CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Can Emotionally Immature Parents Change?

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

A listener spent years hoping her two divorced, emotionally immature parents would finally take accountability, only to watch the same excuses repeat with new partners. Whitney answers the question of whether parents ever really change later in life and how to handle it if they don’t. Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. Today is Thursday. We have a Q&A episode where I'm only going to answer one question because it was a really good question that allowed us to get into so many themes. We're going to be talking about divorce, grandchildren, accepting your parent, going no contact, more avoidant parents and parents that repeat the same cycle over and over in their emotional immaturity. It was a great question that allowed us to touch on a lot of different themes. So thank you so much to that caller for sending this in. As a reminder, you can always send me a voice note or your written question to Whitney at Callinghome.co, and I might choose it on a Thursday episode. All right, I'm going to read you that first caller question. Hi, Whitney. Thank you so much for the incredible work you do.

I've been listening to your podcast for a while now, and it has been vital in helping me navigate very challenging relationships with both of my parents. Thank you. you so much for listening. And thank you for sending this question in. My parents divorced when I was five. Both exhibit high levels of emotional immaturity and my father displays strong narcissistic behaviors. I'm now in my mid-40s with children of my own, ages 11 and 14. As my kids have entered their pre-teen and teen years, it has brought everything into sharp focus. Realizing how vastly different my own parenting approach is has brought me to a breaking point. I've been low contact or estranged from both parents for the past few years, and despite years of

therapy on my end, it feels like they are doing zero work. With my mother, the riff deepened when I tried to explain how her actions and words were causing me harm. I was met with defensiveness, gaslighting, and eventually name-calling, specifically being told I was just like my dad, intended as a severe insult. When I held my boundary and stepped back, she texted saying she spoke with my sister, now understood why I was hurt and asked for patience while she learned better communication skills. But this isn't a communication gap. It's a lifelong pattern of resorting to childish behavior when challenged. She hid behind, quote, good intentions while completely ignoring actual impact, and I don't have the bandwidth to stay in a relationship where nothing changes. With my father,

after 35 years of marriage, my stepmother left him, a relationship where I witnessed verbal abuse, control and undermining. He took zero accountability. Within two months, he had a new girlfriend and aggressively pushed to integrate her into our lives. When I advocated for a gradual adjustment, for the sake of my kids, he accused me of trying to control his life. For two years, he only reached out with surface-level check-ins, how's the weather, send kid photos, while ignoring the underlying harm. I explicitly asked him not to contact me with superficial pleasantries until he addressed the real issues, which he ignored. Recently, after finding out his girlfriend moved out, his reaching out intensified.

He finally sent an email attempting to apologize, but it was filled with non-apologies like, I'm sorry if you felt offended and it wasn't my intention. I sent him a link to a podcast explaining why those phrases are hurtful, and he hasn't responded since. I hope it wasn't mine. They do not love when you send my podcast a lot of the time. It pisses me off that he only seeks connection. now because he is lonely, yet he still refuses to take true accountability.

I'm at the point where maintaining low or no contact feels like the only option for my mental health, but I carry a lot of grief. It's painful realizing I was never truly accepted or loved for who I am by the people who brought me into the world. My questions for you. In your experience, have you ever seen parents at this stage of life truly do the work, take accountability, and change? And two, because my kids are 11 and 14, I struggle with the fact that they are inheriting this estrangement. Given that I live three and a half hours away in a different state and my parents aren't healthy adults, should I give my teenagers the option to have an independent relationship with them

or is protection the better path? All right. Thank you so much for sending this question in and for trusting me to help you out with this dilemma. Let's start first by kind of breaking this down. this family dynamic, and then we're going to go into those questions. So we have a caller here who has had parents that are divorced since they were five years old. Okay. So if this is something that you relate to, you presumably have been navigating a relationship with your parents with them as separate individuals, not necessarily navigating them as a married couple. This means that while

she's describing both of her parents as being emotionally immature, you are navigating your parents as separates, not as a pair. And that can be quite different than when you're navigating two emotionally immature parents that are married, or two of them that one tends to kind of take up for the other and is more of the enabler, and one tends to be a lot more emotionally immature. These are very different dynamics. So we've got divorced, simultaneously emotionally immature, parents, but sounds like in very different ways. And a mother who kind of sees and maybe agrees that the father might be an issue, otherwise they would not be using, like saying that you're being just like your dad as an insult. Now, I want to say something here about these types of

insults. Okay. Parents use these insults a lot, emotionally immature parents. We'll say things like you are just like your dad. You're just like your mom. In a moment, you are acting in a way that they do not like or that reminds them of that other parent. Okay. And this happens a lot in divorce and in high conflict couples. And the reason that this is so damaging for the child at any age, even in adulthood, is because you could have partnered with truly the worst person on the planet. You could have been married to a murderer.

