Rebuilding Trust With Your Kid: Invitation Over Expectation

What does reconnecting with your kid actually look like? It’s not a big talk or a grand gesture. It’s sharing popcorn while watching a reality show, a cup of tea, a back rub, a silly meme sent with no expectation to respond. In this episode of Parenting with Impact, hosts Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster close out their three-part series on relationship and repair by getting specific about how parents can rebuild trust and connection with their kids when things have begun to feel more transactional.

Why does my kid pull away, even when I have good intentions?

Diane names it early: safety isn’t something a parent gets to define for their kid. You can be endlessly kind, patient, and non-judgmental, and your child still might not feel safe reconnecting. Elaine and Diane use two analogies from a coaching session to describe this: some kids are like a stray cat in the bushes, needing patience and the right approach to coax out. Others are like a dog that bolts every time you reach for it. Either way, the parent’s job isn’t to force connection — it’s to keep creating a safe space for connection to be possible when their kid is ready.

“Up until now”: letting go of guilt to move forward

One of the episode’s central reframes is a tool taught in Sanity School®: “up until now.” Instead of getting stuck in guilt, shame, or blame about how a relationship got fractured, parents are encouraged to acknowledge where things stand and pivot: “Up until now, we haven’t landed where I want to be. From here forward, I want to reconnect.” This isn’t about ignoring what happened — it’s about not letting tension be the thing your kid feels when you show up with an olive branch.

Asking permission instead of offering solutions

A recurring theme across ImpactParents’ coach-approach philosophy shows up here in a practical way. Asking permission before offering an opinion or advice (“I’ve got some ideas. Do you want to hear them?”) gives kids back a sense of agency. Elaine connects this to the four phases of parenting taught in the program — director, collaborator, supporter, champion. She notes how many parents get stuck in director mode and that even when their advice is well-intentioned, it can lead to kids feeling unempowered and strain the parent-child relationship. Questions, not answers, are what move a parent toward collaboration.

Believing in your kid, especially when they don’t believe in themselves

Elaine and Diane land on a core truth: kids need their parents to believe in them most when they’re struggling to believe in themselves. Subtle messages like “I have to do this for you because you haven’t done it” can be felt by kids as “you can’t do it,” even when that’s not the intent. And that messaging can reinforce the very disconnection parents are trying to repair.

This episode is part three of a series on relationship and repair from Parenting with Impact, hosted by Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster of ImpactParents. If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes, it’s worth going back to catch the full arc before listening to this one.

P.S. Curious about the coach-approach techniques mentioned here, like asking permission and the four phases of parenting? These are covered in more depth in Sanity School® for Parents.

What to expect in this episode:

• Why small, everyday gestures — not big talks — are the best starting point for reconnecting with a disconnected kid
• The “up until now” reframe and how it helps parents let go of guilt and blame so they can move forward
• Why their feeling of safety, not your good intentions, determines whether your kid lets you back in
• How asking permission before offering advice restores a kid’s sense of agency
• The four phases of parenting (director, collaborator, supporter, champion) and why so many parents get stuck in director mode

How to Reconnect With a Disconnected Kid (Part 3)

Related Links:

• Emotional Reactivity In Kids: Safety Matters More Than Willpower
• Recognizing and Managing Stress Triggers as Parents
• How to Activate Your ADHD Child’s Brain: Executive Function, Emotions & Motivation

Our Discussion

Elaine: Sometimes reconnecting with your kids is much more simple than you might expect. Sharing popcorn while watching a reality TV show, showing up with a cup of tea or a back rub, sending memes or emojis when you know they’re facing a hard day. What does reconnection look like on a random Tuesday? Let’s talk about that, shall we?Welcome back, everybody, to another episode in the Parenting with Impact podcast. Diane, let’s talk about all the different ways we spend so much time in our programs and in our coaching and our training talking about reconnecting, relationship forward, building trust, getting to healthy communication by, by leaning into relationship. In the last couple episodes, we’ve talked about the ways that people react and some of the ways that our relationships can fall into, into fracture with each other, which happens when everybody… Even if we want for our kids so much, that doesn’t mean we can’t sometimes end up in a place where we’re just at odds with each other in ways we don’t really want. So let’s talk a little bit about what it looks like to rebuild connection and rebuild relationship. Where do you want to start? 

