Coparenting Beyond Conflict: High-Conflict Divorce and Custody Strategies

Why So Many Adult Children Cut Off Their Parents (And How to Prevent It) with Catherine Hickem

Sol Kennedy Season 2 Episode 15

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0:00 | 35:14

Nearly one in four adult children are estranged from at least one parent—a trend that’s becoming increasingly common, yet rarely discussed.

In this episode of Coparenting Beyond Conflict, Sol sits down with parenting expert Catherine Hickem, founder of Parenting Adult Children Today and author of It’s Never Too Late to Be a Great Parent. Together they explore why parent-child relationships break down in adulthood, how divorce impacts family relationships across generations, and what parents can do now to build lasting trust with their children.

Whether you’re raising young children, navigating a divorce, or supporting an adult child through one, this conversation offers practical guidance for creating stronger family relationships that endure through life’s biggest transitions.

Learn more about Catherine Hickem: https://www.parentingadultchildrentoday.com/

Get Catherine's book, It’s Never Too Late to Be a Great Parent: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Never-Late-Great-Parent/dp/197179502X

Get the BestInterest Coparenting App: https://bestinterest.app/

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/H8pqZswdibE

Subscribe to our newsletter to hear about new episodes and build community: https://bestinterest.app/subscribe-podcast/

Keywords

adult child estrangement, parent-child relationships, parenting adult children, divorce and adult children, family estrangement, co-parenting, high-conflict divorce, grandparents and divorce, family communication, healthy boundaries, unconditional love, relationship repair, emotional safety, parenting after divorce, family healing

Key Takeaways

  • Why adult-child estrangement is becoming so common
  • The parenting mistakes that unintentionally push adult children away
  • How divorce affects relationships across multiple generations
  • What adult children really need from their parents during a divorce
  • How grandparents can provide support without making conflict worse
  • Why honesty, curiosity, and respect matter more than taking sides
  • The “Four Pillars” of healthy relationships with adult children
  • How unconditional love creates lifelong trust

Chapter Highlights

00:00 Introduction
01:40 The growing epidemic of parent-child estrangement
04:10 The most common reasons adult children cut off parents
08:20 Catherine’s own divorce and what it taught her about parenting
11:55 What adult children need from their parents during divorce
14:55 How grandparents can best support a child going through divorce
19:20 When your adult child asks you to cut off their ex
25:05 The transition from parenting children to parenting adults
25:30 The Four Pillars of healthy relationships with adult children
31:55 How parents can become a safe harbor instead of a source of judgment
33:40 Where to learn more from Catherine Hickem

What if your co-parent’s toxic messages never even reached you? Thousands of parents are already finding peace with the BestInterest Coparenting App. As a listener, you can too. Claim 40% off an annual subscription here: https://bestinterest.app/beyond

Sol (00:01)
Welcome to Coparenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host, Sol, founder of the BestInterest app for coparents. At BestInterest and on this podcast, my goal is to help you find peace in the storm. Today I'm joined by Catherine Hickam, founder of Parenting Adult Children Today, and the author of the book It's Never Too Late to Be a Great Parent. Catherine's work focuses on one of the relationships that we do not talk about enough in divorce, the relationship between parents and their adult co-parenting children.

I'm excited for this conversation because so many families are not just navigating co-parenting, they're also navigating grandparents, in-laws, adult children, estrangement, grief, and the question of how to stay connected when the family structure changes so dramatically. If you're going through divorce and wondering how to support your kids without burdening them, or how to rebuild trust across the generations, this episode is for you. Let's dive in.

Sol (00:54)
Catherine, welcome to the podcast. It's so good to have you here today with us.

Catherine (00:58)
Thank you. I am so excited to be a part of this journey that you're on in helping so many people.

