Estrangement and Alienation
A nuanced look at both sides of estrangement and what those lessons can teach us about reunification after alienation - STRT July 2026
“Carl Jung wrote that nothing affects children more than the unlived lives of their parents.”
~ Joshua Coleman, Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict
Quick Announcement
I have opened up a survey for currently alienated parents who are looking to support my research for my book on reunification. If you are comfortable sharing your experiences and your biggest questions, you will help me ensure this is the best possible roadmap for targeted parents.
This survey has two phases. Phase 1 takes about 7 to 10 minutes. Phase 2 goes deeper — about 20 to 25 minutes. Your answers will directly shape what goes into this book. There are no wrong answers. Please read the legal disclaimers carefully. They are required if you choose to take the survey.
Thank you for your courage and support as I research and put this book together. If you have already taken the survey, please share it with others as well. Thank you.
Is there a law saying I have to like you?
There is a great clip from the stage play and film Fences, showing the conversation between a father and son in 1950s Pittsburgh, setting the tone of a black family during the civil rights movement.
One of the best performances of this scene is delivered by the late James Earl Jones on stage. (Denzel Washington does a great job as well, but his take is softer and less vindictive than James Earl Jones. As a result, the audience interprets Denzel’s version as humorous.)
A compelling scene in a story shows the humanity of its characters. Troy (the father), played by James Earl Jones, harbors deep anger toward the world he lives in. He works hard for little gain, leaving him deeply dissatisfied with his environment. That anger bleeds into his parenting and worldview. And when left unchecked, it festers and stews until it destroys all the good things he built in his life.
As a father myself, I see the weight of fatherhood and acknowledge that Troy’s intentions in this scene came from a good place. He puts pressure and standards on his son, Cory, so that his son will be prepared for the world he is about to step into as a man. And that world has likely proven to be unforgiving and relentless to him.
And as a son, I see the pain in Cory’s eyes of not being recognized, appreciated, and accepted. The world he is growing up in is vastly different than the world his father grew up in.
What’s funny is that if you read some of the comments in this video, there are a few that make light of estrangement, saying things like: “And this is why we don’t talk anymore,” or “This is the kind of parent who will tell all the hospice workers how they did everything for their child but they only speak to them when they want something.”
Sometimes, a child is looking for a parent to say I love you and they get a harsh life lesson instead.
As far back as recorded history, there are instances of older generations looking down on younger generations for not being as smart, experienced, or knowledgeable. The decision to be tough on the younger generation is an attempt to prevent them from making the same mistakes. This is not to say that it is done well. If you listen to how Millennials and Gen Z talk about the Baby Boomers (and vice versa), there seems to be quite a bit of disdain, which leads us to the core topic of this article…
Estrangement
Alienated parents can find a lot of wisdom in the estrangement community because the circumstances of separation from their children are very similar.
In fact, alienated kids believe they are estranged, thinking that their decisions are their own, while oblivious to the manipulations done by a spouse, parent, or grandparent. The reasons they have for going no-contact sound justified in their minds, and that gives them the ability to say, with finality, that they want nothing to do with you.
On the flip side, alienated kids who realize the truth rebel against their alienator. It is not uncommon to see them become estranged from their alienator or have strict communication boundaries with limited contact. Here, the alienator’s tactics that were imprinted on the child get turned against them.
In some cases, you may find an estranged parent claiming that they are being alienated. In situations like these, you can only trust the facts. Alienation does push a parent to act irrationally because they are overwhelmed, while at the same time, a toxic parent will use whatever tools available to them to blame shift and position themselves as the victim. Shortly after I stepped into the role of being a public speaker on alienation, my alienator (stepmother) claimed that my father had manipulated my brother and me against her, while changing the narrative to say that he had done so originally against my mother. From what I have heard, she laments to those who will listen (even today) how she lost two sons, but she has never once reached out to me since I left. It is a lot easier to say you are alienated than to admit personal failings. (This is not an accusation against my readers, just a cautionary warning, as false alienation stories do exist.)
