Category Archives: Parenting

That’s Smart!

Ah, a new school year, and just past the middle of the year, when New Year’s resolutions can seem long ago and mildly embarrassing, like an old yearbook picture.  It’s a time when we talk to young people about their goals.

A former professor advised us, never take your professional knowledge for granted. When you know something long enough, it might start seeming “obvious,” although it is not. We adults can take for granted the training we received in establishing a goal and then reverse-engineering to the first step, second step, etc.  We’ve known it so long, we forgot. We forgot we ever had to learn it. We take it for granted, like knowing how to sort the laundry or check the air in our tires. You set goals and strategize backwards all the time. Imagine it’s going to be your turn to host Thanksgiving. Without calling it “goal setting,” you have probably already figured out what needs to be done, and approximately when, as well as what you will do about that one family member who never brings what they promised in the family chat. You probably don’t think of planning Thanksgiving dinner in terms of “SMART” goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-constrained) or in terms of identifying possible roadblocks and necessary alternative plans. You probably don’t think about it as “goal setting” either, when you decide you’ll clean up the yard next weekend and gather necessary materials such as big plastic bags, so you’re ready to go.

Children, however, have to learn this set of skills. They need coaching. That coaching is not “criticism” but is instead helping them develop the mental skill of breaking down goals into steps to be taken. Sometimes, people think questioning the “how” is criticizing the goal. Developing the “how” is essential to reaching a goal.

If someone working with me says, ‘I want to be able to join friends in walking the New Year’s Day 5K event,’ as a goal they would like to reach, I will be full of questions that are meant to help them. For example, what is their walking routine now? What medical guidance have they had, if any, on how to increase their fitness? How much time do they think they can give to improving their walking distance and stamina? Do they tend to be more consistent when other people are part of the plan, or do they prefer to fly solo? When roadblocks occur (weather, travel, or illness, for example), what tends to help them get back on track? These questions are not critiques, they’re vital information if someone is going to develop a plan that is appropriate that brings them, step by healthy step, towards a goal.

If you have young people in your life, be encouraging and supportive, and help them learn to ask themselves the questions you have about the roadmap to their goals.

Critical Boundaries

Are you absolutely sick of hearing about “boundaries”?  Yeah, me, too, sometimes. And yet, here I go.

Many of us are also tired of hearing, “I have a right to my opinion.” Yup, we all do – and we then have the right to experience the consequences of sharing said opinion.

In particular, I’m thinking about the encroaching that parents of adults routinely make in regard to their independent adult children. The adult who is still dependent, perhaps living under a parent’s roof or otherwise supported, forfeits a little in the boundary department when it comes to behavior in the home or financial issues. That is a separate conversation. I’m also not talking about an intervention for a severe problem; addiction and its consequences, for example, can require strong measures.

I’m talking about the comments, questions and subtle criticisms that so many people think are acceptable conversational elements when it comes to their independent adult children.

Adults who are independent and living well, do not need uninvited advice on what they should be doing. “Living well” may not mean “living just like me” or “living as I would in the same circumstances.” Parents who offer such advice think, I love them and I want to help them with my hard-won wisdom.

That is not what their children hear. They hear,

Nothing you do is good enough/right/acceptable, or,

You are incompetent to handle your life.

The adult child is, understandably, offended by such criticism, direct or implied. They may think, they have no idea what life is like now. It’s not like it was then. Why can’t they even ask before they just go firing off advice and telling me what I ought to do?

Fair enough.

If you wouldn’t walk up to a stranger or a neighbor or acquaintance with the same uninvited guidance on how to improve something in their lives, why do this to another adult who happens to be your offspring?

Imagine walking up to some stranger in the produce department and announcing that leggings with such a short top might not be the best look for them since the vacation/surgery/baby and adding a helpful, “I’m just saying,” before wandering off to inspect the fresh spinach.