and your child that was born out of that relationship can do nothing about that. They cannot change their DNA. They cannot get rid of that person being their parent for the rest of their life. They are going to have to tolerate the reality that this person who might be an asshole or annoying or a terrible dad or the worst husband ever is part of them. And even if they are estranged from that person or they never speak to that person, person again or their parent dies, they still have to deal with the fact that that person is always going to be their parent, is always going to be a part of them, and they cannot change that.

And so when you highlight this and sort of use it as a jab of like, your father is so terrible and you are just like them, that is very, very hurtful and damaging, not only to the child, but to your relationship with your child, because here's another thing that you cannot change. your child is always going to be your child. Again, no matter what happens, they are going to have that tie to you. Neither of you can fully separate that. And so when you use these digs of like, you are just like your dad that I hate, that I divorced, that I no longer have in my life, that is extremely damaging to your relationship. So for this caller, I can see how when, your mother says this to you, it is, it has a big impact. It is very damaging to the relationship

because you cannot do anything about that. And your mother is saying, I divorced your father. They are no longer in my life. I don't have a relationship with them. And now you're acting just like them. So what are we going to do here? Is your mother going to cut you off? Is she going to not have a relationship with you anymore? She could do all of those things, but she is still ultimately going to be your mother. And so these types of insults can feel simultaneously like an insult, something very painful, a jab, an offloading of responsibility as your mother on to you. None of that feels good.

So let's clarify that, like, that is also why these types of interactions with a parent and these types of insults hurt even more than when they're said. by someone else. We also see in this dynamic the sister stepping in. So we know that there's a sister that comes in and sort of is the peacemaker here or maybe does a good job explaining to mom like, hey, this is why this type of argument felt this way. This is what you need to do to try to fix this. Now, I don't know if this is ultimately a good arrangement for the sister to be kind of being brought in as the peacemaker and triangulating here, the sister might really hate this. I don't know, but in this case, it seemed like it helped a little bit. The mom understood why she was stepping

back, why there was a problem, why this was hurtful. And then the mom ultimately says, like, can you give me some patience while I work on my communication skills? Now, I don't hate this from mom, right? This is a good thing for a parent to say, I'm going to work on my communication skills, and I just need some patience while I do that. What the problem is here for this adult child is that she's basically saying, like, this is a lifelong pattern with mom. I don't trust that mom is actually going to use this time where I'm giving her patience to work on her communication skills. And if I don't trust that mom is going to use this period of patience wisely, I don't really want to extend my patience again. So for those of you that feel like every time something happens like this, we enter this cycle of a third party in the family or in our system, stepping in, helping kind of brush things over, telling me that, you know, mom is going to work on this and things are going to get better.

and then she tells me she's going to work on her communication skills. I give her patience. I extend grace to her. And then ultimately nothing changes. This is probably why this is affecting you in that way. Because it feels like you are just sort of copy and paste this over and over and over. If mom had never done this before or maybe it was only like the second or the third time that she had done this, you might feel a lot better about allowing.

for that period of patience and saying, you know what, she is working on this. I see those books on her coffee table and I know that she's going to therapy and I can tell that she's kind of pausing in between our interactions and things feel like they're moving in a better direction. But when it feels like it's this constant pattern of you freak out, someone steps in, I give you patience, you say you're going to work on your communication skills, period of time passes, nothing changes, and we repeat the same. again, that is why it can feel like it's so hard to extend that grace, right? And I think this is why, and I'm going to talk about this in my upcoming episode, about infantilizing parents and about

this whole, like, we didn't grow up with this in my time, in my day rhetoric that I think people are growing really tired of is because of cycles like this. It keeps seeming like things are going to get better. Like there's going to be some type of change while I am giving you grace and patience and then it doesn't happen and that gets very, very frustrating. And, you know, this caller mentions like a hiding behind good intentions and maybe hiding behind I am doing the work while nothing is really changing. And she's saying, you know, like I feel like I don't have the bandwidth to keep repeating this cycle, which is fair. And I think the question becomes, how many times do we do this cycle? And there is no answer here. I think for some people,

it's like a hundred times. And for others, it's more like 50 times, you know, 10 times, 20 times. Like what feels for you like the amount that you can handle given where you're at in your life and the impact that this has on you? There's no perfect answer there for how many times this is going to get repeated. So while this is happening, we also have this going on with dad, which I want to highlight here how challenging it can be to be going through this with two highly emotionally immature parents at the same time who are not married. So you don't even have the help or the assistance of another parent to kind of balance you out while you're dealing with this other parent.