Going back to alienation, I often find that parents will hold out until their child is an adult, hoping they will reunite then. I discuss this dynamic in my article, The Alienation Trolley Problem. However, once the child becomes an adult, they self-enforce their alienation, which functions in the same way as estrangement. The alienator could die and still have a lingering effect on the child’s behavior and decision to stay no-contact.
The most dangerous thing for an alienated parent in this situation is to be caught up in their own emotions, which leads them to be unavailable to carry the frustration and hurt of their child. It leads to a mindset of, “Well, the door is always open, but if this is what they want, then that’s what they get…”
To prepare for this article, I read 5 books (4 on estrangement and 1 on alienation), and I will list them below in case you are interested.
Divorce Poison by Richard Warshak - A starter book on alienation. Good for education, but it only has a few action items for parents in chapter 7.
Forget Them Kids by Vivian King, Ph.D. - A book speaking from the parents’ perspective on estrangement. This book is highly critical of the victim narratives adopted by the adult children and the amplification caused by social media and therapists. Personally, I found this book to be egocentric and bitter. Best not to follow in the author’s footsteps.
Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child by Tina Gilbertson - A book focusing on helping estranged parents develop their emotional faculties to reunite. A lot of this book aligns with what I teach in this newsletter.
Rules of Estrangement by Joshua Coleman, Ph. D. - Joshua Coleman also has a SubStack I recommend titled, “Family Troubles.” His book is also one of the best on reconnecting after estrangement.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD. - A book on the perspective of the estranged child for dealing with toxic parents. This book is highly critical of parents, profiling them based on negative behaviors that the child can identify in their own family. The book assumes that the reader is a victimized child who is being hurt by an abusive parent, which dramatically shapes how the book is delivered.
There are two sides to estrangement, and to understand this issue that plagues the modern family, you have to see both sides from an unbiased perspective.
From there, we can draw wisdom from both sides to better set the conditions for reunification after alienation.
Estrangement from the Parents’ Point of View
Similar to alienation, most parents say that their relationship with their child was strong before the separation occurred.
However, as the child grew older, one or more factors led to a shift in their perception of the relationship with the parent. These factors operate on ideological polarities. Typically, you will see a child adopt a view antithetical to their parent’s philosophy and then judge their parent based on stereotypes stemming from it.
On a major level, this includes politics, religion, and sexual/gender identity. On a more nuanced level, the child’s perception of the kind of parental support they need is framed as a relational debt their parent owes them. Many parents attribute this to the rise of social media, where algorithms can curate content on pop psychology, politics, religion, social justice, and general education.
In all fairness, the world that today’s youth have grown up in is vastly different from that of their parents. The internet has already democratized access to information, and now, with the advent of AI, expertise in any of these fields has been further commodified.
As a consequence, it is not hard to find clear guidelines or strategies for anything you want to learn, and children who grew up using these tools know exactly where to look first. When this mentality is applied to parenting, these children assume that a parent, though oblivious, should use their access to free information to make better-informed decisions, and the lack of initiative to do so is perceived as intentional neglect.
There is just one major flaw here… it assumes that subject-matter expertise is universal across humanity, which is fallacious thinking. Just look at the diversity of video content talking about “gentle parenting.” It almost seems like no one has an agreed-upon definition of what it is, so there are countless videos criticizing the method, while just as many try to clarify how it is done correctly. And the icing on the cake is that you won’t see the other side, thanks to the algorithm.
So a child sees pop psychology online and resonates with the message without knowing the full context of the psychological terms. An argumentative parent is labeled as someone who is gaslighting or narcissistic, without knowing what those terms mean clinically or in reality.
This can be further compounded by therapists who take a child’s framing of the world at face value, encouraging them to sever their connection with their parent(s) to protect their “peace and mental health.”