Or perhaps interrupting a neighbor’s enthusiastic description of a recent vacation with, “Don’t you people ever get tired of cruises/hiking/camping/theme parks/bicycle tours/ etc.?”

Would you walk up to a coworker and pepper them with questions about their preference for leasing over buying motor vehicles, barely listening to their response before piling on another criticism barely veiled in a question?

I have met people, of course, who would freely do all the above – and they are not exactly models for healthy relationships. Yet many other people will speak to their adult children this way, and be indignant when their children push back or just get quiet.

None of this seems worth cutting off parents for; to me, it seems like a hard conversation waiting to be had. I have seen families ruptured by this; the parent who refuses to accept reasonable boundaries, the adult child seemingly eager to take offense. Flags on the field all around, from my perspective. But both have to be willing to accept their slice of responsibility if things are going to get better.

Thanks for reading.

Riding the Rapids

We recently spent a few days hiking up mountains, camping and white-water rafting in Wyoming and Montana, because isn’t that what people who are afraid of heights (me) and can’t swim (yeah, me, again) do for fun? And it was fun. It’s good to push out of the comfort zone.

Most parents and the other adults who care for and work with children are quite serious about helping them get out of their supposed comfort zones and into a healthier lifestyle. Recently, I was speaking to a group of adults about the topic, “Raising Mentally Healthy Children.” We spent our time focused on what we can do.

One problem that arises in these conversations – whether in a group, one-on-one, or with a family, is that making time for change seems impossible. The days are packed, and nothing on the schedule seems negotiable. Yet, in reality, what’s not negotiable is what humans need to be healthy and thriving.

What most kids need, and what we need, too, is more appropriately divvied-up time. For example, children and teens benefit from a solid two hours or more of physical activity every day. They need time outdoors, in nature, for their immune systems, Vitamin D, circadian rhythms and even their eyesight development. The near-and-far variation in focus that being outdoors elicits promotes healthy eyesight in young children; kids are supposed to go from crouching down to study a beetle to peering across the field to see if that’s a hawk in the tree and then taking off running to make sure. Optimally, they’re outside for at least two or so hours every day – more on weekends.

Kids need enough sleep – probably 9 or 10 hours a night, with an absence of screens. Recent research links high levels of artificial light at night (ALAN) with increased rates of cancer due to disruption of the circadian rhythm. An immediate risk with insufficient sleep is the attention system. Sleep-deprived people are irritable, inattentive, forgetful, disorganized and generally not fun to be around. Sleep-deprived drivers test as impaired, much like those with alcohol and/or drugs in their system. Think about inexperienced and sleep-deprived teenagers driving to and from school and work, often in the dark.

Kids, and we adults, need unstructured time. Most of the adults present had a creative hobby or two, and we all agreed that it takes time to shift gears into that hobby. It’s hard to walk in the door after work and immediately pick up a paintbrush, or guitar, or journal, or woodworking tools, and be in flow. The segue into creativity requires a sort of almost boring downtime – something many adults and children avoid compulsively through electronics. 

I can’t tell people what sacrifices have to be made for their family to have a healthier life. It varies from family to family, and it is never easy. It might be simple or quite complex, but it is never easy. However – after the white-water part, when you aren’t on nature’s roller coaster, there are always some smooth, easy times ahead. Thank you to all the parents who go for it – who strive to be sure their children to have the range of experiences they need to grow up resilient, curious and confident.

Ouch! Hey! and, Yay!

It can be hard for parents to make the changes they see would be best for their families. Every good idea seems like a Sisyphean struggle.

Sometimes it’s useful to start very small. Let’s begin with a short, very simplified review of behavior modification from Psych 101. We’ve got positive reinforcement (YAY), negative reinforcement (also YAY) and punishment by application – life does something to you (OUCH), or withdrawal, when life takes something away (HEY!).

Let’s say it is noonish on a pleasant day, I have a break, and decide to take a walk outside. I will enjoy the breeze, the birds singing, a chance to move and clear my head. I will come back to the desk feeling invigorated. I have been positively reinforced. I did an action, or stopped an action, that resulted in something good (my uplifted mood).

