Blocked

For the adult children losing heart, and a plea to estranged parents on the other side of the silence

Most adult children don’t set boundaries because they want distance. It’s because they’re trying to stay in relationship, and I think that part gets lost in how these stories are usually told. The boundary is often the invitation. It’s the person saying, “I want you in my life, and I need this thing to change in order for that to work.”

When the parent’s answer is dismissal, silence, more silence, and then severance, it hits you with a deep, quiet, heavy discouragement.

Recently, my mom blocked me on Facebook. There was no conversation beforehand, no argument, and I hadn’t posted anything. My dad blocked me shortly before that, and other extended family quietly removed themselves as well. Prior to that, one of my husband’s parents blocked both of our phone numbers after he reached out once to talk about something important, and that was it. No communication, no attempt. Just a closed door.

I love my parents deeply. I think people assume estranged adult children are angry, and some are, but a lot of us are just… weary. I know when I describe what happened in my family, it can sound simpler than it was. There were years of small hurts and failed attempts at repair before we got to the point of drawing a line. I’ve heard it described as a thousand paper cuts. But our one core ask was simple: please stop sharing grievances about us behind our backs with other people. And when that wasn’t something they were willing to do, we said okay, we understand that’s your choice, but we are here whenever you’re ready.

I know some of you will wonder why I’m saying any of this publicly, and I’ve thought about that more than you’d guess. When I was in the thick of this, I went looking for help and found almost nothing for Christian estranged adult children. Everything I found was aimed at parents of adult children, and almost all of it assumed the adult child was a rebellious Prodigal. I write because that Christ-centered voice for adult children still barely exists, and it needs to. I also write for parents who are willing to look honestly at their own part in the distance, and for churches that don’t have language for any of this yet. I’m not trying to win an argument with my parents through a Substack article. I’m trying to give real, biblical footing to a conversation the church has almost entirely overlooked.

On that note, there’s a passage in Colossians I think the church needs to talk about more than it does, and I bring it up not as a weapon but as something I believe God meant for the good of families. In Colossians 3:21, Paul warns fathers not to provoke their children “lest they become discouraged.” The Greek is *athumeo*. It means to lose heart, to become spiritless. Paul is warning parents about what they can do to a child’s heart, and it should be taken seriously.

I don’t bring this up to hand adult children a Bible verse to throw at their parents. That’s not what Scripture is for. I bring it up because I think God put this warning in Colossians because he loves both parents and children, and because real love tells the truth even when it’s uncomfortable. Paul placed this warning inside what scholars call a household code, where he lays out mutual responsibilities within the family. He addresses children in verse 20, and then he turns to parents in verse 21 and tells them: do not provoke your children into losing heart. It’s one of the few places in the New Testament where Paul directly warns parents about a particular way they can wrong their children, and what he describes isn’t what most people picture when they hear words like “abuse” or “neglect.” He’s talking about provocation that results in a child becoming spiritless… drained of any expectation that things could change.

I can’t see my parents’ motives and I won’t pretend I can. I don’t know what goes through someone’s mind when they press that block button or what story they tell themselves about why it’s necessary.

But I can tell you what it looked like from my side when that door closed.

I never removed my parents on social media, and I don’t say that to puff myself up or tell people to look at how great I am. Honestly, it sometimes made my heart ache to keep them there. It was hard to stay connected to people who didn’t seem to want reconciliation. But I did it on purpose, because I didn’t want to send the wrong message. I never wanted my parents to think, even for a second, that I didn’t want them in my life.

When my dad blocked me, it definitely hurt. But I remember thinking, “Well, at least my mom hasn’t.” She had me restricted, so I couldn’t see anything she posted anyway, but at least she hadn’t blocked or unfriended me. And I held onto that. I know it sounds small and even silly. But when most of the connections are already gone, you pay attention to the ones that are still there. That tiny thread was something I could point to in my own head and think, okay, maybe there’s still hope. And eventually, I noticed she blocked me too, and it just broke something in me. The last tiny thread I’d been holding onto, just… gone.

This is the kind of discouragement Paul was warning about. Not always one dramatic blowup, but a pattern of losses that accumulates until a person begins to lose heart.

Parents carry something in this dynamic that no one else does. A friend can walk away from you and it stings. But a parent’s silence reaches into a part of you that’s been there since you were a child, the part that still wants them to see you, still wants them to say “tell me what happened, I’m listening now.” That part doesn’t go away when you turn eighteen or thirty or forty. And a parent’s rejection lands there every single time, with a kind of despair that no other relationship on earth carries.

For the parents still reading, I want to say something I mean with all my heart. I know the word “boundary” lands hard. I know it can feel like your child is saying you weren’t good enough, or that they expect perfection, or that one mistake cost you everything. That reaction makes sense to me. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why it cuts so deep.

Most of the time, when your child sets a boundary, they are telling you what they need in order to stay in relationship because they haven’t given up. Every healthy relationship has terms under which it can flourish. And for Christians, honesty, repentance, and a willingness to hear the truth about ourselves should not be foreign things. Those are not hostile ideas, and they’re part of how relationships are repaired.

I know there are situations where cutting contact and removing connections is the right and necessary thing to do, on both sides, and that’s not what I’m addressing here. What I’m addressing is the parent who says they want reconciliation but hasn’t yet done the one thing their child asked of them. If your child told you what they needed, and you’ve dismissed it, that’s where reconciliation is waiting. Not in a phone call that ignores what they asked for. Not in a card or happy birthday text that pretends the request was never made. Reconciliation begins with taking your child’s request seriously enough to honor it, even if it’s hard, even if it means examining yourself honestly before God and repenting of what you find. Christians already know what it is to be corrected, to repent, and to let truth do its work. We don’t get to skip the repentance part and jump straight to restoration. We don’t get to say “let’s just move on” when God himself says “let’s deal with this first.” And your child, made in the image of God whether they’re a Christian or not, may be asking you for something God asks of all of us: hear the truth, take responsibility for your part, and let that be the foundation for something better.

The gospel didn’t begin with God pretending everything was fine. It began with the truth about who we are, and the grace to be changed by it.

I keep coming back to what I said at the beginning of this article. Most of us drew the line because we wanted to be closer, and watching that get answered with silence and severance can leave a child deeply discouraged in exactly the way Paul warns parents not to provoke. God took it seriously enough to put it in Scripture, and the church owes it to both parents and adult children to take it seriously too.

If you’re a parent, I want to leave you with two questions. Is anything you’re doing right now making your child lose heart? And if you truly don’t know the reason there is distance, when was the last time you asked your child what they needed from you?

Because I can tell you from the other side of it: your child is paying attention. They notice what you do. They notice what you don’t do. And I promise you this: they are still, even now, looking for reasons not to give up.

Please, dear parents, please don’t take those away from them.