The parents are completely caught unaware of the souring relationship they have with their child until they are cut off completely. It seems as though the child refuses to compromise and is highly critical of the parent’s behavior. In some cases, the child uses estrangement as a power reversal. What authority the parent once had is stripped from them, and the child is engaging in dehumanization tactics to punish the parent for what they feel is owed to them.
While this is ongoing, the child frames their situation as tragically heroic. They are breaking generational curses and healing their trauma. This sometimes might be corroborated by attending therapy and engaging in other forms of personal development. The trauma cycle they are breaking has become a core part of their identity.
If a parent tries to communicate with the hopes of reconciliation, they are shut down. When the parent reaches out and voices the pain they feel, the child minimizes their pain while saying, “What about all the things you did to me?”
Again, the parent is caught off guard and is unable to understand what led to the estrangement. Why? The measurement of quality parenting is different between the child and the parent. The child is measuring based on emotional attunement, and the parent is measuring based on money, time, and other sacrifices they made to provide for and support the child. Telling the child about all the sacrifices made for them only further enrages them and cements the estrangement. This puts both sides in a deadlock, in which each believes the other owes a debt.
Another major factor in estrangement is divorce. According to a survey by Joshua Coleman, 70% of parents said their estrangement with their child began after they divorced the other parent. This is where the lines between estrangement and alienation get muddied. On one hand, a parent with clear fault (adultery, addiction, emotional dysregulation, etc.) can create an environment where the child is bitter and hurt by that parent. However, most divorces are not so clear. Between the bad-mouthing that is likely to occur (sometimes on both sides) and the likelihood of an “unforgivable sin,” the child is thought to hold a grudge against the estranged parent.
Estranged parents also attribute their estrangement to when their child got involved with their romantic partner. Since there is no prior relationship with the spouse/partner, the parent struggles to open communication to repair the connection. This is further exacerbated when grandchildren are introduced, leading to alienation from the grandparents.
The worst of estrangement for the parent is very similar to the alienated parent. There is the loss of connection with your child, which leads to missing key growth moments from professional to familial moments, to being alienated from grandchildren, to the feeling of rejection from someone you poured yourself into. The grief involved can sink you into a deep depression, and invites speculation from others who will suspect that you did something abusive to your child to warrant the estrangement.
Before I dive into the child’s perspective, it is vitally important to set aside your own biases and personal frustrations and to objectively observe the language and details of the child’s point of view. Jumping to conclusions before knowing all the details is a surefire way to miss a critical insight that can put an estrangement case into perspective. The reason I want to hone in on this is that this skill helps you identify the values your child holds.
Whether you are alienated or estranged, your child will communicate specifics to you that may be glossed over, dismissed, or refuted on your terms, which leads the child to engage in avoidant behaviors.
I will be speaking generally here, and none of it is an accusation toward my readers. My only advice is to read with curiosity and withhold judgement or expectation, because that is the secret to understanding the estranged and alienated child.
Estrangement from the Child’s Point of View
Estrangement is the child’s last resort after a series of failed attempts to find middle ground with the parent, as those attempts were either dismissed or sparked heated debate. A child will only try to communicate the same way so many times before they give up altogether. Here is what the estranged child is likely trying to communicate:
A need for respect of their abilities, potential, and desires, and to be related to as a capable adult rather than managed as a child.
Ceasing any subtle or snide remarks that attack their identity or confidence (including sarcasm, backhanded compliments, or hurtful digs framed as play).
Acknowledgment of past hurt without it being minimized, explained away, or answered with a list of everything the parent did right.
Respect for their boundaries and autonomy in adult decisions (their relationship, their parenting, their money, their faith, their body) without intrusion or attempts to override them.
To feel heard rather than fixed, corrected, or argued out of what they feel.
An apology for the impact of what happened, backed by sustained change, not a defense of the intention behind it.
