Children can become alienated at any age. Or, they can stay alienated for decades... when the alienated parent stops the reunification process.
Using a proven, repeatable step-by-step process, you can attract your
adult children back to you, just like my dad and I reunited when I was
an adult, and the rest of my adult siblings. If you want to prevent even more years of alienation, follow these steps.
1. Build and strengthen your resiliency skills
If you try to reunite when you are broken, shattered, and heartbroken, you will not attract your child back. They need a strong, empowered, determined parent to fold back into. Learn to manage and cope with the pain, without deciding to give up altogether and just wait for your child to show up. It will not happen.
2. Place yourself in their shoes.
Once an alienated child hits 18 or heads off to college, alienated parents expect them to just randomly start 'realizing' what has been going on. This very seldomly happens, and if so it is when the parent has at least done some showing up. Parents remove empathy, even when they say they understand the position their alienated child is in. Yet they still are angry with their child for not 'understanding' or 'waking up.' This will not be successful in the reunification process. You must understand that becoming an adult does not actually make them one.
3. Unconditional love will open doors.
This goes with the second step, and should go without saving -- but if you have true, authentic empathy for your child, you will show up with only unconditional love. They need to know you are there for them no matter what.
4. Leave the past at the door.
Stop bringing up the past. With yourself, and with your child. It's gone, and we only have the future to look forward to. We can learn from the past, but that is all.
5. Increase and master your emotional intelligence.
Learn how to be emotionally intelligent. This means knowing how to understand and better regulate yourself and others' emotions.
6. Embrace your role.
You must remember who you are: your child's other parent. No one else. Not a step parent, not a guardian, no one. If you want to be their parent again, be that parent they need where they are right now. Learn how to feel more empowered with this webinar.
7. Master communication skills.
How and when you communicate with your adult child will be the barrier or the key to reunification. Learn before continuing to communicate the way you have been. Instead, work with those who know how to communicate with an alienating, rejecting child. Dorcy is doing a Communication Workshop Nov 15-17, and is a highly useful skill for reunification for adult children.