It’s A Delicate Dance
If life is a delicate dance between joys and challenges, the journey of empty nesting is that and more. ENS (Empty Nest Syndrome) parents know what I’m talking about. In the early days of ENS, the mental torture is real. Should I call my daughter? Do I ask my son about such and such, or is that topic off-limits? Do I really want to know everything? Should I travel to meet them, press them to see the grandchildren, or pull back? The questions are endless, and you might struggle to strike a healthy balance with your adult children. This article discusses confusion around our involvement in our adult children’s lives.
Finding a healthy balance when engaging with our grown children can be tricky. But I offer a few suggestions below that might be worthy of consideration.
1. What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Many empty nesters feel their love gives them all access to their adult children. I was one of those parents. My love and parental concern qualified me to dip into my adult children’s business – or so I thought. But I could not have been more wrong. I mean, terribly wrong.
Put Some Respect on It
We must respect our children’s boundaries if for no other reason than the fact that they are grown. I know that’s not always easy, but anything short of that is downright disrespectful. And our parent card has expired now that we are dealing with adults.
Choosing To Live Their Lives Differently Than Parents
If our adult children choose to live their lives differently from how we planned for them, then so be it. We have to “put some respect on” their decisions. And I hear you asking, “how do we do that? I will say more about that later.
Furthermore, adult children may not care what we think about their decisions. And the fact that we love and miss them has nothing to do with it.
2. The Shoulds, Should-Nots, and the Maybes
Here are a few tips that might be helpful to empty nesters.
a. Follow your adult children’s lead, even if you don’t understand it.
We don’t have to understand or agree with our children, but sometimes, we must give them the lead. After all, they are adults now, and it is their lives.
b. Try to offer advice only if they ask for it.
If your child calls you to get your opinion about something, by all means, share it, but don’t badger them about it. Just leave it to them to decide what they will do with your advice.
c. Should you repurpose your child’s old bedroom or keep it as a space to nurture your fond memories of their formative years?
No right or wrong way exists, but you don’t have to change anything. But if you have hobbies or want to mix things up, you would not betray your child if you transformed their old bedroom into a space that serves you.
d. Call or text your adult children every day? Like everything else, that looks different for each family.
If your child doesn’t respond to your text messages or voicemails, don’t stalk them. They have the right not to respond, which does not mean they stopped loving or caring deeply about you. So, try not to take it personally.
e. Inviting your adult children to visit you during the holidays is good.
You should, but do not get pissed at them if they spend their holiday elsewhere.
f. Yes, you should pray for your adult child.
No, you should not bombard them with prayers and daily Bible verses. What empty nesters consider inspirational quotes might annoy their adult children. They may want something other than daily scriptures or motivational quotes from you. But you can ask them if they mind rather than assume.
g. If your adult child disrespects you
Then, stop paying their bills or otherwise accommodating them. Stop babysitting their children, as well. I have known adult children to use grandchildren as pawns to manipulate their parents. No matter how empty-nesting parents miss their children, they should never tolerate disrespect. They are not allowed to use you. Period.
h. We should not be involved in our adult children’s marital business.
You may think you are helping them, but deep down inside, your adult child may wish you to stay out of it. Don’t assume they are okay with it just because they are afraid to tell you to butt out.
i. Should you express gratitude even if you cannot control your grown children’s choices?
Yes, because expressing gratitude makes everything better.
As my friend and I discussed, we always worry about our children. But we must find a healthy balance in how we engage with them.
No matter the relationship between parents and grown children, gratitude can sweeten the dynamic.
3. What If It’s Better That You Don’t?
I know it’s hard to find the right balance with our adult children, but let me offer this. Something can be good and unhealthy at the same time.
Here is what I mean by that. It may seem reasonable when parents are very involved in their adult children’s lives. To an untrained eye, it can look like they are a close-knit family. However, a deeper dive can reveal something else. Parental control. There, I said it. Come for me, friends, but I have seen it before and been a victim.
Some Empty Nesters Won’t Admit It
Sorry guys, but many empty nesters won’t admit to being controlling. And consequently, some adult children may also frame it as their mom or dad being caring. They may not realize that their parents are controlling them.
Holding Emotional Hostages
In a sense, the ENS parents hold them as emotional hostages. Sadly, I know of adult children of ENS parents who acknowledged their controlling ways only after their adult children suffered damage. But some died before they admitted it.
Parents who are too involved in their adult children’s lives can do much damage – this is especially true when the adult child doesn’t have the guts to confront their parents. It is either because they don’t want to anger their parents or they do not want to disappoint their parents. I have personal experience with this.
4. Making It Plain
Constant involvement in adult children’s lives probably feeds the empty-nesting parents’ emotional needs. But what if their ongoing involvement is unhealthy for the adult child and their family?
What if you are in your adult child’s head so much that they don’t even recognize their own inner promptings? What if your constant input in their adult affairs is unwelcome? What if your children resent you for not letting them develop their decision-making muscles?
The Guts To Confront Respectfully
What happens if your child does not want to see you during the holiday? Would you try to guilt-trip them if they did not show up? What if you don’t know what is best for your young adult child but only think you do? Are you still pushing your agenda on them? What if?
When We Have Done Everything For Our Children
Moreover, when we meet an adult person, we expect them to have strong opinions about things already. And we expect them to push back if we push them too hard.