From the child’s perspective, the parent doesn’t even see that they are violating these requests, leading the child to believe that estrangement is the only protective measure available. In the child’s eyes, the estrangement is not an act of punishment. If you read estranged children forums, you will see a pattern behind the anger where they express their own version of grief and loss, wishing they could have a better relationship with their parent(s), only to reluctantly conclude that it is simply not possible in the current circumstances.
A great article on estrangement from the child’s perspective is “The Missing Missing Reasons.”
The author of the article points out that the estranged parent frames themselves as blameless by omitting any of the reasons given to them for the estrangement. The parent says the reasons for the breakdown of the relationship are missing. However, when you dig further into the past communication between the estranged parent and child, the missing reasons are, in fact, in the subtext (sometimes even overtly stated) and are purposely missing from the parent’s narrative. Hence, the “missing reasons are missing.”
Now, my intention is not to assign blame here; rather, I want to raise awareness of the context needed to reconcile a relationship. If reconciliation is the true goal of the estranged parent, then it is imperative to revisit the communication held in the past and examine where the child has communicated hurt and pain.
In the parents’ POV section, I mentioned how pop psychology and therapists have provided the child with language to contextualize their world and the relationships that have shaped it.
Yes, an argumentative person is not always a gaslighting and manipulative abuser. There is a spectrum, but at the same time, an argumentative person (as a personality trait) can be exhausting to deal with. Therapy can validate the child’s emotional experiences, which can lead them to confirm their beliefs about their parent. Whether those beliefs are correct or not is on a case-by-case basis and beyond the scope of this article.
This also applies to the perception of breaking intergenerational trauma cycles. Using myself as an example, you could say that I am estranged from my stepmother (the alienator). I have a list of reasons I severed the connection, even from before I discovered I was alienated. And now, as a father, I have a set of expectations for myself regarding how I will raise my kids so that they never have to experience the harm I grew up enduring. And I don’t think I would ever let my daughter interact with my alienator either. Would that qualify as step-parent alienation? To someone on the outside without context, it would seem like it.
To date, the alienator continues to lament her loss of her “sons,” saying she fed me, raised me, clothed me, and was directly responsible for my academic success. And you know, without a doubt, she has called me ungrateful for walking away from her. When I left Singapore in 2013, she told everyone who would listen that my father had poisoned my brother and me against her.
It is a strange dynamic to see the wolf cry wolf.
Now, this victim complex is not isolated to my case. If you look at the book Forget Them Kids (which I mentioned above), the author has let her bitterness bleed into it. And that is not even the original title. The book was originally titled, “Fuck Them Kids.”
There are also plenty of parent content creators like Doormat Mom, who create videos about their estrangement, talking in the same vein. These sit at the extreme end of the spectrum, and most estranged parents are not writing books or making videos about it. I point to the extremes because they put these dynamics in plain sight. When a parent handles the loss of their child with public contempt or with a running list of everything they provided, they display the exact temperament to the public that the child was trying to step away from. Some parents really are temperamental and difficult to be around, and a child watching their parent respond to estrangement with bitterness rather than reflection has little reason to expect reconciliation to go any differently.
This is also where a spouse or partner often enters the picture. In the parents' section, I noted that parents frequently attribute the estrangement to the partner their child chose. From the child's side, the story usually runs the other way. The partner did not turn them against the parent; the partner gave them a second reference point. Growing up inside a family, a child has no comparison for what counts as normal, so treatment that hurts them is viewed as ordinary. Building a life with someone raised under a different set of rules lets the child see their own upbringing from the outside. What once felt normal starts looking questionable, then unacceptable. The timing makes it easy for a parent to blame the partner, but more often, the partner only sets a new standard for what a healthy relationship should be.
It is worth saying that not every estrangement is a matter of temperament or miscommunication. Some children leave because of genuine abuse, whether emotional, physical, or sexual, and in those cases the distance is not a failed search for middle ground but a refusal to keep absorbing harm. This is the end of the spectrum where estrangement is least ambiguous.
