Having raised three adult children, I’ve gained some insight that might help parents of teens and younger children prepare for this season of life.

Parenting an adult child is not for the faint of heart, let me just say…

But it’s also one of the most rewarding seasons of life because you get the chance to start seeing the fruits of your labor. You see parts of you in them, some you like and some you dislike.

Perhaps the things I’m about to share can help you in your relationship with your adult child right now or can at least prepare you for what could be coming with your younger ones. 

Here are 10 Things I’ve Learned about Parenting Adult Children 

1. Times. Have. Changed. Raising teen and adult children these days is nothing like it was even a decade ago. They have more voices in their heads than ever before, and those voices don’t always have their best interest at heart. Adages like “honor thy father and mother” and “respect your elders” have become almost obsolete, thanks to the messaging from social media influencers and ill-equipped therapists who are telling today’s young adults to focus less on others and more on themselves, and to cut out anyone in their lives who disagrees with them, even their parents. Seasoned therapists are seeing a huge surge in young adults going no contact with parents and other loved ones. “Self-love” is the new gospel for some of these young adults. It’s all about following their hearts and feelings rather than focusing on logic and reason. Social media (especially sites like TikTok) have become sources of free therapy for our adult kids. It’s also easily accessible and gives them quick answers so they don’t have to take too much time or be stressed out by actually having to think through all the many possible angles of their situations. It’s even worse than how we as boomers (born between 1946 to 1964) or Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) learned to solve our life’s problems through thirty-minute sitcoms. Today’s young adults are trying to solve their problems with fifteen to thirty-second reels and then moving on with their lives as if there are no consequences to their actions.
2. We (as parents) don’t get to decide what kind of parents we were to our kids. They decide, and we get to choose how to respond to their decision. If we want to maintain a relationship with them, we must put aside our pride and hurt and try to put ourselves in our kids’ shoes to see WHY they are behaving the way they are. Adult children often have separate realities from ours as their parents. It’s not always about what actually happened, it’s more often about how they perceived what happened and how it made them feel.
3. The way we see our kids while they’re living in our home is not necessarily who they really are (or at least, who they’re really going to end up becoming). Once they become adults and leave our home, we often see a side of them that surprises and even shocks us. The relationship with our adult kids IS NOT the same relationship we had with our kids growing up. We can’t go back, as much as we might want to. It becomes a new kind of relationship moving forward, one that might (and often does) involve less contact, less input in their lives, less physical affection, and less time together. They have to have this time to figure some things out.
4. What we as parents consider effective and frequent-enough communication is not always what our young adult kids consider it to be. Even if they’re lying in bed most of the day or playing video games or shopping, to them, that’s living their lives. So, if they choose to not text us back right away (or even within 24-48 hours) and blame it on the statement that they were “busy,” that’s their reality. They were busy doing whatever they wanted to do that they decided was more more important than communicating with their parents. Again, we don’t get to dictate what communication should look like with them.Another reason adult kids don’t respond when we as their parents feel they should is they are differentiating – trying to separate themselves from the family unit to be able to drown out the voices they’ve been hearing thus far in their lives – parents, siblings, pastors, older family members – to find out what their own voice sounds like.
5. They aren’t going to do something unless they think (or feel) it was their idea – or at least the idea of someone they respect. We as parents can give our kids sound life advice as much as we want, but they typically won’t truly receive it unless they hear it in their own heads as their own idea or from someone they trust or respect more than their parents – a college professor, their peers, a seemingly “cooler” family member.
6. When our kids become teens, our influence as parents becomes much less intense than that of their peers and other mentors in their lives. Their sense of fashion, hobbies, likes and dislikes, political views, religious views start being shaped more by the people they hang out with most, and that is typically their friends, possibly youth leaders, or other family members. Unfortunately, these days, social media influencers become the main voices in their heads because many teens and young adults don’t have the skills to form healthy or substantial relationships in real life, so they turn to fake relationships online – in gaming communities, through following influencers, and connecting in social media chatrooms…often involving pornograhpy or other damaging resources. Kids as young as seven are now being exposed to porn for the first time via the games they’re playing on devices, sneaking a peek on a friend’s phone, or viewing magazines or TV shows by accident. And studies are showing that porn is the most dangerous addiction because it only takes one image to create the addiction, in many cases, because, unlike substances like crack and cocaine that can be physically emitted from the body, the pornographic images stay inside the brain and can be reaccessed with a simple thought. 
7. Guilt never works long term! If your child is choosing, or has chosen, to limit communication with you for whatever reason (even if they don’t divulge that reason), trying to guilt them into changing their behavior does not work. Reminding them of how much the lack of communication is hurting you or another family member doesn’t change how they “feel” about the situation. Telling them that a family member is sick or has passed away probably isn’t going to make them come running back home. It might even push them further away because they don’t want to deal with the guilt or shame of not being there. So, trying to motivate your child to be more connected to the family through guilt doesn’t work. They often feel manipulated by it.
8. Most adult kids are happy to dish out criticism to us as parents but can’t handle even constructive criticism in return. Making comments about their clothes, hair, boyfriends or girlfriends, religious or political views, etc. does no good and can, in fact, create dissention in your relationship. Young adults despise the feeling of being judged, even if their behavior is inappropriate or wrong. With them, it’s not always “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” Sometimes it’s “do unto others as you deem necessary to make yourself feel better in the moment, even if it’s not something you’d want done to you.” It’s all about validation of their feelings, instant gratification, and blame shifting. They rarely choose to take responsibility for their actions until much later in life. 
9. No matter how old they get, they still need healthy boundaries…and so do YOU as parents! I personally can attest that my one mission in life while raising my kids was to help them avoid as much pain as possible, especially any pain I had to endure as a child. I didn’t coddle them, but I definitely protected them as much as possible. My biggest mistake was trying to anticipate their needs rather than waiting to see what they needed or asking them what they needed. I definitely wasn’t the type of parent who tried to be their best friend, but I did try to be the “I want to understand you” parent who constantly wanted to talk things through with them to make the angsty feelings in the home go away. Sometimes it worked, or seemed to. Looking back, it may have just been them trying to appease me to get me to go away. Healthy boundaries with your kids means you don’t allow them to disrespect you with their words or actions, but you also don’t disrespect their feelings or personal space as well. We have to learn to give them space, privacy, and opportunities to fail. And there is a difference between privacy and secrecy. Privacy is based on trust and respect. If your kid has given you no reason to not trust them, they deserve privacy. Secrecy usually involves some sort of dangerous behavior or deception, which can cause them or others a great deal of pain. But trust goes both ways, and that’s something they often don’t learn until well into their twenties.
10. Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned about raising adult kids is that, if we wait and pray and allow God to intervene – truly turning the situation over to Him – everything seems to fall into place at some point. But when we try to “fix things” in our own timing and with our own agendas, it seems to cause even more pain for everyone involved and drags out even longer. God loans our children to us as parents and entrusts us to care for their needs, love them, and raise them with good morals and values. But once we’ve done that, it’s time to turn them back over to Him to shape them into the adults (and possibly future parents) that they’re meant to become. That comes through life experiences – yes, even painful ones – in which they learn that they don’t have all the answers. His ultimate goal in putting them through this pruning process is to teach them that He is always there for them and that they can’t go through life alone, that things of this world will never fill the God-shaped hole that we’re all born with. Nothing of this world will ever bring them the true joy, peace, and security that only comes from a relationship with Him. But they only figure that out through the searching process. It’s the only way.

