I was talking to a friend who by all appearances life is together and then it came out that he doesn't talk to his grown (mid 20s) son. I was like why? They had a turbulent relationship because the parents are not together but his final straw was when the kid didn't call him when his pops (the kids grandpops) died and he didn't call the dad.

I get that would piss me off but I also have this general notion that the parent has to be the parent which means always being the bigger person. If things go bad it's always important for the parent to make the effort to repair the relationship.

I was reminded of my friend when I saw 50 cent beefing with his son.

https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/10/50-cent-father-son-repair-relationship-money-pay/

That's more extreme because it's public but I am trying to challenge myself to consider where healthy, well adjusted people and kids (i.e., not dealing with a child with mental issues or drug problems), where the parent would be fully in the right for cutting off their child?

I guess part of my thinking is that if the child isn't acting right, that's a reflection on you because that's your child right?

Anyway, I am trying to be non-judgemental of my friend, so I am trying to hear some stories to give me a different perspective.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

my sister been beefing with her daughter for a long time.

She beefing with all of us. As soon as you say something she doesn’t like she is on some “okay, I won’t bother you again.. bye!” and you wont hear from here until she needs something or has a new lie to tell you.

Of course some of the blame is on the parents but like someone said on here about their son, there comes a time when you have to let them go figure it out on their own.

I HOPE it doesn’t happen with my girls but I can definitely see my oldest and her mom having issues. Simply because most times the oldest kid holds some resentment for feeling like they got the worst of it. Usually because the first kid is the experiment and then you get better with each kid.. and by better I mean less stringent and less helicopterish

Isn't it just about always wrong and petty for a parent to do to a child?



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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

what are the lingering issues, is my question.

I think it just depends on the reason for the rift, and if the kid's the one burning the parent, and not vice versa.

In Breaking Bad, Jessie's parents are cold as hell toward him- but it looked like they'd made some efforts with him in the past, and grew tired of the routine they just knew was coming.

They look like assholes, but I can see them getting weary of his patterns. Their actions didn't help him, and in fact made things worse for him, but it was at least understandable to a degree.

Situations like that, I definitely get. I've taken that tact with loved ones much of my life, but I don't know if I could with my kids. They'd have to hurt me, or their sibling, in some direct and horrific way for me to even reach the neighborhood of that. But I havven't been tested on that.

In terms of for a time they got all the parents love, attention, and resources.

For example, what if the son's reaction to loss and grief was to shut down? Maybe he didn't know what to say to his parents, and saying nothing is often better than saying the wrong thing.

Did the parent try to call the son? Maybe the son is upset that no one reached out to him.

These are all rhetorical questions, just giving a different perspective.

I'd say yeah, parents and children can beef.

I think abuse might be the #1 reason for parent/child falling out. Miscommunication and lack of real understanding is probably #2.

Sincere question.

Because I saw this and laughed, because where I'm from, this is completely normal.

Frankly, I'm more surprised at families that don't have this sort of strife. It sounds like you have a healthy, loving family life (not perfect, but healthy). So in that case, I can see where this would be something of a curiosity to you.

But where I'm at, this is the landscape.

I look at my wedding party.

Between me and my five groomsmen, only half of us had a father in our lives. Right today, the one with the best father-son relationship? His father is dead.

One of the other two no longer speaks to his father, and it's over some shit like your OP- but not really. The last straw was something most would consider minor.

Of the six of us, only two of us have any relationship of note with our mothers, and one of those is at extreme arms length. I can look at the final straws on those, and they'd probably look like something far too small to walk away from such a relationship.

But as Mighty Mos Def reminds us, regarding that proverbial straw?

It's a million other straws beneath it.

It's just not that simple.

And, frankly, it's extremely hard for people who don't have to deal with these extreme situations to get why those relationships can break. And in the cases I'm talking about, it's damn near all on the parents, with perhaps one exception, where religion is the great barrier. I can't speak on your friend, and won't assume anything. I can only relate my experience from the other end of that equation.

As a father now, one of my great fears is that I become that parent whose kids don't fuck with them in adulthood.
Maybe that fear is enough to make me a good enough parent, teacher, guide, leader, etc, that that doesn't happen.
We're close but I see so many mistakes on my part.