None of this means the child's account is the whole truth. Memory is selective for everyone, and the child reconstructs the past through their own needs and wounds, just as the parent does. The point is not to say whose version is right, but to recognize that both people are working from a different perspective, and that reconciliation depends on each being willing to look past their own.
Alienation vs. Estrangement
From the outside, estrangement and alienation are difficult to tell apart. Both show the same refusal of contact, the same expressed fear or resentment, the same list of grievances, and the same certainty in the child that they have made the right call. The behavior you can see does not reveal its underlying cause, which is why well-meaning people get this wrong in both directions. They assume abuse where there was alienation, or they assume alienation where there was real harm. And sometimes, a parent has behaved imperfectly, leading the child to develop disdain for their actions while simultaneously being alienated from them.
The distinction that matters is not in the symptom but in the cause. Estrangement is a justified response to genuine harm. Alienation is an unjustified and disproportionate rejection that was engineered, usually by a favored parent, sometimes by a grandparent or another trusted figure, who taught the child to see a loving parent as a threat. And sometimes it is a blend of both.
I have seen an alienated child maintain a soft level of estrangement with a targeted parent after reunification because they couldn’t reestablish a parent-child relationship, even though that formerly alienated child has cut off the alienator. I have also seen a case where an alienated child has refused to reconnect even after reaching adulthood, because the targeted parent engages in behaviors that exacerbate the estrangement. As a result, every act in good faith is overshadowed by habits that lead the alienated child to continue staying no-contact.
Still, it helps to be able to tell the two apart, and there are a handful of ways you can do so. Each one helps a little, and none of them really gives you much finality. The truth is often messier than people would like, and to weigh everything evenly can be overwhelming. That is why much of this will depend on a case-by-case basis.
Proportion of the Response to the Alleged Harm
You have to treat every accusation with curiosity rather than a verdict, because false accusations and embellishments are both possible, and so is real harm that no one else ever saw. From there, a few questions help you weigh what you are hearing.
Does the behavior being described match the person as you have otherwise known them?
Does the alleged act carry any clear motive or benefit, or would it make no sense for that person to have done it?
And is there anything that corroborates the account, or does it stand entirely on its own?
What is the underlying assumption that the alleged harm stands upon? Is there a way to verify the truth of that assumption?
The severity of the allegation affects how you handle these questions. Some claims are so extreme that they fail the BS test. For example, I once heard an alienated child accuse their grandmother of urinating in their food repeatedly before it was served to them. It is an obvious lie because the act is grotesque, pointless, and unsupported by anything else around it. The shock value is meant to throw you off balance. But severe allegations also have to be given serious attention. An allegation of sexual abuse is not something you take for granted.
The hardest cases are the invisible ones. Abandonment, neglect, and psychological abuse leave no marks and rarely come down to a single moment you can point to. There, proportion is not something you can measure in one accusation at all. You have to look for a behavioral pattern over time.
If you are the parent reading this and searching your own conduct for where you went wrong, that instinct already tells you that you are not an abusive person. The extreme parent in these examples is almost never the one asking where they could do better. I lean on the extremes because they are easy to see, and seeing them clearly makes it easier to recognize the milder, far more common versions in ourselves. The aim is not to blame you. If anything, my hope is to help you mentalize—see as your child sees so you know what they are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. That is how you build your strategy to reconnect with them.
Grief and Ambivalence
The second way is observing grief. The expectation is that genuine estrangement carries ambivalence, the wish that things were different, while alienation carries contempt with no grief beneath it. There is something to that, but I don’t think it is a fixed state. An alienated child can reach ambivalence too, often after a long stretch of no contact. In the past, I described the emotional state of the severely alienated child in layers.
After a considerable amount of time being no-contact with my mother, I was apathetic towards her. I had given up on a relationship with her because feeling anything about her was emotionally exhausting.
