Ohh Miranda - This is so wonderful and exciting - homeschooling at its finest - integrated in your community, learning from life, for life. Your name, GRUBS, is excellent. I am incredibly happy for you. May your wellspring of ideas, support, energy, strength, and resources be overflowing. Any time you wish to share your latest, it will be a joy to hear.

Haven't heard of these...I'll have to go browsing. Thanks for sharing! Enjoy those littl'uns.

This is great Claire! He's going to love it. I love cooking with kids. Whenever I see Annie's pics I remember the old days of cooking with young relatives. The puzzle is very cute. Pancakes sound like a good idea. French toast too. The classic eggs in a hole, kids love. A really easy recipe is bread pudding, for an oven dish. I'd even have him make the kind of hard sauce I've taught kids where they just smash sugar into soft butter and add a little vanilla or bit of orange juice. It's gritty when you put it on but the sugar melts when you put it on the hot bread pudding. Another easy oven dish is either chicken breasts or pork chops with rice. A casserole dish, if he'll eat onions, onions on the bottom [that's the only part he'd need help with until he learns to cut veggies], lay out meat on that, cover with a cup or so of rice depending on size of pan, beef broth, cover and bake about an hour at 350. I've had quite young kids make this one. Can give the exact recipe if you need/want it. What kind of soup does he like? Bean/pea soups are very easy. Home made croutons to go with too, with his leftover bread. Brownies are easy and since kids tend to not over mix they usually turn out great and it's a good time to teach about over mixing and learning how batters/doughs should look/feel. Kids love to make stuffing. Ripping the bread up, mixing it. I've given them plastic knives and had them cut the veggies, then cook them on stove with butter, add broth, mix with bread, make mounds and cover with pieces of chicken or pork chops or stuff into a bird. I'm just excited you're doing this. Sounds way fun. Smiles.

Thanks to all who have shared on this thread. I too am an estranged mother from an adult son. I used to be the one saying to other estranged parents that they must have done something wrong to deserve it. No child would ever willingly want to cut off good, caring, loving parents. Then, it happened to me and I was in shock and disbelief because I am always the one OTHER people turned to for help with their children. I am a therapist, after all, and I know about interpersonal relationships - right? I spent my whole life teaching others "how to do it correctly and in a healthy way"! How shocking and shameful it was when this happened to me! Not me!! How and why could this happen?!? The past five years have been grueling to say the least. I do understand the suicide attempts by some and the difficulty moving forward with life. I read everything I can find from children who have cut off parents to try to figure out what I can do to fix it. I read the comments by those on this thread that tell us what we have done wrong. So, I have apologized repeatedly for anything and everything I have done to make my child hurt. I have repeatedly reached out to him as have multiple family members and his best friend and other friends to try to heal the rift. Every time I reach out, there is some new reason he and his wife are hurt. Some of the things they accuse me of are not true. I know they are not true because they are about how I feel - that I don't really care about them or that I don't really love them or I behaved in a certain way because I wanted to disrespect them. I can honestly say that all I want from them or anyone is to have a nice time and to love each other. They misinterpret everything I do. I still apologize but only I know how I really feel and what my true intentions were. They can't tell me that. Still, I apologize. Finally, my husband and adult daughter and other son told me to stop apologizing. They said it was making it worse and not better. They saw my pain and desperation and helplessness and it was destroying them. So, they told me to stop because they could not take the pain. So, I stopped. With regard to what CJH Design wrote about gravitating toward pleasure and away from pain, I will say this. My parents have not been easy to deal with. They are controlling and focus only on themselves. I am expected to do everything for them and they still complain. No matter how much I do, it has never been good enough and they always expect more. I have tried and tried to make them happy and I have become a major people pleaser and caregiver in my life, sacrificing everything for the wellbeing of others and especially my family. My father is older and my mother has died. I take care of him every day and it is very difficult because of how critical he is. It is not pleasant to be around him most days but I still do it. I don't do it because it is pleasurable. I do it because I love him and that is what love is. It is unselfish and it is giving, even when it is not easy or pleasant. I also remember how many times I did this for my children when they were difficult to deal with and it was not at all pleasant to care for them, give up dreams that I had, deal with the pain of their behaviors, and work full time to support them. I could have left them and gone out for more pleasurable times when I was young like some parents do instead of hanging in there, parenting when it was very difficult and certainly not fun to deal with temper tantrums, snot, sickness, and endless needs. Not fun at all. Parenting is the most difficult job on the planet and it takes a dedication to stick with it and not run from it toward a life of fun and pleasure. I believe that being unselfish and giving to others is an important value and I try to do it in my life. I also have empathy and compassion for my father because of what he has been through in his life, which I won't go into because it would take all day. I would never dream of cutting him off. My heart hurts too much when I think about the pain it would cause him. I could never do that to him, no matter how he treats me. He does not have to be pleasant all the time for me to be around him, care for him, and stay with him. I think that is what love is really. Another example: In my work I go into jails to help people in trouble with the law. I hate being locked in when I go to jails because I have a phobia. I get paid very little and the courts are not nice to me. It is definitely not pleasant. I don't do it for the pleasure or money. I do it because I want to try to help and because I believe that doing things that are right is not always easy. People do things for pleasure but I have found that meaning and purpose can come out of things we do that require a willingness to set our own desires aside for someone else or for a greater good. This is what I have learned from my estrangement from my son: Karma: I recognize there is a lesson in this for me. What am I being taught by the universe? I have struggled with this long and hard and I think I have learned that I needed too much from my son. I think I relied on him to make me happy because of the difficult relationship with my parents. I need to let him have his own life and make his own decisions. I need to move on and figure out what I need myself and not rely on him so much. I also think I learned that I have been too critical and judgmental of others in my life. I need to try to be more understanding, compassionate, and less focused on who is right and who is wrong. Money: I gave my son everything he ever needed. I paid for his degree, paid for him to travel all over the world, and paid for several cars, and for anything else he needed ever. He now has a good job and is making far more than I ever did. I had to work several jobs to give him what he needed. He does not need my money now but the rift did seem to be about money as far as I can tell. Here is what I have decided I need to do to find meaning in life: I am going to use the money I earn and have to give to others in the world who don't have anything. I am going to travel with organizations that help others and use my money to help them. I am going to give of myself also, because that is more important than just giving money. I am going to try to improve the things for other people around the world who have far less than any of us. That is going to give me meaning and purpose and is something that I always wanted to do when I was raising my children. My daughter has indicated that she wants to do this with me and she shares in the vision. It gives me so much joy and pride to have her with me on this journey. I hope that some day my son will come back and have a relationship with me and with his family. His sister and brother are very angry with him and he does have a spouse that encouraged the cut-off from us. I hope that we can heal eventually but I am not sure if he even values his family at this point. What I have learned is that it is his decision and I must let him figure out his own life and not expect him to be there for me. I can accept this now and I am starting to have some peace so I must be on the right track. Life is a struggle and we all need to work to figure out what we are supposed to learn about ourselves. What you all have written in this thread has helped me a lot to continue figure things out myself.