00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 157, "Friend-Zoning Your Adult Children." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Glad to have you here today. If you are returning, welcome back. Really really glad to have you. I'm glad that you're finding information here that is helping you move into a better space. And if you're brand new, welcome. I know that you will find things here that are going to help you. I just have found in my own life, as I have started to move into a healthier emotional space, that these things that we talk about have made such a huge difference in my life. In fact, just talking with a friend this morning, we were discussing this and I was just like...I'm in such a completely different place than I was six years ago when I got divorced and even completely different place now than I was even a year ago as I have continued to incorporate this kind of information into my life and to really see it and to learn to become more aware of my thoughts. And as I've gotten coaching myself and worked into this space, I am just so happy with where I am. 

01:22 

Does that mean I'm perfect? No. Does it mean that there's no issues? Absolutely not. We're always going to have issues, right? We're always going to do that. But I am showing up in my life in ways that astound me sometimes and sometimes I'm just looking at myself going, "wow, like look what I'm doing. Look what I'm creating. Look how I'm showing up in this relationship," and I'm so proud of myself and it really just is creating so much self-respect for me and so much more self love. I'm just so grateful for the path that I'm on and my desire is to help you move into a similar path. Our lives are always going to have struggle. We're always going to have challenge. But to get to a place where we start showing up more regularly, the way that we want to show up, is so liberating and so empowering and so beautiful. And that's where I want to share with you the opportunity to do that. 

02:20 

So here we are. Let's get started on today's topic. We are talking about friend-zoning your adult children now. I'll tell you how this topic came about, because I think about adult children a lot. Because all four of my children are adults. And I did a podcast called "Parenting Adult Children," podcast number 99 and it's become my second-most listened to podcast, which is kind of fascinating to me how many of us struggle with adult children. Yesterday I was at a missionary dinner for a missionary who's just come home, and I met a woman. We were talking and she mentioned how difficult it was to parent adult children and I remembered even just probably three years ago telling a friend, "oh this parenting adult children is crap. I hate it. It's so hard," and now I love having adult children because of the change of mindset that I've had, and the things I've started to understand about how to create these healthier relationships, and what to do to create that peace within myself with being around my adult children. 

03:39 

And the thing that I've had to learn, and the thing that I shared with this woman when we were chatting, was I just stopped parenting them and I started friending them. I started being their friend instead of thinking I had to be their parent. And some of you are going "whoa whoa whoa I'm always a parent." Of course you're always a parent. I'm not saying that we're not their parents anymore and that we don't love them and that we don't seek to help them when it's appropriate. But what I am saying is that as they grow into the adults, guess what, they get to be adults! And so I decided to friend-zone my children, and it's been one of the best things that I've done for me, and I think one of the best things I've done for them and for our relationship. Before I moved into this space, it was always difficult. The reason I said having adult children was horrible was because I continued to want to parent them. I kept wanting to step into their lives and wanted them to make the decisions that I wanted them to make, wanted them to move in the direction that I felt they should move in. They should go to college, they should be dating, they should go on missions, they should do these things, and as soon as I said "whoa, wait a minute, they're adults. It's time for me to stop parenting them." And in no way does this mean that I walk away from my relationship with them. In fact, I found that it's actually strengthened my relationship with them, which is kind of fascinating. It's another one of those paradoxes. We think that as we back off from that parenting role that we're backing off from the relationship, but absolutely not, we're actually stepping into a stronger relationship. 

05:29 

But what all this does mean, as I friend-zone my kids, is that I see my role as teaching and training them as complete. And now they get to do it all however and whenever they choose. Sometimes this can be really difficult because we've just spent the last 18 years being such an integral part of their lives, helping them make decisions, even telling them what to do at times, especially more so when they were younger. And we've gotten really used to having some control, some say, in what they do and how they do it. And it can be super hard for us to give up that control. Control feels really good when we can control other people. And if we could control them all the time, I would be all for it, but guess what? We can't. Once they become adults, we have to relinquish that control and we have to do it lovingly and not with resistance. 

06:33 

So one of the things that makes this difficult is that we often make their needing or their wanting to step away from us...we make it mean something about us. But here's the thing: if our children want to separate, that's a good thing. That's the best secret of all. It's a good thing. It means that they are on track to do exactly what we have raised them to do. And that is to become adults, in all ways. I know that when I look back at when I had graduated from high school and was going to university in the fall, I was so excited to leave home. And my excitement had nothing to do with not loving my parents or appreciating them or them not treating me well. They were fabulous parents. I was just ready to step into the responsibility for my life. And my wanting to make my own decisions and to grow into adulthood had nothing to do with not valuing them or their wisdom or their experience. It had everything to do with me wanting to have my own experiences so that I could grow and progress as a person. We have that innate desire to do that at that age. So your child wanting space from you and wanting and needing to make their own decisions doesn't have anything to do with wanting to get away from you. It's a development, mentally-driven urge to move into that space of adulthood, to move into taking responsibility for their lives. 

