Parenting Adult Children Can Be Agony
Remember when you first held your newborn? The love that flooded your heart in that incredibly intense moment is wordless to describe. It washes over you and fills your whole being. That love sustains me as a parent. Love is the guide through all the childhood decisions, the effort to raise my boys “right,” and the on-going truly enormous amount of self-sacrifice of being a mother.
Younger Children
My two boys are in their 30s. I look back on their younger days with affection. Hugs, love and laughter warmed our home. Yes, there were difficult times. School, grades, neighborhood bullies, cliques at school, sports, fighting… the list can go on and on.
But the home was at the center, and everything had a way of working out. After they left the warm cocoon of our home, I was shocked to experience parent agony. Not from the empty nest, but from the life decisions they made.
Parenting Adults Is Different
With adult children, the same bottomless love still floods your heart, but the delivery needs to be different. There’s a dance going on in your parent heart.
Do you go ahead with hugging, making good food, listening, and giving all your insight and direction on what to do? Do you do action steps they should do, just to make it easier for them? Do you completely back off and watch them go down the wrong path that will hurt their life and future?
This agonizing dance is a struggle of how to support and show love. It’s very easy to overstep. You ask too much, you express opinions too much, you interfere too much, and the message from them is, “back off.” So, you pull back and watch as they make their choices. Some are terrible, and you suffer through them as if you made them yourself.
Agonizing Over Adult Children’s Choices
One parent shared with me how her son and fiancé drove over to her home to tell her they wanted a baby, NOW. They didn’t want to wait until they got married and settled down with financial resources in place. They said, “Life is short and now is the time for a family.”
In that moment, the parent expressed her thoughts openly about the difficulty of that choice that could await them, then worked hard to be neutral and to support them with love through their choice. She could see her son was not ready for this lifelong commitment and the challenges of parenting.
The road since that day has been difficult. Their little girl, her dear granddaughter, is growing up with parents who are divorced. She bounces between homes and parents as her lifestyle. This parent feels ongoing agony of her son’s choices.
Separation Is the First Step
The other day I spoke to a father who has a beautiful adult daughter. She has never settled into a career that would support her well. Waitressing and odd jobs were her career choices. Recently, she packed up and moved to another state.
The work she had set up there didn’t come through, her new living conditions were below expectations, and her finances suffered. This dad tried to stay connected, encourage and listen to his daughter on phone calls.
The return calls are few and far between and texts or voice mails go unanswered. He is consistently left wondering if she is okay, has enough money for food, and what exactly is happening right now with her. He feels the agony.
Blaming Can Be Like a Gut Punch
My first-born son is an adult now with a family of his own. A few times in social situations he’s delivered a verbal gut punch, bluntly describing what he thinks were my parenting mistakes. He blames those mistakes for how he messed up some events in his life.
We have different memories about those same parenting events of our past. I put time and thought into those parenting decisions! The agony caused by his reflection on my mistakes burns deep within me. Because he’s a parent now, I know he will understand this truth as time goes on, there is no perfect parent. We all do our best with what we know.
Parenting Regrets
When I was in my 20s, my mom said to me, “I wish I wouldn’t have had children.” Boy, that gut punch HURT and took me forever to understand. She had six kids, and we all loved her, actively taking time out of our lives to show love to her.
Now I understand what she meant. In hindsight, I know at the time she was struggling with our adult choices that were very different from what she would do. My mom was going through the painful agony of parenting her adult kids.
Deep Emotions of Parenting Adult Children
If you can relate to this, you’re not alone. This stage of parenting adult children comes with powerful emotions of helplessness, fear, and worry. Some of us are going through the absolute agony of being abandoned by adult kids. We may or may not know why.
We look at other families who have thriving, successful adult children and wonder if we have been a failure in some way. What did we lack in parenting them when they were little? How could we have done better?
The truth is that we have messed up at times. We are parenting as human beings. We aren’t perfect, and neither are other parents and families. I believe that we do the best that we can, with who we are. We can’t give out more than what we have or know.
Two Phases of Surrender
The key to surviving the agony is summed up in one word, surrender. Now, as our children are adults, let go and surrender control of their situational choices and outcomes. For me, there are two phases of surrender.
The first is, when asked, I do my best to express my opinion in a non-threatening, non-judgmental, clear way. Then I surrender within myself, and to them, their choices, and outcomes. Once I’ve given them another viewpoint to consider, I can step back.
They are in this world for their own purpose. They are adults who need to make choices that sometimes work well and sometimes flop so badly that profound lessons are imbedded for them to learn. It’s their journey, and they need to live it.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What about you? How have you found to continue with care and love when parenting adult children brings agony? We could all learn from your story, so please share.
