How To Walk Away from an Impossible Parent

How To! with Mike Pesca

When Sydney's dad texted her, "Do me a favor and lose my number," she was crushed. At 27, Sydney has always had a rocky relationship with her dad, but she held out hope he could still be a part of her life. Now she's starting to think it's a lost cause. On this episode of How To!, we bring in Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and author of the upcoming book Rules of Estrangement, who had his own yearslong standoff with his daughter. Before Sydney figures out if she should reconcile with her dad, Josh says, she has to stop internalizing how he treats her. It's the parent's job to be mature and if they can't do that, you shouldn't beat yourself up over their failings. In the end, the best thing may be to just move on without them.

Do you need us to find an answer to a tough question? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

2020-06-09 28 min

Available Results

Generated results are saved to the knowledge database for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Extract Knowledge

Pick what you want extracted first. Model, scope, and chapter options appear after a template is selected.

Generated results for public episodes are saved to the knowledge database so they can be reused and searched later.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.