Ep 127: How to Heal a Broken Bond

Dr. Joshua Coleman, author of Rules of Estrangement and When Parents Hurt, offers insight on how to repair fractured relationships. Plus, why parental estrangement is becoming increasingly common and what we can do to prevent it in the first place.

Full show notes

After all the blood, sweat, and tears of raising a kid, any parent would want a good relationship with a son or daughter that’s reached adulthood. But sometimes, conflicts that start small during the teenage years grow more intense, and parent-child relationships are ruined by resentment. Many parents find themselves painfully estranged from their grown children after they’ve left the nest. The sad part is, these rifts could have been mended before teens grew into adults, if only parents knew the right approach.

Oftentimes, parents do attempt to remedy deep conflicts with teens, but they go about it in the wrong way. Although they have the kid’s best interest at heart, they find themselves using defensive language, or fail to truly empathize with their children. If you want to keep your kids from distancing themselves as adults, you’ll have to really connect and hash things out from the heart.

To teach us how to overcome bad blood between ourselves and our teens, we’re talking to Joshua Coleman, author of Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict. Joshua became estranged from his own daughter when he went through a difficult divorce. It became worse when he remarried and had kids with his new wife.

He was eventually able to reconnect with his daughter, but the pain of the experience was unforgettable. He decided to dedicate his efforts to researching parent-child estrangement, becoming an expert. He now hosts weekly Q&A’s and writes a regular newsletter on the subject, along with publishing several books about it.

So what can Joshua teach us about healing our relationships with our teens? In our interview, he talks about how part of the reason why kids distance themselves is a change in culture. We also talk about how your co-parent can push kids away from you, and how you can begin to breach the divide even when it seems like you’ll never get your kid back.

The Significance of Cultural Changes

Many of us think that kids should always remain grateful and loyal to their parents, because that’s the way we were raised. We were taught that family is an indispensable part of life, a duty that follows you forever. However, with millennials and generation z facing a more troubled economy, a tougher job market and a higher price of living, they’ve had to become more focused on their own survival. Jonathan and I discuss how this has led to an overall shift towards an individualistic mindset instead of a collective, family based lifestyle.

There’s been a stronger focus on mental health in recent years as well, with more people than ever before entering into psychotherapy. Young folks are significantly more likely than older generations to think deeply and critically about the effects of their upbringing on their wellbeing. This leads to more young adults justifying anger towards the ones who raised them.

As a mother or father, this can be incredibly frustrating. It’s not as if parents have become less attentive or careful. In fact, Joshua has found that parents nowadays are more doting towards kids than ever before. However, this can actually lead kids to want to distance themselves even more. If kids have always felt as though they were under a microscope, they’re likely to strive more intensely for individualism, pushing parents away in the process.

Joshua and I talk further in the episode about cultural changes that have led to more conflict between kids and parents. In addition to cultural changes, this alienation can also be caused by one parent poisoning the image of the other in the child’s mind.

When Parents Put Each Other Down

For some kids, especially when divorce is involved, a kid’s anger towards a parent might be fueled by the other parent. When things are complicated between co-parents, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of dissing the other person when the kid is in earshot. Even when a parent isn’t actively trying to paint the other as a bad person, it can happen as a result of a fight or feud between the two of you.

Joshua stresses the importance of remaining grounded and affectionate toward your co-parent, at least in front of your child. Talking bad about the other person isn’t going to help your relationship with your kid. Even if your co-parent is constantly throwing you under the bus, kids need at least one parent to remain stable and keep things collected.

So if your co-parent is rocking the boat by filling your child’s mind with bad notions about you, what can you do to keep your kid from turning against you? Joshua suggests challenging your kid to think critically about the comments being made in an attempt to tarnish your image. He also suggests listening to the concerns your kid may have now that you’ve been criticized, and empathize with them to understand where you might be misstepping as a parent.

Empathy actually plays a big role in reconnecting with a kid. Joshua and I get into this in the episode.

Listening and Empathizing

When your kid is pushing you away, citing every choice of yours as a reason for distancing themselves, it’s pretty darn tempting to get defensive. It’s incredibly frustrating when kids don’t understand that you’re trying your best. Despite the frustration, however, Joshua emphasizes the value of coming from a place of understanding when trying to bridge the gap with your kid.

Joshua uses a story about his work with paranoid schizophrenics to explain how you should speak to a teen who’s hurt. Joshua found that if he made schizophrenic patients feel as if their delusions were ridiculous, he couldn't get through to them at all. In order to truly help them, he had to validate their beliefs, and understand where they were coming from. Only then was he able to prompt them to question their illogical beliefs.

Even if you think your kid is throwing baseless accusations at you, Joshua believes it’s imperative that you find a kernel of truth in what they’re saying. Making kids feel selfish or mean will simply turn them off from working towards unity. Using phrases like, “I’m open to hearing your thoughts and feelings” or “I want to be better going forward” can help you make progress towards finding peace with one another.

In the episode, Joshua goes over two examples of letters from parents trying to make amends. Although the two examples are similar, one comes off as defensive and blames the child, while the other conveys understanding and respect for the child’s feelings. We discuss this empathetic approach in depth, explaining how you can lead with kindness instead of bitterness when patching up broken bonds with your teenager.

In the Episode….

Joshua speaks from the heart in this week's episode, making for a moving interview and great advice for parents who might be grappling with reconnecting to teens. In addition to the topics discussed above, we talk about:

• Why parents and kids get into a toxic “pursuer/distancer” dynamic
• How to talk to kids about college majors you don’t approve of
• Why your adult kids’ spouse might be turning them against you
• How to t...