At some point in time during the separation years, I felt estranged from each of my three children. It was unbearable.

It is not necessarily a forever outcome!

Our experience is that almost every separated parent suffering through an estranged parenting relationship will have an opportunity to ‘repair’ that relationship. It is our task as a parent to be prepared to seize that opportunity.

Parenting a young or not so young adult child offers wonderful, even ecstatic times, in part because of the difficulty of the journey.

Below are some general conversations of possible parenting opportunities that could help enrich the lives of your adult children and their immediate families.

Families do come in all shapes, in every form, and are sustained and strengthened by the enduring love of each parent to their child and their child’s child.

– Barry Lillie, Founder, Kids ‘n’ Dad

 Situations

Talking about the cause of your separation to your adolescent or adult child is for many of us an unwanted conversation.

Based on the early months, even years of separation, the conversation may seem frankly too dangerous.  Silence or the status quo may seem ‘kind of comfortable’.  The question that remains for every parent of a separated family is whether they must abandon being a parent and just become an adult friend.

 My experience suggests that parenting to your adult child is very different and requires a complimentary set of communication skills and self-awareness. But I would assert that it is part of what you committed to when you became mom or dad. I would also suggest that you have a continuing debt to your child for what happened in your intimate relationship with their other parent.

• Your view of the cause(s) of your separation likely have modified from the explanation initially provided to your children, at the time of separating.
• The original explanation likely lacked ‘texture’ that would help your children in their future relationships and life. You may see this need in your children at different times in their life, and through their more probing questions about mom and/or dad.
• “So why did you and your ‘life partner’ with children separate?” For most of us we move from a blame game-my fault or my partner’s fault- to a more in-depth dissection of what went wrong, and importantly what was good and why did the good somehow get lost along the way?
• Most of us as adults/parents in an intimate, committed relationship know that our childhood experiences had profound consequences on our lives; the same is true for our children. This site has enumerated many consequences for children. The question is why we would not think that our children deserve the best advice/lessons that we can provide based on a more complete understanding of our life changing, family crisis.
• It would be safe to say that my son and I were at our worst in his teen years and in the early years of separation. As we moved into a calmer period in his twenties, I suggested that we go away on a 5-day golf excursion to North Carolina. To my surprise and pleasure he agreed.
• It could have gone either way re: the getting along part. On our way home, travelling the inter-state, we looked at each other travelling at 120km and gave each other a bear hug. It was as if the difficulties of earlier times were set aside and were now only background to our future relationship.
•  It would no longer cause us to flee to the safety of silence. This moment was as magical as the moment the F&CS worker placed him in my arms at two months and he became my son.
• Finding the opportunity to (re) connect with your child provides a path to life conversations that are about integral, parenting relationships i.e. the lifelong task of completing the whole of your child.
• Accomplishing the above allows/invites you into the lives of future grandchildren.
• An explanation given to a child of seven is unlikely to meet the needed explanation for a young adult in a committed relationship. This is a time when most parents can hopefully provide an understanding that is more complete and less burdened by the immediacy, overwhelming emotion and even depression.
• Many of us can see in our adult children behaviors that indicate their doubts about commitment or their search for caring relationships or…?
• The separation process, unfortunately, has a consequence of painting a dark picture of their parents’ intimate and parenting relationship. For most parents- including separated parents- there were many wonderful family times that lasted for years. It is important to convey that to your children.
• Many adult children have lost those memories to the chaos of disruption and two, separate homes. Quite frankly, too many parents have also lost the good times to that same chaos. 

Question: Is our legacy to our adult children to be chaos and division or a narrative/understanding that reflects a mixture of family success and lessons from intimacy breakdown?

               ‘Children of divorce miss their original family when the breakup occurs and when they get older and rework the experience.’

