Healing relationships with grown children

Some friction between parents and their adult children is inevitable.  It happens in every family.  Yet, while these conflicts are common to all families, some families are able to weather the storm and repair the relationship, while other families see their relationships become deeply frayed and, in some cases, permanently damaged.  

We all know parents and their grown children who are no longer talking or can just manage to exchange a card at Christmas.  For these families, the free flow of communication and affection has been cut off.  And when we hear about these cases, we inevitably feel a deep sadness for all those involved.  To lose the love between parent and child feels tragic.

Heal conflict - don’t try to avoid it

I strongly believe that the goal should not be to eliminate all conflicts; that’s just not possible.  In fact, trying to avoid all conflicts only leads to resentment as everyone walking around on eggshells.  That’s no way to have a relationship.  A much better goal is to accept that conflicts will occur and learn ways to recover and repair any rifts before they can cause serious damage. 

But healing rifts with grown children can be a difficult process.  If it was easy, we could all do it, and we’d all have a great parent/child relationship.  In many cases, a major stumbling block is that the parent and adult child may have a dramatically different memory of what it was like to grow up in the family home. The parent feels blamed and accuses the child of “only remembering the bad stuff” and feels that “it wasn’t that bad”.  While the grown child accuses the parent of “wearing rose-colored glasses” or of failing to “take responsibility for what they did”. 

If you’re not careful, this can become a never-ending argument in which nothing is resolved and everyone’s feelings are deeply injured.  The facts of the situation are unimportant, what’s important is how people remember and feel about their lives together. To make progress, you have to accept that both sides are right and that their feelings are completely valid given their experience.

A 7-step process

In my practice, I look at repairing parent/child relationship rifts as a 7-step process.  Because I work primarily with older adults, I’ve written these steps from the perspective of the parent, but they work just as well for the grown child.

1.       Listen.  Just hear them out.  Even if you’ve heard it before, this time it's different.  This time you’re working to repair the relationship not to argue about who’s right or wrong.  Let them talk – you don’t have to say anything.  Focus more on hearing how they are feeling, and less on hearing the facts or the argument.

2.      Accept. Accept that these are their feelings.  You may not agree or think the feelings are accurate or reasonable, but you need to be willing to accept that this is how they feel.  Stop fighting them about their feelings – they have the right to whatever they feel.

3.      Reflect.  It’s important to let them know that you understand how they are feeling, that you “get it”.  You can do this by reflecting, or repeating back to them, what they’ve told you. “I understand that you feel hurt and betrayed by the way you felt I sided with your father and didn’t stick up for you”.  You don’t have to agree with them – you’re just letting them know that you heard them.

4.      Apologize. An apology is an expression of regret for your role in some action.  It doesn’t mean you have to agree that you did whatever they believe.  It is simply an expression that you are deeply sorry for any way that you’ve hurt them.  “I’m so sorry for anything I did that hurt you, I know that I wasn’t a perfect parent, and I want you to know I never meant to cause you this pain”.

5.      Make Amends for the Past.  To make amends doesn’t mean to apologize, it means to make a change.  To make an amend, you need to take an action or at least offer to take an action.  You can’t change the past, but you can take steps to make up for or rectify, past problems.  “What can I do today that can help heal the pain of what happened in our past?”.  Even if they reject your offer, you have made the amends; you have done your part.  You can’t control their response.

6.      Make Amends for the Present.  Along with what happened in the past, there may also be issues about the relationship as it exists today.  “What can I do now to help us have a better relationship today?”. 

7.      Repeat. Healing rifts is an ongoing process. Sitting down for one talk is good, but it may take many discussions for people to feel that they can move forward. 

Healing can take time

These 7 steps can be used to repair rifts in any relationship.  It works best if both sides are willing to work together toward that common goal.  But that’s not always possible, sometimes one party is so injured or angry that they’re not willing to participate.  That makes the healing process much more difficult.  Whether they are willing to participate or not, you can do your part of the process.  Even if they’re not talking to you, you can do each of the steps on your own.  You can go through the steps in an email, in prayer, or just by saying the steps to yourself. 

In my experience, just knowing that you’ve done everything you can, will make you feel better and slowly improve the relationship, and create new openings for communication and caring.