Diane: Well, I mean, honestly, listening to you talk about the setup there and about the fact that, you know, relationships do end up in a rupture, they do end up in a place where, you know, all we’re talking to our kids about is the homework and the things and the business and the, all this stuff, and it feels like we don’t even have a, we have a transaction, not a relationship. And I guess part of where I want to start with is, is normalization on some level because I think that a lot of us, if we end up with a rift in a relationship with our kid, it’s like we go to guilt or shame or anger or frustration for, because of it’s our kid that initiated the rift or whatever it is. There’s gonna be some baggage, and go back and listen to the last two episodes if you haven’t yet to kind of get caught up on the why and the what and the where, and start it with, “Yep, it happened. Where do we go from here?” And what’s important about that for me is that I think you have to get there first because if you’re sitting on the resentment or you’re sitting on the shame or you’re sitting on the frustration- Your ability to repair and your kid’s openness to that, like what do you call it? Like, the leaf. What’s this not… 

Elaine: Peace offering … 

Diane: The peace offering that you bring in is gonna be received very differently if you’re still sitting on the emotion, whether it’s your frustration with your kid, whether it’s resentment, or whether it’s shame and embarrassment because you’re in this place where you reacted or overreacted, and you wanna go back and reconnect. So that’s where I start. 

Elaine: SoI love the language that you use, that when life becomes transactional, right? When we fall into the business of our lives, what we’re really saying is, the first place is to say, “Okay, I want to reconnect to my relationship. I want to be in a relationship with my kid.” And we’re not, we’re not gonna move into a healthy, you know, constructive relationship if we’re coming from guilt and shame and embarrassment and judgment and blame and all that stuff. So we have to kinda do the work to say, “Okay, up until now, we haven’t landed where I wanna be. From here forward,” this is one of the techniques we teach in, in sanity school, these three words that can really change your life, is, “From here forward” 

Diane: Up until now

Elaine: up until now. This, like, what I wanna prioritize now is reconnecting to my kid, and I’m not gonna woulda, coulda, shoulda, I’m not gonna blame and, and judge. It’s like, okay, I want to reconnect to my kid. Start here. What? 

Diane: No, it’s like, as you were saying that, I’m like, A lot of us go, “Well, but my kid doesn’t want to. My kid doesn’t want anything to do with me. My kid is locked in the room.” Whatever it is, like this sort of in spite of, right? It’s this sort of it- you wanting to connect with your kid is not just about you wanting your kid to connect with you, and those are two different things. And I wanna hold that as true because sometimes we just have to connect  and say, “I wanna connect with my kid regardless of what they do back.”

Elaine: Yeah, at first. 

Diane: Because that might be the first step is like, you know, it’s like okay, so your kid’s not… I have a mom and a dad whose kid is not answering their texts right now, and I’m like, “Do you wanna stay connected to this kid?” “Yes, I want them to answer me,” and they’re not right now. And so what feels like an okay pace to keep texting your kid to say, “Hi, I’m thinking about you. Here’s a stupid video I watched yesterday on YouTube. I thought you’d enjoy it.” I mean, it’s this sort of it’s, it’s not… The goal is I wanna connect with my kid, not- 

Elaine: Want them to respond … 

Diane: I want them to respond, and there’s an important distinction there. 

Elaine: So, here’s what I hear myself saying a lot in coaching group. There is no kid on the planet of a parent of any age, and I’m a 62-year-old woman with 90 and 98-year-old parents, right? 

Diane: Right. 

Elaine: There’s no kid on the planet who doesn’t want to be in relationship with their parent if they can and feel safe doing it. That last piece is really important. Hold on. 

Diane: yeah, yeah, no, keep going 

Elaine: And so playing on what you were just saying, Diane, it’s like our, our job is, you heard us say it in the last episode, is to be an invitation, not an expectation. We want to invite them to be in relationship with us, but not expect them to. We want to offer our availability, our love, our connection, our warmth, our support without expecting them to reply in the same way at first because they’ve got to build the trust a little bit to make sure that that feels safe for them to then begin to reply in kind. Right? Go ahead. 

