I SPENT A MONTH IN SUPPORT GROUPS FOR PARENTS OF ESTRANGED CHILDREN

Criminologists are taught that the best way to solve a case is by using criminal profiling. We try to “get into the mind of the criminal” by studying the patterns so we can predict his next move. But, if you already know where he is, the simplest way to find out how and why he did it, is to get him to tell you.

Other than the astounding displays of hypocrisy and self-absorption, one of the first things you will notice on support groups for parents of estranged children, is how quickly things get repetitive. So repetitive, that it made sense to split the patterns into themes:

1.       No one calls estrangement “No Contact”. Only insolent brats do that (more about that in theme 2).

2.       Social media, therapy, brainwashing, and giving children an opinion, has turned insolence into an epidemic.

3.       Nothing the members did was abusive. Estrangement is the abuse.

4.       Nothing a parent did can ever justify estrangement. Ever.

5.       If the words “disrespect” and “did my best” were removed, most posts would be blank.

6.       Boundaries are just humiliations designed to force parents to obey children.

7.       Pregnancy, giving birth, and providing food, clothing, and shelter, are sacrifices that warrant eternal gratitude and compensation.

8.       Estranged children must be punished. Grandchildren, God, and Karma will assist.

9.       Estrangement is the child’s choice. There was nothing any parent could have done to change that.

10.   Reconciliation is impossible after the abuse of estrangement. Moving on to “live your best life” is key.

I also split the members into three groups: “newbies” (just joined), “experts” (estranged for under 5 years), and “veterans” (estranged for 5 to 20+ years), who also follow a pattern: Disbelief, Blame, Outrage, Victimhood, Revenge, and Moving On.

DISBELIEF

The newbies’ first appearance drips with a flabbergasted, but twitchy, self-pity. Nervously, they dip a toe in the water by introducing themselves, and their heartache. At this stage they are careful to add how heartbroken they are, despite their shock and dismay. Here is one I picked at random: (I am quoting directly, so from this point on, I am going to have to ask you to cope with the grammar and spelling mistakes. The research was taxing enough. Having to edit it would just be cruel.)

“Hello. Thank you for accepting me as a new member. I am the heartbroken mother of a 38 year-old daughter who decided that she no longer wanted any contact with me. She sent me a text telling me she started therapy and ‘needed to some space.’ This was unexpected and I am devastated.”

This seems to send the Bat-signal to the rest of the members, who all fall over each other to welcome the nervous newbies:

“Welcome! You’ve come to the right place. We are the only ones who know what you’re going through. Stay, and we will help you.”

At this point I thought I had accidentally joined a cult and that this was part of the welcome package. It wasn’t (I checked). Bolstered by the warm welcome, the newbies sidle closer to their new friends, and ask: “How the hell did this happen!?”.

Enter the experts, who are only too pleased to tell them.  

BLAME

“It’s social media Cancel Culture Mentality. It makes them feel like omnipotent demigods of power and control.” “SO SO SO many influences saying anyone who caused you trauma needs to be cut out of your life.” “It’s an epidemic.” “It’s the Tick tock. They show them how to do it step by step. Disgusting.” “Social media is teaching these kids to act on their feelings. So disrespectful, makes me sick.”

After reading a few thousand posts like these, it becomes clear that these parents’ abject hatred for social media is more about exposure than estrangement. They’re not exactly thrilled with “The Tick Tock” teaching their kids about No Contact, but they are LIVID that they are taking what used to happen behind closed doors, and exposing it for all the world to see. These parents’ biggest argument is that nothing they did was ever abusive. The more social media spreads that it was, the more enraged these parents become. (They call every generation after theirs “The TikTok Generation”. But the majority of the “brats” they are referring to, are well over 40 years old.)

When they’re done trying to ban social media, they go after their children’s therapists:

“I blame the therapists, teaching them they are victims.” “It’s sick and wrong to make judgements based on one side of the story.” “I wish we could sue them for character assassination, and malpractice.”

Their hatred for their children’s therapists also seems to have more to do with exposure than estrangement, as their main complaint is that therapists only hear their children’s side of the story. (Is there a stronger word for “hypocrisy”? I feel there needs to be a stronger word for hypocrisy.) I have yet to see, hear, or read ANYTHING from a toxic parent that includes ANYONE’S side of the story but their own. But wait, it gets better. The members strongly encourage each other to go to therapy to “heal the hurts” inflicted by their horrible children, but the moment one of their children sets foot in a therapist’s office, the entire field must be outlawed. 

