Shelda, I do think we may have "unmet expectations" with our adult children. We want what they don't seem to want. Then we get stuck on the why. This stuff feels like, and probably is, rejection.

All my life I realized I have had times of rejection, like many times. From girl friends in middle school and high school, then my best boy friend in high school, girl friends later in life, the ex-husband, and at jobs. And now the estrangements. I've realized "rejection" is the thing I have to work through in my life and learn to manage, cope, allow, let it be thinking with that rejection.

Our EC tell us who they are and how they are. We can only accept that they "have their own families and don't have time" or as I call it, accept the type of relationship they want to have. We can resist acceptance and it makes us very unhappy. I walk this path with you, dear friend.

have you tried offering to help with those demands of your daughter's family? the most tightly bonded extended families it has been my privilege to witness in action are very involved in the intergenerational demands of keeping all those balls in the air.

just wondering. . .

i inherited my youngest son's 3 orphans about 4 years ago at age 65. i am freshly reminded of just how whelming those demands are. it is truly amazing just how quickly we forget.

arfie, sometimes people have no power to change a relationship because they aren't in control of the ostracizing or shunning or rejection or estrangement.

The one who creates the estrangement has all the power usually and it is a very cruel type of control.

The parent is not always the bad guy and yet this cultural myth that we can try harder, be nicer, give more, still hangs on.

There is sort of an undercurrent to this parents must always try harder stuff that is actually typical criticism of the parent. The mother is always bad or always wrong, sometimes it is the father that is criticized.

Estranged parents often feel more shame or guilt when criticized or told to try harder. Most often I have found the parents have tried and tried and tried and bent over backwards until their back breaks.

Thats been my expierence too. People today are more self reliant and absorbed,we the Parents are a afterthought.I used to blame myself for everything and started to hate myself over and over again...But i am remembering what a 98 year old said to me when he asked me how i was and i told him depressed.He asked why so i told him and he said Don;t think about others just yourself.

They have their "immediate" family, who they need to focus on supporting. Ask yourself who you focused more on when you were raising your family, them or your parents?