00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 99, "Parenting 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. 

00:21 

Alright, hello there, my friends. How you doing? Alright, so glad to be with you today, thanks for joining me. How you doing? I hope you're doing okay. As this is, all this staying home stuff is starting to ease up a little bit. I think people are starting to feel a little bit better. But interesting that it all starts in our thoughts, this feeling better, right? We're feeling better because now we think different thoughts than we were thinking when we were needing to stay home. So very interesting how all of that works. 

00:56 

Alright, can you believe this is episode number 99? If you have been with me, I'm just floored! 99 episodes, next week is a hundred. And next week I'm going to be talking about some of the greatest growth that I have experienced in these last 99 podcast episodes. My growth has been amazing this last year. For one, I've been very, very consistent with my own life coaching. Having someone coach me and it has made such a huge difference. I had some experiences last week with my children that were just beautiful and that just really showed how much I progressed and what I see now that I didn't see before, which is a huge part of life coaching. And just cannot believe where I am. I'm so thankful, so thankful for this journey that I've been on and I thank you for joining me. And I hope that you are having your own journey that is taking you to amazing places and that you're learning things about yourself that are helping you to have a better life and to find more fulfillment in what you're doing. 

02:04 

Alright, so last week we discussed mom guilt and I want to continue on a bit with a parenting theme. I'm talking specifically about parenting adult children this week because parenting adults is nothing like parenting young kids and many of us are not transitioning very well into the difference in parenting these older children. We're still trying to parent in many ways like we do our young kids. When our children are younger we have a lot of responsibility. Can I put that in all caps? A LOT of responsibility. Basically it's our job just to keep them alive, right? Day and night. It's kind of a big deal. Literally without the care of a parent these young kiddos would die, and eventually these sweet kids start to get a little bit older and then they drive us nuts because they want to do everything on their own. Remember the three year old stage? Whoo! But within a few more years they can start getting their own bowl of cereal in the morning and they can hang out for a few hours on their own while we sleep in on a Saturday morning. And we love it, right? And they just keep growing and becoming more and more independent, which we will both love and hate at the same time, but that's our job, to make them independent. 

03:22 

So by the time they're teens we can often have such a love-hate relationship with them growing up. Because this is when they start to make some of their own decisions about who they are, about what they value, and how they want to live their lives. And although they are often immature about where many of these decisions are coming from, it's also their time to make those kinds of decisions, to make those kinds of mistakes, and to step into more independence. And this is when so many parents really start to freak out. Their teen may not be proving themselves to be mature enough to make good decisions, so parents want to tighten down and control them more. And a teenager's natural tendency with tighter controls is to rebel and fight against it in some way, because it's built into them that this is their time to grow out of being controlled, their time to grow into being independent. So some kids will fight back with drugs or alcohol and some with sexual promiscuity, some with screaming and yelling and fighting, some just with internal hatred, some suffer in silence but they don't trust their parents. 

04:30 

Now obviously there are a lot of reasons why a teenager would choose any of these different behaviors that we just described. But the basic understanding here is that teens are seeking to grow into adults. That's where they are in life. It's what they're supposed to be doing. And parents often don't trust them to make good decisions, so they restrict their decision-making opportunities. The teens get frustrated with not getting to make their own decisions, and many teens' natural response is to rebel against what their parents want. And this is where we've often heard parenting teens being referred to as time to start releasing the apron strings, or letting go of the apron strings. Now this is a phrase that comes from the idea of a dependent child being tied to their mothers. And it's important as a child grows that the tie to the mother, or the father, is slowly let out so that eventually the child is independent and no longer tied to the mother or needing the mother or the father for anything. They are making all of their decisions and they're adulting all on their own. 

05:38 

And there are a lot of parents out there who are not happy with their children growing up and no longer being tied to them or needing them. These parents still want to have a voice in the children's decisions. They still want to be in control of their children. There are a lot of reasons why a parent would be hesitant to let go of the apron strings and have the child do it all on their own. But letting go is a very necessary step for both the parent and the child. Ideally, as the child grows, the parent loosens the apron strings a little bit at a time and the child learns to do more and more things on their own, becoming more and more independent until one day they are completely functional adults who are capable of managing their own lives. With mistakes, of course, because that's part of life. That's what we all do. 

