You’re welcome. Prayer is our most powerful tool so keep praying!

Dawn and Michelle,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments about how to apologize well. For the most part, I agree with you and appreciate the time you took to put your thoughts in writing.

However, I would like to address some concerns I have about a cultural trend related to this topic. More and more parents and grandparents are reporting that they have been estranged from their children. While this is not a new experience, i.e., parents in every generation have had to cope with prodigal children, it appears to be a growing trend and there appears to be a reason. I am hopeful that this information will be helpful to the many grandparents who are trying to cope with being cut off from their children and grandchildren.

When I wrote my response, I did so while paying close attention to the words “to her specifications” because I know that this is part of what many young people are being taught to do. They have reported to me that they have been coached- by teachers, professors, mentors and sometimes even counselors- to send their parents a list of grievances from their early lives in their families and to tell their parents what they need to do in order to be forgiven and allowed back into their lives. Having seen many lists and heard others, (often which are pages long and contain complaints of many singular incidents) I can tell you that most contain a list of items that most of us would consider to be very petty or decisions that a parent has a right to make. Here are just a few:
I wanted creamy peanut butter and you bought chunky peanut butter.
My older brother got to do everything before me.
You always picked me up from school in our old truck instead of our nice car. It was embarrassing.
Once you dropped me off a block away from the mall and I had to walk.

We can get into the mind of a school age child and understand how these things might have been hurtful at the age of 5 or 10 or even 15 but
as children become young adults, they need to let the tiny disappointments of childhood go so they can focus on those that might be having long-term consequences. Do you think that any of the items on the above list justify cutting parents out of a life? I hope we can all agree that there is a problem if a young adult hangs on to any of them past the age of 18. If we apologize for these kinds of items, we interfere with our young adult’s ability to cope with issues that may have truly been damaging or hurtful. You can certainly say something like, “Yeah, I can see why you didn’t like that” but if you have to apologize for a grocery purchase, a normal pattern in a family, our decision to drive one car or another or where we dropped a child off, we are encouraging our children to feel victimized by a lot of little things. Multiple research studies have shown that we have a generation of young people that are overly anxious and ill equipped to cope with real issues of concern and this is part of the reason. Good parenting needs to include a combination of empathy and limit setting.

Incidentally, I think that some of this inability to cope is also related to a parenting style in the 80s and 90s that provided all kinds of rewards and trophies for doing nothing more than showing up to an event, thus removing the incentive to work hard to earn a reward and keeping children from feeling the pain of failures and defeats, and learning from them.

What we definitely need to consider and apologize for are patterns of interactions or behaviors that contributed to children being hurt or relationships truly being damaged. All of us make mistakes as parents and we need to be open to talking with our children- and apologizing- for mistakes that have caused some unintentional harm.

Furthermore, it is not appropriate for our children to tell us how we must respond in order for them to include us in their lives. This is a trap because usually the statement is so vague that they can decide at any time that you have not lived up to their stated agreement.

As I mentioned at the recent LC Summit, I always encourage grandparents to begin with humility, empathy and grace and be willing to apologize if necessary. But I also mentioned the importance of truth and in the case of a list of grievances, I encourage you to respond apologetically to those that deserve an apology but to be truthful if some items are unreasonable.

I bet this response will generate some more conversation. Feel free to send follow up comments or questions to joannied@legacycoalition.com.

We hurt with you. May God break down obstacles and barriers.

Not sure if this makes sense, but the tone of this question reminded me of the tone my daughter’s mother in law takes when speaking of situations with them, and she definitely has some responsibility in how things occur. I’m thinking it would be wise for this person to evaluate their attitude more closely….and see where they may have missed things they have said or done that have been hurtful.