A few hours later, it will be about 3 PM and I may have the beginning of a headache. I glance at my water bottle and realize I am way behind on fluids, so I drink a few glugs of water. In short order, the headache dissipates. I have been negatively reinforced: I did a desirable action, and something bad went away.

Punishment, on the other hand, is entirely different. If, feeling a bit bored, I decide to scroll through the news of the day, I might feel depressed and then realize I have wasted my break reading bad news (HEY!).  Or, I may notice the beginnings of a headache and, instead of a drink of water, start with a few chunks of delicious, smooth dark chocolate and then (OUCH) my headache may well get worse.

The point of this little meander through intro psych lessons is that, when making changes, maybe it will progress better if you find ways to start with positive and negative reinforcement rather than what will seem like punishments.

For example, let’s say you think that at least one weekend afternoon of family time without devices would be a good start. Teens and even younger children may not agree. Wrestling their phones and tablets away is feasible, but they will consider this HEY!, and their resulting dopamine withdrawal symptoms to be OUCH for them; their miserable behavior may be a big OUCH for you.  But if a family activity inherently means no devices and then everyone has fun, we now have a big YAY in place the OUCH and HEY! What might that include?

Being outdoors in nature, where devices may not work properly anyway. A movie outing. A museum that requires devices be silent and away. Physical activities. Someplace where there is no phone or internet signal. Or just take a deep breath and impose device-off mode around a slice of a day and spend it in actively doing things that would not be improved by device distractions. Have fun. Don’t lecture about how fun it was (that’s an OUCH). If your kid mentions it was pretty fun, you can agree and take that as YAY – an invitation to repeat as possible.

Hard Changes

Most of us have some changes to make. And most changes are not so easy. That’s why people postpone them, or poke at the edges, or just pretend the problem will go away by itself. Sometimes people convince themselves there isn’t even a problem, really; that it just depends how you look at it. Maybe so. But maybe there’s something that needs changing.

Let’s say you have a teenage child, or a child approaching the teens. S/he is cranky, sullen, uncooperative with chores, sulks during family meals and resists being on time for school and other appointments. S/he wants to spend time alone, in the bedroom, with electronics. The child is depressed and/or anxious and/or obsessive and/or perpetually angry. You know the situation will change, one way or the other. Everything changes. If you do nothing, you are gambling that your child will continue down this road and somehow, at 18 or 19 or 20, wake up, shake themselves off like a wet Golden Retriever and come out of their bedroom, smile and say, “Wow! How could I have been so wrong?!”

Yeah, I doubt it, too.

If you have this situation and need to take it on, it can be hard to know where to start. Here’s a suggestion: if the situation is not a crisis, then the most practical first step may be to start with yourself.

You will have to change. Perhaps you have to start the change process by being sure that all the adults in the house are on the same page in your expectations. Perhaps you need to get yourself on the right path.

You go first. You get enough fresh air, and time in nature, and sleep, and healthy nutrition, and balanced physical activity. You strive to do interesting and challenging things in what little free time you have. You will, quite naturally and incidentally, spend less passive screen time. You’ll be leading from strength rather than being a target for adolescents’ favorite criticism: that we adults are hypocrites. You’ll be in a much better stance to steer positive changes for your tween or teen.  

Not another horrible day

A different day, another awful situation. 

A child, or teen, or young adult has been struggling with emotional turmoil and is tumbling into danger. They confide in a friend, or maybe a few friends.

They may have “met” someone in an online chat and now this person is their “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” and they are planning to run way to meet this person.

Perhaps the young person has been “sexting” with someone they know personally, or “met” online, and now are being threatened with “sextortion,” that the images of them will be spread around, unless they meet some demand. This has recently led to many teen and young adult suicides.

Perhaps the young person shares that they are a victim of abuse.

