Making Peace with Your Adult Children When Things Haven’t Turned Out the Way You Expected
Let’s just say it: This isn’t how you thought it would be.
You didn’t imagine your child avoiding your calls.
You didn’t picture a strained holiday dinner, or worse, an empty seat.
You didn’t expect silence, tension, or unspoken resentments.
And yet – here you are.
You raised them with love. You sacrificed more than you ever said out loud. You showed up. You tried. And now, your relationship with your adult child feels uncertain, disappointing, or even nonexistent.
It hurts. Deeply.
And that hurt is valid.
You’re Allowed to Grieve What You Expected
There’s a quiet kind of heartbreak when things with your grown kids don’t turn out how you hoped.
And while the world talks a lot about parenting babies and toddlers, there’s not nearly enough conversation about what it feels like to lose emotional connection with the adult child you raised.
But here’s the truth:
You are still allowed to find peace.
Even in this.
Especially in this.
Here’s How You Start Making Peace
1. Tell Yourself the Truth – Without Blame
You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. And you don’t have to take full responsibility for how it turned out. Some of this is about your child’s path, not your parenting.
2. Accept That Closure May Not Come on Your Timeline
Reconnection might happen – but it might not. Peace doesn’t mean pretending. It means learning to live honestly without letting pain steal your entire present.
3. Take Your Hands Off Their Process
You can’t fix them. You can’t control their emotional battles. You can love from a distance, but their growth, their healing, their choices – those are theirs to carry.
4. Speak Your Truth If the Door Is Open
If your child is willing to talk, share your heart calmly and clearly. “I know things feel strained. I still love you. I’m open to rebuilding, if and when you are.”
5. Live Your Life, Even with the Ache
This may sound harsh, but it’s necessary: Don’t let a strained relationship keep you from the rest of your life. You still have beauty to find, joy to discover, people to love, and adventures to say yes to.
Peace Isn’t Perfect – but It’s Possible
Peace doesn’t mean you’re “over it.”
It means you’ve stopped waiting for someone else to give you permission to live.
If reconciliation comes, beautiful.
If it doesn’t, you can still write a new story.
You can still be a good mother.
You can still be a whole woman.
You can still be at peace – with yourself and the season you’re in.
Also read, Why Mom Guilt Lingers – and What to Do with It Now.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Are you struggling with your relationships with your adult children? You are not alone. Let’s share our stories here.
Tags Adult Children
Thank you for all these responses. It saddens me that there are so many of us!
I’d like to invite you to connect with me at http://www.realmomlife.com. I have a little freebie there called Second Act Soul Check In. It gives you some ideas about assessing and moving on from a painful season in life. I hope it blesses you!
I’d also invite you to check out the other articles I have published here on Sixty and Me. Several are on this topic.. Sixty and Me.
Regardles of where you are on this journey, you’re not alone!
Grace and peace,
Christine
A million thank you for this very important article and topic that is rarely discussed. We birth our children and love them and do our very best but in the end their journey and path is their own. My goodness it took my almost 20 years and a lot of therapy to figure this out and be ok with it. Our 40 year old daughter suffers from sever mental illness and over the past 20 years has had some stability but is more often very ill, unable to successfully manage her life and more. Early on we tried our best to “help and guide” her but in the end she chose her own path for which we are no longer responsible. We truly love her but she is too highly unstable to be around. Our son is also a “free spirit” with a disability who is a struggling yet brilliant musician but lives independently and has chosen his path. We have a fine relationship with him but see him infrequently as we live miles apart. As parents we have the best hopes for our kids but these are actually OUR hopes and plans not necessarily theirs nor how things actually spell out. We learned to love them deeply but actually just “let them go” with love.
What a timely article! I have my 49 year old son living with me as he is between abodes. This is supposed to be temporary, but I have really he end of my tether. I’ve welcomed him and gave him my bedroom to sleep in as I had a small one bedroom flat. Over time I have discovered that he’s stealing from me and if I ask where things are he gets very angry and accuses me of imagining things! It’s got to where I need to ask him to go. I feel intimidated by him and can’t sleep at night. I can’t believe what a nightmare I’m living in!
yes, so many parents are living with difficult situations- it’s so common.
I often wonder how it’s come to this. I divorced his father over 20 years ago and his father won’t have anything to do with him, so I’ve felt I must make him welcome. My other children are not like this – they avoid their brother as much as they can, due to his difficult nature.
Any tips would be welcome!
You do NOT have to have a thief in your own home. Not ever. No matter who it is. And indeed, you don’t ever have to let ANYONE into your own home if you don’t wish. It is YOUR home. The invitation you issued has to be rescinded.
Because you feel intimidated by him, maybe ask a couple of close friends (ideally a male among them), or people from your church if you have one, to be with you when you tell him to leave. Set it up so that they can stay with you until he is actually gone, has taking his things and left, so he can’t harm you. He will try to stall and get rid of them, but don’t let that happen. If your other kids live in the area, ask them for help.