And the bonus thing I’ve learned about raising adult children is that things do change when they become parents. They soften and become more receptive to your input as their parents. They start seeing how and why you did some of the things you did to protect them, because they now do those same things to protect their own children. They see how the love a parent has for their child is stronger than anything they’ve ever felt. And many times they come back and apologize for all the rotten things they’ve said and done in their past.

But all of this takes time and life experience. It takes broken hearts and overcoming addictions and making dumb decisions and failing and losing money and relationships, and much more that we can never fully prepare our children or ourselves for.

We can’t live our lives for our children, and we can’t live their lives for them. We each have to walk our own path. It’s too much of a burden for a child to have to monitor their parents’ feelings. They can barely deal with their own feelings about their own decisions and experiences.

So, what do we do?

Where’s the line between enough involvement and too much involvement?

Unfortunately, that’s up to our child to decide. Also unfortunately, they are being influenced by MANY other people in their lives, people with whose values we often don’t agree.

Therefore, what I’ve learned is that our most powerful weapon is prayer. Praying for wisdom, guidance, discernment, and protection. Praying that the roots we laid down for them throughout their childhood keep them grounded enough to not venture too far off the deep end that they can’t find their way back. Praying that one day they’ll realize that everything we did for them was out of love and protection. Praying that we, as parents, find the strength to let go and let God take it from here.

If you’re going through this season of life with adult kids, here are a few resources you might find helpful: