Ep 127: How to Heal a Broken Bond

<p><a href="https://talkingtoteens.com/podcast/healing-broken-bonds/">Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episode</a></p><p><br>After all the blood, sweat, and tears of raising a kid, any parent would want a good relationship with a son or daughter that’s reached adulthood. But sometimes, conflicts that start small during the teenage years grow more intense, and parent-child relationships are ruined by resentment. Many parents find themselves painfully estranged from their grown children after they’ve left the nest. The sad part is, these rifts could have been mended before teens grew into adults, if only parents knew the right approach.</p><p><br>Oftentimes, parents do attempt to remedy deep conflicts with teens, but they go about it in the wrong way. Although they have the kid’s best interest at heart, they find themselves using defensive language, or fail to truly empathize with their children. If you want to keep your kids from distancing themselves as adults, you’ll have to really connect and hash things out from the heart.</p><p><br>To teach us how to overcome bad blood between ourselves and our teens, we’re talking to Joshua Coleman, author of <a href="https://amzn.to/3kx4OMe"><em>Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict</em></a>.  Joshua became estranged from his own daughter when he went through a difficult divorce. It became worse when he remarried and had kids with his new wife.</p><p><br>He was eventually able to reconnect with his daughter, but the pain of the experience was unforgettable. He decided to dedicate his efforts to researching parent-child estrangement, becoming an expert. He now hosts weekly Q&amp;A’s and writes a regular newsletter on the subject, along with publishing several books about it. </p><p><br>So what can Joshua teach us about healing our relationships with our teens? In our interview, he talks about how part of the reason why kids distance themselves is a change in culture. We also talk about ho