If your child has gone NC

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If you’re a parent of an adult child who has gone NC with you, do you know why?

I’ve read so many accounts, on here and elsewhere, of parents who seem completely baffled and heartbroken by it, can think of no reason at all.

But surely for a child to do something as drastic as cut all contact, you must have an inkling why?

as the OP stated, please provide the specific examples where adult children of parents who have provided them with wonderful childhoods, weren’t neglected or abused and instead had warm, loving, supportive, kind and respectful treatment from their parents suddenly ceased all contact with their parents.

You keep saying this, yet ignore posts, including mine, where the reality does not fit.

I'm not sure what you want?

My youngest DS will be NC 6yrs in March.

We had a great weekend! He came to visit, I spent the whole weekend with him driving my car in preparation of his test. He had the test, passed, yay!! He asked for some money to cover insurance, I explained I could lend it but couldn't give it. He was happy with that and was delighted to start driving the car he'd bought before the test. Just before Covid shut us all down.

After a few weeks, I said sorry, but I do need that money back. He repaid it. Nothing since.

He then went NC with his DB, his aunt, his cousins over a couple of years. He would chat with my DM when she phoned until he mentioned he was unhappy with his partner, my DM suggested he could have a break for a bit and reset. He hung up on her (she was mid 70s) then sent a text full of vitriol to her, how disrespectful she was, he wasnt a child. He could make his own decisions etc. He spoke with my DF some months later, then also perceived a slight and whoosh, gone.

No idea where he is. Where he lives. If he's even still alive.

He was with a bit older woman (originally he was 18 and she was 24), I assume he still is. He was at uni, working, paying for her, a home, she has a 'title' and royal connections but I think that's all bollocks.

Do I know why he's gone NC? No. None of us do. I'm sure he has a reason, I just wish I could have a conversation so he could explain.

Tell us what the circumstances were. What did the child say about the reasons for them cutting off contact with you? What happened during their childhood - was it stable and loving and there was no neglect or abuse at all? Were you kind and loving and supportive to them? Were you close to them and had a warm, loving, kind and normal parenting relationship and then what, they allegedly suddenly cut off contact with you forever for no reason and with no warning, having never tried to discuss issues about their childhood with you? Explain to us what happened from your perspective, if you want to claim that somehow you are the exception to the very clear and well documented pattern in all academic research on the matter.

Perhaps you are one of the very rare group of parents whose child was born with violent criminal psychopathy. Or perhaps your child went off the rails and became a heroin addict (although usually in that circumstance it would be the parent who ends up cutting off contact, but for a limited time until the child is in recovery, and even then one would question how and why that happened to the child if the parents provided them with good and engaged parenting as happy children/ teenagers/ young adults who has been given a good life generally don’t just randomly decide to go out and start taking heroin).

Perhaps you could enlighten us all on the specific circumstances which make you completely innocent and blameless and why you think the child to whom you allegedly provided an idyllic childhood suddenly woke up one morning and decided for - according to you - no reason at all that even speaking to you was so unbearable for them that they could not do it anymore.

This is vanishingly rare and yet the proportion of estranged parents who claim they have “no idea” why their adult children don’t have any contact with them far, far exceeds the proportion of criminal psychopaths etc. in society, therefore, the only available rational conclusion is that the vast majority of these parents who claim that their children ceased contact with them for “no reason” are delusional, self-righteous people who refuse to accept how appalling their own behaviour has been and take any responsibility for it.

If you have a more plausible explanation - either at a general population level or, as the OP requested in her posts, a personal story of your own to explain your belief that you are the victim - then I am sure everyone will be very interested to read it.

I like being alive so I’m not going to hold my breath.

Did you read my first post? The detail I gave?