You've got two of them that have been divorced for your entire life, basically, as much as you can remember of your childhood, that are kind of both behaving in this way. And that can be really disruptive and highly dysregulating. And so for any of you that are in that type of arrangement, I really want to highlight that for you that that is so much harder than having like one stable, good, reliable parent. Okay, so let's talk about dad. Dad here has been remarried, right, to a stepmother and their marriage is falling apart after 35 years of marriage. So it seems like here that your parents got divorced when you were five and then this stepmother was in your life for a very long time. And this relationship is also highly dysfunctional. So for those of you that

can relate to this, I want you to see how this adds up. Okay. Parents get divorced. Two highly emotionally immature parents who then side by side doing that throughout your life cycle. Then dad gets remarried to another partner who then endures verbal abuse, control, and undermining in front of you for 35 years. You have had no solid relationships to look at and model and to experience throughout your life. That is a strike. That is something hard to deal with and overcome. People who don't have to endure that have a different life than you do. And so I don't want to say like, oh, you'll never overcome that. It's always going to be something that affects you. but if you then also don't have a parent who after they got divorced, then got into a good

relationship or at least kind of healed themselves and improved, this is a double whammy for someone like this to go through all of that and then to be dealing with that still in adulthood. Okay, so dad divorces this destructive parent. Then within two months has a new girlfriend. So you are at the mercy of your parents' point. Poor relationship skills here for a very long time. I don't know how old this person is, but I assume in your 40s if your parents got divorced. He got divorced and then new marriage for 35

years and now within two months, another girlfriend. I mean, this just sucks. Like to be dealing with this in your adult life, to look at your parents and be like, oh my God, get it together. Like you're divorced, which people get divorced for a variety of reasons, but sounds like there was a reason for the divorce here with volatility and potentially, you know, there's verbal abuse, there's control, there's undermining. And you're probably at this point just being like, oh, my God, can my parents, like, grow up and have a normal relationship? I really understand that feeling of wanting that, of wanting that stable relationship. I also understand not wanting to expose your children to dad's new girlfriend that has been around for two months.

after you are now on your dad's second divorce that you're navigating, even though they were married for 35 years. You also had the divorce from your parent. It's a lot. It's a lot. And people who go through this as children can often be highly protective of their own children and not wanting to expose them to all of these different relationship dynamics and ruptures and all of that. And when you're advocating for a gradual kind of adjustment, that makes sense. And then dad's responding to you by saying, oh, you're trying to control me. You're not trying to control him. If you were trying to control him, that might look like, dad, you cannot date this woman.

I forbid it. Not going to let you be in a relationship with her. You can't control that. What you can control is who gets access to your children, okay? And so you are allowed to say, dad, you can totally date this woman. It's been two months since your divorce. Go for it. It's your life.

If you want to see your grandkids, which I know that you want to, you're going to have to come over without her. And we can have a conversation. If this gets serious, you feel like you're going to get married, you're going to be with this person for a long time. We'll cross that bridge when it comes. But for right now, when we're going to do things as a family or when you're going to see the kids, she's not coming over. And if he decides, I cannot see my grandkids without this

woman being around, that's his choice. Red flag, but that's his choice. And you can honor that choice and you can be upset about it and be sad, but you can also say, dad, I understand, this girlfriend is really important to you. You want to prioritize your relationship, that's fine. We're going to be doing this with the kids. If you want to come, great. You're not controlling him. You're presenting him with options that he gets to choose from. And he gets to decide. So then for two years, so I assume this is after you said, she can't come around. He only reached out with service level check-ins. Like, how's the weather, send kid photos? Okay, so he's trying to keep one foot in, one foot out of like,

I want to prioritize this relationship. You won't let me see the kids with this girlfriend. so I'm going to sort of do this surface level thing, and he's ignoring everything out. And then you say to him, I do not want you to contact me with superficial pleasantries until he addresses the real issues, which he then ignored. Girlfriend moves out. He starts reaching out more. Okay. This feels terrible as the child, okay?

