Well, we’ve done our job!  We’ve raised our children and they are now adults who perhaps have children of their own.

As we and our children grow older, patterns of communication from way back can hang around and undermine our adult-to-adult relationship with our kids.  In our worst moments, we can find ourselves communicating from subtle verbal digs to out-in-the-open hostility. 

To minimize these, with a few simple shifts, we can move out of these upsets with our grown kids.  It is possible to create an atmosphere of peace.  Our kids want it just as much as we do.  No one likes to suffer in the prison of relationship conflict and misery.

Here are some actions to incorporate that can help:

Stop Blaming

First, it’s important that we stop hurling blame at them for difficulties in our relationship.  It takes two to create relationship challenges, and we get to take responsibility for our contribution. In reality, that’s the only thing we have control over anyway. (Link to article on projection.)

Let Them Own Their Decisions

Second, we let our adult children choose their own direction, even if we interpret it as a mistake.  If they make a choice we don’t agree with, we will probably not succeed in talking them out of it.  Would we have let our parents discourage us from something we really wanted to do?

Years ago, my middle son announced that he and a young woman, whom he had been dating for three months, were getting married.  While my husband and I had our severe doubts about the wisdom of this move, we opted not to throw an obstacle into our son’s direction. Even though we saw a strong possibility of divorce in their future, we chose to support him. 

Two years later, our son informed us he and his wife were divorcing.  The emotional pain hit him hard.  Yet, because he bore the consequences of his decision, he learned lessons about himself and about life he may not have learned otherwise. He chose his second wife very carefully!

We don’t need to protect our children from the pain of their decisions in life.  Sometimes that pain is one of their greatest teachers.  As adult to adult, our role is to support them emotionally and to encourage them as they walk through their ordeal.

Hold Them Capable

Third, we hold our adult children capable.  How do we do that? Through a simple tweak in the direction of our thinking. 

We notice the labels we currently place on our kids.  These may include “lazy,” “stubborn,” “irresponsible,” “messy,” etc.  Then we replace them by choosing different labels:  things like “worthy of respect,” “smart,” and “motivated to do what they like to do.”         

Then we watch.  We may notice how our young adults begin to show up according to our new labels.  We may notice we quit certain behaviors, like nagging and criticizing.  With these old patterns dissolving and the new ones forming, we get along better.

Why?  When we think capable thoughts about our children, we create a different energy around us.  If our children don’t notice right away, they will if we stick with it. 

We create an atmosphere of freedom in which our adult children can now act as the capable and responsible people they want themselves to be.  Their job is not to please us, their parents.  It’s to make sure they’re living according to the blueprint God/Wisdom has given them for their lives.  It may look different from our blueprint for them. 

Shifting to this viewpoint takes a great deal of maturity on our part.  It’s not easy to view someone in a positive light when our habitual pattern has been to see them negatively.  Yet, when we change our relational patterns, we shift the equilibrium in the relationship.  Our adult children then must compensate by making changes of their own. 

By changing ourselves, we become catalysts for change in our loved ones as well.  We’ve done our job and our children are on their own.  Congratulations!  Now let them be truly responsible to become their own persons.