06:29 

But the problem for so many parents is that even when their children are grown, they still want to parent. We are still the parent, but we are no longer required to parent. We have to hit a point where we step out of the picture, we stop trying to teach and manage and train, and we let these adults do their things. Now, that's not to say if they come to us asking for help that we don't guide them and teach them things we've learned, but we have to let them do it on their own unless they ask. If we are still trying to parent our adult children, we will run into relationship problems every single time because adults want to make their own decisions. That's part of being an adult. And when another person, even our own parent, comes in and tries to tell us what to do or how to do it or that we're doing it wrong, there is something inside of us that pushes against that and then the relationship suffers. 

07:34 

But here's the problem for so many of us: we have been there. We've gone to school. We've gotten married. We've had young kids. We bought our first home. We've been on missions. We've raised teenagers. We've managed our finances well. We bought our first car. We've done it and we know how to do it and we just want so desperately to help them make better choices, right? Why can't they just see that we're trying to save them from the pain of making stupid mistakes? Because, my friends, they can't see it because life is about making mistakes. They can only see from their own vantage point. And as much as we want to avoid mistakes, we intuitively want to make our own mistakes because we know they will serve us well. And our children feel this and they want this because mistakes are a necessary and valuable tool in our lives for learning and growing and moving forward in life. And as parents, we can often overstep our boundaries with our adult children in wanting to spare them the mistakes. We step in and try to tell them what to do or how to do it. We judge their decisions and disapprove of their choices. We criticize their parenting and their house cleaning and their job choices, whatever it is. 

08:53 

But here's the deal. None of what they are doing is any of our business. Once our children become adults, it's our business to back off, to let them learn what they need to, when they need to, and to just love and support them. Not to have an opinion, not to tell them what to think or what we think even, not to try and make them feel guilty, but to back off and let them adult and learn the lessons they need to. We have to stop trying to control them. 

09:28 

But why do we get involved when we really shouldn't? What's going on with that? Very often, get this, it's because what is happening is causing us to be uncomfortable and we're trying to alleviate our own discomfort. We want to control their sadness because we're trying to control our sadness over their sadness. But if we could take away their sadness, we would also be taking away their opportunity for growth and learning how to process their own emotions, which is a necessary part of growing up. What we are essentially trying to do is put them in charge of our own happiness. If their marriage was happy, then we could be happy. If they discipline their children better, then we could be happier. If they had the right kind of job or went to the right kind of university, then we could be happier. We try to control our own happiness by them having no problems. But our own happiness doesn't work that way. 

10:33 

How our children are choosing to live their lives is a circumstance. That's the C line. And circumstances are always neutral. It's what we think about the circumstances that creates our feelings. And we have to learn and understand that how they are choosing to live their lives has nothing to do with us. It is none of our business. Okay, for sure we have thoughts that we want to protect our children and we want to keep bad things from happening to them, even when they're adults. And there's nothing wrong with us wanting the best for them and being concerned when they are struggling. And often, their struggles can make us feel helpless because we realize that we don't have any control over their situation or over them. 

11:22 

But rather than trying to step in and take control, it's so important that we learn to clean up our own thinking about their circumstance. We want to take control to ease our own discomfort over their discomfort. And this is where we often cross the line. We start wanting to control their behavior or something else in their lives. But when they're adults it's not ours to control. At this point we just need to learn to control ourselves, nothing more. But here's a concept for me that has been a big shocker to learn. When I'm thinking that I know better than my adult children, when I'm wishing they would just listen to me, when I'm thinking they're doing something wrong, I am stepping into a place of unrighteous judgment. The fascinating thing here is that I am judging them wanting to be different than they are so that I can have a relationship with the person I really want them to be. 