The next heat in the blame game are their children’s disgusting partners, in-laws, and the parents’ ex-spouses, who all must have gone to the same special ops training program, so skilled are they in the art of brainwashing:

“They’re brainwashed. It’s like a cult.” “Her husband has brainwashed her, she was always close to us.” “My Daughter will never be that sweet Daughter she was before her Husband brainwashed her!” Which brings me to my next point: some parents claim that their children were “evil from birth”: “My child has been angry and hateful since he emerged from the birth canal.” “As a baby she never wanted to be hugged, even then, at a few weeks old she rejected me!” “I can not believe that I carried this demon in my womb and gave birth to him”, but most say they miss who their children were when they were little, but hate how they turned out as adults: “I will always love my sweet baby girl But I would not choose this adult as my friend. No loss here just an evil adult.” “I only miss the sweet girl I used to know, not the cold hearted, self centered person she chose to become.” “I raised them to be sweet and loving, and this is how I’m repaid.”

Interesting how “sweet” and “loving” their children were when they had no choice but to take their parents’ abuse and like it, but the moment they grew up, they all found ways to be brainwashed into becoming hateful adults. Even more interesting is how these parents admit that their brainwashed children are perfectly successful in their jobs, friendships, and every other aspect of their lives, just not in their relationships with their parents. Maybe brainwashing is just funny that way. 

OUTRAGE

Satisfied that they aren’t to blame, and armed with something that is, the newbies move swiftly on to Outrage. Bolstered by all this newfound support and encouragement, they drop the whole “heartbroken” act, and get much more comfortable with telling everyone how they really feel:

“You know what, you’re right. I have been through too much shit in my life to let those weak, judgmental, entitled, self-indulgent jackasses destroy me.” “They are disrespectful overgrown brats.” “I finally can see her fir what she really is. Vindictive, cruel, fake, a user, drama Queen, materialistic and a born lier.”  

Like the shove that started a bar fight, these threads quickly turn into free-for-alls, with all the members gleefully jumping in with some vicious blows of their own. Then, just when you think everyone is about to collapse in an exhausted geriatric heap, someone mentions the dreaded word. The cursed word. The word that “must not be named” lest you invoke its terrible torment: Boundaries.  

“SCREW THEIR BOUNDARIES this pisses me off more than the estrangement. I will never be told how and what I can do. Especially by my offspring.” “I get sick to my stomach when I hear this. We're their life givers and demand and deserve their respect!!!” “All ‘boundaries’ and ‘personal space’ is just disrespecting and judging parents.” “No parent deserves to be treated this way.” “It's their way of standing up and saying I have my rights also!! They will learn it's not true way of life.” “This generation of our kids are mentally sick for doing this to us.” “The lengths these narcissistic brats wiil go to get even.” “Pearls for swine.” “Privileged, spoiled BRATS.” “I'm sick to death of being told we're expected to dance around their feelings. Nobody is going to rule what I can or cannot say.” “I’m so sick of these kids in there made up rules about crap as time to get real and tell them to F off.”

It is in this stage that we get to see the mother of all impasses: The adult children set a boundary in order to save the relationship; the parents aren’t just furious, they’re apoplectic – and get stuck here: CHILDREN. DON’T. GIVE. ORDERS. TO. PARENTS. PERIOD. It doesn’t matter how reasonable, rational, or sensible the boundary, or how calmly, lovingly, or compassionately the adult children have expressed the need for it. Apoplexy is the result. If there are grandchildren involved, it’s Armageddon.

REVENGE

“Rest assured these brats will get what they deserve. Their children are going to do the exact same thing to them. They don’t have enough forethought to recognize it. That’s the funny part.” “I hope my kids can experience what they have doled out...how else will they learn from this disresect?” “They are showing and modleling to their children how to treat a parent, some day they will wish they didn't.” “God I hope Karma hits them good & hard.” “I can do without my daughter. But grandchildren belong to grandparents.” “I could easily walk away from my daughter, but I want my granddaughter.” “If these kids don’t want to see us… fine. It’s a THEM problem. That has nothing to do with the grandchildren.”

