This post is not the typical bitter, toxic parent rant about why a mature age or adult child who is estranged fails to surface, call, or come home for the holidays.
It is honest advice about how to think rationally about your relationship to offspring if they are the product of a toxic family situation… and unfortunately, you are the person whose life decisions exposed them to it.
We are sharing a spoiler alert in the hopes of dissuading parents not yet ready to accept their role in creating a Cluster B child or kid.
We know this one is a sensitive topic that tends to sting quite a bit, so we are giving you a chance to either hop to another article on the popular topics list or to bookmark this page and come back when you have time to really read and process the necessary grieving time likely to be necessary after reading it.
Are you ready to read with the intent to understand and listen — rather than to project and errantly assume the writers of this particularly unique post are not estranged from their own child, children, step-children, or their own family members?
Can you listen with a presumptive understanding no one is being critical or intending to defend or attack either children who behave poorly or adults who — typically through no true fault of their own — were taught NLP based turns of phrase by their own toxic parents that are likely to have made us ALL parent or strive to co-parent at least in part from a somewhat narcissistic or truly traumatized perspective?
Here’s the assertion most likely to piss you off before it helps wake your sleeping tush up and starts to heal you.
If you are reading this post because you have had a falling out with your teen or adult child that you do not understand and you ended up estranged, the following news and related insights are pretty much so the polar opposite of warm-fuzzy advice or in any self-help social circles the metaphoric equivalent of glam.
If you were not there for your child when they were growing up or you behaved in ways that make or have made you appear in the past like a person who has a Cluster B personality disorder, applaud them for setting and enforcing healthy boundaries if you, as their parent, refuse to respect their expressed wishes about how they are comfortable being spoken to or treated.
Yes.
We said that and we will say it again.
If you were not there for your child when they were growing up or you behaved in ways that make or have made you appear in the past like a person who has a Cluster B personality disorder…
Applaud their desire to limit chaos manufacturing and confusion for them in their own life.
If you trigger your adult child, for WHATEVER reason…
If you refuse to respect their rights as human beings to live life the way they want, free from social interference or berating pervasive and constant criticism…
If their MATE or their romantic partner’s family hates your guts…
If they are living under a false belief that you did or did something that you did not — or convinced that you should have known some crucial piece of life-altering information and you didn’t…
Or if they actively seek validation from YOUR Abuser(s)…
Let them go.
Loving adult children from a distance who place no worth on your human existence is truly the best way for them to be successful. If they can’t be with you, as a parent one must let their offspring fly as far away from the nest as their mind, heart, and conscience enable them to go.
Now for the hardest part (quite probably to hear).
Only dysfunctional people enable other human beings to behave in unfettered or unaccounted for ways that are abusive. Parent abuse, like child abuse, is a pervasive social crisis and healthcare epidemic… but parents of children with Cluster B natures who ended up that way by accident due to the under-education of an emotionally sensitive, kind, and loving parent’s choices tend to get all the blame while the true hospitality abusers strive to keep them socially estranged and isolated for pleasure.
All parents are human, but some… have very different core values by nature. Adult children of toxic parents all tend to grow up and choose romantic partners (for instance) who tend to resemble or energetically recreate the social dynamic of Abusers and Enablers.
Resist the urge to nurture an egocentric viewpoint in your own psychology. If you told your child that YOUR Abuser — a person who was also abusing them directly or by default via exposure — “loves them in their own way”, you lied not only to yourself but also to them.
Trauma bonding is NEVER love.
No lover is entitled to abuse their significant other.
No child or adult child is “entitled” to behave in ways that are non-productive, anti-social, or abusively caustic and ultimately antagonistic, either.
It is crucial to understand the difference between real love — healthy love that includes a fond appreciation of self and another, valuing the opportunity to BE in a relationship with that person rather than staying from a sense of fear or obligation — and a relationship that showcases the features of a successful trauma bond.
Men and women who are improperly educated about the meaning of the word love tend to have grown up with or around people who used gaslighting techniques specifically designed to cause the youngster to either become an Abuser themselves, a Complicit Conformist, or an Enabler.
A common ploy of Machiavellian, situational abusers is to target and bully whichever one appears to be the most spiritually in tune and emotionally mature and intelligent family member to the point their health fails, they suffer from severe C-PTSD, and they are literally forced to self-protect. If the targeted victim tries to beg for mercy or to seek emotional support and relief from the constant sabotage, undermining, deliberate baiting, and toxic shame promoting aggression, they are accused of being at fault — blamed for at least half if not all of the mess.