Sol (01:03)
Well, I'm really excited to have you on. I've been looking forward to this interview because I understand that you have an expertise in the parent-child relationship, but in particular, the adult-child relationship and that transition. A lot of our listeners are experiencing some challenging relationships with their own parents. And so I'm just really excited to talk to you today and pick your brain about

⁓ what we haven't talked about, extended family. Can you first share with us what you've learned about estrangement and how common this is? Because I have heard that topic come up a lot and it seems like it's

Catherine (01:42)
Yeah, I consider it to be a cultural crisis because we currently are at 27 % of adult children from 18 to 45 do not have a relationship with at least one parent. Now recognize we have a hundred million parents of adult children in the United States. And so we are now looking at easily a 27 million number

of people who are not connected to the very people who raised them. And there's a lot of implications on that because when we're not talking to the people who brought us here or the ones that we raised, our chances of being able to have hard conversations across political aisles or religious aisles or any other social issue aisle begins to diminish greatly, because we allow the issue to

overtake the relationship. I'm really concerned because the other part that is happening is that the generation who is doing the disconnect, the estrangement doesn't realize that they're setting a precedence with their own children because if they see, mom cut off grandma and grandpa, the definition of normal for that child will be when I get upset with my mom or dad when I'm grown,

all I have to do is just cut them off because that's what's normal is in this family. That's what you do. So we're creating new normals that are very dysfunctional, very unhealthy. I'm not talking about those parents that were sexually abusive or incredibly violent. I'm not referring to not having, very, very, very severe boundaries with people such as that. I'm talking about

boundary issues, communication issues, anger management, life issues, but we're seeing a significant shift in the fact that people just aren't talking to each other. And if you don't talk to people that raised you or that you raised, then that's very concerning because it's gonna have a lingering effect that people aren't recognizing.

Sol (03:44)
Yeah, I hear that. And it sounds like there are many different reasons why this cut off happens. Is my assumption correct that the cut off typically is going from adult child to their parent? Or do you see it happen both directions?

Catherine (03:59)
I have seen it happen in both directions. Around 80 % of what I see is the child cutting off the parent.

Sol (04:06)
Mm-hmm. And like I said, I understand there's multiple different reasons, but what are some of the common reasons that an adult child might cut off their parents?

Catherine (04:16)
One of them has to do with boundary violations and the parents not respecting the adult child for being an adult. And therefore the, the adult children will have boundaries around certain things and the parents ignore it, minimize it, don't take it seriously, especially when it starts to cut into grandchildren. I was talking to somebody recently,

a very well known stage presence, who has a huge following. And this particular person is estranged from her children. And the reason is, is that she would talk about her children on stage and the children had said, "I don't want you talking about us. I don't want you telling stories about us. I don't want that." And that was ignored.

And so as a result of it being continually ignored, the child said, all right, if you're gonna choose to ignore that, you will no longer have a relationship with me, but you will no longer have a relationship with my children. I'm not gonna put my children at risk to being a part of your stories. So therefore, this was a boundary, a huge boundary for this particular person. And that's very common when you have high profile people

who don't have a sense of what they need to do to keep their private lives private and their public life, without taking liberties of someone else's privacy. That's an example. Another example are expectations. Expectations are a dirty word in this relationship because parents have them, they don't even know they have them.

They live them out and the weight of those expectations, which could have started at birth, become heavier and heavier the older the child becomes to the point where they can't meet them. So they decide just to remove themselves from the relationship because they can't handle the weight of dealing with the disappointment, with dealing with the anger, the rejection, the criticism because they didn't do this or they didn't do that. So they just disappear. And those

expectations can be incredibly hard, especially when you have parents who are very values driven. So therefore, whether it has to do with politics or religion or whatever, if a child chooses to go very different than how they were raised, the parents take it very personally. starts the nagging and then starts the judging and then starts the preaching. And it's like they're done. The adult child says, "you know what?

I was hostage to you the first 18 years. I don't have to jump into being a hostage the rest of my life. This is my life. I need to figure out what's right for me." But parents get all knotted up about this and give opinions very freely. And they do it with a tone of voice that they would never do it to a stranger or to a friend. And so they take a lot for granted that's not theirs to take for granted. And it's very hurtful.

