W“
“WHEN YOUR ONLY CHILD TELLS YOU
he doesn’t want to see you anymore, it
cuts straight to your heart, like a knife
twisted and turned,” says Deborah
Jackson,* 61, a history professor in
northern California.
She’s been there. Deborah and her
son, Marcus, 26, were exceptionally
close when he was a child, but
became estranged after she and
Marcus’s father divorced in 2003.
Around that time, Marcus left for
college, and Deborah found it in-
creasingly difficult to maintain her
connection with her son. For reasons
she still doesn’t fully understand,
Marcus stayed with his father on
school breaks and seemed to call his
mother only to chastise her. “I’d be
walking down the street with tears
streaming down my face, cell phone
to my ear, listening to Marcus telling
me all the ways I’d failed him,” she
recalls. “I’d done the best I could with
my son, and clearly it wasn’t enough.”
Despite her efforts, their relation-
ship remained tense and distant. “Ev-
ery day that goes by, I’m missing more
of his life,” Deborah told us last fall,
her voice thick with grief. “I’m afraid
I’ll never see my only child again.”
Experts say that Deborah’s worry
is more and more common. “In my
therapy practice, I’ve seen a signifi-
cant increase in parents whose adult
children have cut them off,” says
Mark Sichel, author of
Healing From
Family Rifts
and a licensed clinical
social worker in Manhattan.
San Francisco psychologist Joshua
Coleman, Ph.D., received so many
requests for help with intergen-
erational conflict that he launched
a six-session seminar, available via
telephone or Web, for estranged
parents. Coleman, author of
When
Parents Hurt: Compassionate
Strategies When You and Your Grown
Child Don’t Get Along,
expected
about 50 parents to sign up for the
first series. Instead, he got 400.
When Your Kid
“Divorces” You
We asked Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., for
tips on healing a serious rift with a child.
His recommendations:
OWN UP
Take responsibil-
ity for mistakes
you’ve made.
If there’s a kernel
of truth in your
child’s complaint,
acknowledge
that.
ACCEPT A
CONTRARY VIEW
Even if you think
you acted in your
child’s best inter-
est, your child
might not have
experienced your
actions that way.
Don’t try to prove
your child wrong.
AVOID
GUIL T TRIPS
Making a child
feel sorry doesn’t
work. Even if it
seems effective
in the short run,
you’ll pay a high
price for the
resentment
you’ll generate.
HEAR THEM OU T
Don’t be defen-
sive. Ask ques-
tions and then
really listen.
WAIT...THEN
WAI T SOME
MORE
Don’t give up too
soon. If there
has been an
estrangement,
you may need to
reach out for a
long time before
the relationship
improves.
BUTTON IT
Don’t give advice
that isn’t re-
quested. Don’t
criticize your
child’s significant
other or sexual
orientation.
Don’t tell your
children how to
parent their kids.
You had your
turn; now let
them have theirs.
Elizabeth Vagnoni, 56, is a film-
maker who is estranged from her
two adult sons. She runs the website
Estranged Stories (estrangedstories
.com),
where people post painful
personal accounts they may not have
shared with anyone—even close
friends. “It’s hard to admit that your
children are no longer speaking to
you,” Vagnoni says.
In an ongoing survey that Vagnoni
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