Stop Trying To Parent Your Adult Children

Every time I’m around when a Christian woman is asking for advice regarding her adult children, I hear the exact same recommendation. “Read Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut & the Welcome Mat Out. This book will change your life!” Finally, my curiosity got the best of me, and I checked out a copy from my local library. This book is so popular that it took me three months to get a copy, and there were over sixty people after me on a waiting list hoping to get their hands on it, too. I walked away with two main thoughts.

1. This book isn’t much more than common sense and logical conclusions about relationships. Couldn’t this have been an informational pamphlet?

2. People really need to stop parenting their adult children.

We Parent Children, Not Adults

I’ve been hesitant to address this subject publicly because I know that a lot of mothers are very passionate about how they “parent” their adult children. However, this massively popular book by Jim Burns is essentially making my point. It’s unclear to me, though, if those reading the book are walking away from it fully grasping that traditional parenting should be finished when children reach adulthood.

In order to cover my bases and seem less cold-hearted, I looked up the definition of parenting, and it’s exactly what I thought it would be.

“Parenting is the ongoing process of raising and nurturing children. It encompasses all the actions, responsibilities, and emotional support required to guide a child through development—ensuring their health and safety, instilling social skills, and fostering independence until they reach adulthood.”

Cambridge Dictionary

I hope you caught the end of that definition…until they reach adulthood. What happens once they’ve reached adulthood? Presumably, we’re done “parenting” them. Of course, our children are always our children, and we will always be their parents, but the relationship inherently changes over time. And that change shouldn’t be like ripping off a Band-Aid. It’s a process, and from the way Burns talks about this subject in his book, it’s a process parents are skipping.

Prepare Your Children To Be Adults

Doing Life with Your Adult Children repeatedly shares examples of parent/child relationships that are in some level of distress because the adult child won’t act like a grown-up, or the parent won’t acknowledge the adult child’s independence as an adult. Basically, something didn’t happen along the way to transform the parent/child relationship from an authority figure and minor to two adults with equal levels of autonomy.

In chapter one, Burns notes that young people today are taking longer to become adults. I have to wonder what he thinks makes one an adult because the basic definition is reaching one’s eighteenth birthday. Just because you don’t like how someone lives or they don’t meet your standards, doesn’t mean they aren’t adults.

Let’s assume Burns is correct, though, and adulthood is a later development in young adults’ lives than it has been for previous generations. May I ask who’s to blame? In part, the individuals in question hold responsibility, of course. They make financial decisions, enter relationships, and choose paths for their lives that lead to whatever consequences are to come. That’s on them. On the other hand, how have they been raised? It’s possible, for example, that helicopter parenting has helped create adult children who can’t advocate for themselves, problem solve, or handle the daily stresses of adult life.

If we’re honest, and let’s always be honest, some parents are in no way shape or form preparing their children to be independent members of society. And it shows. The nurse hands you a crying, helpless baby who needs you for everything. You are the center of this little person’s world, and you blink to find that your baby is taller than you and prioritizing other people and activities over you. Your child is asserting her independence, but she needs you to help her develop adult skills while she’s yet a child. Yes, time is flying by, but we need to keep up if we’re going to help our children become the adults we hope they will be one day.

5 Ways To Prepare Your Children For Independence

In chapter four, Burns offers a list of things a parent can do to help children transition well into adulthood without being entitled. This list is pertinent for parents raising actual children in their homes and for those whose adult children need to get kicked into high gear.

1. Don’t enable your child.

2. Allow your child to experience consequences.

3. Insist upon accountability and responsibility.

4. Set boundaries.

5. Have clear expectations.

Each family will need to act upon these suggestions in a way that best suits their unique situation, but every family should be doing these things. It doesn’t make you a mean parent. On the contrary, it makes you a good one.

Do You Even Know Your Adult Children?

Burns brings us an important point in chapter three. He reminds his readers that children today (adults and minors) are part of a different culture than the one in which we grew up. Boomers receive the brunt of the criticism when it comes to this issue. How many of us have been told that less coffee or avocado toast is the difference between renting an apartment and having a down payment for a home? As I write this, the median amount of money you would need in the United States to put 20% down on a home is $80,000 to $87,000. Insert your O.K., Boomer here. 

The world has changed rapidly, in good and bad ways, and parents need to be aware that, “That’s not how I did it when I was your age,” is not helpful. Your adult children want a better work/life balance than they saw growing up. They want to cultivate relationships, care for their mental health, and live while they’re young enough to enjoy it. Frankly, that’s a foreign way to live life in older generations’ eyes. But they’re adults now, and they get to choose their priorities.