And I do have a small amount of empathy for my parents, because being a parent means being selfless, and making decisions with respect to their impact on your children.
I haven't always made the right calls in those scenarios. Not to the degree my parents did/do, not even close.

But I absolutely believe that, regardless of how our relationships wind up twenty years into the future, it's up to me to pursue reconciliation, and also up to me to be loving enough to welcome them with open arms if they made the move toward me.

I do think a parent's role never ends, and if I have any opinion at all, it's that your friend needs to be the one to initiate reconciliation. He shouldn't put that on his child.

But I want to make sure you understand my question. I am not talking about how kids feel about their parents. I totally am familiar with, and have witness within my own household, kids beefing with their parents. I think in the most loving households, that's maaad common.

The examples you all gave described kids not messing with their parents I get that.

What I am asking about is parents not actively not fucking with their kids. That, is very foreign to me. I've had my parents angry with me, yell, scream, beat me when I was little. But I never had a parent say, I am not talking to you or want to see you.

I don't see it in my wife's household. It's funny because my wife was "lightweight beefing" with my 11 year old because he had a sleep over and she told him to text when he got there. He didn't. He didn't text until the next morning. She left him on read because she was mad he took so long to text and I was like stop being silly.

At any rate, my attitude shouldn't be that foreign to you because you literally described how I feel about it.

"because being a parent means being selfless, and making
decisions with respect to their impact on your children."

That's it. That's how my folks did it and I try to do it.

It's funny you said it because the friend I mentioned who is beefing with his son is a big talk religious guy and I am like dude, there is literally a story in the bible about the parent having to be the bigger one. The prodigal son has always been my favorite bible story because its the most counter-intuitive, hardest to live up to in the real world.



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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I didn't see it specifically as parents not fucking with their kids, initially.

That's a different one, and I don't see much of it.

From where I sit, the families where there's this sort of dysfunction, is the kids not messing with their parents because the parents are messed up.

Outside of a couple of situations where the child grows up to be a danger to those around them, or straight up abandonment when the kids are young, I can't think of any situations like that

Even the fuzzed up parents won't talk like this.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Even the fuzzed up parents won't talk like this.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

their father

which I didn't make well in the original post, isn't it almost always on the parent?



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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

as I get older I fluctuate between should I have made the effort with my father before he passed, or saying fuck that he was a selfish POS (mixed in with a lot of good memories too)

in some cultures the parent really has to put minimum effort into an actual relationship with their child outside of feeding them and keeping them housed, and that's normal and acceptable

It's really too tough to make a judgement call on your friend's situation, but in theory I think it does rest on the parent to make the bulk of the effort to repair whatever's broken

its not up to the parent to keep trying to win them over.

Now I think a parent should always have an open door in these situations but I have seen too many “kids” that are now adults with their own kids who are still carrying things around that will end up damaging their own damn kids.

I feel like adult children who don’t fuck with their parent aren’t really going to receive attempts at contact as anything more than a chance to be used so the parent can feel better about themselves and its not really sincere.. so it creates more distance.

As someone who witnessed it a few times I feel like until you are ready to forgive or release those feelings the attempts at contact will never be viewed as a positive.

Question. If your dad kept reaching out would that have made you feel like he was well intentioned?

>its not up to the parent to keep trying to win them over.

I think this really depends on the circumstances. If the reason for the rift is that the parent is the constant fuck up, then I disagree.

No matter how old the child, it's up to the parent to fix it IMO.

The problem there, is sincerity, which you touched on.
Most people would be receptive to a sincere effort.

But if it's a situation where the kid's been burned time and again, then yeah, it's diminishing returns.

And to your point, by 30, and in those circumstances, I'd agree that time has likely run it's course by then.

So my only real disagreement here, is dependent on those circumstances.

forget. Be like, hey pops, you were a bad father, but I don't blame you, etc.

Sometimes, the child really does have to be the bigger person, because of drug or alcohol abuse, financial ruin, or other issues that might prevent the parent from reaching out out of shame.

But not all people who had rocky childhoods are in the frame of mind where they can take on that burden and try to have some semblance of a relationship or even friendship with the estranged parent.