That it's like, dad inserts girlfriend, pushes you guys out, and doesn't pay attention to you or acknowledge you anymore because you're not wanting to bring this new person around your kids. And he's prioritizing that relationship. The second he gets a little bit lonely, okay, now I'm reaching out to my adult child again. I want to bring the kids back in. That sucks. I understand why that hurts.

And this is sort of a moment to pause and say, is my dad really acting any different than he's ever acted? in my life. From what you're telling me here, this is kind of what he's always done. I don't, I'm not feeling very surprised given the information that I'm seeing here. Okay. So then you're saying he sent an email attempting to apologize, filled with non-apologies like, I'm sorry if you felt offended. It wasn't my intention. And then you sent him the podcast. After the podcast, he doesn't respond. I'm getting the vibe that this is a dad that is very filled with shame and is highly avoided. If you look at these relationship patterns of like getting divorced, dating a new girlfriend, wanting to bring the girlfriend around, then kind of dipping out

for two years is a long time, guys, to like just be surface level, engage in pleasantries with your adult child and not see your grandkids, you know, because you have a new girlfriend. Like, he's lonely and now he's seeking connection but doesn't want to take accountability. And you're saying, you know, I'm at the point where maintaining low or no contact feels like the only option. I'm sure it does because that's all you've been doing. Like, I'm going to be real with you.

Anyone that has been engaging in this type of cycle, like you haven't had anything more than that for years. it sounds like. That's actually where the grief is, is that maybe that's what you're realizing. There's not much of a choice to be made here. You know, your dad has set up this system. And you guys have been doing this for a long time. And you've also participated in this, rightfully so, of like, if you're going to have this girlfriend, then you can't come around the kids. And I don't feel like I can have this, you know, closer relationship with you without you apologizing or taking some accountability. And so you guys are both like standing your ground. And one could be

seen as more appropriate than the other. But this is where my whole concept about like, you got to work with the parent you have, not the one that you wish they were or the one that you're trying to make them into be. Your dad is surface level. Your dad's pretty avoidant. Your dad gets lonely when he doesn't have a partner in his life. And when he finds one, he pulls away from you. These are patterns. And so you trying to approach this as if you have a dad that is like emotionally mature and

connected and understanding and going to apologize and going to listen to this podcast and apologize is probably going to lead you down the path of more. more harm, right? Maybe he's going to come around. Maybe he's going to do something different, but I don't think you're going to be the one to facilitate that. I don't think it's going to be the podcast that you send him or you asking him to be accountable because you've done a lot of that. And other people in his life have presumably done that, and they haven't been the right vehicle for this. So if you know that, I don't know that you have a choice but to maintain. a lower contact relationship with your father, like, as it stands, because you probably

aren't going to get these other things from him right now. So these are moments where I think that, and I want to make sure, like, I'm not speaking directly to this caller and, like, providing you with, quote-unquote advice because I don't know the full context of your situation. But this is one of those situations where I find that people want to be the ones to cut someone off so that they feel like they didn't get cut off so that they feel more empowered. And a lot of people do this with very distant and avoidant and emotionally like neglectful parents sort of as a Hail Mary of like, I'm going to estrange myself from you so that you really see that you're going to lose me. and you come running back and you actually end up getting like so much more hurt in the process. And so I wonder if in this moment it's more about just being like, this is what my dad can offer.

And I need to go and I need to grieve that and work through it and, you know, try to feel this in another space outside of my relationship with my dad. And then I need to figure out, you know, when he texts me surface level, would I feel okay about that if I just said, this is who my dad is? And this is what I'm going to get from him. And if I accepted that and I grieved that, would it feel okay? Does it hurt so much because I want something different and I'm still fighting for it? Or is this really just not okay? And it's really hurting me. And this is true for the mom in this equation too, I think, you know, that if I grieved and accepted it, would I be able to engage this way? Or is it just too much? I can't do it. Like, that's a path that you all have to walk on your own, like, with individual counsel,

not here with me. But I think that there's a little bit here of, like, wanting things to be different than they are. And I get that. And maybe they could be one day. But again, it just doesn't seem like you. are going to be the vessel for that. And that can also be a hard thing to accept, that your parent isn't listening to you and not going to change for you, but it's also not your responsibility as their child to rehabilitate them. It is not your job as the child to rehabilitate your parent. And I think

some of you need to hear that a couple more times. Put this on repeat and listen to it. The question that you asked, though, you know, that I do want to answer is like, do you see parents at this stage of life truly do the work, take accountability and change? Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Is it rare? Yeah. I think it's, I don't think it's the majority, but I do think that there are some. And that is why I will never say, you know, I wouldn't have this job if I didn't believe in people's capacity to change. And I do think that there are some. and that is why I will never say, you know, I wouldn't have this job if I didn't believe in people's capacity to change and to become different. My stance on this is that you may not be the one to create that change and you should not ruin your life sitting around waiting for it or ruin the lives of your children or ruin your marriage or ruin your career trying to save someone that does not want to be saved by you. You can always hold out hope that they're going to come around and they're going to change. And you can even say, if and when that happens,