08:05 

Okay, so that being said, it can be very uncomfortable for us when they start making decisions we wouldn't make. Our trying to still have a say is saying something about our ability to deal with our own discomfort. And we get to learn, this is our place of learning here, we get to learn to trust them to do their best. One reason this can be hard is because we're harsh on ourselves as parents. We recognize our own parenting weaknesses and a lot of times we just think "oh, they're not ready. They're not ready," and maybe they're not. But guess what, you know how many kids have left home not ready? Mmm, probably 99.5%. I have no statistics to back that up whatsoever. But no child that I have ever known has been 100% ready to leave. Because guess what? We are failures as parents. Every single one of us. We're also successes as parents. We've done some amazing things for our kids. And yet we also all screwed up our kids. That's just kind of part of the plan. Every parent fails their children in some ways. Everyone messes up their kids. 

09:35 

My parents were great and amazing and I always felt loved. I always felt like we had enough. I felt like I had all the opportunities. My mother was a little bit of a feminist and my father was as well. But guess what? We struggled with emotional intelligence in my home growing up. Understanding our emotions, being allowed to have emotions, talking about emotions, talking about things that really mattered...we didn't do that in my home. And so guess what? I grew up and I didn't have that either. And I'll tell you what, I loved my children desperately. And I did everything I knew how to do. And in so many ways I was a brilliant mom. Such a good mom. And yet, guess what? I struggled teaching them emotional intelligence. And some of them, well, I think they're going to struggle with it their whole lives because that's how I raised them. Right? Now I raised them to do some pretty amazing things and I have some phenomenal kids. But they're going to struggle with this. And they're probably in turn going to turn around and, when they have children, teach some of the same things. And each of them are on a different path as far as learning to engage with their emotionality. But that's okay. That's their path, right? 

10:56 

But this is the thing. I was a brilliant mom in some ways. I was a really horrible mom in some ways. God knew that. God knows that for you. He knows. He knew when He sent these children to your home that you were going to be brilliant in some ways and you were going to completely mess it up in some ways. That's just how it worked. We are humans. We were meant to mess it up. It's part of God's plan that we mess it up. It's not that he doesn't love us and wants us to have the best experience possible coming down to earth and growing up in these homes. He wanted your children to have a great experience. He knew that you were the best option for them. He also knew that part of the process was that you're a human. You didn't know what you were doing most of the time, because none of us do when we're parenting. We're just making it all up. We all struggle teaching our kids. 

11:53 

So here's another reason that we can sometimes struggle giving up that control. It's because we just love them so much. If you ever loved anybody as much as your kids, it's just not possible. And we want them to be so happy and so successful. And doesn't that sound lovely? It does. And it's true. We do want that. But that's not our... them being happy is not our responsibility. We can't make them happy and we're not responsible for trying to. It does sound lovely that we love them and we want them to be happy. But we can't control whether or not they're happy. So, though that sounds really nice, it is often code language for, "I will be happy when they do what I want them to do." Okay? That's a tough one to hear sometimes. That we want them to do it the way we want them to do it because that eases our discomfort. If our children are making choices that we don't agree with, that is hard. And it is uncomfortable and it's difficult. And so a lot of times we want them to get in line, to do what we want them to do, so that we can feel better. But guess what? That doesn't work that way. We have to learn to manage our own discomfort and that's kind of what we're talking about today, is how to move into that space. 

13:31 

Their happiness will come, not when they do what we say, but when they make decisions and learn and grow and step into their own adulthood. Our happiness will come when we make peace with them making their own decisions, with them being adults and with them making mistakes. And yes, we have to make peace with them making mistakes. We have to be okay with it. We have to recognize that that's how every single one of us learns and grows and progresses. You know, some of the greatest lessons in my life have been as I have made mistakes and then recognize those mistakes and then reworked it. Now this doesn't mean that we stop loving and praying and hoping for our children, but we create peace with them walking their own path, with them learning their own lessons and making their own mistakes. That's how they do it. 