It's a trip because my little step-sister has a great memory of my father, and was kind of hurt that I still had resentment (I had to step in to dance with her at her wedding since her real dad and her step-dad both died). But part of the reason I was left out of the mix was he had this new family, so I was the cautionary tale he told them, "don't end up like T Reynolds" lol, even though I was doing pretty good with my life.

A LOT of people act like they're not still the same awful people, or doing similarly toxic things.

Even someone who isn't well adjusted can forgive/forget the past.

Often enough, it's the present behavior that creates that bigger rift, not the past.

for me, I had a father that hit the bottle hard and barely remembered half my childhood.

As we got older I started hearing stories about his upbringing and it made me step back and realize part of the reason he was damaged.. was because his childhood trauma.

That isn’t an excuse, just facts.

but that still doesn’t excuse his actions, just give me more information to process and do what I want with it.

My sister is a bit different. She sent me letters my mom wrote and other information trying to get me to marinate on trauma. I started reading then realized none of this information was going to help me grow so I just tossed it. For me, I like to believe I do a good job taking what will heal me and tossing what will scar me. Also had to remind myself my parents choices had nothing to do with me even if I was alive when they occurred. That is their fuck up and they had to live with it.

Its something I keep trying to instill in my wife. We need to heal for our kids sake and close chapters on these old stories we been carrying around for decades.

We are not our parents.

my wife is so traumatized, we won't even be having kids. so not our parents in more ways than one.

but that's not my story to tell lol

part of the good work of a marriage is addressing these things like you say though

is because my wife was terrified of being a bad parent.

she is younger than me and was a dancer (modern, not skripping) so that is also part of the reason.

dancers very body conscious so I can see that.

You wore her down huh? lol

But in a situation where the parent decides they aren't messing with the kids anymore, I can't really say.

TR made a great point, that the parent doesn't really have to do much. I'd extend that beyond "some cultures", too.

I think kids, even adult kids, are incredibly forgiving when it comes to their parents. Generally, a parent has to fuck up royal for their child to no longer want them in their life.

Even parents with incredibly obnoxious personality traits tend to get a long leash with their kids. The bar for them tends to be low.

But I don't see too many situations where the parent is the one choosing to keep the kid at arms length, apart from scenarios I already mentioned, such as abandonment, the kid growing up to become a danger to them, etc.

aren't regarded the same by all the kids though?

That's kind of interesting too.

Say you have that guy who is out there getting married four / five times

The kids from that first original marriage vary in the degree they still fuck with him, for example, based on their age and relationship with him.

first kid is planned = gets mad love

second kid isnt planned and ruins financial plans = this lil nigga here

third is a girl = dad is wrapped around her finger

marriage on the rocks and dammit, she gets pregnant = mad af

they offer the olive branch simply because they’re the parent. I also don’t agree that the adult child is always a reflection of the parent. A person can have the best parents and still make poor decisions that go against everything they’ve been taught, especially as teens or adults.

always has her door open anytime he daughter needs to walk through it.

But there is a lot of trauma and from what I have witnessed. When a parent reaches out and a child isn’t ready or says “fuck yo branch” there is only so much you can do before your contact is seen as another form of abuse.

I’ve seen it first hand. A parent reaches out and the child thinks its a trap so they can shit on them once they let their guard down.

Its still up to the parent to reach out but over time they will do it less and less if they never get a response. At some point the child is a full ass adult and its up to them to bury things or let it ride.

I’m sure some will feel differently but my wife doesn’t speak to her bio dad and until she is ready any moves made by her dad are viewed as overstepping the wish she has in place of not fucking with him or his side of the family.

my father in 9 years. I agree with you that it is up to the parent to be a parent and the bigger person. It did start out that he pissed me off but, day after day passed beyond that conversation without him reaching out to me. Then those days turned to months and the months turned to years. I am not going to chase his affections like I did as a child. He has made a conscious decision to not be in contact with me so I let it be.

Plus, I know that as a parent my mother would never go three days without some contact with me. I also know that he, as a parent, wouldn’t go anymore than three days without some contact with his other children. That tells me where I stand so I let it be. He has never been more than a monetary parent (he paid his child support and is proud to proclaim it) to me anyway.

