Great article. I tell people you have to be a tremendously shitty parent if your stable, normal child doesn’t speak to you.

I like to tell these parents their child is estranged because the parents don’t know what’s wrong.

This confuses them.

I tell them that the child has repeatedly explained the problem, but the parent didn’t hear it.

Since the parent says, “I don’t know what’s wrong”, the child assumes they have failed to make them understand, and there is no reason to keep trying. The child likely views it as their inability to help their parents understand and instead of prolonging a fruitless attempt to resolve their issues they just bailed.

Or, are you claiming your child just up and left the relationship with zero discussion for years beforehand? Your child has never criticized your parenting ever?

Side note… When the Flying Monkeys say, “Your mother doesn’t know why you don’t talk to her”, simply use a variation of the above. “I have explained it to her for years. It’s obvious she doesn’t get it. So what has changed? Why would she get it now? I am not going to be able to explain it differently.” This stops the manipulative attempts to get you to reconcile under the guise that, “You mother doesn’t know why you don’t talk to her “