Why Won't My Grown Kids Talk To Me?

My adult children won't talk to me. What can I do? Before I even begin to answer that question, I want to acknowledge the deep, deep pain that's associated with this situation. And I want to say that I think I have advice that's helpful. And the reason that I think it's helpful is because I've given this advice to many people and it has in most cases worked to improve the relationship. The advice begins with merely considering an idea, a thought. and that is that even though it feels like your child trying to hurt you, in the vast vast majority of cases that I've ever seen, that is not the case. The child is not trying to be vengeful or spiteful or inflict pain in the parent. The child is merely trying to get themselves safe. Now, if this is too hard for you to even consider as a possibility, then that's fine. You can reject my advice. I don't have a monopoly on advice. You can seek advice elsewhere and somebody else's approach. But if you can open your mind to the possibility that your child feels unsafe around you or your spouse, then healing can begin to happen. Additionally, can you concede that maybe the reason your child feels unsafe is something that you don't know about? It's possible that something affected them in a way that you don't understand how it affected them. It's possible even something happened to them that you don't even know happened to them in your home that you were knowingly or unknowingly complicit to. But if you can begin to accept the idea at least as a possibility that what this all comes down to is your child feeling afraid and unsafe and you as a parent saying to yourself, you know what, my number one job to this child when they were a baby and when they were little was to give them safety. And now as an adult, I'm going to give them that safety, which apparently they never felt. If you can begin to look at it that way, I've seen success. I've even seen miracles. Now, I'm going to acknowledge there's a huge double bind here because when the relationship devolves to such a point where there's little to no contact, it's very hard to prove that you're safe because there are so few opportunities for interaction. But if you can be mindful that every interaction should be non-threatening, should be safe, if you can be super self-aware about anything you do that might feel pressuring and you can try to refrain from that just long enough at least that your child can breathe and decompress and feel like maybe they can be themselves around you, there is Hope.