Also, I have gotten the feeling he thinks I should show gratitude for him paying child support and throwing extra money at me here and there. And the fact that I don’t see that as a big deal seems to upset him. From my perspective, he paid his child support so he wouldn’t go to jailor get his paychecks checks garnished. That didn’t have anything to do with me. But based on some conversations my uncle (his brother) shared with me I get the feeling he feels like I am ungrateful. I saw this dude 1 time between birth and age 17. I can count of two hands the number of times I have spoken to him between 17 and 28/29 when we stopped speaking. How dare he think I have any reason to show him gratitude!

He knows how to be a father. He is a whole father to my siblings and a constant critic of their children’s fathers. He has chosen to not be a part of my life and I think it is hypocritical but I accept it.

Thank you for sharing.

When my guy was describing his situation, we asked him what do you think your son would say is the reason for not talking?

He didn't have an answer I remember but he kept mentioning how he had financially supported him all these years. I made the point that money is probably my friends "love language" because of his career but maybe your son was looking for something else? Like being around. Its a similar situation (it sounds) where my guy remarried and is now a model dad and so the son can feel like he knows how to be a parent like you mentioned. My friend definitely described his kid as ungrateful.


Anyway thanks for sharing, it really is the kids perspective on this my dude is missing.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Absent greater detail on their relationship, your friend needs to be the *parent*- not just the proverbial bigger person- and set that pride to the side and patch things up.

IMO that should always flow downward from parent to child, not upward.

If the parent can't put in the work, there's no reason to expect the kid to.

The kid can take it a number of ways, but rejection is probably one of the more significantly damaging ones IMO.

Your friend needs to be the one to initiate that reconciliation.

But that's me.

kids do not give a shit about child support payments

be more alike than either one if us cares to admit. He is 74 years old and I know we don’t have much time left to finally get to know each other but, I refuse to chase him for fear of rejection, and (here is the wishful thinking part) I think he refuses to chase me for the same reason. So whatever!

I tell my male friends all the time, if you don’t establish a relationship with your kids when they are young you can’t expect their loyalty or respect once they are grown. For the short amount of time that we were in contact he really expected me to relate towards him with the same reverence and respect as his other kids, knowing that he never parented me the way he parented them.

>I tell my male friends all the time, if you don’t establish
>a relationship with your kids when they are young you can’t
>expect their loyalty or respect once they are grown.

he wasn't around when I was young, so I was around when he was old. we never talked about it when he was alive. he never approached me to tell me anything, so I stopped caring as teenager. didn't care about the relationship because there wasn't one or him. I'm fortunate in that I never pined for him to be around when I was a kid. just knew he wasn't there.

then later in life, found out he was a horrible father to my much younger sister. apparently, he has another child who was put up for adoption. some folks really aren't built to be parents.

with your dad.

My first thought is, he is going to pass and you are going to regret not saying what you had to say to him or giving him the opportunity to say his piece.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that might be me watching too many movies or having this idealized idea of how such a scenario would play out. The more I thought about it the more I realized its a good chance it might not play out the way we would want it in our mind.

Anyway, all this to say, I've got no clue. There might not be an "right way" to resolve it all. And the fact is, I am not sure these type of things ever get resolved.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

sometimes the resolution is less involved than forgiving or feeling regret.

as I said, my dad passed and I was pretty eh about it. didn't have anything to finish with him prior to him passing. I have no regrets about how I behaved while he was alive (behaved = didn't seek him out/had nothing to say to him). once I got to the don't care part of the story, nothing else mattered. it doesn't always end with a cherry on top.

People are catching hell on this earth mane. It is hard to assume ANYTHING.

Once there's money involved, nothing is off the table. So seeing that with 'rich' folks and/or 'famous' people? Not shocking.

And hey, sometimes? A kid can just lose their damn minds regardless of their upbringing/what you tried to 'instill' in them. This is especially the case where lots of kids are not growing up in authoritarian households where someone is 'in charge' and 'whatever they say goes'. AND OF COURSE, there's hella issues with THAT setup too. But dowhatchalike (I see guys and girls dancin)? That shit ain't all that either, is it!?