Earlier I said, “Just because you don’t like how someone lives or they don’t meet your standards, doesn’t mean they aren’t adults.” Well, it also doesn’t mean they’re wrong or need to be fixed.

Do You Think Your Adult Children Are Failures?

Burns does defend adult children throughout the book, but it’s his criticism that stands out most. In chapter four (p.59), he introduces a term he coined and seems to think is quite clever. Adultolescence. He claims many young adults are not quite adults yet. As he sees it, they’re living an extended adolescence. Burns lists five identifying characteristics of an adolescent, and because some young adults share the same characteristics, he qualifies them as less than an adult but more than a teenager.

Adolescence (and Adultolescence)

1. Identity exploration

2. Instability

3. Self-focus

4. Feeling in-between

5. Seeing possibilities and having optimism

First, I’m forty-three years old, and I am still exploring who I can be as I grow and mature. Isn’t that identity exploration? Next, many of us move in and out of stability, especially as the working climate changes and marriages begin and end. Third, shouldn’t someone in young adulthood be focusing on herself as she moves into new roles in her adult life? Fourth, who doesn’t sometimes feel in-between? Every time we move from one season of life to the next, we feel that transition and need to reestablish ourselves. Finally, I sincerely hope that being optimistic and believing in possibilities isn’t reserved for the kids.

Yes, this list makes sense as a way to describe teens, but none of this list is exclusive to teenagers. Besides, the culture, as Burns correctly pointed out, is different from previous generations. Young adults often attend college, get settled in a job, and then begin the marriage and baby carriage plan. Jumping directly into family life is less common and usually discouraged. This isn’t a deferred adulthood. Rather, it’s an adulthood that doesn’t resemble the one with which many parents are acquainted.

Why Do We Need To Understand Our Adult Children?

What does any of this have to do with parenting adult children? A lot! When parents look at their adult children and see a lifestyle they don’t understand, they assume their children need course correction. They don’t. Parents fear they’re children are failing. They’re not.

Adult children don’t need you to insert yourself and try to parent them as they navigate living as a young adult in a culture you don’t understand in the same way someone raised in it does. Suggesting their rent is too high, nagging them about marriage, or making judgy comments about how much of their lives are online isn’t necessary. Let them be adults and own the fact that you don’t know everything about being a young adult in the world today.

Embrace A New Role

My children currently span early elementary through late high school. With some of my children, “we need to talk” is a lecture. They don’t know much about much. They simply need to sit down and listen. Other children have outgrown being lectured. My husband and I are trying to help them learn to handle things without so much of our input, yet it’s in the safety of our own home…and we still have plenty of input.

These older kids have conversations with my husband and me. We work through a problem together and allow them some space. Why? We’re trying to separate ourselves from them enough that they can be their own selves with their own minds. I will always be there for my children, but I don’t want them to need me for everything. I’m working myself out of a job. The whole plan is to get them to move out and have their own lives. It’s a little sad, but it’s the best thing for everyone.

So, who is a parent supposed to become to her children? A friend and a mentor. Admittedly, that friendship is always going to have boundaries because you’re still their parent, but you are on a much more equal playing field once they become adults. Adult children, as I keep saying, don’t need you to parent them. They need someone they can count on to come to when they need it, but that should be at their initiation, not a response to an arm-twisting buttinski mother.

Parents seem most challenged by this new role when it’s sudden, but whose fault is that? Part of a parent’s job is to prepare her children for the future, and that definitely needs to include being self-reliant. Doing Life with Your Adult Children has multiple examples of and tips for parents training their adult children to be functional adults. Although this is helpful, I wish the book did more to explain how this process ought to begin many years before your child is, in fact, a legal adult. Love your kids by slowly letting them go.

Keep Healthy Boundaries

We all know a family with limited boundaries. Everyone is in everybody else’s business, no one’s romantic relationship is free from familial interference, and privacy isn’t a familiar word. May I let you in on a little secret? That’s not healthy, and your adult children probably don’t want that kind of relationships with you. They want to be respected as adults and given space to live their lives. And no, they don’t want unsolicited advice. Just because you thought it, doesn’t mean they need to hear it. (If you know me personally, you’ll think that’s hilarious coming from me. I’m a work in progress, folks.)

