Healthy Relationships With Adult Children Research Paper

Creating Healthy Relationships with Your Adult Kids

Parents are used to setting ground rules, giving guidance, and making decisions for their children, but what happens when their children become adults with their own lives and their own choices to make? What does this new parent-child relationship look like? What is a parent's role in the life of their adult child?

Many parents are confused about how to navigate the transition from parenting a teenager to parenting an adult, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of guidance in this area. Most parenting advice relates to how to raise children.

Strategies

Parents of adult children have more invested in the relationship. They generally report feeling more stress and tension in relationships

with their adult children than the children do.[1] You can minimize this dynamic by developing healthy relationships with your children. Here are some strategies that can help:

• Space
Children do not exist to fulfill their parent's goals and dreams. A key component to a healthy relationship between a parent and their adult child is the understanding that adult children have lives apart from their parents. Taking pleasure in developing their own connections and experiences will allow parents to build a relationship of equality and friendship with their adult children.

• Respect their Choices
Respecting an adult child's freedom of choice isn't always easy. It requires a parent to practice radical acceptance when an adult child makes choices they do not understand or agree with. It's important to remember that adult children will encounter adversity and make mistakes as they work towards creating a life of their own. Parents may be afraid for them at times and worry about them on many occasions, but there will be times when saying nothing is the right approach. Adult children have to find their own personal power and path in life. They must experience the consequences of their actions, both positive and negative, to do that. The role for parents who want to create healthy relationships with adult children is to be supportive and demonstrate respect for their thoughts, feelings, and choices.

• Make Peace with Imperfection
The need to control leads to the demise of many relationships. Children are imperfect. They are trying to find their way in this imperfect world and if parents hold them to a perfectionist standard, they won't have the space to find out who they truly are. It's a given that children will make mistakes. They may embarrass or even hurt their parents. A parent's role is to embrace their children - imperfections and all... with their wounds and scars, mistakes and misdeeds - and give them a place to land when they need to. A parent's role is to provide and environment of acceptance and love when children need it most, putting aside ego and pride. After all, parents are imperfect too. Forgiving ourselves with all of our imperfections allows us to grant the same gift to our children.

• Let go of the Past
Long-standing conflicts from childhood can carry over to adulthood.[2] Creating a solid relationship with an adult child means accepting them as they are now. Part of that includes letting go of any negative patterns from the past. Replaying undesirable occurrences brings that same energy into present experiences.

• Your Child's Romantic Partners
Parents tend to scrutinize their adult child's romantic partners. Common questions include: "Is this person going to be a new member of our family?" Those questions are natural; however, patience and restraint are a must. Questions about sex, living arrangements, marriage, and future grandchildren are off limits. Having a poker face is often mandatory. Adult children may go through lot of partners. Ultimately, the choice is theirs, not their parent's. A parent's role is to focus on the positives in that person and in their relationship. It will work out or it won't.

• Giving Advice
It's a good idea for parents of adult children to resist the urge to weigh in on things - especially when they haven't been asked to do that.

In many cases, giving an adult child a shoulder to cry on or being there to listen and validate their feelings is exactly what they need. Less talking and more listening fosters a relationship of trust, respect, and acceptance. When times are tough, the adult child will know there is a safe place to turn where they can sort out what they are going through without judgment.

• Transitions & Boundaries

Adult children will go through many transitions...not all of them will be easy, and some of them may even be heartbreaking. Whether it's a difficult divorce, substance or alcohol abuse, financial issues, or legal troubles - certain life transitions can have devastating effects on a family. Sometimes a parent will need to set boundaries to avoid enabling an adult child. There may be times when a parent has to be OK with their adult child not being OK. If a parent takes responsibility for an adult child's problems, the adult child can't own the solution.

•

Disagreements
Disagreements are natural. They are a way for a parent and an adult child to share their views. The problem becomes larger when differing views are not mutually respected. Rifts are often caused by issues from childhood that get reenacted in new situations. Here are some suggestions for handling disagreements with an adult child:
1. Be honest with yourself about your feelings.
This is an important item because everything else on this list is dependent on this one.
2. Be honest with your adult child about your feelings.
3. Face up to your part in the disagreement and apologize if it's warranted.
4. Let it be okay that you don't agree.
5. Honor your adult child's right to their own opinions.

Often, the parent will be the one to reach out to repair a rift - that's OK.

Ask yourself, "Do I want to be happy or to be right?" The answer to that question will often lead you in the right direction.

Balance is Key

Are you a parent with an older teenager or a parent with an adult child? Raising resilient, independent adults started when they were kids. As a school counselor, I've seen parents who are raising their children in an authoritarian and punitive manner with harsh consequences for mistakes. I've seen parents with rules that are restrictive and unbending. When I see this, I become very concerned - not only for the child and their own growth process - but for the future relationship between parent and the adult child.

There is a balance. We can empower our children to freely choose their own path and help them to develop skills such as responsibility, respect for others, and strong self-esteem. We can choose to empower them to direct their own lives rather than mold them into adults who only serve to please other people. We can guide them without being controlling, we can be honest with them while maintaining appropriate boundaries, and we can share time with them without becoming enmeshed. These choices are healthy ones for our children and they are healthy for us

too.

As an empty nester, you can make healthy and empowering choices now:[3][4]

:wave: Click to enlarge.

Are you an empty nester or about to be? What are you doing to embrace the new space in your life? What new opportunities and adventures are waiting for you?

About Jeanmarie Wilson

Jeanmarie Wilson has a Masters Degree in School Counseling from Long Island University and has been a school counselor in the New York public school system for over twenty years. She has two rescue dogs and helps support animal rescue - a cause that is very important to her.

Influencers along Jeanmarie's spiritual journey include Esther and Jerry Hicks, Marianne Williamson, Louise Hay, and Neale Donald Walsch. Jeanmarie enjoys yoga and meditation, cooking healthy food, gardening, swimming, hiking with her husband and dogs and spending time at the beach.

Click the image below to visit Jeanmarie's site, Parenting from your Soul to learn more about using a spiritual approach to raise kids with compassion and wisdom.