Just incase anyone thinks this whole ‘no contact’ is a new and trendy concept dreamt up by therapists.
I come from a generation of ‘no contact’ (shock!’) which began in around 1969 (well before I was born and my mother was a teenager) when my grandmother did something my great grandmother found unforgivable (it was, to be fair). The ripples of that passed to my mother via her mother. And then to me. I decided, probably aged around 10 as I was a bright child, that this ‘stopped with us’ and I’d never not speak to my mother. Turned out my mother had other ideas. Despite my best efforts and after 35 years of the same shit, and after having daughters of my own (can you believe I hoped I’d have sons just incase I repeated the pattern) I said enough is enough. My daughters and my love for them really did open my eyes (quite painfully to be honest it’s taken 10 years now) to realise how messed up it all was. Am determined not to let that pass down. Pain stops with me. I’ll absorb that generational shit, I’ll say this stops with me (and all the judgement that comes with it) and I’ll be a bloody forcefield around my kids. It’s never simple. But it’s worth it.
edited to add: I wish it had never come to that and I believe I did everything I could to prevent it. But others have a different view and feel like I’m as much to blame (the child, but apparently now I’m an adult that doesn’t count because we’re ’both adults’). So I have suffered from it. Shamed because of it.

I currently am very very low or no contact with family. I call it NC. Not my choice.

Currently a phone call with my mum once a week, a few texts with my dad for the last couple of years and one phone call I currently don’t have an address for him since he split up with my step mum. And my siblings railroaded me out of the family. I get the cursory Xmas present and birthday card which completely overwhelms and upsets me as it’s done so my mum can still say they haven’t kicked me out of the family. Last year I went home to see parents siblings and families were all sick so I couldn’t see my nieces and nephews and so on and so on. One sibling called me this year first time in 5 years so I panicked and thought a parent was ill and got off the phone and was sick. I don’t know the reasons it’s been done to me at all as they just tell mum it’s not like that and it’s not happened. ?

I do know that I had a horrendous breakdown a number of years ago and when I needed help and support noone was there. I also know when I finally had some therapy the therapist was able to tell me I had a neglectful childhood with emotional abuse, I needed an expert to tell me the words for me to know. I also know the therapist advised me to go no contact to help myself but I couldn’t do that to my parents. I love them all dearly.

so I will be in the big minority of people who are estranged but don’ know the reasons. It hurts so much it’s horrific and Christmas is looming. I can’t describe how bad I feel , oh and I have an adult DC too so they’ve done it to my child too.

Honestly?

And therein lies the problem.

Yes. And you didn’t answer these questions and provide an actual account of what happened.

@Accaron your anger at all parents shines through brightly. I hope you have a good support network around to help you when your childhood trauma gets you down.
I imagine you are not a parent, not a single parent struggling with poverty, ill health and an abusive ex.
Most parents do the best they can with the resources they have available. Some do well especially if they had a healthy upbringing, some not so well if they were neglected in their own childhood. Some are outright abusive. I would say the third group are in the minority.
Most parents want what is best for their children and will make sacrifices so that their children have better opportunities than they had themselves.
I am an estranged parent. My son has Asperger’s, everything is very black and white for him. In his mind there will never be enough. He took up two thirds of all the resources available, his two siblings shared a third.
I don’t think in your mindset of parental abuse and children being scapegoated you can understand the trauma that the whole family go through when one member’s needs and demands swallow the house whole.
And yet in his mind he was rejected, not included, not loved enough. When he stopped calling I respected his decision. If he felt safer without me in his life then so be it. I write to him occasionally, let him know the door is open and he is welcome and missed. He doesn’t know where I live now and that’s ok too; he had quite a violent side to him and I’m getting on and not so quick at getting out of the way.
I know why he is estranged and I’m sad about that and I’m ok with it too.
I hope you get to a better place, I can recommend The Hoffman Process as a very helpful and healing therapy for coming to terms with childhood trauma. I found it very helpful.

What else do you need to know?

What did it say, that made it “hate mail”?

I am not “angry at all parents”.

I am a parent.

I am angry about abusive parents who desperately try to justify themselves and are so shameless that they’ll even do so on a public forum, yes.

Given the number of self-justificatory responses from estranged parents on this thread the probability of them all being as blameless as they claim to be is very close to zero.

I also find it absolutely disgusting that you are trying to justify abusive behaviour based on the parents having a “hard life”, or having had poor upbringings themselves. It’s one of the worst stereotypes that people who have experienced abuse as children have to cope with: that somehow this will make them abusive themselves. The opposite is the case in the vast, vast majority of cases and we overcompensate, if anything. It’s yet another way to try to abuse the already abused and pretend they must be the problem. Adults have choices. No matter how your life has been you have a choice to decide how you will live and what kind of person you will be. This is yet another kind of deflection and victim blaming.

