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 response for parents. Her approach takes into account both your family’s communication history and the importance of healthy boundaries, even during estrangement. Don’t continue to put up with rude behavior. Know where your limits are, and calmly assert them. Do this with your child, your spouse or partner, other family members and friends. Setting boundaries, if you do it in the spirit of building better relationships, will not damage your bond with your adult children. Use the examples given in this episode to set your own boundaries around the disrespectful use of foul language. In the spirit of picking your battles, Tina also offers an opinion regarding your adult child’s use of “snarky tones” with you.

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 emotions just pushes him further away?
There’s a clue in a simple rule of thumb for rejected parents. Before you do anything, ask yourself, “Will this serve my child?”
You’re human. You deserve for someone to care when your feelings are hurt, and when you’re having a hard time. But it’s not clear that your adult child is the right person to fill that role, especially when she’s estranged.
Tina offers some food for thought in this episode (use the player below to listen now) if you’re thinking of giving your estranged adult child a piece of your mind.

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 investigate the “why” of what happened. They miss opportunities to understand and correct missteps that led to problems in the first place. Even if they search high and low for the cause of their children’s behavior, parents as a group tend to look in the wrong places for the causes of estrangement. In this informative episode, Tina helps parents slow down and focus their efforts where they’ll be most fruitful. If you can pinpoint the real cause(s) of your adult child’s desire for distance, you can start building a better experience for both of you in the future.

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 the estranged adult child.
The idea is, if your child won’t speak to your spouse, or to both of you, then the two of you won’t condone this behavior with contact or favors. There should be consequences, the thinking goes.
But is that a good idea? It depends on whether the outcome you seek is to hold on to your principles, or to facilitate reconciliation. Your strategy may not be able to do both.
In this helpful episode, Tina offers her thoughts on parents presenting a united front. She considers both partial estrangement (i.e., estrangement from one parent but not the other) and estrangement from both parents.

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 many mothers and daughters become estranged? Mother-daughter relationship coach Rosjke Hasseldine has some important thoughts on that question, and she shares them in this episode. Listen to an excerpt from Tina’s interview with Rosjke, who is also the author of The Mother-Daughter Puzzle and The Silent Female Scream. In this excerpt you’ll hear Rosjke discussing the roots of conflict between mothers and daughters – what often goes wrong in this very special relationship, and why the problem extends beyond just you and your daughter.

"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 situation.
But wait a minute. If what you’re interested in is relationship repair, then all of those activities must be viewed in a different light. A good apology, for example, may be the only way to gently take down the wall your child has put up.
Seeking first to understand is a recognized habit of highly effective people.
Validation doesn’t imply agreement. It’s just a way to move from the opposite side, to the same one.
All of the tools successful parents are putting to use, might make it look like they’re taking the blame. But what they’re taking is responsibility for solving a problem that’s bothering them.
Don’t mistake responsibility for blame. There’s no value anyway on staying focused on whose fault the estrangement is. It’s just a recipe for remaining estranged.
Try to let go of the notions of fault, blame, and guilt surrounding estrangement. Recognize apologies, validation, and other tools as part of a solid relationship repair toolkit.
If your goal is to repair and improve a troubled relationship, look for ways to be accountable – not ways you’re not at fault.
If your goal is to prove that too much blame has been laid at your feet, you may be in the wrong place here. The Reconnection Club is for parents seeking reconnection through self-awareness and personal growth.

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, Someone else is controlling (or has brainwashed) your child, and Your child has a personality disorder that’s making him act this way. Each of these assumptions in the parent says, in effect, “This estrangement in entirely beyond my control.” Only when parents give up any hope of having a positive impact on their troubled relationship, are they truly powerless to heal estrangement from their adult children. The other episode mentioned on this show was Episode #62, Personality Disorders and Estrangement.

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 feelings.
Once your own feelings turn angry and defensive, your ability to repair your relationship is compromised. That’s why Tina shares some thoughts to help you get your compassion back.
In this episode, Tina offers a few ways to look at your child and see a frustrated, angry, de-skilled individual who’s not operating at their best -- rather than a mean bully you want to run from.
If you can find your way back to compassion for both your child and yourself, you can get back on the reconnection track.

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 trouble? Don’t they miss their children? Don’t they love them? In this episode, Tina suggests that it’s not only okay, but healthy and important, for rejected parents to enjoy themselves during estrangement. The holidays are a good time to practice this. But throughout the year, if you’re too sad to participate in good times and creating happy memories with others, you’re adding to your pain and loss. According to Tina, you deserve better. She outlines three typical reasons why parents find it hard to let loose, and counters them with common sense and compassion. This inspiring episode will give you permission to go ahead and enjoy yourself this holiday season, and beyond.