Diane: Well, I think that there’s two parts to that, is like one is building the trust and the safety, and then the other is defining what being in relationship means. And this is one of the hard things because, I mean, I know you know, you and I have talked about our relationships with our parents, and you have a very different relationship with your mom than you do with your dad. I have a very, very different relationship with my dad than I did with my mom. And it’s like this sort of everybody’s gonna have a different kind of relationship, so this, part of it is like we’re talking about being in relationship, period not being in a perfect relationship or one where we’re having coffee every week or, you know, it’s like this sort of part of the expectation is expecting them to be there, and part of the expectation is expecting them to be there in a certain way. And I want to kind of distinguish between the two because, yes, you might be able to get to the certain way, and you might have to start with, ” I’ll take anything for now. I want to build the bridge so that we can decorate it in two years.” I don’t know what else to say to that. 

Elaine: I was just, I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend who’s got two young adults in their early 20s, right? He’s not necessarily a parent of a complex kid. He’s a dear friend. I’ve known him for a long time. And he, he was saying, and I love this language, he said, “I figure any time my kids after the age of 14 talk to me, it’s a win, period.” Right? Because they’re designed to individuate and to separate and so if him saying, “If my kids are talking to me at all, I’m in a good place. This is good.” And so we ended up talking about How do you move through the kind of the phases of parenting? Because it’s, it’s great to have enough trust and safety for your kid to talk to you. And so for some of us, if we’re not in that place, if things are fractured, the first phase is to just get to a place where they’re willing to be in conversation with us or with their siblings and, right? And we’re, we’re just having basic civil relationship. That’s, that’s level one, and that for some of us is a, big leap and a really, really important one, right? 

Diane: Well, and I think that that’s, that’s the piece that may be level one, and I mean, I remember going through a lot of therapy in my 30s and trying to grapple with what kind of relationship I did wanna have with my parents because they, you know, it’s like the… I remember the conversation was like, would they be my friends if they weren’t, if they didn’t happen to be my parents? And I had to figure out, well, where, where did we have connection and what did I have that, like, connected me to them and how did I wanna be in relationship with them? Because we’re very different people. And so again, it’s this sort of figuring out not just how do I be in relationship, but giving space for the definition of that relationship to take shape. 

Elaine: Yeah. yeah. For sure. All right. So let’s take… That’s a great stopping point. Let’s take a quick break and we’ll come back.  Welcome back, everybody. We’re, I think we’re talking about relationship, reconnecting to our relationship with our kids wherever that is. And up until now, we’ve been talking about up until now, letting go of what’s happened up until now. We’ve talked about kind of that first level of connecting in whatever way we can, those simple ways, simple gestures of just loving relationship connection. I think where we go from here, Diane, check me on this, is, is so then, then what? What does it look like to begin to build on foundational trust so that we’re beginning to be able to have some of the conversations we wanna have with our kids without them being transactional? 

Diane: Well, and I think that the… I wanna go back to a word that you said at the beginning that we haven’t used very much today, which is safety, right? And I think that that’s the piece of it, is that we don’t get to decide what safety looks like. 

Elaine: It’s them. Yeah. 

