How to Divorce Your Adult Children and Restore Your Sanity
I am known for exposing the “elephant in the living room.” Those things everybody knows but nobody is talking about. Not every mother-daughter relationship reads like a Hallmark card, and our culture makes that a shameful secret to bear.
Dr. Christiane Northrup suggested that the bonding hormones that flood a mother’s blood stream at childbirth stay with women for about 28 years.
It is no accident, then, that the first round of truly adult separation (not teenage rebellion) begins to rear its head somewhere around 30 for women and the menopause years for their mothers. For the first time, the veil begins to lift and we see each other for the women we have become.
When It Comes to Your Adult Children, What is Normal?
Some estimate that 96% of American Families are dysfunctional in some way – making it the norm. But “normal” is not necessarily healthy, and it certainly falls short of the abundant life we’ve been promised.
Women are held responsible for the relational health of the world – at work, at home, family health and wellbeing, the sexuality, the promiscuity, the cause, the cure and the results. When a true perpetrator arises in a family, the mother protects ala Mama Bear. If she doesn’t die trying, she can later become a target.
Mom is apparently the one who knew (or should have known) what was happening at every moment of every day to their children – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. After all, moms have eyes in the backs of their heads and are equipped with the unusual ability to read minds, right?
See also: Letting Go And The Art Of Parenting Adult Children
What Is Healthy When It Comes to Adult Children?
M. Scott Peck wrote, “Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” The pinch point for grandmothers is that any loss of relationship with our adult children means strained relations – if not severed ties – with the grandchildren who now light up our lives.
I am a mother of three and grandmother to 11. I stayed with their father for more than 20 years believing that somehow I could make him feel loved enough to change.
Over time, each of my children has drawn close to me for healing, and pulled away for the same reason. I am, after all, the one they hold responsible for the shifting emotional sand in their psyche.
Ten years ago, I remarried a man whose children were also grown. We imagined that would alleviate the adjustments of step-families. In some ways, not having children in the home made it easier to forge our identity as a married couple.
Although we shared values, we didn’t share history with each others’ children. We each brought our traditions and expectations to bear. When I recently chose to divorce this man who had played “grandpa” to my children’s children, old wounds surfaced.
Had I known that to leave him meant I would lose my only local family, I probably would have stayed for the sake of the grandchildren. It’s that old programming baby boomer women still struggle with.
If something isn’t working, you try harder. Marital problems? Pray more, love more, give more, be patient, and wait it out. Suck it up, stuff it down, be quiet and don’t make waves.
What Is Real?
I have identified four distinct stages in the journey to wholeness.
Desperate
Our lives become (or continue to be) a carefully constructed illusion based on how it looks, what people will think, and what we imagine will get us the love and security we so desperately crave.
This is why grandmothers continue to “make peace at all costs” rather than saying what they see, need and want. Some have called it the disease to please.
Distant
Pretending that everything is okay when in our hearts we know that is not true can only go so far. We go along to get along. We smile in public and cry in private. We live a lie, and it eats at our souls every day.
Women think if we ignore it, maybe it will go away or time will heal all wounds. The thing is, time doesn’t heal buried pain. It has to be unearthed and acknowledged before it will pass away. Pain that gets buried alive poisons the rest of our lives.
Divorce
Divorce is a harsh word when applied to our mother-child relationships, isn’t it? But it happens whether we acknowledge it or not. Divorce occurs when all communication has broken down and attempts at reconciliation fail.
It is the most painful dark night of the soul. With divorce comes all the drama of severed relationships, he-said she-said finger pointing, and drama triangles where people talk about each other, but never directly to one another so healing could occur. We might as well lawyer up and some do. It’s called Grandparent Rights.
See also: The Detachment Wall: How To Let Go Of Your Adult Children
Done
Last is the place of acceptance. There is no anger, no angst, no more bargaining. It is where we accept what life is handing out right now and the fighting is done.
You have decided what you do and do not want, what you will and will not stand for, and are making decisions to move forward with or without the resolution you may have hoped for. You are free to stay or go because you have become dedicated to reality at all costs.
Read HOW TO DEAL WITH HAVING AN ESTRANGED ADULT CHILD.
Legal Aspects and Grandparent Rights – What You Need to Know
Sixty & Me has explored the topic of “Grandparents’ Rights” to provide helpful insights for those facing this challenging situation. While this information is not intended to serve as official legal advice, it offers key facts about your rights as a grandparent and steps you can take to advocate for them.
When relationships with adult children become strained or severed, grandparents often face the heartbreaking reality of losing access to their grandchildren. This situation can feel isolating and disempowering, but understanding your legal rights as a grandparent can provide a pathway to preserving these cherished connections.
What Are Grandparent Rights?
Grandparent rights vary by country and state but generally refer to legal provisions allowing grandparents to seek visitation or custody of their grandchildren under specific circumstances. These laws aim to protect the best interests of the child while balancing parental rights.
Common scenarios where grandparent rights may apply include:
- Estrangement: If adult children sever ties with their parents and restrict access to the grandchildren.
- Divorce or Separation: When a child’s parents divorce or separate, grandparents may step in to provide stability and maintain family connections.
- Death of a Parent: The surviving parent may limit or cut off contact with the deceased parent’s extended family.
- Child Welfare Concerns: If there are allegations of neglect or abuse by the parents, grandparents may petition for custody or visitation.
When to Seek Legal Advice
Not all situations require legal action, but it’s essential to consult a family law attorney if:
- Efforts to communicate with your adult child or maintain access to your grandchildren have failed.
- You believe your grandchildren are in an unsafe or unhealthy environment.
- Your relationship with the grandchildren has been unreasonably restricted or severed without cause.
- You have played a significant caregiving role in your grandchildren’s lives and wish to continue that relationship.
How to Advocate for Grandparent Rights
Document Your Relationship
Keep records of time spent with your grandchildren, including photos, gifts, or messages, to demonstrate the strength of your bond. This evidence can be helpful if legal intervention becomes necessary.
Attempt Mediation
Before pursuing legal action, consider mediation to resolve conflicts with your adult children. A neutral third party can help facilitate communication and potentially avoid courtroom disputes.
Understand Local Laws
Laws governing grandparent rights differ significantly depending on your location. Some states require proof that visitation is in the best interest of the child, while others may only grant rights in cases of parental divorce, death, or abuse.
File a Petition
If all else fails, you may need to file a formal petition for visitation or custody. Work with a qualified attorney to ensure your case meets the legal requirements in your jurisdiction.
Prepare for Court
Be prepared to demonstrate that your relationship with the grandchildren is beneficial to their well-being and that continued contact serves their best interests. Courts prioritize the child’s welfare over all else.
Limitations of Grandparent Rights
Parental Rights Take Precedence
Courts often prioritize the rights of the parents to make decisions about their children.
Burden of Proof
Grandparents typically bear the responsibility of proving that their involvement is in the child’s best interest.
Cost and Emotional Toll
Legal battles can be financially and emotionally draining. Consider whether pursuing legal action aligns with your values and the potential outcomes.
When to Let Go
In some cases, pursuing grandparent rights may not be the best course of action. If legal intervention risks further alienating your adult child or negatively affecting your grandchildren, it may be better to focus on indirect ways to express your love and presence. Writing letters, sending cards, or creating keepsakes for your grandchildren can serve as meaningful reminders of your bond.
By equipping yourself with knowledge and support, you can make informed decisions about how to protect and nurture your relationship with your grandchildren while maintaining your own emotional well-being.
Why Setting Boundaries Isn’t Selfish
For many mothers and grandmothers, the idea of setting boundaries with their adult children can feel unnatural, even wrong. We’re used to giving, accommodating, and putting our children’s needs before our own. But when that pattern continues unchecked into their adulthood, it can drain us emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even financially.
Setting boundaries isn’t about cutting people off – it’s about protecting your peace, honoring your needs, and creating space for healthier interactions. It’s not a punishment. It’s a form of self-respect.
You might worry that saying “no” will make you look cold or uncaring. But real love includes accountability. Boundaries teach others how to treat you, and they give relationships a chance to grow from mutual respect rather than obligation or guilt.
If your adult child speaks to you in a way that’s disrespectful or demands more than you’re willing to give, it’s not wrong to say:
- “I’m happy to talk when we can be respectful.”
- “I’m not able to help with that right now.”
- “I love you, but I need to take a step back for my own well-being.”
These aren’t walls – they’re doors with doorknobs on both sides. Boundaries can actually create the conditions for reconnection, because they remove the resentment that builds when we’re pushed past our limits.
Remember, your role as a parent has shifted. You’re not abandoning them by drawing a line. You’re simply saying, “I matter too.” And that’s not selfish, it’s healthy.
