50 Parents Who Went No Contact With Their Children Share What Happened

A little different, I was disowned, but I deserved it. I was an a****t and a mess for a long time, my mom couldn’t keep bailing me out of trouble and watch me self destruct anymore. I wasn’t living at home, she came to see me one last time to tell me she was done, not to contact her, she would no longer have anything to do with me. She was in pieces, I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her. But it was the best thing she ever did for me, once she cut me off my rock bottom came hard and fast. After a little while of living on the streets and my a*******n consuming me, I made my way to a detox center, got a few days clean under my belt and never looked back. That was almost 15 years ago. After I was clean a little while I contacted my mom, and little by little we built a relationship again, and now we’re really close. I am forever grateful to my mom for letting me fall and letting me back into her life.

I have disowned my oldest son. He m*lested my daughter, has been diagnosed as a sociopath and we have restraining orders against him. It isn't fun and I never thought I would be that parent.

Not a parent, but my parents stopped loving me the moment I was disfellowshipped as a Jehovah Witness, and I was promptly Kicked out.

I knew nothing of how to live on my own at the time, but I had a decent job and survived.

My brother stopped associating with them 2 years later and lives with me, and they since moved away (1500 miles away to be exact).

Its easier to tell people I am orphan or that I do not have parents, cause its hard to explain how they would stop loving or want to associate with there own son over some stupid cult rules.

I disowned my father. I don't believe that it nearly as difficult a decision as disowning a child, but it was tough.

I grew up in an upper middle class perfect nuclear family. My parents were high school sweethearts. My dad was an operator at an oil refinery, my mom was an accountant turned stay at home mom. I am a middle child- I have a 3 year older brother and a 3 year younger brother.

When my older brother was about 10, my dad's drinking got out of hand and be became extremely physically a*****e. A few years later, my mom divorced him after 23 years of marriage because she was afraid for our lives.

My dad went off the deep end. Started doing d***s, stealing, etc. Was involved in a few hit-and-runs. My older brother, who had received the brunt of the physical abuse, was manipulated into a relationship with my dad for a few years. To a lesser extent, so was I. He seemed to take an interest in us for the first time since we were little, but in hindsight it was just more manipulation and gaslighting.

Wont go into all of the details, but my brothers and I eventually got wind of just what kind of sketchy stuff he was involved in. My little brother and I, who both had aspirations to get into law enforcement, cut him out of our lives completely. My older brother took a while longer- he was a kid who always just wanted his dad to love him and so he was wearing blinders. He did eventually see the light, and cut my dad out as well.

A few years ago, my dad was living with his mom. My grandma had been manipulated by him for years, and they had a symbiotic co- dependent relationship... she was a prescription a****t and he was an "everything" a****t. My grandma had a reverse mortgage on her home. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and given 6 months to live, and moved into a nursing home. My dad kept squatting at her house, despite the bank coming to (rightfully) claim the home. Cops got involved, and he was arrested.

My grandma slipped and fell 2 days after moving to the nursing home. She developed a brain bleed and died a few days later.

My dad had a seizure his first night in jail and was brought to the hospital, where it was determined he had a burst brain aneurysm. The doctors theorized that the aneurysm was the result of his d**g use, and when he was scuffling with the cops during the arrest, his increased blood pressure and/or jarring caused it to burst.

He's now in a nursing home, and functioning at about a 6 year old's level. He has some inkling that he's f****d up royally and it is all his fault but he really doesn't understand the specifics. He can kind of communicate, and hold conversations but they're bizarre and wander all over and a lot of very strange words make their way in.

I visit him a few times per year. I only do it because the person he became with a*******n is dead. I believe that karma caught up to him, and he's earned his hell. I truly would not shed a tear if he dropped dead tomorrow- he's been dead to me for a decade. I do have some compassion for a sad, confused 58 year old man who is alone in a depressing nursing home with no visitors. He knows he has kids, and a wife (he doesn't understand they're divorced) and sometimes he even knows he has grandkids he has never been allowed to meet. So he doesn't understand why nobody visits him. I've started occasional visits not because I have any interest in having a relationship with him, but because unfortunately the doctors saved him when his aneurysm burst and we're left with a person who is paying for crimes he doesn't know he committed, in a world he doesn't understand. He sometimes cries when he asks to see pictures of "that little boy" (my nephew- his grandson) and I have to explain, yet again, why he isn't allowed to meet him. He asks me questions about "that cop"- my little brother, whose name he can't remember. He looks so proud when I tell him that his son is rising through the ranks and just became a K9 officer. It's like a shard of the dad he was 25 years ago has surfaced, and everything in between only exists as a convoluted fever dream. It tears my heart open as a human to see his suffering, but in a really twisted, sick way gives me satisfaction that his actions caught up to him, which makes me hate myself even more than I already did.