12:26 

Did you catch that? In essence, I'm arguing with who they are rather than accepting who they are. So let's say you have an adult child who's using drugs. I'm going to use a tough situation here but I want you to stick with me, okay? It would be very easy to say in your mind "he shouldn't be using drugs." But this is a very judgmental statement. We are judging the choices they are making and how they should be living their life. It's important that we learn to move into full acceptance of who they are. That doesn't mean that we embrace their drug use. What it does mean is that we embrace them. Drug choices and all. We love them without condition. We don't say we'll love them when they stop using drugs or when they move into a rehab program. We can decide to love them exactly as they are or we can always be judging them for not being good enough and not doing it right. 

13:29 

The thing is our kids get to do whatever they want as adults. and we can judge them and want them to be different than they are, or we can love them unconditionally. But which one of those responses brings the feelings that we want to have for them? So if I'm judging them, what feelings does that create in me? If I'm loving them unconditionally, what feelings does that create in me? Okay, I've got to look at what am I creating. And also which one of those, judging or unconditional love, creates a place where they will feel safe and connected. We can want things for them, for sure. We can want our child not to use drugs, but we don't get those things through judgment. People know when they're being judged and when they're not being loved, and our children feel it and know it, and judgment is never a place that is going to create connection because it puts us on uneven playing fields. And when our children become adults, guess what? We step on to even playing fields. We get to make whatever choices we want to make, and they get to make whatever choices they want to make. Do we have more playing time on that adult field? Yes, but that doesn't mean that they are still not on that even playing field. We are not better than them because we've had more playing time. We are now adults. 

14:59 

Here's the thing about judgment: it causes us pain. Adults get to live how they want. If we try and judge and change them against their own will, we will destroy the relationship and we will never feel good. We will be in constant turmoil over the judging of what we don't deem "right" behavior. Our judgment takes us farther away from them. However, unconditional love takes us closer to them. If they're going to be in a better place, our best option to help them is to give them a loving space. Thinking the thought, "I just want to help them," can be a dangerous thought because again, it's coming from a place of judgment, not from a place of love for them. If we think they need our help because we think they're not capable of doing it on their own, we think they're not smart enough or even strong enough to figure it out, then we're being judgmental. We may say, "I just want them to be okay." But is that what we really want? Or do we really want them to be different than they are? Do we want them to not be addicted to drugs? Is that what we really want? 

16:18 

Until we learn to embrace who they are with everything they have going on and love them unconditionally, we will never find  peace and they will never find a safe place and we will never have the relationship that we desire. We have to be willing to open ourselves up to their reality, to their life, because shutting ourselves off from their reality shuts us off from them. We want them to have a life without pain, but that is an imaginary life for everyone. When we learn to love the life they have, and not the imaginary life for them that we've created in our minds, then we can find the connection that we desire in our relationships. 

17:03 

We have created these imaginary lives in our minds since they were tiny. We would think "they're going to grow up, they'll be happy, they'll do great in school, they'll love the gospel, they'll go on a mission, they'll marry in the temple, they'll go to university, they'll get a great job, they'll have some beautiful children, and they'll live happily ever after." And this whole life we have created for them is imaginary, and yet we think they should be living in it. And as long as we compare their lives right now with the imaginary lives we've created in our minds, we are missing our actual children. 

17:39 

Moving toward their reality is our work. It is the work of our lives, learning to love unconditionally without trying to change them. Because we can't change or fix anyone. It makes us feel horrible when we try, because we always fail. And it pushes them away because of our judgment. And again, the relationship suffers. We may find that in some situations people may adjust their behavior temporarily to appease us. But it will never be long lasting because they are changing their action line, not their thought line. The drug addicted child may go to a rehabilitation program to appease us. But the results will not stick long term because it was an action, the A line, made under duress rather than a thought for themselves, the T line, of how they want to live their life. 

18:36 

The price we have to pay for a good relationship with our children is complete and total acceptance of who they are and what they choose and where they are in life. When our children feel that we are disappointed in them, that we don't approve of their choices, that we want them to change, that we don't accept them, then they don't want to be around us at all. They won't open up to us and talk to us about what they're struggling with. And we have not created a safe place. We have not created connection. But realize sometimes even when there is connection, they don't want to open up and talk to us about it because they want to figure it out on their own. That's part of growing up, right? 