Diane: And I think that this, again, going back to this, this couple I was working with this morning, this kid is in a place where it’s like they don’t feel honestly, they don’t feel safe with themselves in their world, in their body right now. And so the idea of connecting with their parents just feels unsafe because it’s this reminder of their reality, and so kind of living in a parallel universe that keeps them safe, right? And so that’s the first piece. You can be the nicest, kindest, generous, non-judgmental whatever, and your intentions can be amazing, and that unfortunately doesn’t guarantee that your kid is gonna be in a place where they’ll go, “Oh, wait, this does feel safe for me.” And so there might need to be some action along with it. There might need to be, you know, it’s like me. I picked up something silly at the grocery store for my kid and left it on his doorstep the other day. He happens to live a couple blocks from me, and it’s like I know he’s in a place where he’s having a hard time, and I just wanted to let him know that I was here. And it’s like, “Hey, I bought this for you at the grocery store.” Boom, left, nothing else, right? It’s this sort of dancing in and out, making, you know, making those movements, making those gestures. This, this, again, I hate to, like, beg on this couple this morning, but we were talking about, like- Two sets of kids, like we, we were using a cat analogy and a dog analogy. And so the cat analogy was, like imagine you had a cat, a stray cat that was stuck in the bushes in your backyard, and you were trying to figure out, how do I get this cat out? Like, how many different treats do you try? Do you ignore them? Do you leave it there? Do you go at, in the morning? Do you go at night? Do you, like, do the brown treats or the juicy treats or whatever else, right? And then we were talking about the dog, and the dog’s having a hard time because, like, every time you go get, to get the dog, the dog goes running away, right? It’s this sort of, so it’s this sort of you don’t know which way they’re gonna go, but you have to continue to reach out or to try the things to maybe do some experiments with the intention of I’m not I’m connecting to my kid, but I’m creating a safe space for my kid to be willing to accept my connection. And I, somehow that distinction in language feels important here. Does that resonate? 

Elaine: Yeah, it does. But it is, it is not just what we do, it is how they receive it and experience it. And giving them the space to receive it however they receive it, and to not have to have it be a certain way, right?

Diane: Well, and that’s hard because, like it’s like we can’t change how somebody else sees something. 

Elaine: Yeah. So I’m gonna go back to this friend I was talking to, because what I started… ‘Cause his kids are pretty kind- one of them especially is pretty independent, and yet he’s still a little over-directing. And so we were talking about that tendency to tell instead of ask. And so he was giving an example of, of telling her she could do this, this, or this And I kinda challenged him to, “You’ve already gone through the process of solving the problem. And so by giving her the answer, you’re actually not letting her learn the process of solving the problem,” which he kind of got curious about. It’s like, “Okay, so how would you do that?” And, and in the conversation, what was, what was interesting was just that shift to asking more questions, just the openness of questions, but before offering an opinion, asking permission. It’s one of the techniques that we teach in, I think, module three of Sanity School in the communication section. is asking permission to make a statement or offer advice or direction or anything else. It sounds silly, but it is such a powerful tool to give our kids a sense of power and agency and ownership. 

Diane: Well, I think about that tool because it’s like I’ll use that tool with two of my family members I’m thinking about.  And one of my family members, they’ll pause for a second if I ask, if I say, “I’ve got some ideas. Do you wanna hear them?”  And they’ll pause for a minute, and they’ll actually go, “Well, uh, no.” They’ll actually think about it and decide whether they’re ready for it or whether they wanna try to figure it out on their own. And then the other one is like, “Of course I want you to tell me,” right? It’s this sort of… And so again, it goes back to that sort of you can’t… It’s about helping, creating the space to and then letting them receive it how they receive it. 

Elaine: And being willing to If they, if you ask permission, say, “Can I share something with you?” And be…

Diane: be willing to hear no 

Elaine: Not share it if they say no. And this friend said to me, “Well, they wouldn’t say no.” I’m like, “Well, that’s ’cause you have a good relationship with your kids, but a lot of kids would say no.” 

Diane: Yeah. 

Elaine: And Toby’s like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, really. A lot of kids would say no.”

Diane: Well, and I think the other piece of it is the timing, right? It’s just sort of so often we, we’ve, like, if we have a siding. I was thinking about didn’t, in one of the episodes weren’t you talking about having a Josh sighting? 

Elaine: Yeah. 