Tags Adult Children
Thank you for your article and I find comfort in knowing there are many parents out there just like me who wonder whether they did a good job. I have 2 children in their 30’s; my daughter is well adjusted, married for 12 years, 2 young girls and a successful career. I only need to help her out when her first child was born as she was quite stressed. She has her friends. We have a solid and loving and respectful relationship. My son, almost 40 has had mental health issues since childhood; been quite a ride but the last few years I have seen improvement. He has a good set of friends and has found help there. We are more solid than ever but he does not share much. There was a comment about a mother saying to her daughter about she never wanted children; my Mom did the same among other insensitive remarks. Yes, it hurts. We all need to know we did the best we could and making boundaries is what is needed when they are adults.
As a mom raising two children, this topic is something I never imagined would be an issue for the future. Our children had an amazing childhood (their words) and were loved and supported by two parents who always put their children’s needs first. When they had both just become young adults, graduating college and moving out, their father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. Fast forward another 7 years and I have struggled. Struggled with the overwhelming grief of losing my best friend and soulmate and struggled with transitioning from being a mom/caretaker to having a more adult relationship with our children. The loss of their father changed me from a confident, independent wife/mother into someone who feared life and needed reassurance and support. I believe the death of their father has also been difficult for them as well. I’ve had to stand by and watch them both make choices for their lives and wonder if they would have made those same choices had their dad been here. I guess my expectations that our adult children would step up and support their mom as she had done their entire life, were just unreasonable. They both just couldn’t understand what I was going through and I think oftentimes, watching me suffer in grief was more than they could handle. They are 30 and 32 now. I am close to our daughter who has done her best to be there for her mom while building a life of her own. But our son, just walked away. He doesn’t have anything to do with his mom or sister and has used work as an escape from having to do any relationship work. He also has a wife who I believe has encouraged him to step away from his own family and give 100% to her. In February they had a child, my grandchild who I have yet to meet and may never. This has added to my grief and sense of loss in ways I could never have imagined. I love my son and I know he is struggling to maintain real, healthy relationships because of his own unprocessed emotions and all I can do is standby and wait and hope that he wakes up some day before it’s too late.
This is so emotive and a painful subject for many of us. Currently in the midst of an incredibly difficult situation with my daughter and 2 grandchildren who have lived with me for over 5 years (different fathers, both not involved in their lives). I’m attempting compassionate detachment and looking for solutions. I’ve been helping to raise these beautiful boys but now need to let her go. It’s time and I’ve done all I can with a clear conscience but it doesn’t make this easy. She is a grown woman but it’s the children my heart is aching for and the damage being perpetrated against them is unforgivable.
This applies to grandchildren as well. I watch as my adult granddaughter makes her way through life. We talk when she’s in the right space. Does she listen to my guidance? Not immediately, but over time I do see some signs that she heard me. Can I control the outcome for her? Absolutely not. I’ve learned to focus more on bettering our communication which for my part I can control. Bottom line is I want her to have an easier time than I did.
I grew up in a home with educated parents who were not happily married, or happy in their own lives. We were emotionally neglected children. My uncle offered to take us, but our parents refused. In time, my parents left, my brother left. They were good people, just not in a place in their lives when they should have had children or wanted family. In my brother’s case, he is on the spectrum.
It shows largely in my brother and less so on me. Abandoment was huge and I carry aspects of that with me today. I loved my parents and felt that it was my responsibility to get the help I needed. They did what theyknew. I went to college in my 30s and then on grad school. I was fortunate to get into top schools having built the skills at night school before I returned to college raising young child with a self-absorbed spouse.
Nobody gets it all. Just be sure not to go the guilt route. There is no payoff with that. We do the best we can with where we are. And, that is good enough.
My three year old granddaughter is not safe. What then? I’m used as a sitter but I do it to make sure she is ok. There is just too much to explain. My daughter is angry at the world and takes it out on me. Swearing, name calling. She says she has hated the past ten years of me ruining her life. I’m terrified for my grandchild. Abuse, neglect, potential inappropriate touching from her absent father. I’m sick at the thought of abandoning her. I have a terrible chronic health condition that my daughter says is fake. Like many we have different memories. I’m moving away I. Order to try to salvage my health. I cant ask her to even pick up a prescription but I babysit against the doctor’s advice. I’m just sad for my granddaughter. I’ve given up
On my daughter. I interfered, criticized, made mistakes in desperation. My therapist says I overindulged her as a single mother (me) so I’m not blameless. I see all of these close families
Stephanie, this is so heartfelt. Thank you so much for your honesty. I, too, have over-indulged. My issue – not theirs. It has taken a huge toll on my health as well.
Are you saying your three year old granddaughter is not safe from her father? That your daughter refuses to do anything for you?
Social media is full of people touting how wonderful their lives are. If they were so wonderful, they wouldn’t need to try to convince the rest of us about them.