And when a kid has any portion of their upbringing without you living in the same house with them? Forgetaboutit. You can have a kid 'in your house' and be ON THEIR CASE EVERY DAY and still not get them to 'get' whatever you're trying to 'give' them. If you're picking them up even weekly or anything like that, please! You can't keep a kid on-schedule/task with a few 'you better be doing that homework, now' texts or talks on the phone every now and then. Please!

Now look, I get growing apart from friends. I get losing touch with friends as people start moving around to different areas on the map. I can understand 'not messing with' shady cousins. I can even get not being super tight with siblings depending on how those relationships fell apart when people start moving around (or, even worse, when they don't and people are around each other all the time). Not being down with your fraud azz aunties/unks? Okay.

I don't dig not talking to your kid(s) in most cases. But hell...even with what I just wrote, IDK. If I'm drawing lines with certain 'levels' of family, how hard would it be for that 'line' to move depending on the 'transgression' that occurs!? AKA once you have 'falling out with someone' as an option, who is to say you can't fall out with any other person!?

Still, could I really fall out with my own kid? Could I!? She's 14 now. Good kid overall too. I'm thinking 'no, never that'. But I have no business thinking I know for sure. And I'm typing this like I think 'I'm above falling out with my own kids, chief/lord/son/bro/yo'.

To zoom out on another angle of this: I see/know WAY TOO MANY people who have strong (and bad) child/parent dynamics with their siblings. And there might be even more people with STRONG homeboy/friend dynamics with their damn kids.

And even by my broken standards above, there's no reason to think someone can't have a falling out with a friend. So....if you treat your kids like your lil homies in any major way, a falling out can happen over damn near anything, right? In either direction?

>I was talking to a friend who by all appearances life is
>together and then it came out that he doesn't talk to his
>grown (mid 20s) son. I was like why? They had a turbulent
>relationship because the parents are not together but his
>final straw was when the kid didn't call him when his pops
>(the kids grandpops) died and he didn't call the dad.
>
>I get that would piss me off but I also have this general
>notion that the parent has to be the parent which means always
>being the bigger person. If things go bad it's always
>important for the parent to make the effort to repair the
>relationship.
>
>I was reminded of my friend when I saw 50 cent beefing with
>his son.
>
>https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/10/50-cent-father-son-repair-relationship-money-pay/
>
>That's more extreme because it's public but I am trying to
>challenge myself to consider where healthy, well adjusted
>people and kids (i.e., not dealing with a child with mental
>issues or drug problems), where the parent would be fully in
>the right for cutting off their child?
>
>I guess part of my thinking is that if the child isn't acting
>right, that's a reflection on you because that's your child
>right?
>
>Anyway, I am trying to be non-judgemental of my friend, so I
>am trying to hear some stories to give me a different
>perspective.
>
>
>
>**********
>"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then
>they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson
>
>"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

My oldest brother is the 'scapegoat' in the family. A scapegoat is the child who is blamed for behaving in a way that doesn't reflect the values the parents want to falsely project to the world. It's a hallmark of toxic family dynamics.

For whatever reason, my dad had it in for my brother. And my mom to a degree as well, although she awoke to her role in my brother's abuse when he was starting his teenage years.

My dad, who is the oldest man in his family of origin, was abused physically and emotionally as well. My brother's presence and his personality likely triggered my dad, possibly because it reminded him of his own behavior as a kid.

It got really bad. I won't get into details. My last intention would be to trigger someone. But there was a lot of physical and emotional abuse directed toward him.

Things were always tense between my brother and dad ever since he left my parents' home when my brother was in his early 20s. But when he got married, their relationship collapsed. They went a few years without speaking at all.

Eventually, they mended things. So much so that my brother was my dad's primary caregiver before he died from Alzheimer's earlier this year.

Like the OP said, my dad was a very religious man. He was prideful and arrogant. He would say that himself.

Religion is great for helping us see our potential as human or spiritual beings. But it also instills values that can blind someone to the damage they cause to others unless they also work on self-awareness. My dad never worked on his self-awareness, which was a big reason why he never improved his treatment of my brother.