Dear Kathy,
I have always been close to my children, even when they were going through their teen years. My son is grown now and my daughter is in her second year of college. Since she graduated high school, she’s distant towards me and she gets annoyed when I try to give her advice or ask her about her life.
I don’t understand why she’s freezing me out. I love my daughter so much and I want us to be friends like it used to be between us.
“Delores”
Dear Delores,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through a tough time. It is terribly painful to feel rejected by a family member we love.
Consider scheduling some private one-on-one time with your daughter and ask her if there’s anything going that she'd like to share with you. She may be experiencing a personal problem that she hasn’t told you about yet. Perhaps she wants to re-negotiate the relationship between the two of you now that she is at a different point in her life.
Barring the afore-mentioned, perhaps the current situation is part of her developmental stage as a young adult in late adolescence. Young women often establish their own identities as unique people by rejecting who their mothers are. It’s not personal, and it is temporary. Hang in there and remember that this too shall pass!
Please let us know how things work out,
Kathy
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