When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along

When Parents Hurt addresses the pain, shame, and sense of loss parents experience when their relationship with adult or older children has not developed as hoped. Even with genuine effort, parents may lose the opportunity to be the parent they want to be and must grieve the loss of a harmonious relationship. Dr. Joshua Coleman provides healing exercises and case examples to help parents reduce anger, guilt, and shame. The book explores how temperament, the teen years, a partner's or their own mistakes, and divorce can damage the parent-child bond. It guides parents in accepting their own imperfections as well as their child's, and in developing strategies for reaching out while maintaining self-esteem during difficult periods. The book also examines how society's expectations contribute to parental distress. By helping parents recognize what they can control and what they cannot, When Parents Hurt offers approaches for families to develop more positive ways of relating to themselves and each other.