When an Estranged Parent Returns: Planning for Mom and Dad

There are several important considerations to include in the development of a plan for changing the family structure when an estranged parent is returning.

How old was the child when this parent last had an active role in their life and how old are they now?

An absence of over a few months for a child age 3 and younger may mean there is not much memory of the missing parent or memory of a relationship. It's essential for the returning parent to educate him or herself about the developmental needs and milestones missed during the absence, as well as to learn the current developmental needs, tasks and goals now.

What were the circumstances that lead to the loss of contact between the parent and the child and what memory does the child have of those events?

Children who witnessed frightening behavior (domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, high conflict couple relationship) may feel anxious at the idea of integrating the absent parent back into the new family structure.

If the parent had a problem behavior or illness, it has to be stable/resolved with a clear plan for continuity of recovery/stability. This is essential in order to honestly reassure the child that the returning parent is a safe and loving person who can be relied upon.

Are there unresolved feelings/issues/wounds/traumas in the adult/couple relationship?

If either parent is still emotionally and negatively engaged with the past and unforgiving toward each other, the restructuring of this family will probably not succeed. Couples resolution therapy for high conflict and/or estranged coparents is a critical component in ensuring the success of this process for many former intimate partners.

What is your child's history of loss and trauma?

It will be important to assess the number and types of losses your child has experienced as well as an events that have caused them trauma, such as parental conflict. Together these factors may impact the length of time it will take your child to mange the reunification process.

Children can be traumatized by abandonment, abuse, and neglect and witnessing verbal or physical conflict between their parents.

When children lose contact with a parent they can experience a range of emotions as part of their grief including confusion, anger, sadness, anxiety, anticipation, shame and guilt. If children suffer multiple losses, like losing significant caregivers, extended family, friends through change of school or home that often accompany a family breakup, then the losses add up.

The more losses a child sustains, the more difficult it becomes for them to bounce back from other experiences.

The level of cooperation or conflict between parents is very often the reason the child lost a parent in the first place. We will next focus on establishing an adequate coparenting relationship for the sake of the child.

The Estranged Parent Needs to be Ready for Resistance and Question

The custodial parent is a critical part of the process of restructuring a family when an estranged parent is going to be reintegrated.

The issues and questions for the primary parent depend on the circumstances of the other parent's absence:

1 Are you committed to sustaining a consistent relationship if you re-enter the child's life? This means consistently showing up for parenting time and meeting other obligations. Part of the risk for a custodial parent cooperating with a reunification process is that you may disappear again and they will be left to pick up the pieces of their child's life.

2 Do you have the parenting skills you need to care for the child? Are you willing to take a parenting skills class?

3 If you had unsafe behaviors in your life, you need to be able to demonstrate change. If alcohol and/or drug issues played a role in your absence what evidence of sustained sobriety can you show the other parent? What are your plans for relapse prevention? If domestic violence is in your history have you completed an anger management or DV class? Do you have ways to express your anger that do not involve harm to self and others?

4 Be prepared to answer the question "why now?" The custodial parent may harbor feelings of resentment and believe you now want to come in and be the 'hero' or 'heroine.' You will need to demonstrate that you're not just there for the good times.

5 Are you providing economic support? If not, are you planning on doing that? If you have been negligent or inconsistent in providing financial support for your child, begin right away with whatever you can!

6 If the custodial parent has worked to eliminate you from your child's life because of unresolved issues in the couples relationship, are you ready to sit down for high conflict coparenting therapy with the custodial parent to resolve these old wounds for the sake of your child?

Reunification after a period of estrangement in a parent-child relationship is a very serious undertaking for both parents. Be ready to stay and work and build the trust needed to be successful in the process.

Understand the Absence of a Parent From a Child's Point of View

Children experience feelings of sadness, anger, confusion, guilt and/or shame when a parent disconnects from their life.

