Adult Kid Pretending Not to Recognize Parents After Sister's Death Praised

A post about a 21-year-old whose parents attempted to reconnect with them after they "dumped" their child at their grandparents' home at age six has gone viral on Reddit, where it had received over 28,000 upvotes at the time of writing.

In a post shared on Reddit's Am I The A****** (AITA), user throwaway_9572847 said: "My older sister developed a serious illness when I was 6 and my parents decided that they couldn't care for both of us I guess, so they kind of unceremoniously dumped me at my grandparents and my uncle took me in. Like, didn't even explain to me what was going on, just 'you're going to go visit gran for awhile' and never picked me back up."

The post has raised the difficult issue of estrangement and whether it's possible to repair broken family relationships.

A November 2017 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Family Theory and Review said: "A diverse range of factors that are often interlinked has been found to contribute to estrangement."

The study found that the consequences of estrangement from a parent or child include the following:

• Reduced levels of psychological well-being
• Feelings of loss
• Experiences and/or perceptions of stigma

A December 2015 report from the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge and the U.K. charity Stand Alone stated that "adult family relationships are complex and diverse" and that it's challenging to exactly define estrangement. "However, at its most simple, adult family estrangement can be understood as the breakdown of a supportive relationship between family members."

The report found that "most who were estranged from a parent strongly agreed with the idea that they could never have a functional relationship again."

The user in the latest Reddit post said their sister recently passed away between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The poster ran into their parents at Christmas when they went to midnight mass with their grandmother.

The user said they "approached me and tried to give me a hug. I did recognize them, but I pretended not to and just backed off and said 'Sorry, do I know you?'"

When they said "We're your parents!" the poster replied: "My parents are at home" and sat next to the grandmother. They sat behind them and the poster said: "I could just feel the stare, and on the way out they were like 'You really don't recognize us?' and I said 'Oh, are you my dad's brother? I think I remember you from when I was little'."

The poster said they'd seen the parents around five times since being dropped off at the grandparents' place and "not at all for the last 9 years."

The user said: "I decided to stop having contact with them when I was 12 and since I was the only one reaching out all communication broke down. It turned out ok, I love my aunt and uncle and it turns out they can't have kids so they've always said I'm their miracle kid, I was just misrouted by the stork at first. I was formally adopted by them when I turned 18...I'm 21 now."

After the recent Christmas incident, the user said the parents wrote them "a long letter about how hurt they are and how I should understand that they were trying to do the right thing and how they'll always be my parents and I can't change that."

The poster said: "Other family members think I was too harsh as they're grieving, but I don't think they should get a pass just because they remembered me now that my sister is gone."

Ruth E. Freeman, licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and the founder and president of Peace at Home Parenting Solutions, told Newsweek: "Children who have ill siblings can often feel neglected, but this sounds like an extreme example of that situation."

She said the poster "has every right" to respond to the birth parents in any way that they like. "The loss of one's parents is one of the most devastating [things] that a child can experience. It isn't [the child's] job to take care of the parents and [the child] has every right to make clear boundaries with them.

"On the other hand, most people end up wanting some kind of connection with birth parents, regardless of their behavior," she added.

Rather than pretending to not recognize them, which is "clearly an attempt to hurt them back," Freeman suggested the poster could say something like: "I don't want to be in contact right now. I have too many feelings of hurt and anger. If that changes in the future, I will let you know."

The social worker explained that doing this is a way of taking care in case the user changes their mind as they mature. But the bottom line is that "the family should support [the poster] to manage the boundaries around this relationship...even though the parents are grieving, it is not [the poster's] job to take care of them."

In a comment that got 42,200 upvotes, user Si_the_chef said the poster is "NTA [not the a******]", adding the poster's response to her father "'Are you my Dad's brother' was pure class."

User WholeAd2742 said: "And it's technically correct with the adoption :P," in a comment that received over 14,200 upvotes.

Erebu593 noted: "Yeah their [the parents'] line of 'we'll always be you parents and you can't change that' well actually you can with this piece of paper. OP [original poster] handled this perfectly NTA" in a comment that got 2,300 upvotes.

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment.

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