Pushing other humans to the brink of duress then blaming them if they react in an emotive way is NOT evidence that the provoked human is a by nurture or nature, overt or covert Abuser.
Ever watch a grandparent known for having been abusive to their offspring while they were young pit that same person against their own grandchildren once the toxic parent reaches grandparent status? Ever notice how the most toxic of adults who abuse will strive to undermine their own child’s relationship with their little ones?
Ever notice how the most toxic of adults who abuse will strive to undermine their own child’s relationship with their little ones?
The little digs that undermine the esteem of a parent in a child’s eyes…
Treating the grandchild like the Golden Child while undermining the biological parent’s credibility day in and day out, year after year… until they can capitalize on the child’s natural rebellion and permanently alienate the youngster or youngsters from the child they, as the toxic parent, perceive as a “failure”.
[Keep in mind every abusive parent who fails to raise a conformist who actively ENJOYS using, gaslighting, and abusing others tends to claim their own child is a failure. If that same child develops psychological or romance troubles as a result of poor parenting, the person who failed them will strive to overwhelmingly blame them.]
If your own parent — a toxic grandparent — or an abusive ex goes out of their way to destroy your relationship with a child by telling them tall tales, speaking negatively and spreading malicious gossip or abusive turns of phrases to them in front of your face or behind your back, it is crucial to understand that there is likely to come a time when choosing to withdraw your social support for your offspring is likely to be essential.
There is a myth that all parents of Cluster B children are willfully abusive, deliberately negligent, and egocentric by nature.
Consider the plight of a family scapegoat. Raised as an abused child, told that trauma bonding is love, and that if they complain or out their abuser that they will be targeted for extreme social abuse and shunned.
All humans make mistakes in judgment based on the information they have readily amassed at the time. When new insight or intel arrives, only Cluster B people choose to stonewall, to refuse to take personal responsibility for the choices they make, or to strive to self-educate with the intention of understanding their own forensic psychological development.
If someone refuses to listen with an intent to understand, ending conversations with them about any and all topics or subject matters and striving to keep a safe physical and emotional distance from them is PRUDENT.
Applaud their courage if they chose to live their own life away from anything or anyone who triggers them to revert to dysfunctional ways.
If they were alienated due to a toxic person or mobbing peer-group gaslighting, it is still perfectly okay to be proud of your child for striving to self-advocate.
If they are NOT Cluster B by or before the age of 28, chances are once the toxic peers finish toying with them for their own selfish and sadistic pleasure that the same people who are likely to have turned on you — or a copycat version of your own Abuser that your child subconsciously selected as their mate — are likely to hand your child their own arse on a plate.
When and if that time comes, resist the urge to leap to their rescue. Not because you don’t want to help but because they are likely to tell their abuser they spoke with you and suddenly once again you will be pigeon-holed into the position of playing the monster in the manufactured and utterly malicious Abuser created triangulation.
There will be no words you can say and no ‘thing’ you can do to win the loyalty or affection of a child biologically or socially disinclined to give it.
Read flyingmonkeysdenied.com posts, pages, glossary term definitions, and meme gallery collections over on NSFM as many thousands of times as you need to understand that if your adult child is a vertical thinker with a predisposition toward self-promoting, they will align with whichever party or person they feel is likely to give them a social or financial advantage.
If you do not know how to handle your relationship with your child because you feel abused, taken advantage of financially or socially, and you are not being treated as if your own fundamental human rights are something worthy of respect, chances are it would behoove you greatly to do some serious reading about the difference between setting and enforcing healthy lifestyle choices and having what is known in self-help social circles as “porous boundaries”.
If you make promises to a mature teen or young adult that you will buy them things in exchange for them being willing to NEVER SPEAK TO OR INTERACT with a loving parent or targeted person again, it crippled the victims — both the offspring as well as the person who has been successfully estranged or fully alienated from the TARGETED VICTIM. The abused child, converted to Abuser by Proxy, conforms and assists in the soul murder of their true Abuser’s target.
When new insight or intel arrives, only Cluster B people choose to stonewall, to refuse to take personal responsibility for the choices they make, or to strive to self-educate with the intention of understanding their own forensic psychological development. Nice people tend to value the social and emotional chance to connect and share pro-social physical, intellectual, and emotional space.
If someone refuses to listen with an intent to understand, ending conversations with them about any and all topics or subject matters and striving to keep a safe physical and emotional distance from them is PRUDENT.
AGAIN — applaud their courage if they chose to live their own life away from anything or anyone who triggers them to revert to dysfunctional ways.