Even when a parent made the decision to withdraw from the life of a child was based on what the parent believed was in the child's best interest, this is rarely understood by the child.

Children often feel that there is something wrong with them that accounts for the parents departure from their life. "If only I was __________ (nicer, smarter, kinder, etc), my Mommy/Daddy would have stayed."

Children often blame themselves and feel rejected and abandoned. As children try to make sense of why a parent doesn't come around, the easiest explanation for them is to blame themselves.

Children may lash out at the absent parent in anger, "You left the family, convinced their life would be whole, or at least better, if you hadn't left.

On the other hand, some children will form an idealized image of the absent parent and have unrealistic fantasies about the day they will be reunited.

Whatever the response of your child, your job as the estranged parent is to be patient, present, loving, warm, accepting, consistent and predictable. Children need a sense of safety and security from birth. An absent parent damages that sense of safety and security.

Part of the healing process for children is learning that the absent parent has taken responsibility for their absence, made a genuine apology and is prepared to show them they will make it right. The child must see the parent as trustworthy and dependable.

Even if the estranged parent has been the target of alienating behaviors from the custodial parent, the child does not want excuses that blame the other parent.

Educating children about "the truth," about what really happened is not helpful and, in fact, can be quite damaging. The estranged parent needs to be able to answer the child's questions about why the parent left without pointing the finger at the other parent or making the child feel as though they must take sides.

Guidance for the Estranged Parent

First, be prepared to go slow. It is natural for a parent to want to jump in with high energy, intense determination and 110% enthusiasm. Many expect to pick up from where they left off, or start a relationship if they recently learned that a child existed.

The parent has a sense of urgency about catching up on what has been missed with the child. A plan for renewing or creating a relationship with a child when there is estrangement must be built entirely around the the child. This means careful preparation and proceeding at a pace and level of intensity that the child can handle.

Trust in a close relationship builds slowly based on interaction and shared time and shared activities. This is especially true when there are wounds to be healed. The time invested carefully at the beginning can create a foundation for a lifetime of involvement between parent and child. Don't rush it!

Consistency and predictability are an absolute must for the child. Trust is earned, not automatic, for any of us in our important relationships. This means being honest about your own ability to be patient, be present, be consistent, and be predictable. This means that the parent has to be ready and willing to overcome barriers and make the child the top priority.

This also means no cancelled appointments unless you are in the hospital. Talk to your friends, family, employer, and coworkers to make sure they understand the importance of this journey you are about to embark on.

No matter how you ended up disconnected from your child and their life, you must think about this process and your absence from the point of view of your child not yourself.

Loss of Parent to Separation/Divorce

In the years following a separation or divorce, 33-40% of children lose contact with a biological parent. Loss of contact with a parent can deeply impact the child emotionally, developmentally, socially, and academically throughout the course of their lifetime. At the very least, children abandoned by a parent can be haunted by a lifelong feeling of emptiness and may experience a number of life challenges:

1 Feelings of shame, guilt, rejection, anger, sadness and confusion

2 A belief that they are somehow not worthy of the absent parent's love and presence

3 Poor school performance

4 Difficulty forming intimate relationships

5 Increased use of alcohol and drugs

6 More aggressive, acting out behaviors

7 A need to create a story that explains the parent's absence from their life

8 A deep desire to know that they are missed and thought about by the absent parent.

Divorce or separation create tremendous challenges for the parents. Depending on the quality of the couples relationship pre-breakup, the transition to living separately can be more or less difficult. In general, the more conflict and unresolved couples issues that exist before the breakup the more difficult it will be for the family to find peace afterwards.