I doubt anyone has read this- it wasn't supposed to be a novel. But that's how I disowned my dad, then kind of developed a minimal relationship with the ghost of his former humanity than now occupies his body. My heart goes out to people who have had to disown a child. I was extremely fortunate to have an incredible mom and extended family to support my brothers and me, yet I am still damaged from my time with him. Having to choose between compassion and love for a flawed person and your own or your other loved-ones' physical and mental wellbeing rips something open inside of you and leaves you permanently scarred.

My parents disowned my oldest sister. She always struggled growing up more than us (she became a teen mom with a bad older dude, partied a lot, etc), but my parents helped her a lot. They do okay for themselves, but had a no-co-signing rule for all six of my siblings and I. Still, they co-signed for her house so she could get a head start.

She didn’t pay the mortgage for almost 3 years before my mom got served in front of all the other nurses at her work.

My parents worked tirelessly to try to work out deals where my sister and her family kept the house and got some leniency, but to no avail, because my sister never showed up for court dates. During this time, she paid $12k for IVF and got pregnant with her fifth kid.

When my mom demanded some of the money back, she accused my dad and my brother of beating her sons when my parents took them to Disney World (he didn’t) and said she’d file a police report if he asked for money again. They kept asking, cause it wasn’t true.

She awkwardly joined us for Christmas, and punched my brother in the face during the meal for “humiliating” her oldest son by asking him if he wanted to work at my brother’s company for good pay. Her oldest son is in and out of jail, and my brother was trying to help him after his release, but her son said he didn’t want a job and got mad. She then called the cops and told them the same brother had illegal guns in his truck, and they came on Christmas night and searched his truck (no guns found!)

Needless to say, she is not welcome anywhere near any of us and my mom still cries about it, but refuses to talk to her again.

My parents didn’t “disown” me... I was just a weird mistake. My mother never wanted a child. She bailed after a few months.

My father was a single parent and ended up in prison (life without parole) when I was 14. I finally met my mother. She was a police detective by the time I moved in with her. She threw me out after two months.

I am 30 now, and life is typically a little weird around the holidays, but I always get a good laugh when I tell people that my father is in prison for life and my mother is a cop. But then they get super awkward when I tell them that no... it’s not a joke.

It took a long time for me to come to terms with it, but I know now that none of it was my fault.

My ex wife disowned my son.

We both married young when I was in the military (high school sweethearts). She became pregnant 6 months into our marriage. I don’t think she connected with him at all after he was born. The most she did with him was Instagram photo shoots where she painted herself as #1 mommy. When he turned 3, I left the military. A year after that, she ran for the hills. I remember it like it was yesterday. I sat down with her at a local restaurant to talk divorce plans. We split all of our financials and material items down the middle. We finally got to custody for my kiddo (something I dreaded to discuss because fathers never gain custody in my area) and she tells me “I want absolutely no responsibility”.

I was taken back and I asked if she was sure. She was. That one sentence hurt me more than anything else that happen during that time. My biological father wanted nothing to do with me and now I was seeing it happen with my own child but with his mother. I received full custody and she married within a year afterwards (she had another child too). Her parents try their best to be apart of his life but she still does her best to avoid him. He’s 7 now and used to it, but I know it weights heavily on him. S**t sucks a*s but it’s life I guess.

I love my son, but he abused me. When he turned that violence on to his sister by choking her, I had to say "Good-bye".

I have been legally disowned by my father. When I was 11, my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer (this was her second diagnosis in around 4 years, obviously she recovered the first time after intense surgery and a lot of chemo) and he did not want to look after her like he did before. He also had a new gf and her family to look after apparently and he had no issues leaving us. When my mum passed away when I was 14, my brother, grandmother, him and I met up to discuss who I was going to live with (the plan was my brother and his family, father was never considered) and he showed up and declared that he was in the process of going to court to legally emancipate himself from me. He went out of his way to legally declare that I was no longer his child. Just so that my brother (22yo with a wife and 2 young children already struggling on one paycheck) couldnt seek child support.

Needless to say it stung coming only days after my mother's funeral..

My biological father divorced my mom and also his 3 kids, basically bouncing out of our lives and making it clear he wanted next to nothing to do with any of us when he left.

