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I love my 40-year-old daughter. And I know she loves me. But at some point during the past decade, our visits have often ended in emotional fireworks. It’s been a shock because even at the age of 30, she would still sit on my lap and run her fingers through my hair. Now she has a 5-year-old daughter, and I feel like I’m walking an emotional tightrope that I can barely see.
One misstep, and I’m afraid I’ll lose the opportunity to visit with my grandchild.
When I talk to other women about this, I’m surprised at how many of them share this type of relationship with their own adult daughters. And it’s daughters and not sons. I know of one woman who has never seen her two grandchildren. Her daughter sends her digital images of the children, with their faces blocked out. She has no idea why.
Diana Singleton, a marriage and family therapist, says she often works with adult children who believe they need to set boundaries with their parents. “They felt emotionally abused when they were children. They’re adults now, and they have cut off the relationship between grandparent and grandchild," she said. "I’m working with one couple who have never seen their grandchildren.”
In Singleton’s own family, her sister-in-law withdrew and had no contact with her mother for 10 years. That meant her mother was cut off from seeing her two grandchildren. The stated reason was that the daughter had married a Muslim and her mother did not approve. “My sister-in-law finally just said, ‘Enough’s enough'."
On a recent flight home to visit my daughter and granddaughter, I struck up a chance conversation with the woman sitting next to me. Diane Scheerer has a grown daughter and son. But it’s not the son she has trouble with. She feels she has been “walking on eggshells” with her 39-year-old daughter since her daughter was a teenager, and dated a boy they didn’t approve of. She later married him.
Things came to a head in early 2024, when her daughter gave birth to twins, adding to four other children already in the family — all under the age of 7. She last saw her grandchildren that February, when the twins came home from the hospital. After that, her daughter stopped returning her phone calls and blocked her text messages. She didn’t hear from her on her birthday or Mother’s Day. Scheerer says she has no idea what caused the rift.
Then, in May, she made her oldest granddaughter a birthday cake and brought it to her daughter’s house, without calling first. “She wouldn’t have answered if I had called,” Scheerer says. “So I decided to put the pedal to the metal. I promised my granddaughter last year I’d make her a Squishmallow cake, and my word is gold.”
It didn’t go well. “My daughter came out and said, ‘What are you doing? This is terrible. I will meet with you later without the children being able to see anything.’ So I dropped off the presents and cake.”
When they finally met, at a neutral location, they talked for an hour and a half. Her daughter listed her complaints, including her concerns about her 7 year old’s body image, this because Scheerer had mentioned she herself was going to cut sugar out of her diet. Her daughter called her a “narcissist.” “I just kept saying, ‘Honey, I love you. Whatever I’ve done, I apologize'."
The conversation ended with an invitation to visit the grandchildren the next day, As Scheerer recounts: “I was profoundly grateful. My dreams have been full of this. It would never have worked if I had tried to argue with her, to make her out as wrong. We have to focus on what we agree on: We love the children.”
What can grandparents do to navigate these choppy waters? Therapy. This is an opportunity, therapist Diana Singleton suggests, for adult children to clarify their expectations, and that “grandparents really need to listen to what their adult children are saying in order to make the repair.”
For me, what has worked is to acknowledge that I have asked too many questions and have given my daughter too much unsolicited advice. Ending that habit has been a game-changer.
“I don’t want you to tell me what to do,” she said. “I just want you to listen.” In other words, I am now treating her like a grownup.
One friend, who is the father of a daughter, offered this perspective on the mother-daughter dynamic he has witnessed. He recently told me: “Tension is built into the relationship between mothers and daughters. You and your daughter are embodying enduring energy patterns of a timeless dance.”
Thinking of it that way, it was clearly time to give me and my daughter a modern and healing twist to that dance.
Are any of you estranged from one of your adult children? Let us know in the comments below.
Elia Barberi
Follow Article Topics: Relationships