Tthe kid just pulls away, shuts down. Some of them get angry, get unhealthy, punishing. So the dysfunction can come out on the end of the adult children that makes it worse. But no one wins. No one wins when we can't talk about it. We can't solve, we can't listen. We can't be vulnerable and own our stuff. And we blame instead of

looking in the mirror. There's a lot of reasons why we're having the issues that we have today. They make sense to me completely. I feel sad for parents because I think so often they don't know that they don't know, which is one of the reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing, because I want to give them as much of a heads up as possible on what to pay attention to. I just

have never seen anything in the marketplace that really gives concrete directives, insights, some wisdom on how do we handle the season? Because all the parenting rules change. The minute they turn 18, the only thing that doesn't change is the need to love them and the need to be really clean about who you are and who you're not.

Other than that, all the other pieces change. You're no longer the protector, you're no longer the educator, you're no longer the guide, you're no longer the discipliner. All those things go away. And parents don't know how to parent without their old job description. So I'm trying to give a new job description to parents, so that way they can build bridges instead of building walls.

Sol (08:22)
Yeah, that makes sense. In this podcast, of course, listeners are primarily going through divorce or have gone through divorce and their kids maybe aren't even to the stage of being 18 and launched. And I understand that you yourself have gone through divorce. curious how your personal experience has informed your professional perspective on family ruptures.

Catherine (08:44)
I was married 35 years and I chose the divorce and it was not well received on the other end. it was very much, a decision that I made at the time and I've never regretted the decision because I knew it was right for my own well-being, my own health and my own mental being. But I also knew that I had a 27 and a 26 year old who were getting ready to hear news they never thought they would hear.

I made several decisions early on and one was going to be that I would not ever speak ill of their father. I didn't do it in the marriage and I wasn't going to start in the divorce. I knew that one child would be probably more comfortable with the divorce than the other. I was prepared for the fact that the child that wasn't going to be happy about it,

would need space and time in order to come to their own conclusions about my choice and my decision. I had to be really grounded in knowing that I was making the best decision at the time for me. And I was going to have to be willing to deal with the consequences of whatever that meant in the relationship. My goal was to be sure that I showed integrity,

that I showed respect to both the children and to their father and to give them the space that they needed to figure out whatever it is that they needed to figure out about my decision. I was willing to answer questions, but I was not willing to unload or vent or criticize or whatever. I just wasn't going to do that. My son handled it very well,

and my daughter needed the time to process it. But six months after I had filed that, made the decision to leave, she came back and she said to me, "I totally understand. And how can I support you?"

I could put my head on the pillow at night knowing that I had not tried to coerce or bad mouth. And I didn't have any guilt about how I handled that because I wanted her to respect me when the process was over. And I just knew, give your children enough time to figure out the truth. They'll figure it out. In most cases, they'll figure it out. Not in all cases. So need to say that.

As they grow, as they mature, it takes time, especially when they're under the age of 24, their brains are still in that very formative developmental stage. We have to let them have that space and time to figure things out, because they're still trying to figure themselves out. So I just think that what I learned for me and for what the parents that I work with is, you'll never regret being

respectful, you'll never regret having integrity, and you'll never regret being the right person doing the right thing. And that is the only thing you can control. You can't control people, how they react, what they say, what they do with what you've done. And we have to let go of keeping everybody happy with hard decisions. It's just not realistic. So you have to be really confident in the decision that you're making that it's the right one.

Sol (11:14)
Mm-hmm.

Catherine (11:32)
and you can't go looking for approval from everybody else that you've made the right one. You've got to know within yourself that it was the right one. And I think when you can bring that person to a tough decision in your parenting, then it says that you're grounded, you're stable, you're comfortable in your own skin, and you are big enough to handle whatever it is that they bring to you.

Sol (11:55)
Now flipping the script for a moment here and imagining a parent listener who has a relationship with their parents and is going through a divorce. What does an adult child who's going through divorce need from their parents? And how does that match up with what you see parents tending to offer?

Catherine (12:14)
I think it depends on the variables that take place in the divorce itself. So for instance, if there is someone who's having an affair, then that means one parent's gonna perceive themselves to be a victim. And so there's all those dynamics that will get played out in the divorce. And those dynamics put the kids in a really bad place. It's a no-win for the kids if one of the parents is going to be the victim.