When new insight or intel arrives, only Cluster B people choose to stonewall, to refuse to take personal responsibility for the choices they make, or to strive to self-educate with the intention of understanding their own forensic psychological development. If someone refuses to listen with an intent to understand, ending conversations with them about any and all topics or subject matters and striving to keep a safe physical and emotional distance from them is PRUDENT. Applaud their courage if they chose to live their own life away from anything or anyone who triggers them to revert to dysfunctional ways. If they were alienated due to a toxic person or mobbing peer-group gaslighting, it is still perfectly okay to be proud of your child for striving to self-advocate.
Read it again…
When and if that time comes, resist the urge to leap to their rescue. Not because you don’t want to help but because they are likely to tell their abuser they spoke with you and suddenly once again you will be pigeon-holed into the position of playing the monster in the manufactured and utterly malicious Abuser created triangulation.
Lather, rinse, and repeat…
There will be no words you can say and no ‘thing’ you can do to win the loyalty or affection of a child biologically or socially disinclined to give it.
There will be no words I can say and no ‘thing’ I can do to win the loyalty or affection of a child biologically or socially disinclined to give it.
There will be no words anyone can say and no ‘thing’ anyone can do to win the loyalty or affection of a child biologically or socially disinclined to give it.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. Likewise, you can try with all your might to wake a person, but if they are willfully stonewalling and simply pretending to be asleep because denying you the opportunity to feel worthy, in any way heard, loved, liked, appreciated, valued, or respected makes them feel pleasure?
Ain’t no BODY got time for dat.
“Pssssshhhhtttttttpppppbbbbtttt…” is basically the only socially appropriate word, sound, thought, deed, facial expression to make, or auditory gesture one can possibly make in polite social response to a social interaction like that.
Read as many tens of thousands of Narcissistic Abuse recovery articles over and over again… as many times as you need to understand that if your adult child is a vertical thinker with a predisposition toward self-promoting, they will align with whichever party or person they feel is likely to give them a social or financial advantage.
The abused child, converted to Abuser by Proxy, conforms and assists in the soul murder of their true Abuser’s object of #NarcissisticRivaly obsession.
If they do so by free will choice and are over the age of psychological maturity — meaning knowing the difference between right and wrong and still choosing to self-promote at the direct expense of a parent they are striving to harm — understand they are NOT kind human beings by nature.
It’s an unfortunate truth, but one must protect oneself physically and financially at all times from Cluster B people as well as their enablers.
Love Fraud perpetrators typically hone their manipulation skills first by gaslighting and using psychological and emotional abuse tactics to control as well as to devalue and berate emotionally sensitive or kind parents.
Trauma bonding is NEVER love. It’s a vicious and truly life decaying cycle.
Don’t let your offspring guilt or manipulate YOU into thinking your own emotional and social neglect or abuse is okay. The same advice goes to parents of abusive children as it does someone who has been trapped in the cycle of love-bombing –> devaluing –> abuse escalating –> dramatic abuse incident –> discard of the victim by a ghosting Abuser –> hoovering –> honeymoon –> followed by the typical return to ever-increasing cycles of abuse throughout the duration of a Cluster B person’s adulthood.
If you think forging a close, personal relationship with a Cluster B person is safe… please consider reading up on Stockholm Syndrome, Parent Abuse, Enabling, Co-Dependency, Cognitive Dissonance, and Magical Thinking.
Reading up early on about how to protect yourself physically as well as financially and medically from a next of kin who has a personality disorder that makes them prone to situationally abusing others overtly or clandestinely in private can literally make or break you when and if something like a medical issue or other unexpected life circumstances where you personally or physically need familial assistance arises.
If they cannot be nice to you in your 40s and 50s, imagine how your own adult child might choose to treat you once they have a medical proxy and financial power of attorney over you during your senior years. Most parents feel compelled to enable their toxic adult children because they know that somehow they failed to parent them at least on some levels in flawless ways.
Some children are ASPD by nature. Others are turned NPD by underparenting adults thinking they are simply letting children be children — rather than teaching them how to pro-socially behave. Others end up prone to violent verbal aggression and have poor decision-making skills coupled with impulsivity issues due to head injuries.
One never truly knows what makes another human being tick unless a complete forensic psychiatry analysis is done coupled with a health history of things like exposure to head injury, environmental allergens, toxic chemicals, and pharmaceutical elements (et cetera) has been done. And even then, scientists are just starting to make research progress about the nature of the human mind and all it’s related, complex biochemical processes.