There are many reasons parents and children lose contact:

1 Ongoing conflict between the parents over parenting and custody issues

2 The inability to provide good caretaking due to mental illness, alcohol and/or drug abuse

3 The child's and/or parent's difficulty adjusting to the separation or divorce

4 Relocation of a parent more than 60 miles from the child

5 Safety issues such as domestic violence and/or child abuse

6 Alienating behaviors by the other parent

7 Lack of knowledge by father that a biological child exists

8 The choice of the parent to not be involved due to immaturity or concerns about child support obligations

9 Incarceration

Once the issues that led to the loss of contact begin to resolve, a parent often wishes to reestablish, or perhaps establish for the first time, a relationship with their children.

Children who are able to enjoy a warm and loving relationship with both of their parents fare better over time than children who lose one of the parents.

If you are a parent who lost a relationship with your child and are ready to invest the time and energy (and patience) required, contact Transitions Family Program at Hannah's House about our Comprehensive Family Restructuring Therapy process. It may be a good solution for you.

Contrasts in Parenting - For Better or Worse

Any parent who tells their child that the other parent wanted to murder them (abortion) should be placed immediately in supervised visitation for child abuse. The intentional cruelty and malevolence is difficult to accept and nearly impossible to forgive.

Parents who justify this type of emotional and mental abuse by calling it "truth-telling" are dangerous to their children.

Contrast this behavior with that of a parent who posted a warning about a movie last night. She parents a 5 year old and warned other parents that The Good Dinosaur may contain content that is too emotionally sad for the young child to process.

Contrast these two parenting behaviors in the context of good parenting.

The parent's responsibility is to protect, nurture and teach the child so that the child feels safe, secure and confident.

The first behavior is designed to impair the child's sense of safety, security, and trust. The second behavior is that of a parent who feels that she let her child down by exposing him to the content in a G-rated movie that was too emotionally challenging.

I hope that any parent who has talked to their child about the desire of the other parent to abort them will talk to that child again and do this:

Tell the child you were wrong to tell them.

Tell the child that you told them so you could hurt the other parent.

Tell the child that you wanted them to choose to love only you and that was selfish and hurtful.

Tell the child that Mom and Dad were not being very kind to one another when they found out about the pregnancy and that both had a difficult time loving each other.

Tell the child that it wasn't the child that was unwanted.

Tell the child that it was cruel of you to put that kind of pressure and responsibility on a child when grown-ups have a very difficult time dealing with it.

Tell the child you love them just the way they are, that they have every right to be here, that it is not their fault that they have a parent who is not kind or thoughtful or loving.

Tell the child you were wrong and you will work very hard to be a better parent.

Then get some help for yourself to be a better parent and a better coparent. Your children deserve better.

Parent-Child Contact When Child Is In the Other Home

Parents of 2-home children are sometimes anxious about the lack of contact with a child when that child is in the care of the other parent.

Note that it is the parent who is anxious here, not necessarily the child!

If you find yourself anxious about your child when your child is with your coparent, stop and ask yourself some questions before reaching out to your child:

1 When was the last time you were with your child?

2 Has more time passed since you were with your child than has ever passed in the life of the child without contact with you?

3 Has your child ever been with a grandparent or other trusted caretaker longer than the child has been with the other coparent in this particular instance?

4 How long will it be before you are with your child again?

5 Is the amount of time you have to wait to be with your child again longer than the child has ever gone without seeing you?

6 Is your child verbal? Can your child say "I miss mommy/daddy?" Can your child say "Can I call mommy/daddy?" If so, let them.

7 Is your child capable of self-control?

8 Is your child capable of self-soothing?

9 Is your child capable of getting his or her needs met by an adult?

Most of the time, the anxiety problem is in the parent not in the child. If the parent gives into their own anxiety and acts out as if the child is incapable of waiting and delaying gratification, then the child certainly can learn to be anxious and demanding.

And it's the parent who is modeling his or her own inability to wait, to delay gratification.

Life requires all of us to bear the discomfort of uncertainty or longing from time to time. It is ordinary and part of the human condition. It is not extraordinary, or traumatic, or horrible.

Check yourself, mom and dad. If you are anxious, admit it and deal with it. Don't make it your child's issue!