– Judith Wallerstein: What About the Kids

Photo Albums and what they mean for a separated family

• If you are a parent that agreed to leave the matrimonial home, then you likely left with an uneven distribution of family ‘things’; often this may include family photos that illustrate the family history;
• The visuals in my day were photo albums, that provide a journey through the parenting years together as an intact family unit. They are a shared record of fond memories.
• We believe strongly in shared parenting (min. 40/40 parenting time for each parenting time with each child); however, whatever the parenting time, each parent has the responsibility to their child to provide a continuing bond to the other parent and their previous life in an intact family.
• Interestingly, family pictures (I took none with me at the time) are a history of your family. My failure to understand that reality effectively left the children’s mother to be the guardian of the family journey.
• In a beautiful, loving way my daughter knew that pictures of the children and past family events touched my soul and she went through the family photos at different times and helped to convey our shared family life by providing copies of our journey as an intact family. This may seem a small thing, but it is not!
• You are conveying an important message/model. Most importantly, that you are a family and that you are not afraid of the past or abandoning the past. You are stating that your journey with your children is continuous and to be cherished.
• Children become adults and pictures are reminders of fun and silly times together with more to come in the changed family. Pictures connect the family history through the generations- child to parent to grandparent.
• There are many ways to build on the changed, but continuous family theme.
• In the section on parenting, it is important to allow your child to see that through all the current tension- that you are able to talk about good times that were part of the family’s daily life. Remember for most of us the ‘worst’ of times took place in the closing months of the intimate relationship. Even if it was over a longer time, we managed to protect our children and manage day to day living.
• I would also suggest that you are not afraid to connect past residences with times in the child’s life.
• The one red flag (it is important) is that when in a ‘new family’ you need to consider any new partner’s sensitivities.

 Moving On

Family is content not form.

– Gloria Steinem, activist and writer

I became a parent through the adoption process for my first two children. Many times, during the early years of separation (high conflict), I felt an extraordinary level of guilt. I suspect that it goes with the territory; but I always felt a moral obligation to be this ‘perfect parent’ because another parent(s) and F&CS entrusted me with two children. I had not finished my responsibility. Of course, I had that same obligation to my youngest child who was born the old fashion way.

This sense of guilt is our partner, often for some time. Guilt can paralyze or motivate us to learn ways to not repeat errors or to allow past mistakes to control our life. It can feel very difficult to assert our standards to our children. It is easier to shy away from talking about our failings, even in the face of knowing our children require guidance in their on-going lives.

Moral failings are part of most of our lives. Having an affair after feeling alone for some time in a now, loveless relationship is the wrong order of doing things. Often, our older children see the events in their family through the perspective of the ‘wronged’ parent. This perspective may derive from an actual failing or may in fact be completely false. Two narratives may still be operational for years.

An earlier section talked about ‘no-fault divorce’ and your joint responsibility to explain the separation to your children. It is important, as your children grow older, that you are up to refining your explanation to meet their ‘refined’ questions as they embark on serious, intimate relationships. As an aside, my youngest daughter just asked me how/when I met her stepmother. Something triggered a question that she needed resolved.

Children need parents, stepparents and grandparents, who have the capacity to frame the past in ways that lead our children and ourselves to a brighter future. I would suggest that you focus on the issue of forgiveness for yourself and your children’s other parent. At some point, one needs to create at worst a business-like relationship with your former intimate partner and be able to engage in needed conversations with your children.

Serious conversations with your older children require perspective, calm, thoughtfulness, reflection, listening skills, making it not about you, while talking about your inner journey.

Communication skills that are conciliatory, invitational and to the point are an important tool for successful co-parenting. Even with the above steps, it can feel like a steep climb because your child may not be ready to hear a modified narrative and is ‘stuck’ still in anger or detachment. The ‘other’ parent may still be in their own state and hindering or even sabotaging progress.

In the end, the rule is that we can only be in control of our reactions and our actions. Be proud of your positive changes and the preparation/hard work that you have done to support your children.

Topics that are a part of each parent-child relationship from a separated family

I married just shy of 22. I have no recollection of any discussion of intimacy, marriage, etc. with my parents or anyone else. I learned, whatever I did learn, through what I observed through my parents and grandparents. In both cases, they remained together (intact) through thick and thin. I suspect that their marriage would not have survived the changing perspective on separating today.

My marital breakdown was a first for my family and as such it had overtones of failure from every corner.

My mother at some point suggested…strongly that I had been spoilt. For years, I have tried to understand her criticism/observation. She and I never made it together to a place where calm had replaced chaos. She and my father died prematurely, in part, from the prolonged chaos of the separation.  (See grandparents’ section)

One of the significant losses from a ‘bad’ separation is that wounded, caring family relationships may never have time to recover i.e. it can feel like everything good from before has been discredited.

 I go back to this theme because unless these conversations take place between parent and child, the unanswered questions remain open wounds with lifelong, negative consequences.

How do you answer the question about a missing dad or mom? How do you answer questions about why there are no paternal grandparents in a grandchild’s life? The questions are more than just a question; they require an answer/explanation that provide an adult understanding, that supports our children and our children’s children to navigate life.

For grandparent specific resources, see all blog posts with the grandparents tag.