If your adult child has pulled away or stopped speaking to you, it can be incredibly difficult to know when to keep trying and when to stop.
You may have apologized. You may have given them space. You may have sent messages letting them know you love them and are willing to talk. Maybe you’ve gone to therapy, examined your part in what happened, or tried to change the way you communicate.
And still, you wonder: What if there’s one more thing I could do?
I don’t think the best answer comes from deciding to try for six months, a year, or five years. The more useful question is this:
Is there still something meaningful available for you to do?
That is very different from asking whether you have stopped caring or given up hope.
Look at What Your Adult Child Has Actually Asked For
Before deciding whether to reach out again, start with the clearest information you have.
What has your adult child actually asked you to do?
There is a meaningful difference between an adult child saying, “I need some time,” and saying, “Please don’t contact me.”
If they have explicitly asked for no contact, continuing to send messages because you want them to know you love them can create a problem you may not intend. You may be trying to communicate care, but they may experience the contact as evidence that you’re not respecting their request.
If they asked for time or space without clearly defining what that means, the situation is less straightforward. But even then, I would pay attention to what has happened since.
Have you repeatedly reached out without receiving a response? Have they declined invitations to talk? Does nearly every attempt at contact come from you?
Silence doesn’t always tell you why someone doesn’t want to engage, but repeated silence does tell you about their willingness to engage right now.
If you are trying to decide whether another message would help or add pressure, I go into that distinction more deeply in Should I Reach Out or Stay Silent?. Your blog inventory identifies this as one of your more recent pieces specifically addressing this decision.
Have You Been Given New Information?
This is one question I think parents overlook.
Before reaching out again, ask yourself: Has anything actually changed?
Perhaps your adult child told you something about their experience that you hadn’t understood before. Maybe you recognize something you need to take responsibility for. Perhaps they have indicated that they would be willing to talk under different circumstances.
That is new information. You can respond to it.
But if nothing has changed and you are simply trying to find a different combination of words that might finally produce a response, you may be trying to solve a problem that is no longer yours to solve alone.
This is particularly difficult after an apology.
A parent may think, Maybe I didn’t apologize correctly. Maybe I need to explain it differently. Maybe if they understood how sincere I am, they would respond.
Sometimes an apology does need more thought. But sometimes the apology has been heard, and the adult child is not ready to do anything with it.
I wrote more about this in Why Adult Children Stay Distant Even After You Apologize. An apology can be meaningful without giving you control over what happens next.
Have You Addressed What Genuinely Belongs to You?
There is another side of this that I don’t want to overlook.
Sometimes there is something more for a parent to do.
Maybe your adult child has repeatedly told you about something that hurt them, and you have spent most of your energy explaining why they misunderstood you. Maybe you have been so focused on defending your intentions that you have not really considered their experience.
Or perhaps you recognize a pattern in yourself that you genuinely want to change.
Accountability matters.
But accountability is different from repeatedly searching for more things to blame yourself for, hoping enough self-blame will eventually bring your child back.
You can examine your behavior, make amends when appropriate, and change something you genuinely believe needs to change.
Then the other person still gets to decide what they want to do.
If regret keeps you stuck in the belief that you have to keep fixing the relationship, I Tried to Fix It Too Fast, and It Backfired: How to Cope With Estrangement Regret may also help.
More Effort Does Not Always Create More Opportunity
This is where estrangement becomes particularly painful.
You can do something that is healthy, appropriate, and genuinely important and still not get the outcome you desperately want.
Effort and influence are not the same thing.
If a relationship requires two people, eventually there comes a point when the next move requires the other person to participate.
That doesn’t mean the work you have done was pointless. It means your work cannot substitute for their willingness.
This can also happen when the estrangement is not a complete cutoff.
Maybe your adult child answers occasionally but remains emotionally distant. Maybe they come to holidays but avoid meaningful conversation. Maybe you have some contact, but every attempt to become closer is met with withdrawal.
The question is still useful: If you stopped trying to move the relationship forward for a while, would anything happen without you making it happen?
That answer may tell you more than the number of months or years that have passed.
Why Is It So Hard to Stop Trying?
Even when parents understand all of this intellectually, they can have tremendous difficulty backing off.
There is a reason for that.
Doing something gives you something to focus on.
You can write another message. Rewrite the apology. Search for another explanation. Ask another person what they think you should do.
For a little while, action can make uncertainty feel more manageable.
But then you wait.
You check your phone. You wonder whether they read the message. You try to interpret the silence.
And eventually the urge to do something returns.
This is why I would pay attention to what is happening inside you when the urge to contact your adult child becomes especially strong.
Did something change in the relationship?
Or did the uncertainty become harder to tolerate today?
Those are not the same thing.
Estrangement can create enormous fear, especially when you don’t know whether you will ever have another chance to repair the relationship. I wrote specifically about that fear in What If I Never Get Another Chance?.
Stopping Pressure Is Not the Same as Stopping Love
Parents sometimes tell me, “If I stop reaching out, my child will think I don’t care.”
That fear makes sense.
But if you have already communicated that you love your adult child, that you are willing to talk and that you would welcome the possibility of a relationship, you may not need to keep proving it.
There is a difference between making yourself available for repair and trying to make the repair happen.
You control the first.
You don’t control the second.
Backing off does not necessarily mean closing the door. It may mean recognizing that you have reached a point where the next decision belongs to someone else.
You Don’t Have to Decide What You’ll Do Forever
I also think it is important not to turn “stop trying” into a permanent decision when it doesn’t need to be one.
You do not necessarily have to decide that you will never reach out again.
You may decide:
I am not going to keep trying to move this relationship forward when nothing new has happened.
If circumstances change, you can respond to what actually happens.
If your adult child contacts you, you can decide how to respond then. If they give you new information, you can consider it. If limited contact begins to grow, you can respond to the relationship as it develops.
You don’t need to solve that future relationship today.
And if contact does reopen, the first conversation does not have to repair everything that happened during the estrangement. I talk about approaching that moment slowly in The First Conversation After Distance: How to Reopen Without Making It Worse.
So, How Long Should You Keep Trying?
I wouldn’t answer that question with a number.
I would look at what your adult child has asked for, what you have already done, whether you have been given anything new to respond to, and whether there is evidence of willingness from the other person.
Sometimes there is something meaningful left for you to do.
And sometimes the next meaningful step cannot come from you.
Recognizing that does not mean you have stopped loving your child. It does not mean you have decided reconciliation will never happen.
It means you are acknowledging the limits of what one person can do in a relationship that requires two.
There is a difference between leaving the door open and spending your life standing in the doorway. You can leave the door open and still go live your life.
- When Your Adult Child Sees You as the Enemy
- Walking on Eggshells With Your Adult Child? Here’s What It’s Costing You
- Why Your Adult Child Still Won’t Talk to You After You’ve Changed
- How to Deal With Disrespectful Adult Children Who Won’t Take Responsibility
- Reconciliation With Adult Children: What Nobody Tells You
