It’s called parent estrangement and here’s my take.

I’ve been open about my alcoholism, recovery and divorce during my girl’s tween and teenage years. I’ve shared that we had a lot of healing to do and that the conscious communication skills, I mapped out and coach my clients through, paved the road to our re-connection and healing. In fact, I attribute their successful launch as young adults, in part to conscious communication. Today, I feel blessed that they share their adult lives with me and even seek my advice.

What I haven’t shared as readily is my secret fear. There was a time, when I was afraid my girls would leave home and move on with their lives never looking back. I was afraid, I had damaged their trust to the point that we could not recover the sweet connection we had when they were little.

Conscious parenting and recovery afforded me a path to work through my guilt about not being fully emotionally present during part of their development. But before that part of my growth, the guilt was almost debilitating and the path forward was haphazard at best.

Parent estrangement was a real fear of mine, even though I didn’t know that was a phrase or phenomena at the time.

I believe parent estrangement is not only a result of trauma, but more practically a result of our attempts to control our kids to such a degree that they believe their own development to individuate from us, is at stake. They fear they can’t form their own identities without severing ties.

As a family sociologist, I know there are multiple factors involved. The fact that we live longer and adolescence isn’t complete in Western society until age 25 weighs in. Some young adults see financial independence as rationale to disassociate from nuclear family relationships into adulthood in part because those relationships were viewed as transactional. Additionally, there is the influence of the digital age, where kids can make choices to delete items and people with the push of a button and it opens a myriad of options.

What if I told you that parent estrangement could be prevented?

What if I showed you how to prevent being deleted from your young adult’s life and it wasn’t permissive parenting?

Conscious communication has the power to simultaneously engage teens to share their thoughts and feelings in an empowered way where they feel seen and heard and also hold boundaries in a way that was not controlling or abusive, but allows you, in your role as a parent, to feel seen and heard too.

Intentional, emotionally available, relational parenting (or conscious parenting) does just that!

You can release your fear of the future by learning and applying conscious communication now. The shift requires, empathy and bravery. Some of us have never stood for ourselves the way conscious communication empathetic listening and talking requires. Like me, you may not have grown up with good communication models and you may not know how to represent all the love that is in your heart in a way that connects.

That’s why I created the research-based Back on Track Family Communication Program.

I recently heard the following from a Back on Track mom.

“I allowed my teens to walk all over me. Then I resented it and yelled in exasperation. I learned that I equated holding boundaries with abuse from my own childhood and I needed to grow. I needed to hold boundaries in lots of areas of my own life. Using the communication skills as Laura teaches them in a specific order, I now know how to be empathetically present with my teens while standing up for myself (without shouting). I didn’t know I could do both at the same time. Now I can. I truly hear them and they are genuinely engaging in family life, like contributing with chores. It’s not perfect, but I feel hopeful for the first time in years. Not only are they helping out more, but we had so much fun together on our family summer vacation. I love it when they trust me and confide in me about the struggles they are having. “

Teens want deep connection with their parents. (I promise it’s true!)

When we are able to be our authentic selves which means emotionally present for them (empathy) as well as be emotionally present for ourselves (boundaries) then abandonment is off the table.

Parent estrangement is a form of abandonment that likely derives from children not being able to articulate how they themselves felt abandoned in some way in childhood.