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Gender: A Wider Lens

Premium: The Top Five Common Mistakes Estranged Parents Make

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.6961 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2024

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.widerlenspod.com

Is there a "prodigal son" element to the phenomenon of estranged children returning to their families? (Thanks to one of our founding members for submitting this question). While estrangement is a complex and new issue for many, there are some (if not common) instances where estranged children do find their way back to their families, however sometimes uneasily. But, this observation ties into themes discussed in Abigail Shrier's book "Irreversible Damage", which mentions that while "glitter families" (chosen families) might not be there in times of crisis, biological families often will be.

What are some mistakes that you see parents making, which actually push the child further away? Empathy, patience, and strategic thinking are critical for parents to create a more conducive environment for potential reconciliation with their estranged children. But what should they avoid?

In this bonus episode for premium subscribers, Joshua Coleman, Ph.D. addresses these questions and more, emphasizing that estrangement affects the entire family dynamic, not just the parent-child relationship. Coleman highlights that the majority of estrangements do reconcile, often driven by life events or personal growth. And he also outlines five key mistakes parents make that can push estranged children further away as well as coping strategies for parents dealing with long-term estrangement.

Want more from Dr. Joshua Coleman?

WEBINARS FOR ESTRANGED PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS

Visit drjoshuacoleman.com and scroll to bottom to subscribe to his newsletter.

Watch our full length episode with Dr. Joshua Coleman: https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/episode-166

To listen to our premium content in your favorite podcast app click here for Substack instructions on setting up a private feed.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Gender A Wider Lens exclusive content. If you're a free listener, what you're about to hear is a preview of a bonus episode for our paid sub-stack subscribers.

0:11.0

If you'd like to hear the rest, go to widerlands pod.com and sign up for any of our paid membership

0:16.8

options.

0:17.8

And to all of our premium and founding member subscribers, thank you for the support. And here's the bonus conversation.

0:24.0

Okay, so we are back here in our special exclusive content for subscribers and we're welcoming

0:34.0

Joshua Coleman back onto this segment of the show so thank you for being here

0:38.2

with us for being having me. So we had a question submitted and I know Stella was also had some ideas of what we could talk about today, but someone says something very interesting.

0:50.0

She said, I'm curious if there's also a prodigal son element to all of this.

0:55.2

It's also new, it's hard to know, but what I've seen happened in my lifetime were that

0:59.4

estranged children do find their way back, sometimes uneasily to their families. As Abigail Schreier wrote in

1:06.5

irreversible damage, your glitter family probably won't be the ones who will show up and stay with you if you've had a car accident,

1:14.8

but in most cases your family is and will always be your family.

1:18.3

So, I mean, is this something you've seen, I guess, over the course of many years working in this field? Yeah I remember Abigail's quote about that and I highlighted that as well, you know, the sort of the found family isn't necessarily going to have the same kind of commitment that your own family is going to have.

1:37.2

Yeah, you know, statistically the majority of estrangements do reconcile from others. It's 80%. I mean it's a tragic 20% who don't.

1:46.0

For dads it's not as high it's probably closer to 70%. So in terms of the prodigal, son or daughter theme, you know, I do think that a lot of these,

1:56.1

a lot of adult children who do this do eventually come back.

2:01.1

They often come back faster if the parent is able to meet them where they are, but sometimes they come back anyway. They may come back because they marry somebody who's, says, look, I'm not going to be married to somebody. Often they're from another culture, but they'll say I'm not going to be married to somebody often they're from another culture but they'll say I'm not going to be married to somebody who's not going to let you know

2:16.7

the grandparents have contact with our children or they have other life experiences or they get involved in a good therapy where the therapist encourages them to reconcile.

2:25.3

Are they just kind of mature?

2:26.8

They are they sort of, you know, sometimes as we have talked about earlier, a stranger can be a form of mastery, mastery around independence and

2:34.5

individuation and they may just kind of get what they needed and then be able to

2:38.2

turn back towards the parents. So there's a lot of reasons why an adult show

...

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