If you were to peel back the onion, the emotional state would look like this:
Apathy → Anger → Fear → Grief
Apathy was the default state so I could focus on my life. Anger was the protective peacocking behavior whenever my mother was trying to reach out. Fear was hidden under the anger due to the need to protect myself from the consequences of interacting with my mother. And at its center were grief and hurt.
This doesn’t mean that 100% of me had rejected her. Deep down, there was a part of me still carrying the grief of losing my connection to her, but the emotions of fear (especially of my alienator) were so strong that they overshadowed any grief that I held. And since it is easier to be apathetic than angry or fearful, I defaulted to a state of indifference.
Child’s words vs the Alienator’s words
The third way is to ask whose story the child is telling. The expectation is that an alienated child parrots someone else’s words, and that you will catch the borrowed framing if you listen. In practice, you usually will not. The script gets absorbed and retold in the child’s own language, in their own voice, with their own examples, until it sounds exactly like lived conviction to everyone around them. I had a way of talking about my mother that was entirely my own words, and no one ever suspected otherwise. This included sports coaches, teachers, and close friends who knew me well.
Put together, none of these is a clear litmus test, and each one fails in real cases, including my own. That points to the truest and most unsettling thing about alienation.
The alienated child believes they are estranged.
The rejection feels like their own free choice, made for good reasons, and that certainty feels identical to the certainty of a child who left because of real harm. This is why you cannot resolve the question by asking the person whether someone turned them against you. They will tell you, honestly, that no one did. I believed my decisions were my own long before I understood how much psychological abuse warped my way of thinking.
It is just as important to say that false alienation exists, and it runs the other way. Some parents who were genuinely abusive, or who genuinely earned their estrangement, will claim alienation to escape accountability. They frame their child’s distancing as someone else’s manipulation, because it is easier to be the victim of a scheming ex than to sit with their own conduct. Again, this is not an accusation against you, the reader, but I do have to point it out because I have met many parents whose behavior was clearly shooting themselves in the foot when it came to reunification.
You should also know that the sources you turn to for help are not neutral. The literature on alienation tends to favor the rejected parent. The literature on estrangement leans toward the child. Each can confirm what the other refuses to see, so the only honest way forward is to learn from both and make an informed decision afterward.
Additional Resources on Estrangement
Anthony Hopkins on Estrangement from his daughter.
While I have not read his memoir, I found his answer in this interview communicated a lot of the grief and hurt that most estranged parents carry.
Oprah’s recent video on estrangement.
This is not as in-depth and it covers a lot of the basics of estrangement, but it can be a helpful starting point for more info.
Role Reversal
At a certain point, your parents become your children, and the quality of your ability to care for them will be determined by the quality of their parenting and the responsibility they took over the course of their lives. There is a great sense of irony here. Just like there is no law saying we have to like our children, there is no legal obligation to care for our parents in their old age. Many people are happy to stay no-contact or place their parents in hospice.
When we become parents, we too take on this responsibility. We nurture our children so they can grow into strong, bright adults who will go on to nurture their own children. And when our mental and physical faculties diminish, we become children again, clinging to familiarity and routines, depending on others for basic tasks, and sometimes losing our ability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary.
Now I am a staunch individualist, and I sincerely believe that a person cannot pour from their cup until they have first filled it. It is not selfish to take care of your needs, even if someone else has to wait.
One of the big discussions my wife and I have often is about money. Money to raise our kids, ensure their education is covered, and to support us in our old age. Even though children are often expected to care for their parents in old age, we don’t want to thrust that responsibility on them. Our health, well-being, and financial ability are our responsibility.
Last year, I wrote a lengthy article titled "The Crucifixion of the Modern Parent." The core thesis of that article is that, today, we as parents are balancing an overwhelming number of expectations, beyond alienation. Adding alienation to economic, cultural, and social constraints leaves many parents in a pit of despair, resulting in some tragically giving up completely.