14:36 

So I'm gonna tell you three really quick examples from my life in the last year or so. I just got back two days ago from a trip to the Dominican Republic, which was fabulous, and I was scheduled to go with my two daughters, and a couple of siblings. There were six of us going, and the week before we left one of my daughters like "where's my passport?" I'm like, "I don't know. I haven't seen your passport for a couple years. It's yours. You've had it." It's not mine to take care of because I'm letting her be an adult, right and so she searches. She finally finds her passport and guess whose passport was expired and we were leaving for the Dominican Republic in about six days? And so a lot of tears, a lot of panic, as she called around and tried to find a way that she could get an expedited passport. Well, there are only three places around the West Coast that do that, that's Los Angeles and Phoenix and Denver, and you have to have an appointment. She called all of them and none of them had appointments available. So one of my daughters did not get to go on this trip that she had paid for. She paid for all of it...the resort we were staying at, the airline, and she didn't get to go on the trip, and it was really tough for her. 

16:05 

Here's another story. My other daughter didn't fill out some paperwork to keep a scholarship when she was at school. And it wasn't the largest scholarship she had, but the tune of two or three thousand dollars a school year. Which is a lot when you're a young person. And she lost that scholarship because she missed the deadline. And guess who didn't remind her? I had no idea it was coming up. I was just letting her take care of her own stuff. Same daughter right now is looking at going to school in the fall, and where she's going there's a huge housing shortage. They have way more students than they have housing available and there's no housing available. She's going down there in the fall and she doesn't have a place to live. And I'm just standing back here going, "okay, you know what? I'm just gonna let her figure this out. I'm gonna let her be an adult. If she needs my help, she can ask and I would be probably very happy to help her where I can. But she gets to figure this out." Are these painful experiences for them? Absolutely. They're hard and they're tough and it's hard to start adulting and growing into this. But these are lessons never to be forgotten. 

17:30 

The lessons that they're learning in these through these experiences and myriads of others that they're having as I'm stepping back and letting them adult, these will teach them things that they will benefit from their whole lives. And I don't want to take that away from them. Is it painful to watch them go through some of these? Oh yeah. When my daughter found out about the passport thing, I was so sad. I was so sad for her, I was so sad for us because she wasn't going to get to go with us. Broke my heart, but there was nothing I could do about it. And letting her step into that space of taking care of it is kind of a...it's a very difficult thing to do as a parent sometimes, but as we friends-zone them, I wouldn't be calling my  friends and saying, "oh, by the way, we're going on this trip. Do you have your passport?" I wouldn't be doing that. I expect them to be adults and I expect my friends to take care of their business. And when I friend-zone my children, I do the same thing. I don't step in and try to micromanage their lives and try to do things for them. And that's the way that they're going to learn and that's the way that I create peace for myself. 

18:49 

So do you want peace? We have to stop stressing about and trying to control things that we don't have any control over. It is vital that we stop wiggling our way into the lives of our adult children, who get to make their own decisions. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that wiggling in may look like. Because I think a lot of times we think that we're just being really good parents and a lot of times we're being intrusive. And we are breaking down the relationship because of things. Now this is definitely not an all inclusive list. These are just the ones that came to my mind off the top of my head. So asking about when they're having children. Guess what, my friend? You may really, really want grandchildren, but that's none of your business. Or asking when they're going to get married, they get to figure this out. That's wiggling our way in, in a way that feels intrusive. Here's another one. Always having opinions about how their parenting. Are we calling them out? Are we telling them how they should do it? We gotta stop that. We gotta stand back and let them be adults. Let them parent. Expecting them to be at your beck and call? Do they come to dinner when you call? Do they come for Christmas when you expect them to? Do we get upset if they choose not to come home for Christmas or to go on a trip with friends instead of come to the family reunion? Are we expecting them to be at our beck and call and to be where we want them to be? That is wiggling in. That's being controlling in a way that we need to not be. How about giving unsolicited advice? Woo! That's... I really, really have to pay attention to myself. I'm an advice giver and I love helping people see things and I'm really learning to stand back and just go, "wow, that's tough. What are you gonna do? How are you gonna figure that out?" I'm learning how to do that. Sometimes I say...I still mess up. My kids would probably be happy to tell you how often I mess up, but I am doing so much better than I used to do, and I'm really proud of where I'm at with learning to keep my mouth shut. How about this? Making backhanded comments about how they're choosing to live their lives. Maybe their church activity, maybe their marital status, maybe whether they're choosing to use alcohol and drugs, get tattoos, maybe they have a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe we make comments about how they don't visit enough. All of that is trying to control in underhanded, manipulative ways. 