Alternatively, call adult protective services in your area and get advice and help. Tell them you are afraid, that he has been stealing, and you need help getting him out, Sometimes they are slow or not as helpful, depending on wher you live nad how busy they are. . If you have an attorney, with whom you have a good reltionship. call him or her and get advice on what to do.
As a more drastic resort, you can have a police officer ome and escort him out; tel them he has been intimidating you and stealing from you, and no, you are NOT crazy. Maybe have friends there for support when you do this.
As a final resort, wait until he has gone out and will be out for a while, call a locksmith as an emergency; gather his things quickly, and put his things out on the porch when the locksmith comes, and have the locksmith change your locks. You can explain tot he locksmith what is going on. Then if your son tries to come back in, call the police as he will be a trespasser.
Ideally having friends there and making him leave right then will work. If he says he has no place to go, give him the number of a local hotel.
Do NOT tolerate it!
We actually have a restraining order against our daughter so we can see her daughter, our granddaughter, whom she cannot see as she is highly unstable. So sad but what is necessary at this point. We pray she will again seek care and be back in our lives.
This may be an unpopular perspective in reaction to this story about the pain of an estrangement from our adult children, but I am compelled to share. This is exactly where I was headed with my kids, who are 36 and 32. I had seen estrangement in my family and all around me. And I did not want this for us. In a moment of crisis when my fear was real, I sought help for myself and started to look inward.
I’m here to tell you that when this happens in families, it’s because we, as parents, were wounded children, and we unconsciously projected our own fears and shame and wounds onto our children, not from a sinister place at all, but just because we knew nothing else. This was how we were taught to parent. Many of our wounds and our beliefs about ourselves and our beliefs about our bodies and our beliefs in general were handed to us by our parents who were wounded children themselves. So I did my work. It has been a journey of repair, but also of incredible love and freedom and today, I have an amazing, beautiful relationship with both of my children. Things still come up, and our relationships are far from storybook perfect, but we now have the tools to work through our triggers with each other. I actually became a certified Wayfinder Life Coach with the purpose of helping other moms do their inner work so that they can repair their relationships with their adult children. If you want to find out more about my story, send me a note or find me online. Sending you so much compassion…
Laurie Levitan
I’m so happy you were able to repair the relationships! It’s great that you found a way that worked for you and your adult offspring.
But the blanket statement about what causes this just isn’t accurate for everyone. Not everyone was a “wounded child.” Not all parents whose much-loved and well-parented kids grew up to be abusive, or rejecting, or selfish, or dangerous, or ungrateful (or whatever) adults “projected their wounds” etc. onto them. It simply isn’t always the case. And it’s not helpful or kind to say that for people whose situation is very, very different. You really just don’t know this. No one can know for sure what other people are experiencing, and if there’s one thing we see on these boards, it is a great deal of variety and a huge range of different kinds and etiologies of estrangements.
Still, I’m glad to hear that you found a good solution! May each person find her own, too.
Thank you for your response.What I believe with all my heart and soul is that parents do the best they can with the tools they’ve got. And when something hasn’t been working, it can be helpful to acquire new tools, new perspectives. There is NO BLAMING, NO JUDGEMENT. If anything, I hold all of these parents with compassion. I am sorry if my words felt unkind to anyone.
Thank you for this—it did feel a little victim-blaming, or mainly overgeneralizing, so I really appreciate your clarification. I agree that nearly all parents do the very best they can with what they have to work with. (And that might not always be ideal.) All good wishes to you.
I too have this issue withy adult daughter. I’m not sure when it started as she was always somewhat cold and accusatory to me. I have 2 grandsons that I adore but haven’t seen in over 7 yrs, as she won’t allow it . She is my only child and I can’t describe the pain I’m in. She said I ruined her life? I will no longer allow her to speak to me the way she has in the past, so we don’t talk at all. I never thought my life would be like this.
I’m 74 and have lost all hope.
Oh, Sandy, I feel so much compassion for you! It’s so difficult and complex. Sheri McGregor’s site rejectedparents dot net has a lot of resources, and she has a couple of books about how to heal (Done With the Crying and Beond Done with the Crying).
Please don’t lose hope. Your life can be very good, with or without reconciliation. That child you adored may be gone, and the new adult she is now is not one you recognize; the person you knew and cherished would never act like that, I’ll bet. It requires serious grieving and adaptation and acceptance. You can’t make other adults change, but you don’t have to accept bad behavior from ANY adult, and clear boundaries are appropriate.
I hope you can enjoy your own life as it is, even though it’s nothing like what you had imagined it would be. I find it is a very beautiful world with a lot of good in it, with or without the presence of my daughter, and I have some time left to live it fully and contribute to it, and intend to do so. I hope you can, too.