One thing I have learnt over the last 15 years is that change takes time,
We all have visions, visions of making life better, visions of compassion, visions of a better future.
Our mindsets evolve over time.
The way we think and behave is coloured by our upbringing and our experiences whilst growing up.
If we have been lucky enough to have had good role models in our early years, hopefully we go on to be good role models to others.
Sadly, all too often, children grow up in an environment where they either don’t have good role models, or indeed have no role models at all. No one says “I love you.”
Children who have been estranged from family members, often have had no-one to look up to, no one to show them how to be loved and how to love others. Children who grow into adults, not trusting anyone.
How do you show them how much you love them?
When you have been estranged from a child/grandchild for many years, we all have this vision of how it will be when we are reunited. Those magical hugs to fill that empty void we have lived with for so long.
But how are those children now actually feeling?
If you have been apart for a long time, things will be different, these children are no longer children they are adults, and have become their own person. We don’t know what has been said about us, and we don’t know how their life has been.
I have written before that this is about building a brand new relationship, and it takes time, patience and kindness.
That may seem obvious, but it is all too easy to fall into so many traps.
The estrangement is nothing to do with the now adult children, it was an episode in their lives that they had no control over and was an adult problem. So trying to go back to that time, is not advisable.
You may well feel you want to put the record straight etc, but what is important now is the relationship you are rebuilding with your child/grandchild, the past is just that, the past.
As grandparents we need to show by our actions that we can be trusted, that we love our grandchildren unconditionally.
It may well be that those hugs you have so ached for, are not quite as you thought, there may be a resistance.
It should be of no surprise, if you look at this from the child’s eyes.
Adults around them in the past have let them down, and they have lost trust in all adults. It could also be that they have been shown little or no affection from adults they have spent most of their life with. So when we suddenly engulf them with ‘hugs and kisses,’ it makes them feel uncomfortable, so they pull back.
The grown up children, will naturally be very wary, they are fearful that if they let the barriers down they might be let down again.
It is up to us, to prove to them that we wont let them down, that we are going nowhere, and that we are here for them when and if they need us without question.
To have a vision is to have hope, so we must continue with that vision.
Family breakdown has become a public health issue, so if we treat estranged children as though they are coming out of an illness we can be part of their healing, with care, compassion and calmness.
