‘What I Wish Estranged Parents Knew About Going No-Contact’

Estrangement, and especially the estrangement of adult children from their parents, has been a big topic in the past few months.

Oprah Winfrey invited a panel of therapists to talk about the “rising trend” of estrangement on her podcast, for instance. One of the experts controversially blamed “therapy” for “inflammatory reactions” to parents’ behaviour.

And Sir David and Victoria Beckham’s relationship with their son Brooklyn has proven, well, rocky in the past year, too.

We don’t know the particulars of that case for sure.

But with so much attention around the topic of estrangement, we spoke to Dorcy Pruter, the founder of the Conscious Co-Parenting Institute, who began her business after reconnecting with her father following years of estrangement.

Here, she shared “the hard truth most [estranged] parents aren’t ready to hear (at least not at first)”.

Some parents may feel blindsided by their grown-up child going no-contact.

But “going no-contact is never the first choice,” Pruter said. “It’s the last resort of a child who didn’t feel safe, seen, or sovereign in the relationship.”

She added that there is often no single moment that leads to a break.

Instead, “it begins with small moments of emotional misattunement. Dismissed feelings. Subtle control. A child becomes the parents’ emotional regulator.

“It can look like ‘loving too much’ or ‘doing everything for them,’ when in reality, the parent may have unknowingly made their child responsible for their self-worth.”

For the parent, she said, they might really feel they gave their child everything.

“So when a parent finds themselves mystified by estrangement, the most powerful question they can ask is not ‘What went wrong?’ but: ‘What truth did my child not feel safe enough to tell me?’

“Is it helpful to reflect? Yes, but only if the reflection is rooted in curiosity, not guilt or blame. Parents must be willing to trade the need to be ‘right’ for the courage to reconnect. That means listening to the silence not as a punishment, but as a message.”

Another reason parents might feel shocked by their child’s distance, Pruter told us, is that they struggle to notice early signs of disconnection for what it really is.

“There are often early signs of withdrawal, short or transactional conversations, and emotional distance, but many parents miss them because they interpret that distance as rudeness or ingratitude, rather than disconnection,” she said.

And if your child has already gone no-contact, she recommended taking that as an opportunity to “heal [your] own wounds, take radical responsibility, and become safe for their child again, even if that child never returns.

“I often tell my clients that reconnection isn’t about changing your child’s mind. It’s about transforming your own heart.”