Man years later, at my older sister's funeral, that he had the f*****g gall to attend, I asked him why he did that he said, "I thought it would be easier for everyone." He actually meant it was easier for him to run home to his wealthy family and enjoy a second adolescence while my single mother worked 2 jobs to feed 3 kids under 10 with zero child support from him.

My father said my mother's issue was she had too many children and it gave her some kind of brain fever, much like a dog that loses it's mind after having too many puppies.

My mother said my father felt trapped by me. He was planning to leave when it was just my two older brother and then my mother got pregnant with me and he felt obligated to stay.

Now that I'm am adult with two kids myself, I think I realized that both of my parents are are just extremely mentally ill and incapable of loving anyone, including themselves.

As Jehovahs witnesses, my parents disowned my siblings and I several times since I was in my late teens. One of the JW “rules” is that you do not associate with others who know “the truth” but refuse to follow it, including family and Parents are encouraged to disown any children who have left the religion. The first time was when i was 19. It upset me, i was heartbroken and eventually they changed their minds only to do it again a couple years later and so on until i stopped caring and no longer attempt to be a part of their lives at all.

I spent 20 years trying to get pregnant, and my son is now 13. What nobody ever tells you about is that you might end up with a kid you 100% dislike.
My son and I have zero interest in common. I tried everything to find common ground to no avail. He's been stealing from his now 86 granma, he stole from me, hacked my Google Play store account and my credit card twice to buy items in his games. I went to file a complaint before finding out he had done it. Went to 2 different therapists for that issue on the last 5 years and he totally manipulated them.
He damages things I like or care about. I now refuse to clean and tidy his bedroom because it's like a grenade aftermath within an hour after I have finished. He hides garbage instead of putting it in the bin.
He lies for everything, even when confronted with proofs he's lying, even crying on command.
He's the kind of clown I always hated even when I was a kid, always mocking and making these not funny jokes.
Now he's going to boarding school. First year was mandatory after another serie of thefts but he enjoyed it and chose to go back. I cannot really afford it but ANYTHING to get some relief, to be able to sleep with both eyes closed, to relax.
I feel like my heart is numb, if not dead. I have this constant nauseous feeling about my son. Sometimes, I feel the urge to drive away and never come back, just go, change name and forget about everyone. And I deeply hope that I won't live too old because I don't want to see him ruin everything.
This, they don't tell you about.

Alright, so this is a family secret that I revealed and got my mother's family to disown me. Which honestly is for the better.

When I was a kid, my uncle, molested me repeatedly over a summer I was with my grandparents. It really f****d with my sexuality and took me into my late teens, early 20s and years of therapy to accept that I'm gay. Still working on trying to even trust men as whole, in part because of this.

Anyway, when I was about 14 I told my mother because I just needed to get the secret out. I was in a situation I'd have to be alone with him again, and I was scared. Although looking back I was more scared trying to tell her, what her youngest brother did. When I did I learned that, this is a pretty common thing in her family and it happened to her by my grandmother's second husband. Well it happened to her and her three other sisters. My mother apologized to me, telling me she was sorry for sending me away that summer and that the family curse caught me as well. Honestly I needed to hear this because I hated her for letting this happen, but she had no way of stopping it or even knowing it'd happen to her son. Always been something that happened to the girls but never the boys. Aren't family traditions grand (sarcasm)?

We went to the cops, and because it had been so long and across state lines. There wasn't much they could do, it was my word against his. My mother family acknowledged that stuff like this happens in their family, and that I should blame the devil for this happening to me and not the person. And really I should feel bad for him because all of this was hard on him as well, he took this time to officially come out of the closet, and they all, minus my mother, let him know how brave he is for admitting his illness. And subsequently blamed me for turning him gay, keep in mind I was still trying to process if I was gay at this time. I was then accused of wanting to get molested and that I needed to repent what I had done and for trying to destroy his life. My mother tried to argue back, but at this point it was my mother's family versus my mother and I. My mother ended up giving slightly and told them we need time to process this. They let off and...

We got the hell out of there and never looked back. It's been about ten years since I saw any of them. They blame my mother for raising a devil loving son, which didn't get helped when I finally came out. The last thing they told us is that they'll let both my mother and I back in, if and only if, I admit that a nine year old wanted to be molested and of course convert back to being straight.

I think they are still surprised I haven't taken them up on their offer. Idk, and idc. My family is super small now, and I couldn't be more pleased.