I am here and I'm ready to see it. And I want to do it. But I can't, you know, ruin my life trying to get you to change when you're showing me absolutely no signs that you want to do that. Now, when it comes to your children, I really, really think that you have to change your mindset on this. Because yes, while your children are inheriting an estrangement to some degree, your kids don't know these people the way that you do. They do not have that relationship with them. They know them as these types of grandparents. they're not their parents. And I think this is where we get a little bit like two in the weeds with the grandparents stuff is like children only know the grandparents when the grandparents

become involved in their life and are attentive to them and form relationships with them. So my children, for example, have relationships with their grandparents, okay? And those relationships have been fostered by the grandparents coming around and interacting with those children in a specific way. And that is how my children have come to know their grandparents and to have relationships with them. If those grandparents came around and were rude and condescending and mean, they attacked me, they didn't treat me well, or they just never came around, my children know them just as that. They are just like any other person who came around and did that.

They don't really have this unique tie to those people without the relationship being built. I think sometimes we get a little bit confused here because of like the title and the relationship. So the title of grandparent to me is a title. that can be filled and inhabited by a person who really beholds that title and treats it with a level of importance and meaning, okay? But someone can be a get the quote unquote title of grandparent and have never even met that child. You know, technically, for those of you that were like adopted or abandoned by a parent,

your parent could be a grandparent. They could technically hold that biological title, but not have really filled that relationship or done anything to step into that role. And so I think there can also be this fantasy about the grandparent for you as the parent. Like my parent is a grandparent. They hold this role in my child's life and they're not living up to it. And that's very painful and again goes back in the grief bucket for you. But for your children, they only know what they know about your parent.

And if they've only had kind of this surface level, whatever experience with them, you might be perceiving that your children are going to be like, I want to meet grandma. I want to see grandma so badly. But they might not actually feel that way given the interaction. that they've had with this person. This is what I see a lot in my work, at least, that like when the children become adults or teenagers, they're not like clamoring as much to see this person you think they're going to

be just because of the relationship that's been built with them. So I say let your kids lead in a lot of these situations. I wouldn't forbid them from seeing someone that isn't okay influence in their life or that isn't dangerous to them. But if your parents are, quote unquote, like you're saying, not healthy adults, they live in a different state, you know, allow your children to develop a relationship with these people and see how that plays out. You might actually be fighting something that isn't there. Because if your kids haven't spent a lot of time with them, they haven't been healthy, they haven't been engaging, you know, especially like your dad,

who's just kind of like texting every now and then asking for pictures, I don't know why your kids would be like desperate to form a relationship with someone who's been so distant. But in the event that they are, we have, if you go to callinghome.com and just click the search icon and type in grandparents, I have a ton of articles, scripts, videos, things on this. I have another episode called like only healthy relationships with grandparents. are important for kids or good for kids, something like that. I've done a lot on grandparents stuff that I think would be very helpful for you as well. I want to thank you so much for sending in this question. It was really, really great. We were able to cover a lot of ground with this one,

so I hope that you all found this very helpful. As a reminder, I answer one or two questions, depending on the length of the question. Every Thursday on the Calling Home podcast, you can always send your voice notes or written questions to, Whitney at callinghome.co. And I might choose your question to answer on the show. As a reminder, we are working on the scapegoat this month inside the family cycle breakers club at calling home. You can join at calling home.com backslash join. And we will link that in the show notes as well. Really excited. We just had our first group for the scapegoat this Wednesday yesterday. If you're listening to this episode on Thursday, but we still have three

more of them this month. So I would love to see you there. And we'll have a new episode next week on Tuesday. Please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us a review on the podcast. We did finally fix that error that there were two of this show on Apple Podcasts. Really bizarre. So lost some of you that were subscribed and listening on that one. So please don't forget to subscribe to this version if you're listening on Apple and leave us a review. It really helps the podcast get found. Thank you so much. I will see you again on Tuesday. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified

health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.