Parenting Adult Children: When to Speak Up and When to Let Go

I often wonder why no one told me about how it feels to have adult children. I mean, how did they not sing from the rooftops about how amazing and wonderful it is when you feel like your children have grown up to be your best friends. But ALSO, how did I not get warned about how deflating and hand-wringing it is to realize that even though you’ve gained so much life knowledge through your blood, sweat and tears, in order to create great relationships you often need to keep all that to yourself?

Because the truth is that by the time our kids are adults, they are the ones in the arena who need to figure things out. They are at a stage where they honestly have to learn through their own life experience, not mine.

Oh I’m not saying we as parents shouldn’t share things with them, we are still the parent. But it’s all a delicate balance.

And today I’m here to dissect a question about when to give advice to adult children.

A Question That I’ve Been Pondering

I got this question from a reader recently:

I’d love a post hearing how you have navigated parenting adult children. The really nitty gritty. When do you step in and when don’t you? Do you wait for them to ask your opinion or do you just give it? I feel like I’m drowning. Some days I feel like this is the hardest part of kids. I feel like I’ve had more big disagreements with them than I did when they were young teens. I’ve always had a great relationship with them, but I feel like I’m really struggling.

I think this is such a great question and something I’ve really been leaning into learning how to do for many years now.

And I STILL get it wrong all the time.

Our job as parents used to be teaching kids how to make good decisions. Now, with adult kids, the job is learning to respect the decisions they make. Even when we would make different ones.

There is so much talk about how hard it is to parent newborns. And toddlers. And teenagers.

But I’m not sure anyone adequately prepares you for how hard it can be to parent adult children.

Because here’s the strange thing:

Their problems can get bigger just as our ability to fix them gets smaller.

And that feels so helpless.

Why Parenting Adult Children Is So Hard

That reader was right when she said “Some days I feel like this is the hardest part of kids.”

When our kids are little, we can step in. We can set the rules and move the boundaries and impose the consequences. We make the chore charts and teach money systems and try to teach kids how to belong to each other.

But then those kids grow up. They leave home and suddenly they are in charge.

These huge, consequential decisions about college, careers, money, marriage, faith and relationships loom right in front of them. And we just pray our guts out that something we have taught them will stick. Because it’s not our job to make those decisions. Yes, we may have more wisdom than we’ve ever had.

But in their eyes we have less authority than we’ve ever had.

Moving from the playing field to the bleachers

I’ve written before about the idea of “moving to the bleachers” as our kids grow.

When they’re little, we are right out there on the playing field with them. We are calling plays and tying shoes and reminding them where to go.

But slowly, almost imperceptibly, our job changes.

We have to start climbing up into the bleachers.

Oh, we are still there. We are still watching. Still invested. Still cheering our hearts out.

But they are the ones playing the game.

I’ve also written about the “locus of control” and how important it is to let that shift to our kids as they grow. At some point, they have to become the ones in charge of their own lives. Not us.

I believe that with my whole heart.

But here’s the thing:

Believing it and actually doing it are two very different things.

Because what happens when you can see something they can’t?

What happens when they’re making a choice you wouldn’t make?

What happens when they tell you about a problem and you can see what seems to be a perfectly obvious solution?

What happens when every mothering instinct inside of you wants to yell down from the bleachers:

“WAIT! DON’T DO THAT!”

That’s the part I think we need to talk about more.

When Do You Step In With Adult Kids?

My favorite part of this reader’s question is this: “When do you step in, and when don’t you? Do you wait until they ask your opinion, or do you give it?”

As I said, I’m still getting lots wrong.

But one of the biggest things I’m learning is to listen first.

My kids have taught me that listening with love may be one of the greatest gifts we can give our adult children.

Acknowledging that there are hard things.

Being a shoulder to cry on.

Being curious about what they’re thinking rather than immediately telling them what I’m thinking.

Oh boy, that sounds so easy as I type it here in this little space.

But we all know it most definitely is not.

Ask First, Then Advise

I do try my best to wait until my kids ask for my opinion. And if I’m just bursting with something I think would be helpful, I try to slow down enough to ask first:

“Do you want me to just listen, or do you want my thoughts?”

Sometimes they want my thoughts.

Sometimes they don’t.

And then comes the really tricky part:

Being okay when they don’t.

Because after spending twenty-something years pouring our hearts into teaching and training these people, we have accumulated quite a lot of thoughts! 🙂

But I’m learning that just because I have an opinion doesn’t mean my adult child needs it.

I’m getting better and better at realizing that sometimes keeping my mouth closed is its own form of love.

But should we really never speak up?

The other day I was sitting in the temple pondering about specific things each of my children are grappling with right now. And I had such a distinct impression that I do need to speak up. I do need to ask the hard questions.

I don’t think parenting adult children means we suddenly become people without opinions or boundaries or voices.

Sometimes love requires us to say something hard.

Dave and I have been worried about one of our kids and the trajectory of their job. Is this what they want to be doing for the long-run? And I’m so glad we were able to bring it up and get their impressions as to their big picture vision of the future. When kids are worried about finances we ask how they’re doing on the 10-20-70 principle and remind them the power it has. Sometimes we have invited kids to read the same book with us (especially before a trip) so that we can discuss particular things together and get our kids thoughts on them. And in the process we give our own. Oh there are so many things that it’s so beautiful to be able to have open conversation about!

Questions to Ask Ourselves

But I think the questions I originally would have asked have changed.

When my kids were young, I might have asked:

What do I need to teach here?