Careful about pushing your vision on your adult children, as well. As a parent, you may have to grieve a dream you had for your kids. Maybe you dreamed of living in the same town as your children like the rest of your family has done, but you found out one of your children is moving ten hours away with his wife and kids. How could he? That’s not the plan! Wrong. It’s not your plan, but it was never your life to plan, anyway. Don’t burden your children with your pain and disappoint over their completely valid decisions. Things may be changing, but change doesn’t mean you’re being erased. Your role is different, that’s all.

When You Have To Confront Your Adult Children

I’ve said a lot about parents’ need to stay in their own lane, but there are times when parents need to confront their adult children about concerns. As Christians, we are supposed to do this with our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and it’s certainly no different with our own children.

The trick is knowing when to step in and when to turn a blind eye. I believe a good rule of thumb for all parents is to step in, even when you haven’t been invited to give an opinion, when it’s a matter of spiritual health. If your relationship is healthy and open to freely speak to one another, then it’s probably all right to step in when there are concerns about your adult child’s marriage and children. Each family has to determine the appropriate boundaries for themselves.

The most important thing is to speak up when you see a concerning spiritual matter. Burns, on page 35 of his book, said that it’s a “legacy of love” that matters most. He didn’t flesh out that idea, and that’s a dangerous idea to put out into the world without an explanation. I can’t say what Burns meant because he didn’t say, but I would caution anyone who reads that message or hears someone say that to think very critically.

Most people understand love to be acceptance and being a cheerleader for someone’s life. That’s not always love. If your adult children are living in a sinful lifestyle, struggling in their spiritual walk, leaving the Church behind, etc., then it is not love to support that. Pointing children to the truth, whether their thirteen or thirty, is always a part of our role in their lives. Correction is not unsupportive or rejection. Sometimes, it’s the most loving thing a parent can do.

You Can’t Force Faith

My children’s freedom to reject the gospel is the hardest part of being a mom. They’ve heard the gospel their whole lives from their father and me. We were saved in our mid-twenties, so we have many lessons we learned before salvation that we can share with our children and tie back to God’s saving grace. In our home, salvation is such a real and miraculous thing. (I hope it’s that way in your home, too.) Nonetheless, none of that guarantees my children’s salvation. Their father is a pastor, but they can still reject Christ. I’m heavily involved in various ministries in our church and state fellowship, but you guessed it, that doesn’t add a thing to their personal response to the gospel.

On page 29 of Doing Life with Your Adult Children, Burns discusses a young woman who has become wayward, according to her parents, and they took responsibility for her rebellion against God. Her parents thought they should have made her go on more missions trips. Y’all…a missions trip doesn’t save. Jesus does. Perhaps they are some of the countless parents who have misapplied a popular proverb about parenting.

The Proverbs Dilemma

Burns says something maddening on page 117 about parenting in reference to Proverbs 22:6.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:6

Burns calls this proverb a “promise of Scripture,” and he continues with a discouraging misunderstanding of this verse.

“If your children have walked away from the faith, anchor yourself in this promise. It is an excellent reminder that there is a great hope they will eventually return to the right path. This proverb doesn’t specify when they will return or how, but time, circumstances, and God’s relentless love have a way of bringing the wanderers home.”

Jim Burns, Doing Life with Your Adult Children, p. 117

Proverbs 22:6 is not a guarantee. God isn’t providing a quid pro quo arrangement between parents and Himself. If this were the case, we wouldn’t have free will because our parents’ faithfulness and persistent teaching of God’s Word would be our salvation. However, works can’t save us, not ours or anyone else’s done on our behalf. Jesus Christ alone can save us.

There is a hope that children who were raised in a home that worshiped the Lord, studied the Bible, prayed, and lived to serve Him will come back to the faith they were taught when they were young if they have left it at some point. On the other hand, there are more examples than anyone wants of people raised to know the Lord who reject Jesus. Full stop. Did those parents do a bad job? Were they unfaithful? Certainly not all of them! In the end, our children accept or reject Jesus. We raise them to know who He is and how to follow Him, but we can’t force them to repent and believe.

Final Thought

Doing Life with Your Adult Children isn’t a terrible book, but I don’t recommend it. It doesn’t say a lot that you couldn’t ascertain from Google, common sense, personal experience, and counsel from trusted friends. The biggest mistake the book makes is neglecting to urge parents to begin transitioning into a smaller role in their children’s lives earlier.

Although Burns wrote this book in such a way that he appears to be helping people “parent” their adult children, it actually reads as a warning to begin stepping back long before your children are adults in order to protect your relationship with them and give them their best chance at a healthy and autonomous life.

Do you have any advice for parents of adult children?

Image courtesy of LOGAN WEAVER via Unsplash.