When your child stops talking to you
Rufus T Firefly
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
We have two adult children. When we moved to Canada in 2014, our son stopped communicating with us. Nothing. We kept in partial contact through his then girlfriend. My wife even flew back after a few years and spent a week tracking him down and trying to resolve matters. We thought that this had succeeded, especially when we then paid for him to fly out to us in Canada. His visit seemed to go well but as soon as he returned, he shut us off again and we didn't hear anything.
When we returned to the UK, he suddenly got in contact, asking for money to clear some debts. We had to say no, as we were still getting our lives sorted out and we had to buy a house. After that, nothing again.
We were then contacted by his now ex-girlfriend, who told us that he had suddenly cut off all communication with her. She had a lot of his stuff and wanted to know if she should send it to us. In the end, nothing came of that and I have no idea what had happened to this stuff.
About 12 months later, she contacted us again. Our son had still been working for her brother. He had not turned up for work for a few days and so the brother got worried and called the police, who went round to check on where he was living. They got back to him later simply to say that they wouldn't be taking the matter any further.
So right now we have no idea where he is or what he is doing. And it is highly doubtful that he know where we are, as we moved house 18 months ago.
When he cut us off completely after his visit to Canada, I had a long chat about this with my bishop. He told me that a similar thing had happened to him and his wife - one of their children vanishes for months or even years at a time. Then, out of the blue, he will turn up for a few days and then wanders off again. My bishop was very open about how he and his wife coped with this and it was very helpful for us.
Funnily enough, over the course of the next few months, I came across a number of other people who had experienced the same sort of thing - a child who had just cut off all contact and whom they never knew where they were or what they were up to. In some cases, there was a clear breaking point; an incident that had resulted in the split. But in the majority of cases, it was like us - no real discernible reason for being cut off.
One of the ways we have had to learn to cope with this is by simply not talking about him unless someone else mentions him. We can't spend our whole lives wondering what is happening or why he has done this - not just to us but to others too. But we have had to make other arrangements, as well. For a variety of reasons, we decided to amend our wills so that he will not inherit anything when we die. Most will go to our daughter and some will go to two "chosen grandchildren". In addition, our daughter and the mother of the chosen grandchildren (who is a very dear friend) will be co-executors and also have power of attorney. We have instructed the friend that her role will primarily be to act as buffer between our daughter and our son (should he come looking for an inheritance).
But what will we do if he decides to get back in contact with us? That's difficult to think about. For a start, we are agreed that there will be no financial bail-outs. We have done this before and I know my daughter would be outraged if we did it again, especially as we paid for him to visit us in Canada and yet every time she visited us, she paid her own way (and was happy to do so).
I think that, after all this time and all that we have been through, we would have to be careful about how we let him back into our lives. I would be very wary about him moving in with us, for example. And I would want to know that he was serious about addressing some of the things that he has done - not just to us but to his ex-girlfriend and to his sister. I suspect that we would also need a lot of family counselling to work through all sorts of issues.
I could go on about some of the aspects of all of this but will leave it here for now. But I wanted to raise it here because I am very aware that more people than we realise go through this sort of thing and often keep it hidden, partly through shame and partly because you just don't want to talk much about such a painful thing. But I do know that talking to others who had experienced similar family breakdowns was helpful for us - if just to get the reassurance that we weren't the only ones and that we weren't such bad parents after all.
When we returned to the UK, he suddenly got in contact, asking for money to clear some debts. We had to say no, as we were still getting our lives sorted out and we had to buy a house. After that, nothing again.
We were then contacted by his now ex-girlfriend, who told us that he had suddenly cut off all communication with her. She had a lot of his stuff and wanted to know if she should send it to us. In the end, nothing came of that and I have no idea what had happened to this stuff.
About 12 months later, she contacted us again. Our son had still been working for her brother. He had not turned up for work for a few days and so the brother got worried and called the police, who went round to check on where he was living. They got back to him later simply to say that they wouldn't be taking the matter any further.
So right now we have no idea where he is or what he is doing. And it is highly doubtful that he know where we are, as we moved house 18 months ago.
When he cut us off completely after his visit to Canada, I had a long chat about this with my bishop. He told me that a similar thing had happened to him and his wife - one of their children vanishes for months or even years at a time. Then, out of the blue, he will turn up for a few days and then wanders off again. My bishop was very open about how he and his wife coped with this and it was very helpful for us.
Funnily enough, over the course of the next few months, I came across a number of other people who had experienced the same sort of thing - a child who had just cut off all contact and whom they never knew where they were or what they were up to. In some cases, there was a clear breaking point; an incident that had resulted in the split. But in the majority of cases, it was like us - no real discernible reason for being cut off.
One of the ways we have had to learn to cope with this is by simply not talking about him unless someone else mentions him. We can't spend our whole lives wondering what is happening or why he has done this - not just to us but to others too. But we have had to make other arrangements, as well. For a variety of reasons, we decided to amend our wills so that he will not inherit anything when we die. Most will go to our daughter and some will go to two "chosen grandchildren". In addition, our daughter and the mother of the chosen grandchildren (who is a very dear friend) will be co-executors and also have power of attorney. We have instructed the friend that her role will primarily be to act as buffer between our daughter and our son (should he come looking for an inheritance).
But what will we do if he decides to get back in contact with us? That's difficult to think about. For a start, we are agreed that there will be no financial bail-outs. We have done this before and I know my daughter would be outraged if we did it again, especially as we paid for him to visit us in Canada and yet every time she visited us, she paid her own way (and was happy to do so).