Or, perhaps they stumbled upon, or were led to, the terrible misinformation that hurting oneself is a useful way to cope with painful feelings. The young person proceeds to experiment with self-harm, and posts online about it.

So-called friends hear the plan, listen to the horrible stories, or see the images of scratches, cuts or burns, and fail to turn to an adult for guidance.

Every parent I’ve ever spoken to is under the impression that their child would, of course, come to them if a friend were in grave danger. And sometimes that is true, but an awful lot of the time – in almost any of these kinds of incidents I’ve ever encountered in clinical practice or consulted on, as it happens – that was not the case. The case was, almost every time, that other young people knew about the plan to run away, or the abuse, or the self-harm, and did not seek the guidance of an adult.

Sometimes these “friends” have an unflagging alliance, suddenly, to keeping promises (unlike the promises they have made to you, dear parent, about everything from cleaning their room to homework being done well to treating your automobile with respect). Sometimes they believe they are better equipped to help than an adult would be, although they cannot arrest an abuser, drive someone to the emergency room or help them connect with a mental health professional for counseling, and their capacity to manage extreme distress is probably not much better than the troubled friend’s skills. Sometimes they dread social disapproval for breaking the rule that you keep adults out of it, whether the “it” is someone self-harming, or sharing that they are a victim of abuse, or are planning to run away from home to meet up with the “boyfriend” they “met” online.

I urge you to have frequent, open conversations about these topics with your young people. Make them age appropriate; be calm and encouraging. If you are too stressed out, you may be misread as “angry.” Remember that adolescents go through a stage where their brain interprets almost every non-happy facial expression as “angry.” If that happens, the conversation will probably be a complete failure.

Be calm, be matter-of-fact, and be sincere. Ask questions, too:

How do the people you know handle things like a friend telling them this kind of stuff?

If this was your friend, what would you do?

If it were (fill in the blank for some close friend or family member), what would you want their friends to do in this type of situation?

Why do you think people are reluctant to ask adults for help with this?

What would make an adult seem safe to go to with this problem?

Don’t lecture; have the conversation. It may be a conversation that occurs for a few minutes at a time over an extended period. That’s okay; sometimes a few sentence and letting it simmer is what’s necessary.  

You may, without knowing it, be setting the groundwork to save a life.

Boundaries, Fences and the Berlin Wall

My cousin George died a few years ago, still with Soviet bullet fragments in one leg from his part in helping people escape from East Germany to the west. He had been a young man seemingly allergic to caution and willing to risk death to help others through what was intended to be an implacable barrier, the old Berlin Wall.

There are walls, and fences, and boundaries. The fences around our back yard allow bunnies to slip from one yard to the next. Yesterday, a squirrel chased a small bunny – not much bigger than said squirrel. The bunny escaped under the fence; the squirrel scurried up the fence to be sure the bunny was banished to the neighbor’s yard. The bunny, meanwhile, scampered right back into our yard. Up above, the squirrel looked left and right for the bunny. They had, apparently, an issue with boundaries.

Boundaries.  Twenty-plus years ago, boundaries were discussed most often in therapy, helping clients, often victims of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse, learn how to put up practical, realistic limits for interactions with others. As the topic became more commonly known, wise writers and speakers (Brene Brown, for example) provided practical and inspiring information about developing and maintaining these healthy limits.

Like anything else, though, something good can be misused.

Medications that are essential to reduce some pain for someone in the final stages of cancer kill non-patients via drug abuse.

Entire genres of horror movies revolve around practical items used as devices of mayhem.

And the important psychological concept of boundaries – that we are each distinct beings and have a right to dignity and mutual respect ¬ is weaponized, like so much else in therapy, by far too many people.

As an example, consider the meme that “No is a complete sentence.”  That’s fine, as far it goes. But how often is that level of curtness warranted?

Husband: “Would you like to go out for ice cream?”

Lori: “No.”