What’s Next for You and Your Adult Children?
Do I wish I had capacity back then to do some things differently? Definitely. Do I regret what I allowed my children to endure because of the choices I made? Mm-hmm.
Is there anything I can do now to go back and change it? Not a damn thing. Does it serve anyone for me to live in remorse and regret? Nope. Not now, not ever. Never.
Nobody had a perfect childhood – at least nobody in my generational gene pool. We all did the best we could with what we had to work with at the time. That is as true today as it was generations ago.
The biggest healer for women in daughter divorces is to break the shame by breaking the silence. Let’s talk about what’s real and how to help live dreams without drama in our later years.
Read WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT MY ESTRANGED CHILDREN… WHAT CAN I SAY?
Also read 60 AND ESTRANGED FROM AN ADULT CHILD? HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH IT.
This article has generated several important conversations. Many mothers/grandmothers are going through similar realities each with their unique set of situations. Talking and being vulnerable with one another is part of the healing process – as we can tell by reading your chats. Knowing that you are not alone helps in accepting the outcome of your distanced relationship with your adult children.
Many have mentioned that therapy has helped them through this difficult time in their lives. Online therapy sessions are now readily available and affordable. Websites like Better Help, Talk Space, and Online Therapy have therapists and mental health professionals available to listen and guide you.
Resources for Healing Parent-Child Relationships and Navigating Estrangement
After reading your comments, we were struck by how many of you are navigating this challenging situation. In response, Sixty & Me has added a dedicated resources section to Kim’s heartfelt and insightful article to provide additional support and guidance.
Below are some highly recommended books, podcasts, online forums, and support networks to help you on your journey toward understanding, healing, and finding peace.
Books
- When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along by Joshua Coleman – A compassionate guide that provides strategies for navigating conflicts and misunderstandings with adult children while fostering self-awareness and emotional growth.
- Done With the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children by Sheri McGregor – Written by a mother who has experienced estrangement, this book offers practical advice and emotional support to help mothers heal and move forward with their lives.
- Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children by Allison Bottke – A resourceful guide for parents who need help establishing boundaries while still supporting their adult children in healthy and meaningful ways.
Podcasts
- The Estranged Heart – This podcast explores the complexities of estranged family relationships, providing personal stories and professional insights on healing and growth.
- The Reconnection Club Podcast – Specifically for parents of estranged adult children, this podcast provides tips and support for working toward reconciliation and understanding.
Online Communities and Forums
- Rejected Parents Forum (RejectedParents.net) – A supportive online space where parents can connect, share stories, and seek advice from others facing estrangement from their adult children.
- Facebook Groups – There are several Facebook communities, such as Estranged Mothers Support Group and Parents of Estranged Adult Children, where members offer advice, empathy, and solidarity.
By exploring these resources, you can find the support, understanding, and strategies needed to face the challenges of estrangement or difficult relationships with adult children. These tools may help you process your emotions, foster self-care, and even work toward reconciliation when possible.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Where do you find yourself in the process of letting your adult children go? Where are you on the journey to finding yourself in your sixties? Please share your thoughts below!
Tags Adult Children
There is so much pain here. Some recognising regrets and others unsure as to the distancing behaviour of their adult children. Some certain their children are fully at fault.
Baby boomers were the first generation to embrace divorce widespread. Many young children navigated the trauma and chaos alone because their parents simply did not know about children’s developmental needs, were focused on their own interests or did not understand their child’s experience. An experience which creates attachment wounds with parents.
This doesn’t disappear on its own or with “I always did xyz for them’. It is primal, the bond can be ruptured in these circumstances. It’s not a choice by the child (young or old).
Understanding this can help parents understand where things have gone wrong. It can help parents keep themselves safe AT THE SAME TIME as maintaining compassion and empathy for their adult child. Mostly because generally children are hard-wired to love their parents and will do so through difficulties…until taken to breaking point.
Cutting a child off (any age) is another abandonment.
I’ve had challenges and a period of estrangement with one of my daughters and the hardest thing was hearing about myself in relation to her.
I did my best but still hurt her in some ways. Not accepting this and acknowledging it to her would have been a death knoll to our relationship.
My own mother resorts to the push away while avoiding accountability.
Attachment theory had a lot to teach me about parenting and children.