Diane: And well it’s like this sort of, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got my kid’s attention. I gotta be like  do do do do ’cause I’ve only got 30 seconds and if I don’t, if I don’t get to if I don’t get to the finish line, I’m never gonna get to the finish line.” And so we get impatient, and then we get to that sort of thing. And sometimes it does take a little bit of time to coax them out from behind the bushes. And even when they coax- come back out, they might zoom back into the bushes again. And so it is that constant intention to connect and to create the safe space. And it’s the little steps, and not, and, and being able to self-manage. And there might be, I mean, I’m thinking about in small group there are times that I, we coach parents to figure out, how do I take care of this myself if I can’t get them to engage? Or how do I wait if it absolutely is required for them to be engaged? And it’s that sort of, “Okay, well what if I can’t do it right now? What if it’s gonna take longer? What would it, what would I do to either take care of myself in the meantime or create some kind of you know, structure that will get me through or whatever it is?” Because it does sometimes take longer. 

Elaine: It can, it can take a while. You’re rebuilding a relationship And, and that, it takes, like it took us however long, how your, whether your kid is 10, 12, 14, 20, 27, it took this many years to kind of fall out of trust with each other. We have to rebuild the trust, and that takes a little bit of time. It starts happening faster. It’s like pushing a ball down the hill, and it starts rolling and picking up, because they wanna be in a relationship with us. They really do. Even if you think they don’t, they really do want to if they feel like they can. So I think this piece of building trust, trusting the process there, and allowing asking permission, really empowering their sense of agency is powerful. The other thing I hear us talking about is, you know, I mention asking more questions, but let’s be more overt. We talk about the four phases of parenting. 

Diane: Right. 

Elaine: Director mode, collaborator, supporter, champion. A lot of us get stuck in director mode. That’s when we’re telling them. Even if we’re telling them their solutions because we know it’s what’s best for them, we’re still telling. The next… The questions allow us to move more into collaboration. It doesn’t really matter whether we know. The question is, do they have a sense that it’s, uh, their own agency, right? Do they have a sense that it’s their own agenda? And so we- asking questions allows them to answer it so that they’re not judging it as information, do I agree or not, but they’re actually beginning to get the insight from their own answers.

Diane: Well, and I think about the other end of the spectrum, right? It’s this sort of, we talk a lot about the fact that we’re either in director or we’re in avoider, frankly. Like, it’s sort of, okay, I, I have to be out of it ’cause my kid won’t let me in it. And asking questions can be a way to move into a role of champion or support, and to say, “I’m here. Let me know if there’s anything you need. I’m here.” Like, give me a… I think about, you know, give me a job. You know, let me do something. Can I bring you popcorn? You know, all of those sorts of things. Again, we’re trying to move the needle. And the other thing that was coming up for me, Elaine, as you were saying that is, like, part of it is if we can figure out what their resistance is- to the relationship, to the trust in the first place. What is it that they don’t trust? If they have got- I’m thinking about a mom in, in one of my young adult small groups, and she had a habit of pouncing, right? It’s this sort of she’d get the kid, and they were there, and it’s like the kid would say, “I need help with this,” and it was like she’d grab it and like run with it, and here’s the 17 things you need to do and I’m gonna help you, and you know, and all the things because she was so excited, and she recognized that the pouncing was what was causing them to retreat again. Because then, you know, it’s like they’d get a, “Yes, please help,” and then, “Well, wait a second.” So if I can slow down and go, “My kid wants help, and it’s really hard for them when I take over. It’s really hard for them when I go too fast, or it’s really hard for them when I have a million suggestions and they’re overwhelmed.” You know, it’s that sort of figuring out where are they and what is their resistance to the connection will enable you to go, okay if I make fun of myself, and I try to do this a lot with my kids, it’s like they’ll be more interested in connecting with me because it- they’re feeling down about where they’re at in their life, and they want to hear that other people have have flaws and foibles just like they do, right? 

Elaine: Yeah. So there’s something here that’s about how do we have the conversations with them in a way that, that lands for them, that feels, feels safe. So it’s, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about asking questions. You’re talking about kind of being a little self-deprecating and being playful and a little bit of joking and making fun of ourselves. about pacing ourselves so that we’re not pouncing, but that we’re slowing down and we’re really listening and letting them set the tone and set the pace. This can be really hard for a lot of us. You know, it really can. The other thing that, that I think shows up a lot for me with my kids and, and always has and continues even as they’re young adults, is what my kids need from me, what our kids need from us more than absolutely anything else, is for us to believe in them even when, or especially when, they have a hard time believing in themselves. If we are sending them the message, “Well, you can’t do that because,” or, “I know you can’t,” or, “You’re not able to,” or, “I have to do this for you because you haven’t,” or any of those kind of subtle messages, we don’t mean to be sending you-can’t-do-it messages, but they are, they’re hearing them that way then it reinforces this pushback that you’re talking about. 