Okay, for one thing, unless I am on a medically required pre-surg fast I wouldn’t ever say no to ice cream, so it’s ludicrous on that count. Secondly, it’s just rude. “No.” Better: no, thank you; tomorrow would be better, or, No, not this instant; could we go after I finish this paperwork?

No is a complete sentence, and optimally a loud one, when someone behaves inappropriately – then drawing attention to the need to stop an encroachment makes “NO! NO! NO!” a complete paragraph.

But the magical complete “No” is the least of my concerns. What happens more is the application of “I’m setting a boundary” when the person (usually a gaslighting partner or manipulative family member) really means, I’ve decided to be mean to you and I am using the magic hall pass word of boundary to get away with it. It’s totally legitimate to set a boundary. Yet, when used to justify inconsiderate behavior, it becomes a useful tool gone bad, a well-oiled emotional chainsaw in the wrong hands.

Of course, there are many people who refuse to accept reasonable boundaries.

For example, the fact, grandparents, that your (and my) fantasy of grandparent-life looked one way does not impose that script on our adult children. Whether we like it or not, they largely write that script and we can be enthusiastic about our roles, or be miserable grumbles and find ourselves little more than walk-ons.

Adult children who are not financially dependent on you do not need your unsolicited guidance on what they should be doing with their money. That conversation reasonably happens when they breach their “I’m a grownup boundary” by asking for money. They have, at that point, called you up from the Parent Reserves to Active Duty, and at that point you can ask questions, like, exactly what are they proposing to “pay off” with your IRA distribution for the entire year? Counter their complaints about boundaries that they are the ones opening that door.

When someone brings up the boundary word, it is time to breathe, ask some clarifying questions, and then take some time to reflect.

Does this feel like gameplaying – do the “boundaries” in this relationship keep shifting like quicksand?

Can you discern the difference between your disappointment and actual manipulation and meanness?

Does this sound as if the person is using psychological terminology to justify distancing from family? Is it possible that there are factors you don’t know about, or don’t sufficiently understand, that make this reasonable to them and for them at this time? This is entirely separate from you being disappointed.  Example: if big family holidays include family members who have been cruel, or abusive, or harshly critical, or have bullying senses of “humor” towards this person, the person placing a boundary up is acting in reasonable self-interest.

Usually, in the short term, the uncomfortable fact is that you can’t change the situation; you must figure out how to adapt. Pushing against the decision will, inadvertently, reinforce the decision; your arguments, tears and complaints will be interpreted as more evidence of disrespect for their asserted interpersonal boundaries – whether they are emotional boundaries, actual physical distance, or the dire separation equivalent to the old Berlin Wall.

Social Contagion

(This post mentions eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse and suicide. Please reach out to your local emergency services if you or someone you know is struggling with any of these!)

When I was in 9th grade, I unwillingly, and briefly, attended our parish’s very small Catholic Youth Organization meetings (CYO.  The group comprised mostly boys, all altar servers, who played ping pong and pool with our associate pastor, a well-meaning middle-aged priest from Poland. The only other girls were the type of enmeshed best friends that are normal at that stage of life. Their shared passion was Bay City Rollers. They put together, in that era of typewriters with ribbons and no internet, a monthly fan newsletter with some success.  Life would have been oh, so easy, if only I could have mustered enthusiasm for the boys from Edinburgh.  I tried. But, despite the social costs, a Dylan fan I remained.

Go ahead, laugh. But you have faced the challenge of social contagion, too. You may even now be wearing a style of clothing you don’t actually even like. It’s just what’s “in.” As a teenager, you wore the right clothes, or pined after them; you strove for the right hair style. You wore the trendy colors even if they made you look ill, and were anxious for the approval of your peers.  It’s not just kids who follow the crowd; every married person knows that when your spouse’s friend circle comprises mostly divorced people, there may well be trouble ahead.