To that end, before you go blaming yourself for an adult child who chooses to betray hospitality or who acts like an ass… consider this sage piece of advice and wisdom from folks who have already jumped ship and made it successfully across the event horizon.
If your child is abusive, refuses to listen with an intent to understand, and they reject your core value as a human being or person, all the same advice for healing from a love fraud incident — minus the sexed-up romantic relationship parts — are likely to be the best advice to follow when dealing with them.
Ask yourself the following questions to help you to decide if the relationship is worth trying to force.
- If you met your child on the street today, are they the sort of person you would see inviting out to coffee or home for the holidays?
- Do you and your child have any interests in common that would allow you to spend limited quantities of time engaging in the recreational hobby together? If so… are they biologically or psychologically capable of spending time with you without them blurting caustic insults, assuming a socially aggressive posture, or without forcing YOU to have to walk on eggshells around them?
- Do you honestly, truly, and sincerely like one another? Aside from familiarity and the ties that bind all families together… if the child was a perfect stranger would he or she be one you would like to get to know or you would feel strongly inclined to trust and or to mentor?
- Does your child currently exhibit traits of a Covert or Overt Situational Abuser — targeting you or anyone else they happen to enjoy bullying for social abuse for their immediate self-aggrandizing pleasure? Are they the kind of person who seems to enjoy making others look or feel small in order to make themselves appear somehow greater?
- Are they TRUSTWORTHY? Are you, your belongings, your finances, or your emotional psychology likely to be respected and or to be physically safe in their presence — with or without your consciously feeling a need to oversee or to be forced to self-advocate to the point of ad nauseum in their presence?
Collapsed Narcissist personality types oftentimes develop a sinister streak of repressed rage and violent tendencies. In youth, they tend to berate parents. In their 20s and 30s, they tend to harm love interests. By the time they hit their 40s or 50s — look out, as children who were raised to believe they are “special” and can have whatever they want on-demand tend to develop deep-seated passive aggression.
A 50-year-old woman with a Cluster B nature who gains power of attorney over her mother, for example, can totally destroy her parent physically, financially, and socially on a whim if they are able to trick the senior into signing away their own right to make personal care, medical, or financial decisions for a senior over the age of 65 who needs care.
While many adult children who were denoted “At-Risk Kids” grow up to live full and active social lives, the traumatized or overindulged inner child — granted special favors while being exposed during youth to horrific co-parent behaviors like watching one parent or a toxic grandparent playing Alpha Abuser to a submissive, confused, and terrified passively active Enabler — tends to leak out on occasion.
Try not to be the catalyst who they are able to point the finger of blame at when and if they choose to behave poorly or to “lash out”. Limit or end contact with any peer or person who is violent, who steals from you, or who lies to or about you IMMEDIATELY.
Why?
Because letting your child build a karmic debt they have to repay is not loving behavior. What it is is underparenting by Enabling while self-promoting your own needs over your duty to help them to treat other human beings in pro-social ways that show conscious awareness that the things we say, do, and think about ourselves and one another during any given lifetime matter.
Stonewalling and ghosting a kind, loving, and emotionally intelligent person are Narcissistic Abuse tactics designed to elicit a panic and fear of abandonment response in a target. The victim is marked for social abuse, typically comprehensively blackballed by the Abuser’s friends, and the Abuser enlists the help of Flying Monkey personality types (typically conformist family members or toxic family friends prone to Enabling while pot-stirring) to help them mob and abuse their preferred scapegoat by proxy as many times over as the victim chooses to allow them to believe they are winning some game they are playing like social predators.
Going NO CONTACT with a vertical thinker or person with a noted Cluster B disposition is an act of humane unconditional love infused with respect, one that truly helps to protect the highest and greatest good of both targets as well as the hospitality betrayer.
If you tell a child there is something they can do or should stop doing in order to win back your favor, stop now, mama or pop. You are manipulating, using the withholding of affection to change their behavior.
That’s the OPPOSITE of gray rock — trying to lure them back with a carrot. It’s the tough love form of beating a dead horse with a proverbial bait and switch, claiming they are out of your life for good… unless.
Be as kind as humanly possible and set healthy boundaries. State them clearly, ask politely for things like your private life, your time, and your home to be respected. Then, the ball is solely in their court.
An adult child who is a horizontal or spherical thinker with an average or above-average IQ who stays away from drugs and alcohol is likely to make many of the same mistakes you did when you were young. But they are not likely to be mean or to treat you as if your feelings and life are not worth taking the time of day to value or worthy of at least the bare minimum of social civility and pure interest.