Diane: Well, and I think that that’s, that’s part of it is that sort of, so the resistance is I don’t, I don’t feel safe. Again, this is sort of I don’t feel safe with me so I’m not gonna let you help me because I don’t feel safe in the first place. So if you send that message of I believe in you, and I think that a lot of parents would be like, “Well, if I say something like that to my kid it’ll sound corny. They won’t get it.” Like, it, I believe in you may not sound the same to my kids as it does to Elaine’s kids or to your kids, and so it’s this sort of it might just be high five, psst, you know? It might be you got this, dude. Right? Let me know when you got it. You know, it’s like this sort of finding language that, and this, I think we’ve talked about love languages before in the podcast, is like part of this is like knowing what feeds them and letting them, and feeding them that way, right? It’s this sort of if they’re the kinda kid that likes to spend time together, you know, like watching videos. My kid came over yesterday and was, you know I had to take 20 minutes of learning about why the gaming industry is falling into the crapper right now, and it’s like this sort of, okay, let me sit down and learn about what’s going on with this kid’s world because that’s Important to them connection, and it’s important to them, right? And so it’s all of those things that we need to do. And, and I think when you think about relationships, you think about friendships you have. You think about what you do when you’ve got a new colleague at work, and the things that you do to kind of connect in. Those are the same things we need to do whenever a breach happens, right? It’s this sort of or whenever our kids level up and they’re a new human, and they go- they’ve gone off to college and they kind of come home and it’s like, okay, wait, how do I reconnect with this kid? They’re in a different place. The thing that worked for 18 years doesn’t work anymore. Where do I go next? 

Elaine: Yeah. Olive branch is what you were trying to remember earlier. 

Diane: That was it. Olive branch. Exactly it. I know it’s ark references, you know? 

Elaine: Lots of ways that we offer the olive branch, but really that’s what we’re talking about, is that, is that we’re the ones setting the stage, setting the tone of the relationship. And so we wanna be offering welcoming, offering acceptance, offering understanding, offering belief, offering our vision of their capacity, not from a place of you’re not reaching your capacity, but I see how amazing you are, right? When we hold out that virtual olive branch, however it shows up, they feel seen, and that begins to build a sense of safety, and that’s really what we’re talking about here.

Diane: Yeah. And just to reiterate what we said earlier, it’s us wanting to connect with them and not how do I get them to connect with me. 

Elaine: Acquiring them, right. Yeah. So be an invitation rather than an expectation, and that can show up in a whole bunch of different ways. All right. Are we in a good place?

Diane: I think that’s great. 

Elaine: All right. Thank you for tuning in and listening and, and hopefully making this, through this three-part series. If you haven’t gone back and listened to the last two episodes before this, we really were trying to build on it this time with, with understanding relationships. And as always, we so appreciate your listening, your tuning in, what you’re doing for yourself and your kids. We don’t, we don’t just say it. We really believe it makes such an extraordinary difference. 

Diane: Do we wanna encourage somebody to take some action items? This might be a good one to kinda say, what do you wanna do with what you learned today? Like, what’s your insight?

Elaine: What are you taking away from this conversation, right? What’s your insight from this? 

Diane: What do you wanna do differently? 

Elaine: And is there one action you might wanna commit to? And as always, if so, how do you wanna set yourself up for success with that action? Never wanna commit to something without making sure you can, you can try to help yourself be successful with it.And as always, if you like what you’re hearing on this podcast, please take a moment to like or follow or subscribe or leave a review, whatever it is to, that helps let the world know this is something that you find valuable and help us reach more families, more providers, more professionals who could benefit from really thinking about and being part of the coach approach. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you on the next one. 

Diane: Thanks everybody.