19:18 

So what allows connection is the truth about what is. The price for connection is unconditional love. Connection will only come with our children when we no longer judge any of their decisions, but rather accept them for who they are. I love Byron Katie's statement that says, "when I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time." Okay, so applicable here, because not only do I lose, because reality is what it is and I can't change it, but I also lose my connection and my relationship with my child when I argue against the reality of who they are. I can't get the connection with my children that I desire by fighting against who they are all of the time. This relationship and our own peace of mind requires that we let go of these imaginary lives we've created for them and embrace the person that they are. 

20:18 

So here's an interesting assignment that I want you to try. Make a list of all the things you want for your children. All the things you've ever dreamed that they would have or do or become. Make a list. Then, go back and re-read that list and realize that these expectations are preventing you from having the meaningful relationship with them that you would love to have. They will always feel the tone of disapproval in our voice if we are approaching them with judgment for not fulfilling this list we have for their imaginary lives. It is imperative for us to create a place of no judgment. If we want a connected relationship, that is our only option. We all crave being seen and loved most especially in our worst moments. 

21:11 

Our children especially desire to be seen and loved by their parents. If they feel we are trying to control them or we disapprove of them, they will withdraw. And this is our work as parents, to give them the space they need to grow up at whatever stage and whatever place they are in. This is one of the most precious and beautiful gifts that we can give them. And it can't just be lip service. We have to change our hearts to this place where we truly feel unconditional love for them, where we no longer judge them. 

21:51 

When we live in this place of wishing that their life was something different, that becomes a torture chamber for us. We are breaking our own hearts, and we don't have to live this way. Learning to love them unconditionally and without judgment literally is the work of our lives. We want them to evolve, but first we have to evolve. This is our work, not theirs. I think every parent struggles with this at some point with their adult children. We love them desperately. We want them to have the best of everything and to be the best versions of themselves. But that is their work. Our work is to learn to stand off to the side and to love them and support them and embrace them and in every decision and choice they make. We don't get to be in the middle and meddle. What we do get to do is our own work of truly learning how to love unconditionally, of learning how to not judge and of learning how to embrace them for who they are. 

23:07 

I love growing up. I love this. This concept for me has become so true in the last couple of months. I've really learned this with my own children and in my relationships with them and what a difference it makes when I let go of my judgment. I've learned the last few months how to do this better, and it's made a huge difference. Let's go there, shall we? This growing up gig is freakin' amazing. And as much as the world tries and tells us, especially as women, that we should be afraid of growing up, we should be afraid of the wrinkles and the bulges and the gray hair and all this other crap, I'm just at a point where I am tired of that. Tired of this unspoken feeling like we should all be afraid of growing up, because this growing up is amazing, getting to this place where I understand myself, where I accept myself, where I love myself and I am living from a place of integrity that I have never been able to do before this. This is what life is about. Love it. Hope that you're loving it too. 

24:17 

Okay, my friends, coaching is amazing. My life is where it is because of coaching. I would love to be your coach. If you just want to give coaching a shot, if you have questions about it, whatever, you can get on my website tanyahale.com, you can sign up, go straight to my calendar and sign up for a time that you and I can sit down and talk for about 20 minutes. It's awesome. Coaching is great. It's an investment, for sure. It takes a lot of energy, it takes time, and it takes money, but it is so worth it to think that we can strengthen relationships, that we can live with more peace and fulfillment and contentment in our lives. We can just get to this better place. It's so worth what it costs, not just monetarily but also with all the other investments that we have to make to do this. Okay, my friends, that is going to do it for me today. Thank you for being here. Wish you the best. If you've been struggling with parenting your adult children, take a look at what's going on inside your own heart. Take a look and see what you can see. If you need help seeing it, that is what coaching does. Wish you the best, take care, and I'll talk to you next week. Bye. 

25:34 

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.