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

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.

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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