Over the years, we’ve seen waves of societal concern about the risks of contagion. Were young people teaching each other to cut or burn themselves (1990s), how to purge or starve themselves (ongoing since at least the 90s), how to get a so-called “high” from household items? Could a teen’s suicide lead to copycat attempts?  The answer to all of these is, yes.

Children now are not gifted with preternaturally adult-style brain development. The ability to sound sophisticated by parroting what you’ve read or heard is not the same as an adult brain with a well-developed executive function – something that takes into the early to mid-20s to acquire.  Your kid is not any more resistant to peer pressures of even the subtle type than you were when you were screaming in excitement over a band because all your friends were.  As it happens, they are more vulnerable, because peer pressure can surround them wherever their cell phone works. Odds are, you were free – as soon as you were off the school bus, there was some space for other influences to counterbalance the noise of adolescents striving to show their individuality by being as much like their desired group as possible.

Notice the vagaries of the teenage years: they move from music star to music star, aesthetic nomads in lockstep. No one wears jeans; then they all wear jeans. The games, the accessories, even the car you drive falls under the anxious eye of a child who wants to fit in.  It’s important for all of us to be attuned to the various social pressures to conform, because we want our young people to survive, and thrive, throughout these very turbulent times.

Cutting off Mom and Dad, Part 3



…and now we come to the final installment (so far) in my
wonderings about this strange phenomenon of parent rejection by adult children.
So far, I have tried to spread the responsibility around: the infantilization
of young adults by many institutions, the culture at large, and parents.  Now it is the young people’s turn.


It is my observation (granted, limited to some review of the
literature, professional trainings and clinical experience – over a quarter
century) that it is not usually the abused children who grow up and cut off
their parents. This seems odd, doesn’t it? If a child who was tortured decided
to cut off contact, we could understand, even support the healthy distancing.



It is much more typical for the young person who simply does
not want to be bothered to cut off the parent or parents. Quite often it seems
to be one parent; a widowed mother, typically, which makes me suspicious that
the possibility of some sort of responsibility drives the distancing.  I am sorry to be that cynical, but so it
sometimes seems.  Other themes seem to be
that the parent doesn’t just pat the child on the head for every decision, or
the parent has different political opinions, or religious beliefs.



If you are an adult, then surely you have developed the
capacity to tolerate the presence of people different than you; it appears to
be a matter of pride to young adults, especially, to be open-minded about
people’s differences, to refuse to allow even stunningly foundational
differences in values to be barriers to mutual respect. If that is the case, if
you think of yourself as tolerant, then surely you can tolerate the fact that
your parents, or grandparents, or aunts or uncles or other relatives, no doubt
have different ideas than you (and from one another). It may come as a surprise
to you that your parents, whom you may see as some monolith of monotony,
actually disagree with one another. A lot. The research indicates married
couples disagree on about two thirds of the stuff of life, or more; they just
have figured out, I hope, how to live and let live on these disagreements and
how to work with the few that are pretty significant areas. 



Are you afraid? Afraid that you cannot properly defend your
own positions, operationalizing your terms and pointing to data, rather than
feelings, and that interacting with your parent(s) will be an exercise in
losing an argument and feeling like a fool? 



Are you afraid to simply listen to try to understand more of
their opinion, meaning the information and experiences that support that
stance?



Are you afraid that staying close to aging parents will mean
being stuck with them, having to take care of them, when you are carefully
curating your life to minimize responsibility?



Are you afraid you will die of boredom if you have to listen
one more time to their ramblings about the events of their lives, which may
actually not be any more ennui-producing than your own (have you wasted a chunk
of your life bingeing a fictional series lately or playing video games?).



Are you afraid that they will keep trying to get you to
change and you are tired of explaining to them that your
job/partner/reproduction plans are not up for discussion?