A child who has zero interest in knowing their parent as an adult — away from the context of child-rearing — is, as hard as it is to hear, likely to have an incredibly low level of emotional sensitivity or emotional intelligence. All the best test scores and the highest IQ in the world are not likely to make them any more socially aware of how and why their relationship both to and with other human beings have profound relevance.
If you are made to feel fear… your home has been robbed (more than once by your offspring’s friends over the age of 18 or by a child themselves personally who is over the age of 21)… your offspring does things like commit identity theft or allows their friends to use your name and credit information to self-fund without your knowledge or express written and notarized permission…
If your house or personal property have been trashed… and you have been grossly abused financially by a thief, con artist, or Machiavellian liar who asks you for help or money knowing full well that you are likely to do anything within your personal power to help them out of a sense of love — not pursuing profit or doing so because you feel somehow guilted into handing them cash because you feel “obligated”…
If you have been lied to or inexplicably ghosted by a child over the age of 18…
Time to do a self-reflective inventory and assess whether or not the relationship is one you think serves either of your best interests.
Sometimes, when it comes to communication, less is more. Keep the faith, educate, and follow Facebook.com/DiscardPileParents for ongoing help with emergent feelings of isolation, loneliness, missing your child or grandkids, and to help assist you with grieving the loss of the opportunity to feel loved, appreciated, and included in a loving family unit or close personal extended family circles,
And whatever you do, resist the urge to try to force your way back into your child’s life — especially with claims you have a right to see your grandchildren. The stress a grandparent puts on the co-parent of their estranged child and that child’s romantic partner by doing so is immense. By the time you calculate that each moment of time your own adult child spends thinking about you in a way they themselves feel duress is time they are forced to spend neglecting or stress-parenting the grandkids understand that truly being the trigger is a serious karma-inducing decision.
Let them learn. Let them live.
Keep scrapbooks of notes to the grandchildren that can be left to them in a will, and create your own genealogy based forensic psychology abuse journal that details as much as you can remember about the tone and tenor of your own family life as a child.
Be sure to include ample notes for them from a candid social and psychological perspective that includes medical details, inheritable genetic conditions or ailments in the family DNA you are aware of, and a comprehensive collection of information that documents the memories in family photos as well as to free-write descriptions of everything from the family dog to divorce issues to what kinds of baby food used to be their favorite as a child.
Couple all that with pop culture memory details and before you know it, you will have created a legacy homeschool project perfect for donating to the special collections library of your favorite college or to leave to the grandchildren someday in a will document.
Couple all that with pop culture memory details and before you know it, you will have created a legacy homeschool project perfect for donating to the special collections library of your favorite college or to leave to the grandchildren someday in a will document.
In the 21st century, technology and scientific advancements are likely to allow things like genetic damage from exposure to trauma or nutritional deprivation to be repaired for future generations using CRISPR. If your bloodline has been notched by an undiagnosed condition somewhere along the line (such as has happened to so many families with FAS or parents who were picky eaters and chose to nutritionally deprive their offspring of much-needed vitamins and nutrients), chances are the conditions will be readily apparent to someone who reads the diary-style historical documents with an eye for such things.
To that end, speak freely as if the people who are likely to read the journal collections in the future are your own loving, trusted, and most cared-for family members.
With that said, don’t be afraid to volunteer your services doing things like helping teach At-Risk kids how to read or to volunteer through your local Big Brothers or Big Sister’s type of youth mentoring programs. Just because your own child does not value the time or effort you spend showing them kindness and favor does not mean that there are not millions of other children in the world dreaming about having a caring parent, an active and involved father, or a truly kind and personable type of mother.
Take a deep breath and give yourself a huge hug if you managed to make it to the end of this article without getting angry at us for daring to suggest that Parent Abuse is a real thing. Having children should never be the death sentence of any parent’s core identity.
Figuring out who you were before you became a parent and seeking to cultivate and nurture that aspect of your personality can truly lead you to some life-affirming as well as lifestyle-enhancing changes. Trust divine right action, strive to go gray rock as often as possible, but resist the urge to repress emotions about this one.
If you are so gray you end up depressed or mildly sociopathic, then it’s time to commit to taking as much time as you need to sit someplace quiet, to really journal expressively, and to cry this one out. The stages of grief over losing a relationship with a living child encompass feeling as if the child died compounded as if they were a non-romantically involved love fraud.
Think Bernie Madoff — but make him your son. Then let him trick you into handing him over the proverbial keys to the castle only to see him r-u-n-n o-f-t.
Yeah — not most loving parents or neurotypical child’s idea of family fun.
