to find commonality and extend forgiveness, relationships can be restored," she told Bored Panda. "It takes patience and ongoing conversations once you're communicating again. If the parent isn't willing to humble themselves, it is hard for reconciliation to occur."
#16
I started having babies when i was 18, and i was trying to raise children when id never had a good role model for how it’s done properly. I had untreated she’d misdiagnosed mental illnesses. I was a s**t parent. Their childhood was full of trauma and I was at the helm. I thought I was going pretty good, given the circumstances of our lives but I wasn’t at all. I was a baby with a sick brain and no support system trying to raise babies.
I believe I did my best but unfortunately sometimes our best simply isn’t good enough. I’ve recently been properly diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and yeah, growing up with a bpd mother is a horrific fate for a child.
I don’t know how to make amends with my kids, but I know that best course of action is to respect their autonomy and respect their wishes to not interact with me. I just love them from far away now. And I can absolutely say they are the most amazing, kind, compassionate, and beautiful people I’ve ever seen. I’m so proud of all of them.
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57points
#17
In my case, the catalyst was January 6th. We had a family group chat and we were exchanging information about what we were watching with our own eyes. My oldest son started chiming in saying it wasn't that bad and the news was overblowing things. Up to that point I had no idea how far gone down the conservative hole he had gone. Of course he waited until after I moved him into a new apartment in the middle of July, cosigned for the apartment and paid the security deposit before he decided to cut contact.
He has gone no contact with the entire family with the exception of a conservative BIL, which we get along with fine. I thought we had shown all of our children how to get along with others even if their opinion differs. I guess that lesson didn't sink in.
53points
#18
My parents are too old for Reddit. I estranged from them because they never, ever wanted me. My mother didn't want kids but in that day, that wasn't an option. They had my sister first and sort of "used up" their love on her. When I came along five years later, they didn't have anything left. I didn't find out until 35 that it wasn't anything I did: my mother just really didn't want kids. By then, though, I'd internalized close to four decades of being unwanted. I am terrified of being abandoned and have had rafts of therapy. My parents were never abusive. We had food on the table and clothes on our backs. I had My Little Ponies and She-Ra figures. I also attempted s*****e for the first time when I was eleven years old. I started drinking when I was 15. My parents did not notice. They told me I was "the independent one" so I didn't need their love. We also were not a demonstrative family. My family did not hug or kiss or touch in any way. I think I have hugged my parents maybe ten times or so. Both parents are quite smart and there was always a kind of... judgement? about people who couldn't use their words and had to use their bodies instead. Like only poor or stupid people hug their kids. I could go through a list of what they did for my sister versus me, but f**k it. I would be accused of hyperbole, or of making things up whole cloth. We were only nominally raised in the same household; her life had a very, very, very different trajectory. Suffice it to say that it wasn't just the love that my sister used up - time, money, effort, ideas, conversation - I got none of those things. If it matters, I don't blame Sister - we still talk. It wasn't her fault.
51points
#19
100% my fault, or to be fair 95%.
While breaking up with my high school girlfriend, after realizing there was something wrong with her and us, of course, she got pregnant. The breakup was precipitated by her sleeping around, so there was a real question of whether my daughter would be mine.
While breaking up with my high school girlfriend, after realizing there was something wrong with her and us, of course, she got pregnant. The breakup was precipitated by her sleeping around, so there was a real question of whether my daughter would be mine.
She was.
I moved back to my podunk hometown, and tried to be a good father. Ex-girlfriend, was looking for a boyfriend/husband, I was not willing to do this. She quickly got pregnant two more times, moving up the economic ladder with every pregnancy. The last guy to get her pregnant owned the country club, so her financial needs were met, but she really didn't have a man in her life yet. Through the multitude of boyfriends and lovers, I tried to be a father to my daughter, but I was constantly shut out. When I looked at going to court to have court-ordered visitation, I was told by my ex-girlfriend that I would be accused of abuse if I did so. This was not an idle threat.
So I left, and did not do nearly enough to keep in contact with my daughter. She did not like me because of my absence, and because of constantly hearing from her mother, what a piece of s**t I was. Again, I chose to leave. I was an adult she was a child, but I was fairly immature and did not see any way out. 25 years later I'm still not sure what I could've done differently.
I email my daughter every month or two and she emails me back every year or so. This failure is the great regret of my life.
50points
#20
I am one of those Moms who always felt that providing for my kids, taking them on vacations, buying them what they needed was enough, didn’t realize love and nurturing were essential ingredients. Now my daughter is 28 and cannot hold a job, emotionally insecure, depressed and blaming me for her failures. She made me realize ( and therapy helped ) that how my actions, behavior might make a child feel they are not valued or loved. I am remorseful and regretting all my actions but unfortunately cannot undo the damage caused.
49points