That a child’s instinctive bond to their parent protects parents from hearing about their faults until the child is older, old enough to feel independent / safe to feel the real. That’s why it ‘comes out of nowhere’ in the later years. It’s always been there, stuffed down. Many adult children problem solve their anxiety with their parent through distance, which they may have had modelled to them by their parents (as a viable solution) through divorce. Monkey see monkey do. We can’t really blame them for that.
Attachment and ‘rupture and repair’ helped explain a lot. We can prevent more harm by avoiding ‘divorcing’ the children we may have played a part in the position they find themselves in. Protect ourselves, of course! but ‘divorce’ them is to me, an ultimate primal rejection by a parent. ‘Divorce’ is for a chosen relationship to end not a biological/existential bond which forms roots for generations.
Not everyone fits this category of course but for those that do, it has been healing for me and my daughter for me to learn about attachments, be more accountable and have more empathy (all with lots of help!).
Unfortunately for my mother it is hopeless, for as long as she lives in denial, writes her own story for me about the past and distances to protect herself from facing any accountability of her failings or having any empathy for her children’s earlier experiences.
For those who do not identify with the above, have viewed things from their child’s perspective and tried to find new ways of relating, my heart goes out to you. It is so very painful and you’ve done all you can. Sometimes things break and while devastating, accepting this is how things are is all that is left. In your space I hope you find people who know and love you and you can love them too. Peace.
Thank you for offering an educational perspective to our lived experience. It is a perspective I will personally consider and welcome a new understanding. With the numbers of aging women estranged from their adult children continues to climb, it has been a mystery to me. Your idea of attachment theory as an effect of divorce is a new one to me and I viscerally understand why this article I wrote in 2017 is still getting so much traction. Thank you!
—Kim
I suspected there might be a site like this but just found it now.
I made the decision 28 years ago to divorce the mother of my children after 25 years of marriage and unsuccessfully trying to navigate her need for control and habit of triangling others including our children into our family and marital issues and scapegoating me in the process. I did not arrive at this decision lightly but only after years of therapy with multiple therapists. I naively thought if I divorced this person the triangling and scapegoat patterns would end. They didn’t.. if anything they got worse. Eventually it no longer even needed her involvement. She had passed the torch to our children who now picked up the same tone of contempt and disrespect. Finally 4 years ago after 24 years of trying to set boundaries i declined to participate in any more group family gatherings but offered to continue to have individual relationships with my children separately from each other. I left the door open for several months but then hearing nothing simply walked away and severed all contact.. it’s been 4 years. I’m not naive enough to believe I’m still not scapegoated or that the triangling hasn’t continued but I’m at least not continuing to volunteer to be on the receiving end of their attacks and contempt.
I find my children to be a tremendous ongoing source of emotional pain because they just shut me out most of the time while maintaining their relationships with their father who was an abusive husband but they do not really know that! I do ok and then like waves it comes especially after their father lets me know he’s had conversations with one or two of them,
I have the same situation. My heart aches daily.
Hi. I’m 58 with 2 daughters the oldest who is now 30 has ADHD and Aspergers. I’ve fought with her my wife life getting her the help she needs, trying to keep her on the right track. She’s been violent with me and my husband she’s bullied my youngest daughter for years. Its been a fight to stay friends, she has a 7month old little girl who I adore, I’m disabled but pushed myself to go to hers and stay for a few days every other week to help, she lives over 100 miles from us so its a trek for us. I’ve spent a fortune on helping her with the baby. One night I was there we had a disagreement, she threw me out of her house at 1am in the pouring rain, I had a suitcase, bag and walking stick I had to walk 30 minutes to the closest premier in where it cost me £125 to stay over night. I should have walked away then but we tried again because of my granddaughter. She is now saying her Mental Health therapist has called us narcassists and abusers, my youngest who is 25 is supposedly the worst kind of Narcissist, she untreatable and dangerous. I can’t take anymore and need to do something,, divorcing her has been on my mind for a long time. We have blocked each other off everything and had to block her partner to who thinks it’s OK to talk to us the way she does. I need help and advice I can’t take anymore.
What about when there’s grandchildren. We don’t want to lose contact with our grandchildren.
My son (33, husband, father of 3 children-12/10/8) has just gone through the surgery to further affirm his belief that he should be a woman.
This is an awfully long story, but we are devastated. Being Christians adds a different dimension to the whole situation.
I’m beyond adequate words.
It doesn’t help that the world around us seems to be embracing this type of behavior.