Are you afraid to set boundaries, including the boundaries
of discretion? Surely you do not talk about everything with every friend; in
the same way, it can be very wise to discern what topics to discuss with whom.
If your definition of family means “people who have to accept and agree with
everything about me,” then even something as simple as dietary differences (the
omnivore and vegan siblings, for example) will necessitate cutting off a family
member when all you had to do was not rave on and on about the great steak you
grilled last weekend or stop talking about murder when you are sharing a meal.



Cutting off family without very strong grounds to do so is a
red flag. If your friends have done so, consider their reasons; if this is how
they treat the people who sacrificed for them in ways they may not yet
understand, exactly how solid is the rock you stand on with these friends? Can
you really count on them to be there, helping to clean up after you have
vomited, for the zillionth time, during chemo? To show up for you when there is
a death, or a birth, and in the long months of change and bewilderment
afterwards? To take a day off and drive you to and from having your wisdom
teeth out, or a colonoscopy, or whatever else has to happen – and the medical
office will not release you to a ride share service?



The family cut-off is a tragedy, under the best and most
reasonable of circumstances. The dangerous parents might need to be cut off,
for the sake of their children and grandchildren. It is heartbreaking that life
had to come to this, but it may be necessary. That is not something to be done
lightly, indifferently, or without serious reflection of how this decision will
play out in the decades to come.



Thanks for reading –



Cutting off Mom and Dad, Part 2

As previously explored, the culture undermines parent-child relationships. One way is the manipulation of expectations of normalcy. Young adults are frequently told to believe that anything less than absolute, craven praise and approval, of anything, is some sort of miserable toxicity and not to be borne. The relationship must be severed, even with parents.

On the flip side, many parents feel that their position as parent gives them license to offer criticism, advice, and endless commentary on their adult child’s habits, clothes, parenting, etc.  If you are financing an adult child, then I would suggest you tell your child what you will do – not what the adult child will do. You can’t make them do anything, but you can control yourself.  A self-sufficient adult who lives on their own, paying their own way, and raising a healthy, well-adjusted child does not need unsolicited advice or undermining, either.

If you’re thinking, reading this, that you jolly well can make them do something – well, actually, no, not without force.  We parents specialize in saying things that can’t be enforced, silly things like yelling at a toddler, “You’re going to get in there and go to sleep right now!” The average three-year-old has figured out you can’t make her go to sleep; and if you do anything that forces sleep, and I find out, I will report you to Child Protective Services. A three-year-old is portable:  you can pick them up and transport them to their bed, over and over, but the command to sleep is just a waste of syllables.

Sometimes, fellow parents, you may be grieving. You had your child, and you had dreams. You imagined a long future, that child’s adulthood, and the ideal fantasy of whatever your engagement with that child’s future life would be.  I was hoping for a shared private practice (we had discussed this, to be fair!) and lots of hands-on times with grandchildren and spent a couple of decades amassing cookie cutters and art supplies that seldom needed, and given away with much grief, grief not for the things but for the unfulfilled dreams. Instead, I have an adult child of whom I am immensely proud who lives many hours away, and that means her husband and their lovely child are far away, too.  I don’t get to impose my dream, or a guilt trip about my unfulfilled dream, on them. Doing so would be foolish and unfair, and reduce the likelihood I can enjoy what I have, which is far more than many people have, and a situation that those who are involuntarily childless would envy.

So…this set of posts on family cut-offs doesn’t solve anything. I don’t have any big, smart solutions or a therapy intervention that will take away the pain of alienation from the very people for whom you would willingly die. Perhaps it can open up some ideas for reflection, or conversation. If you are an adult who has cut off a parent, please reconsider, seriously and prayerfully, on whether their behavior warrants that wall of silence. If you are a parent, wondering what you have done, perhaps there is room to change the ways in which you try to influence or even make demands on someone who does not belong to you.  Perhaps there is nothing to be done except wait and pray, which comprise tremendous power in the long run.  What to pray? I do not know. I can tell you how I pray, across all relationships: family, friends, clients, students, our leaders, our enemies…that both the other party, and I, be open to becoming who God wants us to be. Amen.