Now I’m trying to ask myself things like this before questioning my kids:

• Is this actually dangerous or deeply consequential, or is it simply different from what I would choose?
• Is this really my business?
• Does this child already know what I think? That’s a big one. Because let’s be honest, our kids usually know what we think. If we’ve already said it, saying it six more times probably isn’t adding wisdom. It’s just adding pressure.
• Am I saying this because it will help my child, or because saying it will make ME feel better? This one really takes some inner “shadow work.” Because sometimes watching our adult kids struggle makes us so uncomfortable that we desperately want to fix something. Giving advice can relieve our own anxiety but it doesn’t help theirs.
• Will saying this make my child more or less likely to come talk to me next time? This may be the most important one. I want to be a safe place for my kids. I want them to know they can tell me the messy stuff without immediately getting a lecture or a solution. That doesn’t mean I will always agree with them. It means I want the relationship to be strong enough to hold disagreement.

The goal isn’t never having conflict with your adult children.

It’s building a relationship that can withstand disagreement and working to sort it out together.

Trusting them is different from telling them we trust them

I think our adult children need to know that we trust them.

I will always praise my parents for how they taught me to trust in myself as a young mother. I would always ask for their opinions on this or that when I had little toddlers. And always, without fail, their answer was, “oh you’re doing it so much better than we ever did.” It wasn’t to put themselves down, it was genuine trust in what me and Dave were doing. There was no second guessing. And even if we weren’t doing it all right all the time (which I’m sure we weren’t), I think their trust in me helped me step up to be the kind of parent they were telling me I was.

What Trusting Them Actually Looks Like

I used this on Grace the other night. She was talking about some friend struggles and my first instinct was to step in and give some advice. But something in my heart put me on pause. And instead of offering advice, I told her I trusted that she would figure it out. She has all the tools to figure it out (she really does), now she just needs to put them to work.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the difference between saying “I trust you” and actually trusting them.

Because it’s easy to tell our kids we trust them. But if we question every decision after that, and offer advice they didn’t ask for, and check back over and over to see if they’ve done what we suggested, what indication are we giving that we actually trust them?

Not much.

Of course, trusting our adult kids also means accepting that sometimes their decisions won’t work out. Maybe some of the most important things they learn will come through experiences we would have saved them from if we’d had the chance.

And when things don’t work out, maybe our job isn’t “I told you so.” Maybe it’s being that durable place where they can feel safe in defeat, learn what they need to learn, dust themselves off and keep going.

What if we disagree?

This reader said something else that really struck me:

“I feel like I’ve had more big disagreements with them than I did when they were young teens.”

I think this is important.

Because having disagreements with our adult children doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong.

Our children are becoming completely separate people from us.

Of course they are going to think differently about some things.

They may have different ideas about money or marriage or religion or careers or family traditions or holidays or parenting or any number of things we once assumed they would see exactly as we do.

And if they’re married, there’s a whole new layer to navigate — because now you’re not just learning how to relate to your adult child, you’re also figuring out your relationship with their spouse. Which is its own beautiful, complex, and humbling journey.

Maybe the goal isn’t to raise adult children who always agree with us.

Maybe the goal is to build relationships that are strong enough to hold the disagreement without losing each other.

When we land in a disagreement with one of our kids, I try to remind myself that my goal isn’t to win the argument. It’s to keep the relationship. Sometimes that means I need to say ‘I hear you’ even when I still think differently.

Making Mistakes as Parents is Part of the Journey

We aren’t going to navigate all of this perfectly.

Sometimes we’ll say too much.

Other times we’ll will ourselves to stay quiet and wish with all our hearts that we’d spoken up.

Sometimes our kids will be offended by something we thought was harmless.

And sometimes we’ll get defensive too.

And then we get to do something else important:

repair.

Oh my goodness, the beauty of modeling a sincere apology is so important.

We try again.

We keep learning each other in this new configuration.

Success in parenting adult children does NOT mean never getting it wrong.

Thank heavens for that!

Maybe it means learning to keep choosing the relationship even when we do.

The only tether is love

Dave and I were talking about all of this one morning, and he said something that I keep thinking about.

He reminded me that at this point, the only tethering we really have is love.

Think about all the tethers we have when our kids are young. We live with our kids, eat together, drive together, we are in charge of the yeses and the nos.

But as kids grow, those tethers fall away.

Hopefully what remains isn’t control.

It’s love.

And maybe that is why this stage requires so much work from us.

Learning to Let Go of Control

After pouring our hearts into training and teaching and working alongside our children, we have to figure out how to let them go.

Not let go of them.

But let go of our need to orchestrate their lives.

We have to accept that they are on their own learning paths, learning in their own unique and individual ways.

We have to figure out how to trust them.

How to listen.

How to speak up when it really matters and keep our mouths closed when it doesn’t.

How to apologize when we get that balance wrong.

And how to keep climbing back up into those bleachers when every mothering instinct in us wants to run onto the field to “save” them.

Maybe most of all, we need to make sure they know:

I’m here.

I love you.

I trust you to live your life.

And I’ll be cheering for you the whole way.

I wish I could give that sweet reader who asked that question a perfect formula for knowing when to step in and when to step back.

I can’t.

I’m still smack-dab in the thick of figuring it out too.

But maybe that’s part of the beauty of this stage. Our kids aren’t the only ones still growing and learning.

We are too.

And if you’re looking for more ways to stay connected with your adult kids while you figure all this out, I love this simple 9pm prayer practice and this post about holding your family close when you’re far away.