But these are our children, not random adults, and we have done everything for them since birth. And we made every decision about their lives, whether they would go to school or be home-schooled. Whether they would have a religious upbringing or not. We decided whether to involve them in sports or other activities. And we paid for everything in money, sweat, and sometimes tears.
A Goal To Foster Balanced Relationships
Consequently, I get that it makes it even harder to let go of the reins of your adult children’s lives. But we have to allow them to control their lives without our input. And remember, our goal should be to foster a balanced relationship with our adult children, not refuse to relinquish control.
5. Let Your Adult Children Learn How Balance Their Lives
There is no bubble to shield our adult children from pain. And forcing them to live the lives we have scripted for them can hurt them in the long run.
So, should you pull back a little or a lot from your grown children’s lives? I cannot answer that for you because each parent-child relationship is different. And there are as many dynamics to each person’s life as stars in the sky on a clear night.
Encouraging You To Strike a Balance
I am only encouraging you to be open to striking a healthy balance with your adult child, not one that YOU think is good. You cannot solve all your adult children’s problems, nor should you try. Let them figure some things out alone. It will not kill them. Besides, what makes you think that if they do get hurt that they won’t recover?
So, how about you step back and allow your adult children the space they deserve? Let them tell their own story. Don’t try to frame their story for them. Then, in the long run, everyone will be all the better for it. Trust me on that.
Examples of an Unhealthy Balance
One day at work, I complimented a young man on the lovely dress shirts he wore daily. He smiled at me and said, “My mom bought this shirt. She buys all my clothes.”
My ex-mother-in-law never cut the apron strings of the man I married. So, I took a deep breath about this married man with two children. I expected him to say that his wife picked his clothes for him. I expected him to say, “I have to give my wife all the credit because she picks out all my work clothes.
Memories Of a Confusing Time
That bought back too many unpleasant memories for me about my marriage. And all I could imagine was doom for this man’s marriage. At some point, his wife would get tired of being the “other woman” to her husband’s mother. My mother-in-law did everything in her power not to experience ENS. My husband was her last child, and her husband had died many years prior.
Letting him go proved difficult for her, but holding on to her grown son caused many problems in my marriage. And I sensed the same thing could happen with this young man’s marriage because my ex-husband was also his mother’s youngest child.
But What About The Wife?
Friends, I get it. That is fine if Mama wants to buy her adult son a birthday gift. But to be choosing and paying for all her grown son’s clothing? Where did that leave his wife but hang around as a bystander?
Aiding and Abetting
With her husband’s cooperation, her mother-in-law robs her of the opportunity to do those things for her husband. Some may argue that the wife did not have a fashion sense. Too bad. Together she and her husband could work on that.
The couple should have had the opportunity to shop together for his clothes. But the wife was left entirely out of it. Mama did not want to cut those strings because she wanted to avoid feeling unneeded by her grown son.
Second Example
My second example is of a situation where the mother of the married son cooked food for him every day. And he would go and pick it up and bring it home to his wife. What if the wife did not cook the meals his mother raised him on?
It was time for the son to be released to plan their family meals with his wife. They needed the chance to develop their cooking style as a couple. So, what if the new wife did not know how to cook and bake meals from scratch? Where is it written that she has to if it is okay with the husband?
Let Them Do Their Thing
Furthermore, even if the wife burned his food, the last person he should have run to for relief was his Mama. Nor should his mother have allowed him to keep running to her for her cooking. That is what I mean by off-kilter or not balanced.
Not Only In A Lifetime Movie
All this reminds me of a Lifetime movie called, The Perfect Mother. The empty-nesting mother (in that movie) did not think anyone was good enough for her son. So, when the son married, the mother-in-law did everything she could to break up her son’s marriage.
The young wife tried her hardest to get her husband to recognize his mother’s controlling ways and negative impact on their marriage, but the son brushed it off. He gaslighted his wife by trying to convince her that his mother was only being a caring mother. In the end, the mother had the daughter-in-law killed.
Consequently, the son ended up grieving the loss of his wife and hating his mother for what she did. And if I am not mistaken, they based the movie on a real-life situation.
c. In my third example, a young man told me he never finished college because he missed his Mama so much that he gave up a full college scholarship. But I blame the mother because she let him forfeit his college scholarship so he could return home to her.
Dear friends, there is something off-balanced about that. Sure, it made sense that the boy got homesick. Many college students are homesick during their first year. But to be so connected to your ENS mother that you would give up your higher education?
And for the ENS mother to be so dysfunctional that she allowed it is a shame. She already had her years with her son. It was time for him to learn how to be an adult because he was one.
Let Them Pursue Their Dreams
Consequently, I would never encourage my children to give up their college education, dreams, marriages, or careers to return home to me. That is why many colleges and universities host Family Weekends. And that is what vacations are for.
I don’t know. I am not judging any of these families. I am simply saying that I know the pain of Empty nesting from the perspective of a young bride and her ENS mother-in-law. Everyone loses in situations like that.
In closing, I end where I began. Finding a good balance as an empty-nesting parent can work on nerves we didn’t know we had. At the same time, this experience allows us to grow and discover ways to enjoy these golden years of our lives without burdening our children. Instead, if we give up our expired parental rights, we will enjoy many years of joy with our adult children and grandchildren!
Hugs to all of you!
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