As academic research bears out and many posts on this thread alone demonstrate, the vast majority of us who grew up with such abusive parents and have therefore decided to cut off contact with them have done so precisely because we refuse to be like them or allow our own children to be around people like them, in order to stop the cycle of generational trauma.

We are the barrier, the shield, we absorb all of the victim blaming and lies or just block it entirely despite all of the pressure exerted to try to bully us again just like when we were children, because we are the change, and we will not bend to your gaslighting.

I hope you are ok. Has your DS been in contact with other people so you know for sure they aren’t ill. 💐

That’s very interesting. I would love to know more about your experiences with the Hoffman Process. Your situation sounds similar to mine and I completely identify with what you say about one child taking so much of the resources.

I will bite though probably regret it. My son is on the spectrum . He had needed a lot of help and support from being very young. I devoted myself heart and soul to fighting for him. Fighting for his needs to be addressed at school, trying to shield him from situations which upset and challenged him, trying to make everything alright for him. My other children’s needs were very much set aside because I only had so much energy . I did my absolute best. He developed mental health issues which turned into severe depression as he faced adult life because he struggled to cope. Years of living at home unemployed followed with him often disappearing into the night leaving a suicide note. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t enjoy holidays in case he topped himself whilst I was away. Sought help for him and for myself in every way I could . We had the crisis team out one night when he walked out. I pleaded with doctors, bought self help books, literally worried myself sick.

Eventually he found a therapist he could talk to after a few failed attempts. He told me she had told him to cut me out of his life. I don’t know if that was his interpretation of what she actually said, or whether it was true. He became angry, bitter and verbally abusive. Finally he got himself together enough to leave and things have just got worse and worse. He calls up now about twice a year and just rants at me. He’s blocked his siblings and his father who are distraught also. I’m beginning to wonder if he has a personality disorder now.

I am just utterly heartbroken. I am not an abusive parent. I’ve broken myself to try everything I could his entire life to help support and protect him. No doubt there will be many who say I’m whining and gaslighting. Be grateful you will not know what this is like. I can’t accept that he doesn’t want any of us in his life. I can’t accept I have lost him. It’s something we will all have to live with though.

@Accaron It’s sad how you twist and turn everything to your agenda.
I am the child of abusive parents, I am the parent who turned my self inside out to shield my children and gave them all the love and attention that I never had.
Illness and poverty were a reality, they are not an excuse, it happened. And in spite of that I got them all raised and into university and eventually independent.
And yet even with my best efforts I am estranged from my son and all you can do is scream ‘abuse!’
I raised them on Rogerian principles: that every person is inherently doing their best every day, and every person has their own innate wisdom to figure out their own solutions given enough time and encouragement. There were no punishments only conversations on how they would consider rectifying wrongdoing. We had a democratic household with weekly meetings to talk about what was working and what needed adjusting. It worked pretty well on the whole.
My son is doing what is best for him right now and I respect that. Turning up on his doorstep and proclaiming my undying love for him and begging for forgiveness would alarm him and make him feel unsafe in his home.
I wasn’t perfect, nobody is.
But you don’t want to hear that, you are determined that I’m a monster. Guess what? Life is complicated, it’s not black and white.

I also had neglectful and abusive parents. I know what that is like and I was determined to give my own kids everything of myself . Too much, as it turns out .

Many, many people across the globe have always and still do live in poverty and not alienate their children to the point where their children feel they have to cut off contact with the parent for self-preservation. It is absolutely no excuse. Children don’t cut off contact with their parents because their parents are poor. They cut off contact with their parents because they were neglectful or abusive and even then, only generally when it has been ongoing and extreme and the parents have refused repeatedly to acknowledge or accept responsibility for it or show any remorse.

What on earth are you talking about? Have you actually read the posts properly? Negligence and abuse? Where is that even suggested?

I think you should step away from this thread because you're no longer making sense and you are being really awful to other posters.

DH has told FIL exactly why many times (every 6 months, FIL gets in touch like clockwork), but FIL refuses to hear it. Not much more we can do tbh. Ignorant twat.