Parents of estranged adult children Community Group

One or more of our adult children walked out of our lives and never looked back.

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hasty_05 06/27/2023

I want to ask you all if you feel rejected or rejection from being estranged by your adult sons or daughters? I am hearing more and more about the word rejection. It does feel like rejection to me and after much self-introspection, I realized rejection is a deep issue for me from childhood. Our brains are hard wired to have connections with other humans and this rejection, ostracizing, shunning type of stuff from our adult sons and daughters can make our brains go into depression and anxiety and deep stress. I learned to name it as rejection and understand why this becomes such an emotional loss, but I have not totally worked through "my own stuff" to be healed from the rejection.

BunBun 06/27/2023

I think there's an element of rejection in it. I always think of it as estrangement but I am not optimistic there will be a reconciliation. Sadly, I think it is permanent in my case.

arfie 06/27/2023

i'm another who feels like the rejection/estrangement is not only permanent, it's the only family tradition my birth family has. we can trace our family's estrangement traditions back to the luther wars in central germany. old time religion? the catholics and protestants are still duking it out in my family tree. i didn't raise my sons with either religion, but the beat goes on.

shelda 07/02/2023

I've read that estrangment runs in families and who knows? Not sure why my daughters reject me and it used to guilt me up and i felt so worthless. I was always going through what i did wrong etc... but i seriously know now it is their issues and not mine. Remeber you are your own best friend it helps me feel better about who i am

JoyO 09/15/2023

My husband and I are dealing with our two oldest children, For some reason, they keep treating us like crap. We've always been there for them and now being in their thirties, they are controlling and if we don't go by what they say, we're no good. The thing that gets us is that they both think we don't love them and obviously didn't do enough for them, even though we did, but they wanted more out of us. We just don't know how to handle them and being that they both have children, the use them as pawns when they don't get their way.

hasty_05 09/15/2023

Hi JoyO, glad you joined us here but sorry for the conflict in your family. Many parents have manipulation from their kids. Mine are no contact now but I often wonder when they have periods of contact if they want something. They get no money from us so I think that created the last dumping. I’m not going to play that game anymore. Like BunBun, I think we are done at this point because I won’t be their whipping boy/girl.

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