Given that many of these challenges are inherently systemic, the most anyone can do is actively plan ahead to mitigate their own risks while raising their own profile.
That means:
Exercising to keep your body strong in old age.
Growing professionally to increase your earning potential.
Strengthening your communication skills to expand your network.
Budgeting so you always have funds available for leverage.
Investing, so you are doing more than trading time for money.
Learning so your brain stays active and plastic.
Eating good food to stay healthy and avoid illnesses.
These are just the baseline behaviors that minimize the burden on our children so that when they are adults, or even parents, they have significantly less to carry while they navigate their own challenges.
More importantly, they are the ingredients to a fruitful life for you.
Again, there is no law or rule requiring a child to care for their parent in old age. This practice is just something that has carried forward from our history as human beings. Our capacity to care for our parents is shaped by many factors in life, and yet alienation and estrangement will dramatically shape those decisions even more than money or time.
I think that is the greatest fear of estranged parents. Whether they were good parents or not, whether the estrangement is justified or not, the estranged parent is left thinking to themselves that they are truly alone and vulnerable.
We can discuss the ethics of it all day, but the debate will never change an estranged child’s mind. If they don’t care about their estranged parents’ perspective or opinions, then their criticisms will be ignored out of spite.
Which then begs the question… What would change their mind?
I mentioned before the importance of understanding what your alienated child is thinking because those thoughts shape how they perceive the world.
Understanding how your child thinks is not a tactic to win them back. But it is the only ground on which reconciliation can be built, because you cannot answer a need you do not see.
So what would change their mind? For starters, almost never an argument. You cannot reason a person out of a position their identity now rests on, and every attempt to prove them wrong only confirms the story that you do not listen.
The thing is that you cannot control whether your child returns, but you can control whether you are someone worth returning to. That means staying available without pursuing, holding the door open without standing in it demanding they walk through. It means carrying your child’s hurt instead of your own, which is the opposite of the resigned feeling that you often hear from estranged parents, where they say, “Oh well, the door is open. It is up to them to decide.”
The changes that actually move an alienated or estranged child tend to come from outside your reach and on their own timeline. They grow up and see more. They become parents themselves, or they watch the person who shaped their story mistreat someone else, or catch them in a lie, or simply reach a point where the alienation narrative no longer fits their life. You cannot schedule any of these, nor can you pick which one it will be. What you can do is make sure that when they reach that point, you are calm, present, and recognizably different from the person they were taught to fear.
The environment you create is what they look at first, because if it is a place where they feel safe, they will be more likely to open up and explore what a relationship with you might feel like.
Reunification with your alienated child is a process of managing guilt. You cannot allow your own guilt to influence the environment you create for your child, and simultaneously, you are managing the guilt of your child, given their fears of interacting with you and going against the loyalty to the alienator.
It will not be quick, and it will not be linear. As I always say, consistency is key here. A reply to one message does not mean that message was the one that worked, because it may be the slow accumulation of progress over the years. And sometimes, a child can take a step toward you and then retreat again.
If the only goal is to get your child back, every year without them will hollow you out. The deeper goal is to heal, to keep the alienation from deciding the rest of your life, and to build a life full enough that you are not spending it waiting by the door every second of the day. That is the work that makes you someone they may one day want to come home to.
Concluding Thoughts
I was once asked by someone who knows my alienator whether I would be willing to have dinner with the alienator if the opportunity ever arose.
I have not spoken to the alienator since May 2013, and based on the patterns I have seen, I do not think I will ever speak to her again. Still, I gave this hypothetical some thought, and here was my answer.
I could do it, but I wouldn’t be the Andrew she remembers. I wouldn’t allow the things she had done for me to be held against me. And if she were to escalate the situation, I would not allow myself to be manipulated into submission.
Note: Keep in mind, I also have to eat my humble pie here. The research shows that it is very easy for an abused child to fall back into old patterns with an abuser, even if they have been apart for a long time.