Whatever role that parent is in, they need to minimize that this is happening to them. This divorce is happening to those children and their lives will never be the same. Holidays will never be the same. And even if people get along, it's still not the same. We have to keep in mind

that it's not our children's job to be a comforter to us in the circumstances. They're the kids and our job is to be supportive of the impact this is going to have on them and their lives, especially as we look at where they are developmentally. It's a loss that our kids have to grieve.

The world got flipped upside down. If we don't recognize that loss, if we don't understand how our children have grieved in earlier years over other losses, we may be blindsided by how they grieve now. They may be angry, they may choose to shut down, but those could all be parts of grief, what grief looks like in an adult child. Grief takes on a lot of different

forms when we have a physical loss, you when someone dies. But it's the same type of loss when a marriage dies, a family dies, per se, from how it was known. It can be reformatted, reconstructed, but there still has to be the grief that goes with letting go of what was so they can begin to embrace what is. And parents need to understand their kids will grieve

but they need to be sensitive to what that grief could look like. It could be that they shut down. It could be they don't participate in holidays for a while. It could be that they're angry. It could be that they're angry with a parent who filed the divorce. It could be that they're angry with a parent who didn't file, but who they know is a part of the reason why. It just comes out in all different shapes and sizes. Our job as parents is to be the parent, regardless of what age it's happening.

Our children are powerless in our marriage success or failure. And we need to keep them that way. There's no blame on the kid. There's no responsibility on the life of the child. They are going to experience the consequences and the residual impact for the rest of their lives. And we need to be respectful and understand what that really means.

Sol (14:54)
Focusing now in more on that concept of a higher conflict, you mentioned an affair or even a situation that is very common in our listeners going through a high conflict, more abusive situation where they got out because they needed to get out and they feel like their

ex might be punishing them or using the legal system against them. What do you do as a grandparent, as a parent of an adult child in that situation? How do you hold your role? What does that look like?

Catherine (15:32)
If I'm a parent to someone who's going through that, is that what you're asking? It's real important that you ask them what they need. Don't assume that you know what they need. Ask them what they need. And they may say, I don't know. And then you come back and you can say, OK, that's great. Here's what I'm good at helping with.

Maybe it's picking up the kids in the afternoon every day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or maybe taking them like on the weekends that you have to work and it's your weekend. Maybe it's those details of just custodial care. It could be emotional support. It could be creating a time where you do a family dinner once a month where they come and they have a chance to to vent and you have a chance to listen, encourage and support.

But keep the doors open of options on what does support look like. And if a parent doesn't know and they have a computer, go on Chat GPT and say, "what does divorce support look like? I'm a parent, my kid's getting divorced, they've been married 10 years, we got two small kids. What would it look like?" It's gonna throw out to you a list of options on how you could support. Use AI to your advantage.

But at the end of the day, it's not assuming that you know what they need. I think that's a problem, we all have a tendency to assume. assume, ask. If they don't ask, give them options. But also just say, how are you doing? Be sure that the focus is not always on the grandchildren. "How are you? What do you as a woman, as a man, need right now? How could we come alongside you in this?"

It's also important that you ask questions of your adult children. "What kind of relationship do you want me to have with your soon-to-be ex?" I need to understand that. I'm a person who speaks transparently. I'm very boundaried, but I'm also very transparent. And one of the things that was the most hurtful to me was when I found out that my mother,

maintained a relationship behind my back with my ex to the point of a Christmas gift, a birthday gift, not just talking, but actually ongoing connection.

It was hurtful. It's not that I didn't want her to have a relationship, but the hurtful part was she didn't tell me.

To me, it was a question of respect. It was a question of "here's what I'd like to do. How do you feel about that? Should we wait until this or whatever?" None of those conversations happened. I felt really betrayed. Now, fortunately, I'm a healthy person and I forgive and I put things in perspective and I communicate, but

I've worked with a lot of people who hold on to things. And if you hold on to things, that's when you start to become bitter and resentful. And that's never helpful to anybody. I don't ever want to give anyone the power to make me bitter and resentful, including my own mother. At the end of the day, we can't assume that we know what healthy looks like to our children. And so I think we want to be really respectful.

