I know they screw up. I know you love them and you don’t want them mess up their lives. You’ve been down a few roads and you know a thing or two, but that doesn’t mean you need to be monitoring your adult children. You don’t get to tell them how to live their lives—or how not to live their lives.
Whether they are parents at this point themselves or teens still or young adults starting their careers, you still don’t get to tell them how to live. They need to learn their life lessons on their own. While you may have one or two stories about how your parents guided you, I’m guessing you had more instances of being angry and frustrated that they were telling you what to do.
Your parents may have been right in their advice and, looking back, you now might wish you’d listened more, but that doesn’t change the fact that children want to live their own lives, even if that means making mistakes.
Some of those may be big mistakes and your children might choose avenues you hate and fear will earn them ugly consequences. You may shudder to watch their mistakes, but you still don’t have a right to straighten them out. Don’t rescue them from the consequences of their mistakes (this is how we learn) and don’t tell them what they need to do.
I know this is hard, maybe the hardest part of parenting. You still need to let them manage their own lives. Be very careful what you say, even when they ask for your advice.
One of the most difficult aspects of this is watching what may be taking place with grandchildren, if you have them. Grandparenting offers the beauty of being a central part of a child’s life without having the tremendous responsibilities of parenting. It also puts you in the tough spot of having a ringside seat to all your own child’s mistakes and the results on their children.
Resist the urge to tell them how to live, though. The best, most powerful lessons are the ones we make for ourselves and the surest way to poison a parent-child relationship is to tell adult children what they should do. They won’t thank you for it and, chances are, they’ll just stop telling you about their lives.
You need to believe in them, even when they’re messing up. And you need to refrain from commenting. When your children were young and growing up, they needed your direction. It was your job. Having a parent manage a kid’s life is an important part of childhood, but now that they’ve grown to adulthood, they don’t need you directing them or commenting on their choices or pulling them out of bad situations.
They won’t thank you for it and they won’t learn to believe in themselves. You love them. You want them to know they can fix their own lives. Let them do it without a running commentary from you on how they’re messing up.