You thought having young children was hard — but now you’ve got adult children.
This is a whole new stage in the parent/child dynamic, and it’s hard to know how to handle it. Maintaining good relationships with your adult children is complex at the best of times, so it’s important to be fully equipped. If you want to avoid your adult children distancing themselves from you, it’s important to know what their triggers might be.
1. Giving unsolicited advice
One thing that gets under adult children’s skin is when their parents give them unwanted advice. It’s great if you’ve got a good relationship with your adult children and can share life advice with them regularly, but it’s important to know where the line is. Generally speaking, your adult children will come to you when they need guidance.
2. Making them feel incapable of autonomy
One big change when your children go from teens to young adults is their need for independence. This has been steadily growing and changing since they were little, but now that they’re adults, they want to prove their independence. As a parent, you might be used to helping your children with most things, but now you’ve got to step back and let them do it themselves, per BetterHelp.
3. Blaming your child for relationship tension
Child-parent relationships are complicated at the best of times, which is why you’re going to run into issues no matter what. It’s all about how you approach these issues. If you approach them by pointing the finger at your child and blaming them solely for the issues you’re having, then this is only going to cause more stress. Instead, focus on relationship repair rather than who’s to blame.
4. Not checking in on the relationship enough
There is a difference between being too involved in your adult children’s lives and checking in on your relationship status. There’s nothing wrong with taking your children out individually for lunch or dinner and chatting candidly about how you think your relationship is now. If your adult child feels that they can communicate any issues, they’re less likely to want to distance themselves.
5. Telling your child how to feel and think
As parents, we raise our children with specific values and beliefs that we hope they will carry into adulthood. However, while some of these are so foundational that they’re not likely to change, your child still needs to develop their own identity around what they value and believe in. To avoid distance, try not to tell your child how they should approach life.
6. Not honoring boundaries
Boundaries are essential in any relationship but are especially important in an adult child-parent relationship. This is because lines will look different than they have in the past. It’s worth sitting down with your child and talking to them about what limits and rules they want in the relationship and then honoring these.
7. Being too involved in their social media
This might sound like a trivial trigger, but if your adult child shares much of their life on social media, they’ll have expectations regarding boundaries around your involvement as their parent. Most adult children don’t relish the thought of their parents commenting on everything they upload and sharing it with all of their friends. They might end up blocking you if they think you’re being overbearing.
8. Constantly asking them about their relationship status
Every parent’s dream is for their child to end up with a loving partner, someone who takes care of them and thinks the world of them. However, this doesn’t mean you should be overly involved in this aspect of your adult child’s life. The more relaxed you are about it, the more likely they are to divulge information, keeping you in the know.
9. Overdoing the parenting advice
Once your adult child starts having children of their own, your relationship changes again. It also changes depending on whether you have a son or daughter. Mothers tend to be closer to daughters than fathers are when they have children. If you are a mother and your daughter has just had a child, it’s essential to find the right balance when sharing ideas. She will want the space and opportunity to parent for herself.
10. Putting the career pressure on
Most parents only want the best for their children, and in addition to dreaming of the family they might one day have, this includes success in other areas. If you had a high-flying career, you might pressure your adult child to follow the same route. If you want your child to remain close, allow them the space to choose their direction in life.
11. Chastising their decisions too much
Speaking of direction in life, another trigger for adult children that can cause them to distance themselves from their parents is if they feel chastised for their choices. It’s natural for parents to worry that their children are making the wrong decisions — but they can only say so much. You have to allow your child to make their own choices.
12. Intervening when you shouldn’t
As a parent, when you reach the age where you have to spend more time on the sideline than in the game, it’s hard. It’s hard to know where the line is. Talk with your adult child about when they are comfortable with you getting involved and helping them out and when they aren’t.
13. Not respecting their space
In a perfect world, most parents would want to visit their adult child whenever they want. However, this might differ from what your child wants, and you must adhere to this. It gets even more complicated when your child starts living with their partner or gets married. Setting clear boundaries around when you’re allowed to visit is essential.
14. Criticizing their choice of partner
Adult children are free to choose who they want to date, even if you, as a parent, might not agree with their choices. It might take everything in you not to pick apart the person they’ve chosen to be with, but this is important if you want to remain on good terms with your child, Psych Central advises.
15. Not letting them give you feedback
You’ve spent the last 20 years raising your children and ensuring they learned some of life’s most important lessons. Now, you need to be willing to get advice from them. Even if it’s not what you want to hear, having a parent-child relationship when they’re adults is a two-way street, and they must be able to be honest when giving you advice.