I think that, after all this time and all that we have been through, we would have to be careful about how we let him back into our lives. I would be very wary about him moving in with us, for example. And I would want to know that he was serious about addressing some of the things that he has done - not just to us but to his ex-girlfriend and to his sister. I suspect that we would also need a lot of family counselling to work through all sorts of issues.
I could go on about some of the aspects of all of this but will leave it here for now. But I wanted to raise it here because I am very aware that more people than we realise go through this sort of thing and often keep it hidden, partly through shame and partly because you just don't want to talk much about such a painful thing. But I do know that talking to others who had experienced similar family breakdowns was helpful for us - if just to get the reassurance that we weren't the only ones and that we weren't such bad parents after all.
Comments
My elder daughter didn't speak to me nor respond to messages for over a year after my late-wife's mother died. She lives on a narrowboat and I had no idea where she was on the canal network other than which county she was in.
Then, one day, whatever it was lifted and she got back in touch and things are a lot better now.
Now she is gone, I am responsible for a lot of Dad's paperwork and I guess soon enough his care, and when I visit (a lot more often than was possible when Mum was alive, even when he resumed speaking to me - I still feel guilty about this but I don't think I could have done anything about it) I get to listen to him reminiscing on how he and Mum never had a disagreement or shared a cross word. There's no way to do anything other than nod and smile.
I'm sorry for your situation @Rufus T Firefly . It must suck the other way around, too.
This is quite a good book if you want an evidence based approach to working on relationship dynamics.
She has got some fixed ideas about us, which are just not true, and tries to interact with us accordingly. (E.g. when our children were school age, our household income for two adults and two children was over double her income as a single woman. She was convinced we were rich because we had over twice her income. When we said that raising children was not cheap, she didn't believe us. She still thinks we are rich now because she assumes we were saving throughout. We simply don't have the vast savings pot she thinks we have. We are not the rich relatives she thinks we are.)
I'd really like things to improve between us, but don't know how.
Yes - we know that there are mental wellbeing issues involved but we have also become aware in recent years that his behaviour (especially towards his sister) was really awful in many ways. So there are very long-standing issues that need to be addressed, even if he is willing.
My family (unlike my wife's) has always been rather semi-detached. My siblings and I moved to different parts of the country (or even abroad) and we only kept in contact sporadically. That's just how we are. But what we are experiencing with our son is a whole different level. At least with my siblings, I always knew where they were and we could talk about stuff (especially care of our parents in their later years).
My brother told me he was going to Korea to avoid paying child support for his two children. He was still in the Air Force at this time, and I had hoped he was saying that to distract us from what I guessed was another secret mission. Nope. We went over ten years without knowing if he was dead or alive. Finally, my parents contacted our congressman who did find him and told Mom and Dad that he was alive, but that he couldn't give us any more information than that.
Not long after that, he contacted my parents and eventually came to visit us with his new wife and their son.
His children from the first marriage will never forgive him; I think with good reason.
I do not want to imply this is happening in any of the above stories, This is just the story of my famly.
Hm. I'm having some feelings about this, being an adult who is working on getting back in touch with his dad in his 40s.
And given the kind of emotional labor I'm doing right now, the timeliness of this thread is really something. So this might be a sort of tale from the other side of that chasm.
And let it be said that I seriously honor my father and my mother, even as I deeply understand the struggles I'm going through with them. And they were generally good to me, so I'm a mild case as far as abuse goes (though there's some abuse I don't want to get into because I do honor my parents, mostly because my parents had too much on their plates dealing with each other.) Really, these days the line between "less than ideal" and "abuse" is hard for me to draw sometimes. Whether I was subjected to emotional abuse or not really depends on where you think the line is. I could see reasonable arguments on either side. *shrug*
There's a social expectation that you "grow up" and become "an independent man" according to a certain mold and...if you don't, what the fuck are you? Nobody. Nothing. A shameful blight, stain, and a drain on your family.
My father didn't fit the mold his father set and I think they never really got along after he grew up, even though my dad did eventually marry, settle down, and get a job. He was the first born and caught more of the questionable child-rearing tactics of his parents. His younger siblings had a more positive relationship with their parents, and did a better job of following in the family footsteps. There is still some rancor for that, I think, though it's hard to suss out unless you look closely, compounded by my father's choice to marry a disabled woman in a family that stressed Christian Science. Do the math. It made me very angry as a kid. Strange that my father lived closer to his parents than his brother and sister did, and took care of his mother in her old age. As an adult, I wonder at that. Scratch that, he earnestly believes in doing the right thing until it hurts...and beyond. I'm trying to work on that.
So, to me, I followed in my father's footsteps and floundered a lot as an adult. I've mostly gotten lucky in marrying someone who had better fortunes in life than I have. By the old standards of patriarchy, I'm a failure, living on my spouse's good fortune, even though I have a good degree and am obviously pretty intelligent.
So, if I go back home, who am I? What value do I have? Why should I even go back with anything to prove?
Maybe the son doesn't want to go back until he has established himself, and the present global economy isn't conducive to men establishing themselves in the way they were told they had to to become proper "men."
I get along with my parents. I honor them, and I do come by to visit once a year. But communicating is hard. The standards for parenting have gone up a lot since I was a kid and I think a lot of people like me are looking back and shaking our heads in disbelief at the things we were forced to put up with. And shaking our heads in disbelief at the economy we have inherited. And we are a little angry that the folks who set up this bloody world for us are looking at us like it's all our fault if we're still floundering into middle age.
If my father were less understanding, I'd probably drift away with more force than I have. You can't take your kids for granted. If you treat children like investments that you're entitled to cash in on when they're older, they might feel that's a little cynical and feel the same.