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Welcome to breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Did you know that more than 67 million Americans are estranged from at least one member of their family? And 16% of all those report that it's their parent that they're estranged from. Well, Dr. Kathy Cook, founder and CEO of Celebrate Kids, has a brand new book that addresses this trend of kids canceling their parents. It's called Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children. Here's Kathy Cook.
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I can imagine more than those statistics. You know someone who's gone no contact with a parent or family member. It's one of the most common and hardest conversations I have with people when I speak around the country. I work with a number of Christian organizations that specialize in supporting people. And many of the people I've spoken to who run counseling hotlines in these ministries and say the majority of their counseling involves parents and adult children. This is such a hard reality for the church. There's so much hurt in our congregations. Have you felt it? Seen it? Experienced it? Many adult children say they go no contact for their emotional health, and a lot of them find support and encouragement to avoid their parents from their spouses, friends, counselors and social networks. They're often told they're brave for cutting off their parents. It's heartbreaking. This causes parents to be confused and lonely trying to process grief and shame. I'm sad for them and I'm also sad for their adult children because I believe they'll eventually experience disappointment, sadness and loneliness. The emotional health they say they're protecting may actually suffer. We're not designed to be cut off from family. In my brief time with you, I want to share three insights from my new book, Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children that can keep your relationship healthy and restore it if it's unhealthy. First, if your children have distanced themselves from you, feel and process your grief. You miss your child and your role as an involved parent. Grieve the broken promises, unmet expectations and unfulfilled dreams. When grief goes unacknowledged, it leaks out as control, urgency, criticism and guilt. And these things cause adult children to pull away and stay away from their parents. Please, for the sake of your relationship with your children, acknowledge the end of the parenting season and grieve. Then be ready to step into new roles of guide, mentor, coach and cheerleader as you can. Second, parent is always your noun, but you can only parent as a verb when your children invite you to adult children tell me they don't need to be managed. They need to be respected. They don't want to be controlled. They want to be supported. I encourage you not to offer advice before your adult child asks for it. Adult kids will hear it as criticism. They'll conclude you don't believe in them or trust them to do well. They'll be disappointed and hurt if you were an active parent, maybe even a helicopter parent, who reminded them to study and dropped off permission slips when they forgot them. Your adult kids tell me they don't think you can parent any other way. They go no contact because they don't believe you can change, but they want and need to. They may want you to know about their business, but they don't want you to be in their business. If your children are still talking to you and you see that you've been trying to manage and control them and start your next conversation by apologizing, tell them you now understand how your advice comes across. Give them space by saying that you're here to encourage them, but you won't offer advice unless they ask. You're a parent noun and you're trusting them now that you aren't their parent verb. Third, I want you to understand that influencing your adult children and grandchildren is something earned through respect. You're not entitled to be their grandparents. Adult children do not owe parents closeness, access or agreement. When parents play the entitlement card, adult kids shut down choose respect, and my research shows that influence will quietly return and conversations will be possible. I want you to know that hope, the way I talk about it in my book, is a decision. No contact can feel permanent, especially because the influence of social media and cultural currents is so strong and feels so definitive. It's not in my research when parents change their posture, especially from correction to humility, persuasion to presence, fear to faith, and despair to hope, staying connected to adult children is likely and reconciliation becomes possible if breaks have occurred. I believe no contact decisions by adult children grow from bad patterns of misaligned roles, unmet needs of parents, unresolved grief, and conversations that have been shaped more by fear than trust. To stem the tide of no contact from adult children to their parents, I wrote this book. I hope you found these ideas helpful and that this resource Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and Hope with Adult Children will awaken a ministry in our church to those who are quietly suffering from this cultural Trend.
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That was Dr. Kathy Cook, author of the new book Resolve Conflict and Find Peace and hope with adult children. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with breakpoint. For more resources and to share this commentary with others, please visit BreakPoint.org For
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250 years, America has been a bastion of freedom. And as we look ahead to the next 250, we're reminded that freedom is ours to defend. Today, Alliance Defending Freedom stands in courtrooms across the country to protect those freedoms we life free speech, religious freedom, parental rights. These freedoms are at the core of who we are as a nation and they must be preserved. ADF is approaching a critical fiscal year end fundraising deadline. Your support today helps ADF defend these freedoms so they may endure for many years to come. Every dollar you give will be doubled thanks to a special match grant while funds last. Join ADF.com breakpoint or text Breakpoint to 83848 to give today. That's joinadf.com breakpoint or text BreakPoint to 83848.