My siblings and I have stopped interacting with my oldest brother. We found out that years earlier he had molested at least two boys. He was an adult at the time. He showed no remorse, and turned the story around to say that those boys were at fault. It was so disgusting to watch someone you grew up with treat people so poorly and show such a blatant disregard for others.
The good news is that the remaining four siblings have become closer and we now are able to appreciate the good we see in each other. It’s true when they say that if you could pick your family it would look much different than it is!

I wouldn’t say I’ve disowned or stopped loving my son, but it’s real tough to find love for him. He’s almost 14 (next month) and he’s currently out of our home at a treatment facility. He’s averaged two arrests a year for the last two years, and he’s attacked my wife several times, our daughters several times, and the neighborhood kids several times. He’s run away from school, run away from home, and tried to push me off the roof of our house (after threatening to jump off and hurt himself). We have become “that family” in our town where the police are called to our home on a semi-regular basis. He’s been getting more violent as he gets older (not to mention bigger and stronger) and I honestly don’t see an end in sight.

The key fact I’m leaving out is that he’s been diagnosed as high functioning autistic and is also bipolar. That’s like putting walls around a tornado and expecting it to stay inside the walls. A lot of what has occurred he had little control over because of the way his mind is (where he’s constantly at war with himself, structure versus chaos), and my wife and I have tried desperately to give him the best life we can while keeping ourselves and our daughters safe, but **I’m tired.** It’s been 8 and a half years we’ve been going through this with him and I’ve been ready to throw in the towel on him for a while. But my wife refuses to let him go, so we wake up every morning trying to give him the best life for him and our girls.

Since it seems to have widened a bit, a family torn apart. Based on an aunt and her niece.

Aunt starts signs of dementia at a relatively young age, is moved into an assisted living home. Niece (who bounces around jobs) gets hirex to go visit her about once a week, take her out to the mall or a walk in the park, whatever. Paid handsomely.

We get an alert that aunt has a check bounce from her account that should have $5k in it. Niece has drained the account. Proven beyond a doubt, with receipts. Niece would take aunt to aunt's bank machine every friday and withdraw $200, then fill her car with gas (aunt can't drive), and charge us hours when she clearly didn't spend hours with aunt (charged us claiming she took aunt to appointments - there was no appointment. We can actually call the doctor fyi).

The family rift? For some bizarre reason niece's family took her side.

Not me, but my great grandma. This story is really sad but also interesting, so I thought I'd share it.
She was a young creole teenager- french creole was her first language, and she was a quarter-to-half black like me, with tan skin and loose brown curls. She was born in Florida, but when things started getting worse for black people in Florida, her family relocated to Texas. For those who don't know, creole people tend to play heavily into colorism. Although they are definitely mixed race, they prioritize light skinned people. The looser your curl, the lighter your skin, the more white you look, the better. Her parents had high expectations for her to marry a wealthy, light skinned man who would take care of her.


Instead, she met my great grandfather. A poor, dark-skinned man jumping from job to job working for farmers and trying to make a living. The two of them fell in love. They were just teenagers. Her parents threatened to disown her if she continued seeing him, and like a rebellious teenager, she refused. They wanted her to do better. She wanted to be in love.


They might have broken up eventually, if she didn't get pregnant. But she did, and that was the end of it. Her parents basically said "you've ruined your life" and disowned her right there. The whole family disowned her. No one would speak to her- aunts, uncles, cousins, not a single person stood up for her. So she had no choice. The two of them moved to California, so he could get a job picking oranges. He built a house. They had their first daughter. She was 16. She never saw her family again.

##not me, but##

Friend wanted to move out and be independent, which was appropriate, because she was 22. Her parents wanted to keep her under their thumb, and told her she couldn't move out. A huge argument ensued. She grabbed all her stuff and left. And was promptly disowned by both parents.

Makes sense, right?

Do adopted kids count? We adopted a 3 year old from foster care. Cutest, sweetest kid. He had a few issues, but we mostly figured it was because of his history. The issues escalated quickly. When he was 7 he hit our dog with a golf club. We had to keep him away from our dog and our cat. The cat disappeared - we assumed she got out and ran away. Found out years later that he k**led it and threw it in the woods. The last straw was when he burned our home down. We sent him to a residential treatment center where he stayed for 2 years. During that time, he molested a roommate and became extremely violent. The insurance company told us that they wouldn’t pay anymore and we’d either have to pay for him out of pocket ($40k a month) or bring him home. We have younger children and it wouldn’t be safe. We ended up telling the state we wouldn’t bring him home. So now we have a verified abuse report against us because we wouldn’t bring him back (even though the therapists agreed with our decision). I don’t love him. I wish the best for him, but I don’t feel anything toward him.