There's a time and there's a place on when we ask things and sometimes

when people are surviving a divorce, they can't be thinking about our relationship as a parent right now. They're in survival mode. When things calm down and things are cleaner, then you can have the conversation. But I think we just have to be really emotionally aware that it's messy and it's hard and we don't want to make it harder and we don't want to make it messier. And we need to keep our opinions to ourselves.

That's hard.

Sol (18:52)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Sol (18:54)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.

Sol AI (19:16)
And now, back to the show.

Sol (19:18)
So in in that situation where your adult child who's been through this challenging divorce says to you, "well, I need you to I need you to cut them off." How do you handle that? How do you respond?

Catherine (19:34)
I would get real curious and just say, can I ask a question around that? What's your biggest fear of us having a relationship with him or her? I want to understand what's the fear. And listen real carefully, because if there's a fear that you might be disloyal, then that means there's some trust issues that need to be shored up with that child.

If it's a fear that they're going to be taken advantage of or, the parents may not have ever really seen the side that the adult child has seen, and that's the reason they're divorcing. It could be that they're trying to protect them. Anytime there's fear, that means there's, there's a fear of loss. There's a fear of them losing something. And if the parent can help get to the bottom of what that fear is about,

then you're more likely to be able to come to a resolution on how to quote, not have to burn the bridge with the child's other parent. Not that you need to be best friends, not that you're going out to dinner, not any of that. "What if we establish some real clear boundaries on how you would like for us to handle the relationship without us

burning that bridge? Because we want to make it easy for the grandkids in the future and we want to be sure we're included in their lives, but we want to be respectful of any boundaries that you would set. Can we talk about that?" And I and it does that.

Sol (20:53)
That makes sense, yeah. Because

what you're doing is you're establishing safety in that newly forming relationship and family dynamic. You're allowing them to create a new pattern with you where they feel safe.

Catherine (21:06)
Right. And that's really key because when people go through divorce, the stress and strain of what they go through is incredibly hard and sometimes they lose a lot. In my own divorce, I actually was married to a minister for 35 years. And so people didn't give me the benefit of the doubt. They didn't ask the questions. They just assumed that was a bad person

making this decision. I had quite a big support system or an alleged support system of thousands. At the end of the day, I could probably count on maybe 30 people who had the courage to ask me what happened or ask me how I was doing and didn't make assumptions about me. You learn to be very careful with who you trust in moments like that because

you clearly weren't a priority of concern. People just take sides. It's just natural. I was fortunate enough to be peaceful with my decisions that I didn't need everybody's blessing to do what I did. I didn't ask permission. didn't need their blessing. It doesn't change the fact that it's still hurtful. And you have to be able to acknowledge that hurt and grieve that loss

so you can move on. And parents just don't need to add to it. They need to let their children walk through whatever consequences or benefits there are going to be from that divorce, but recognizing that the grandchildren are going to suffer. Everybody suffers in a divorce. No one gets away without suffering. It is something I would never wish on my worst enemy because it's very painful.

There's a lot of, like I said, ramifications that go with that. So the healthier we are as a parent, the healthier we can be with our adult children and in-laws and grandchildren. And if we are the child that's going through this, we have to realize, the adult child that we've made a decision to divorce or we are in a divorce, we still have to recognize that we have to show up for how

our children are experiencing us in the process of this trauma. can only control me. I can't control anyone else. It actually gives me relief to know I don't have to worry about controlling anybody else. Now, it doesn't mean dealing with other people is fun or easy because it's not. But at the end of the day, there's comfort in knowing I'm not responsible for how other people show up. I'm only responsible for me.

Sol (23:23)
One thing I heard crystal clear through this advice that you're giving is that we should really be showing up with our honesty even when it's hard. We're being upfront. We know it might hurt our child to hear that we're getting together with their ex occasionally,

but really what it's all about is being upfront and honest and then being curious.