There are many skills my alienator taught me. She was in my life for almost 13 years. For example, I skipped 1st grade thanks to her tutelage (though the learning experience was not a pleasant one). She pushed me to be a voracious reader, which continues to pay off for me today. When she was trying to set up an education facility in Singapore, I was her assistant, which helped me learn many of my early business skills.
And I am grateful for those experiences, even the ones that were hurtful. It is because of her that I learned to hold the perspective I have today. There is no justification for her behavior, and if you have read my previous articles, you will catch small stories of my life where she was extremely hurtful and abusive. I try not to share too much about them because I think it is more beneficial to focus on the lessons rather than the pain. Anyways, those experiences have shaped me in ways I am still trying to figure out.
But it is important to remember that two opposing things can be true. And alienation can be rife with conflicting truths:
My alienator pushed me hard to achieve my potential. But she also did so in a way that hurt me, and I wish she hadn’t.
I am grateful for the lessons I learned from both the trauma and the good that the alienator did. But I also wish I had been raised by my mother so I could have been someone better.
I have learned how to work through my trauma, and that has made me a better person, but I would have been much farther along in life without it.
Did my alienator lose her son? Yes. But she has not tried to contact me either.
I have learned to sit with my experiences and accept them without judgment. I don’t think I could sit with the alienator for dinner without that.
My close friend and formerly alienated child via abduction would say,
“I didn’t take my power back until I realized this experience happened for me, not to me.”
— Dawn Endria McCarty
And I think that is what most estranged adult children and adult alienated children need to grow and heal. It is not an easy thing. You have to learn to let go of the urge to seek retribution and work through your own fears and knee-jerk reactions. Additionally, you want to work toward something positive, like challenging yourself to achieve difficult aspirations or moonshots, creating meaningful impact in your community, and sitting in awe of all things beautiful.
And as a parent, you can set that example for them, so that your child can aspire to stand on your shoulders and take the next step forward.
Until next time,
Andrew Folkler
Liked this Article? Here are a Few Past Articles You May Like…
Are you a writer on Substack?
If you write about alienation or estrangement, let me know! I would be happy to exchange recommendations to better support our readers.
If you are a general reader who writes about other topics on Substack, please consider recommending Shortening the Red Thread so that other parents can find this newsletter and get the support they need to reunite.
As always, I deeply appreciate your support, and I am grateful for your feedback as I develop these articles.
Thank you Andrew. Very well written and illuminating as all of your writing is. My sons are in this painful situation and I am constantly seeking insight to bring us all through this the best I can. You are helping so many of us. 🙏🏼
Andrew, thank you for this piece. I found it deeply thoughtful, especially your insight that “the alienated child believes they are estranged.” That is one of the clearest and most important truths in this whole field.
What I particularly value in your work is that you write from inside the alienated child’s mind. You explain how the rejection can feel authentic, autonomous, and morally justified, even when it has been shaped by manipulation.
I wonder, though, whether there is more to explore around coercive control, adolescent vulnerability, and identity formation. In severe alienation, especially during adolescence, the child is often not simply making a “choice” in the ordinary sense. Their identity, loyalty, fear, dependency, and need for belonging can become fused with the rejection of the targeted parent.
This is where I think alienation is not only a relationship breakdown, but a developmental and coercive-control issue. The child may sincerely believe they are protecting themselves, while also being psychologically positioned into a role: the loyal child, the rescued child, the child of the “toxic” parent, the independent thinker, the one breaking generational trauma.
Once rejection becomes part of identity, reconciliation is not just a change of mind. It can feel like a collapse of self.
I would be really interested in your thoughts on that, particularly as someone who has lived the experience from the inside. I think your perspective and this developmental/coercive-control lens could complement each other powerfully. I suspect that bringing these perspectives together may help us better understand not only why alienated children reject a loving parent, but also why so many struggle to find their way back.