Another impossible impasse. In these cases, No Contact has everything to do with the grandchildren, their safety, and the adult children’s rising concern with the grandparents’ increasingly disturbing behaviour. What these parents fail to see (other than the sick absurdity of wanting a relationship with a child without the consent of a parent), is that the “merry-go-round” these parents call being able to see their grandchildren, only for them to be “ripped away again”, is completely inevitable: The adult children set a boundary, the grandparent violates it, and the adult children have no choice but to remove the grandchildren. The grandparent responds with more threats, cementing the fact that they cannot be trusted around their grandchildren, until the only way to stop the merry-go-round, is to get off it. Only then do we get to see just how disturbing this really is: Remember how “heartbroken” these parents were over their children’s estrangement? Well they must have gotten over it remarkably quickly, because not only are these parents perfectly happy to toss out their own children for some shiny new ones, they see absolutely no reason for the brats to make a fuss about it.

It is in this stage that these parents can feel their control slipping further and further out of their reach. The messages, emails, cards, and gifts they relied upon to lure their children back into this mounting mess have gone unopened, sending them into a revenge-fueled panic. Cue the experts: “Stop sending gifts. You don’t need this humiliation.” “They will only keep throwing your generosity in your face.” “Stop playing into their power trip.”

Once they are all in agreement, the experts remind everybody to lawyer up and change their Wills at their earliest convenience.

The same way these parents are stuck in a “Children Don’t Give Orders To Parents” loop, we get a little stuck too. We keep hearing how our parents are “suffering from unbearable heartache”. (They’re not btw. What they’re suffering from is actually the blinding frustration of losing control). Where we get stuck is here, at yet another impasse: Just stick to the boundary, and everyone’s pain will go away. SURELY any hassle of respecting a simple boundary cannot POSSIBLY be more painful than estrangement? But we’d be dead wrong.

THE REAL VICTIMS

“Enduring repeated trauma by adhering to the child's requirements is too painful.” “This is bondage.” “Not willing to play that game and end up in a padded room.” “It hurt LESS to cut him off.” “You can’t win when the root issue is control and goal is to inflict pain.” “They demand behavior that is psychologically destructive.” “These are not boundaries this is assault.” “How much are we going to take before it kills us?” “You have to decide if you're going to live and be happy or live just to die.”

There you have it. As “unbearably painful” as all this is, it is less so, than obeying children’s orders.

When it comes to grandchildren, the reason these parents are apoplectic, is not just because their children have given them “orders”, it’s because they know that they’re beat. Swirling amongst any dregs of logic they do have, lies the simple fact that there is nothing they can to do force a parent into obediently handing over a child. Respecting the boundary that would grant them access to their grandchildren is Out Of The Question. So they change tactics:

“Anything I do and say they will get ‘offended’. It’s all a trap for their power trip.” “Some are serial estrangers. We can’t allow them to do this again and again for their own sick enjoyment.” “I will bow out for the grandkids sake. They don’t deserve to be caught in the middle of this sickening game.” “I gave those kids everything. If they want estrangement, I will give them that too.” “I will be alone, but at least it’s on my own terms.”

But just before they move on to the next stage, they have this to add:

“This is what happens when you are too soft.” “The only thing we failed to do, was to teach them gratitude and respect.” “The only thing we did wrong was to be too nice.” “I wish I could go back in time, to undo all the indulgences, things I did for my son to make him happy.” “Parents only get to keep the kids who were scared straight.” “The only thing we are guilty of was listening to the child experts. Children use to be afraid of their parents.” “Some real abuse would have worked.”

When someone accused of being abusive, responds with “I should have been more abusive”, well I really don’t know what else I could add to that. Maybe TikTok can help.

MOVING ON

Once these parents have reversed victim status, they reach a sort of acceptance stage. This cues the arrival of the veterans, who get to work convincing themselves and each other that any reconciliation would only justify the punishment of a parent who did nothing to deserve it, and that the only way forward, is to move on without their children:

“All agreeing with them will do is prove that we were bad parents.” “I will not own abuse.” “This is not about us. It is their choice to be disrespectful and abusive.” “They just want to be “right” and you are paying the price.” “You DO NOT REWARD bad behavior and disrespect! PERIOD!” “I’ve decided to love myself and not let them drag me down.” “It was my happiness or my children’s and I chose me!” “It feels great to be DONE with ‘it.’” “It's FREEDOM from SO much pain, abuse, and stress.” “You can grovel, apologize, pretend you were horrible OR you can skip that and move directly to working on finding a happier life. Your Parenthood Contract has been cancelled.”

I would like to add one more thing before I go. Sometimes patterns don’t lie in the similarities, but in the differences. The biggest difference between good parents and bad is this: With good parents, there isn't a thing we wouldn't do to have healthy relationships with our children. With bad parents, there isn't a thing they would do.

Case closed.