Catherine (23:48)
Yeah, here's what I'll tell you. think one of the mistakes that parents often make is that they tell their kids too much that's too personal. And I think need to be really clear. A divorce is not the opportunity to throw out every intimate detail of a bad marriage to our children. It's none of their business, first of all, in terms of all the details. I think you can go high level, and you can explain,

"We did not grow together, we grew apart, we struggled with communication." You can have reasons for the divorce, but you don't get into the nitty gritty gory detail of all the things that they did wrong, which is the reason why you're leaving them. That's not helpful. It's just not. And the truth is, they've lived with you. So they have their own perspective of what was working and wasn't working in that marriage. They may not be able to articulate it.

They may be scared to even talk about it with you, but they have had a front row seat to experience the tension, the conflict, the pain, the way things were handled. So they're not stupid. They're very perceptive and internalize a lot. And so we just don't need to add to that. We want to keep it as high level as we can, but at the same time, answering questions as respectfully as we can. And

just making sure that if we need to vent, it's not to our kids or in front of our children.

Sol (25:06)
Well, and this brings me to this transition. Having young kids, we're not necessarily thinking about the day that they turn 18, but someday our children will become adults themselves. How do we do this? Regardless of maybe how our parents did it, how do we transition from being a parent of a child to a parent of an adult?

Catherine (25:27)
I call it the four pillars for having a healthy relationship with an adult child. The first one is respect. It's extremely important that parents take their adult children seriously. And I mean, from 18 on. Respect is always a key element in healthy relationships period. And starting respect when they're little is very important because

I think if you respect them when they're younger, they'll respect you when they're older. We have to remember that we're no longer the decision maker for them and we can't just make assumptions. So when they hit 18, we start asking for their input, including them in decisions that are made and we don't make assumptions. So I think respect is the first pillar. The second pillar is

really getting to know who they are versus who we wanted them to be or who we thought they were going to be. There's a big gap in that because parents have a lot of expectations of how they think they should look and what they should do and how they should conduct themselves and the kind of people they should date. There's all this stuff, but that is about the parent. The parents' expectations are about them. It's not about who is your adult child really.

Taking the time to really get to know who they are and who they're becoming is an incredible validation to the development of that adult child. And it says, I see you, I'm learning you, I am going to embrace who you are. I may not ever fully understand some of your choices, but my understanding isn't paramount to my loving you. So therefore I'm going to really want to know what makes you tick.

How did you get interested in that? What is your perspective on this? That's about knowing somebody. When someone feels known, they feel safe. Number three is acceptance. Accepting them and the choices that they're making, regardless if you understand. I see that a lot in today's culture, Our children often veer off the track that we

brought them up with, whether it's the politics or the religion or the sexual preferences, whatever those things I accept my child even if I don't understand? Can I accept them for who they are and maintain that my relationship isn't based upon an issue, it's based upon a relationship? And the fourth pillar is, can I really look them in the eye and tell them I love them unconditionally no matter what that means?

And I will tell you, well over 50 % of adult children do not believe that they're unconditionally loved. Parents think they've communicated unconditional love, but the people that I've talked to, there's no way they would share their lives with their parents for fear of judgment, rejection, criticism,

favoritism towards another sibling that's not doing those things and outright abandonment. So they just don't tell them. They have two separate lives. One of my daughter's friends had come to visit during her, the summer of her junior year of college. Tiffany had walked out of the room for something and Jason said to me, he said, Mrs. Hickam, did you know that Tiffany is the only friend that I have

who is the same in front of her parents as she is behind their back." And I said, "no, Jason, I didn't know that." And I said, "well, what about you? Are you the same?" And he said, "absolutely not." And I said, "well, what is that about?" He said, "I learned a long time ago who my parents want me to be. And when I am who I am, my mom cries and my dad gets mad. So I simply just become who they want me to be when we're together.

And when I walk out the door, I go back to being myself."

Sol (29:01)
Wow.

In a way, you could say that is a form of estrangement.