21:33 

My friends, we cannot do this if we want healthy, strong relationships. We can't do it. How about having opinions about who they're choosing to date? Yeah, right? How about having any opinions at all about their lives? What if we just stopped having opinions about what they do and we just started loving them, right? Here's the thing. When we put our children, our adult children, in the friend-zone, we move into a space of respecting them as people. And this creates what we call a horizontal relationship, which means that we are on equal footing. We're equals. And this is where connection is created. It is not created in the vertical when our children are adults. When our children are younger, there is an inherent vertical relationship where the parent knows more and is there to instruct and train and help the younger child. But as they move into adults, that vertical relationship moves into a horizontal relationship where we become equals. If we want connection, we have to respect that equality, that I am an adult, they are an adult, we both get to do whatever we want to do. 

22:53 

We also, when we put them in the friend-zone, we start letting go of our responsibility as a parent. We are no longer responsible for their lives. They are. It is trusting them with their own life to make the decisions that will move them where they need to go. And it's also trusting God to give them experiences that will take them where He needs them to be. We have no idea the path our children need to take. We may think we do. We may think that they need to go to college, then they need to get married, then they need to have this many kids, and they always need to live this close to home, and then we think we know all this stuff about our kids. We don't know. We don't know what path they need to take. 

23:45 

I know that I've shared this before, but there's a gentleman in my ward who spent a lot of years. away from the church, living kind of a party life. And during that time, he met a party wife, and they had three children, and later on, she was not a member of the church, later on, he decided that it was time to come back, and his wife got married, and they're the most amazing couple that we go to church with. They're so wonderful. And we think that, you know, his parents very well might have been over there having all of these opinions about how he should be living his life, and how he should not be living the way that he did, but I just, I can't help but think...I wonder if that was the path that God knew he needed to take so he could go and pick up his wife and help her come into the gospel. I love that idea, and it makes so much sense to me that we don't  know the path that we all need to take. And so learning to trust God, that He will take them where He needs them to be. 

24:53 

And guess what? In return, we just get to love them and enjoy the relationship. And they will feel all of that. If we just back off from the control, back off from trying to have opinions, back off from all of that, they will feel it. They will feel our acceptance of them, and often, not always, they will reciprocate in kind. And the relationship will be strengthened. My relationship, if nothing else, is stronger with my children, who, you know, whether they feel better for me or not, I feel better, because I'm showing up the way that I want to show up in a relationship. I'm being the kind of person that I want to be. This is such a beautiful, amazing place for us to practice our clean love. This is love with no expectations, with no manipulation, with no opinions. Really, we just love because it feels good. And because we choose to love and how they respond or what they do makes no difference on how we love them. 

25:59 

Now, this does not mean that we don't have boundaries, but I want us to understand that expectations and boundaries are two different things. Expectations come with a lot of control. Expectations are trying to control the behavior of other people, whereas boundaries are working to control my own behavior. So we don't want to have expectations of the people in our lives that we want good relationships with. We do want to engage in healthy ways and we want to have boundaries and even talk about those boundaries when necessary. But expectations and boundaries are two different things. So friend zoning your adult children is one of the best things you can do for your emotional health because you will be at peace. You will let go. You will have less stress. And it's one of the best things you can do for the sake of your relationship with them. Because you will feel better for how you're showing up. 

27:03 

I can promise you, are you gonna have some uncomfortable Ideas and thoughts and feelings about how they choose to live sometimes? Absolutely. Absolutely, but guess what? My uncomfortable feelings about how my children choose to live is my issue not theirs .They get to live however they want. And when I start learning to take responsibility for my own discomfort, and as I start learning to move into this space of just accepting them and loving them, I start showing up in the way that I want to show up and that creates peace for me. So if you struggle with putting your kids in the friend zone, let's chat about it. I can help you see it. I can help you understand it. I can help you move into this space. 

27:55 

And I will tell you, I love being a parent of adult children. Now are all of them living the way that in my wildest dreams I hope they would live? Absolutely not, they're not. But guess what? I'm okay with that. They're good people and even if they weren't good people, they get to make that choice. They get to choose to live however they want. And it doesn't mean that if they went way off the deep end that I wouldn't be sad. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't hurt. It doesn't mean that it wouldn't be difficult. But it also doesn't mean that once they're adults adults, it doesn't mean that I have a right to tell them how to live and to put my expectations on them. So here we go. It's a huge part of growing up into middle-age, is learning to stop parenting and to start moving into that space of creating the kind of relationship with our kids that we want to have. 

28:56 

Okay, so if you want to take me up on my offer to talk about how coaching can help you do this, you can go to my website tanyahale.com. You can sign up for a free 30-minute consult where we can talk about coaching, see how it works for you, and that's going to do it for me. Hope you have an awesome day and I will talk to you next week. Bye! 

29:20 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!