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Health & Fitness

Holiday Stress and Estranged Families

The holiday season can be an especially difficult time for those of us with estranged family members. I invited Dr. Joshua Coleman, an expert in family estrangement, to offer some support and advice. Dr. Coleman is an author of four books: The Marriage Makeover: Finding Happiness in Imperfect Harmony (St. Martin’s Press); The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework (St. Martin’s Press); When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along (HarperCollins); and Married with Twins: Life, Love and the Pursuit of Marital Harmony.

What I love most about Dr. Coleman’s work is how much emphasis he places on empathy. He approaches the topic of estrangement with compassion for all involved, and he encourages parents to strive to do the same. Put simply, his message is to take responsibility when you feel you’ve done something to damage the relationship, and to have compassion for yourself and the other party. This is extremely important, because unless you can have compassion for yourself, you cannot have it for others.

But why do children become estranged from their parents in the first place? Dr. Coleman says that many of us assume that if a child completely cuts off a parent, the parent must have done something terribly wrong. This is not necessarily the case. Dr. Coleman talked about how divorce weakens parent-child relationships, even when the child has already entered adulthood. This occurs for many reasons. One parent might intentionally or unintentionally sabotage a child’s relationship with the other parent, or the child might create an alliance with a parent that they perceive as most hurt by the divorce.

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Does this mean that parents should make every effort to save a marriage? Well, Dr. Coleman points out that we live in a culture that values individual happiness above all else. We therefore tend to understimate the importance of family systems and the damage that is done when we dismantle them. A lot of marriages end that are potentially viable. With kids involved, it is often worth the effort to work it out. Kids can—and sometimes do—successfully attach to step-parents and enjoy the benefits of a new, more stable family system, but in many cases, the opposite occurs. The child feels too conflicted or disloyal to attach to a step-parent and the family system remains incomplete. So when considering divorce, it is important to remember that it will have an inevitable and significant effect on your relationship with your kids. Personal wellbeing, while certainly important, is only part of the puzzle.

During the show, we heard from a woman who divorced her husband when her kids were teenagers, and she hadn’t spoken to her adult daughter in five years and had no idea what she did wrong. Sometimes she just wanted to throw in the towel! Dr. Coleman says that when you love your children more than anyone else and try your best to raise them well and then they reject you, the natural tendency is to jump ship. It is just too painful! But Dr. Coleman advises us to resist that temptation. If your child is a minor, you stay no matter what. If your child is an adult and has adamantly deflected all of your attempts at connection, maybe you fade away for six months or a year. Create a vacuum in which a new relationship might grow. Then, try again.

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The important and difficult thing to remember is that even if you don’t understand your child’s complaint, even if you think they have wrongfully accused you, you must resist the temptation to defend yourself. If you say: “I did the best I could and you don’t appreciate what I’ve done for you,” you’ve lost your audience. Demand compassion won’t work. Instead, you have to offer empathy. Find the kernel of truth in your child’s complaint and acknowledge it. If you can’t, then say something along the lines of: “I don’t think I quite understand, but I’m sure you have a great reason for feeling how you are feeling, and we may have to have this conversation many times over the years before we feel okay again.” You will get much farther that way.

For many parents, that conversation is not even an option because their child has cut them off completely. Many times, their child will begin their own family without mending the break. Estranged grandparents are surprisingly typical. Dr. Coleman referenced an organization in Florida called Alienated Grandparents Anonymous that provides support for this growing demographic, which we discussed as a symptom of the massive transformation in our social institutions over the last forty years. This upheaval has included some crucial reform, like women’s liberation, for example. But the negative side is that our social institutions have eroded. When it comes to how we relate with family members, we are left figuring it out for ourselves. It can be confusing and frustrating. The most we can do is have compassion for one another as we find our way.

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