Catherine (29:04)
It is. It is. It's a socially appropriate form, because he's protecting himself from being known by them because he knows that it will not be accepted. It will be rejected. He'll be the bad guy because he makes his mom cry and he's not willing to pay that price on an ongoing daily basis the rest of his life. So he's just

figured out how he's going to balance his two worlds. There's a cost and a price that that family pays and he pays. He loses, but the parents lose more simply. And this is a really great young man. I mean, he's still a great young man all these years later, but they don't know a side of him. And I began to ask that question among a lot of young adults and he was profoundly right.

It was sad. Like, "no, no, I know where their buttons are. I'm not willing to open that can of worms because I'll never get those worms put back in that can. So I just let them know what I want them to know. They think they know, and I'm just going let it be that way." But my heart breaks when I hear the stat that 53 % of adult children who have a mental health problem do not go to their parents to talk about it.

Well then, who do you go to? Where do you turn? If the very people who brought you here, who raised you, who you've called mom and dad, are not safe enough for you to talk to when you're in trouble, then help me understand that relationship.

And I think parents have to get a wake up call. At the end of the day, what really matters is that they're doing what it is that you want them to do, or are you a safe harbor for them to dock to when the storms of life come that they know that they will be safe no matter what you tell them. And you're going to love them in spite of whatever that is. And you're going to believe that they will recover

and find the strength to get back up and to go back out into that choppy ocean because they could come back to the dock, to the harbor, to know that the very people who raised them believe in them enough that they can recover.

And if parents are that way, we'd be seeing a changed people wouldn't be living so fearfully. The degree of fear and the lack of resiliency to be able to be vulnerable, to fall to get up to try again is because the fear of rejection is so high. And they play it safe. They won't take appropriate risk, which means their worlds will be small

and they will never fully become the evolved human beings that they have the capacity to become. And that makes me very sad. It's not something I wanted for my own children, and it's not something I want for other people's children. I think parents don't know how much they contribute to the problem, because if they knew, they would make different choices and do better.

We've not done a great job culturally of educating parents on this topic, which is why I am so passionate about us helping parents figure these things out.

Sol (31:58)
That's so powerful, Catherine. The thing that comes to mind here is that this might be a situation of 'it's easier said than done for a lot of these adult parents with their adult children. How do you shift from feeling very strongly about a situation in your adult child's life to being a partner in their life?

Catherine (32:18)
You have to get really honest with what your role is because it's not your job to be opinionated about their lives anymore. That day has come and gone. That's not your job. You don't need to ever preach at them again. You had 18 years to indoctrinate them in your belief system and your values and whatever was important to you. 18 years, 24-7, they were hostages for that length of time.

So they probably know you better than you know yourself some days. We don't need to keep preaching. That doesn't help. It doesn't make it better. It just pushes them further away. The real question is what matters to you? What really matters? Is it that they make you look good or is it because you have a relationship that they know they're loved by you?

And when you die, what do you want them to say about you? What legacy do you want to leave? That they were right because you should have been this job instead of that one? How meaningful is that? I want to know that my children knew that to the very last breath of my body, I would die because I loved them and I wanted the best for them. And it wasn't my job to dictate what that best was, but that I would love them and accept them for who they were

and who they weren't. My value of them wasn't going to change because of choices that they make. My value of them was not negotiable.

And that's a powerful gift that a parent can give a child. It's a life-changing gift, actually, because they want to please a parent who loves them.

It's amazing.

Sol (33:40)
That's beautiful. Catherine, thanks so much for being on with us today. For those listeners that would like to connect with you and learn more about your work, how can they reach you?

Catherine (33:49)
We have an organization called Parenting Adult Children Today and we have a website. I'm on Instagram, all the social media. There's a book coming out soon and called It's Never Too Late to Be a Great Parent, and I talk about a lot of the things that we talked about today and how to go about making sure you are being the great parent that you have an opportunity to be in this season of life.

Trying to get as much out there as possible to know that there are resources available for people to listen, grow, change, and evolve. It's never too late for us.

Sol (34:19)
Thank you for the work that you do and for spreading this message of hope and love and connection. Thanks for being with us today and sharing your wisdom.

Catherine (34:27)
Thank you for having me. It's my honor. Thank you.

Sol (34:31)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.

Sol (34:49)
The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.


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