Before Offering Advice To Adult Children Consider This One Question

 

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels

Now that you're divorced and parenting on your own, here are some tips for dealing with grown children.

When I decided to marry at the ripe old age of 19, I did not seek my parents’ advice. They thought it was a terrible idea (spoiler alert: they were right) but they did not let on. Had they, I would not have listened. And I would have been angry. I knew what I was doing.

At a certain age, we all become experts. We have advice for friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and, of course, our adult children. Whether married, divorced, remarried or never-married, we believe we know what everyone else should do on these matters, and myriad others, from work, to end-of-life choices.

Do we have a crystal ball in which we can see the future? I think not. Do we believe we’re right? Yes, we do. Are we right? That’s open to debate. 

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How To Deal With Older Children's Bad Decisions (Without Pushing Them Away)

As a divorced mom, I know some of the particular challenges of coping with your children faced by the single-parent.

Here's my latest on some issues we all have to deal with.

Slim, pretty, equipped with her Prada bag, my son's girlfriend was in my home for a grand total of twenty-four hours. Shortly before the day ended, she informed my son she did not feel "comfortable" in my house...

I was terrified by recent research suggesting mothers are more likely to be estranged from their children than fathers and that it is more common than you think. One in 10 families studied had an estranged child. Another study concluded that feeling like a parent is constantly about to reject you for your choices creates enough emotional turmoil to threaten the relationship.

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Relationships Are Whatever You Make Them

Growing up on the kind of romantic comedies that Doris Day and Kathryn Hepburn made, and Leave it to Beaver, it's hard to see how I was not flummoxed by the other things I grew up with, like West Side Story, Gone with the Wind, and The King and I. In these latter, boy-meets-girl, but they sure don't turn out like a Doris Day/Rock Hudson, or Tracy and Hepburn film. We didn't know Rock's back-story until he was dying. Tracy and Hepburn were a not-just-movie couple, never living openly as a couple. Things were not always as perfect as they seemed. 

As Maria Bello concluded in her wonderful "Modern Love" piece, "Maybe…a modern family is just a more honest family." With my post-divorce coaching specialty, I am constantly confronted by people trying to put together new families, often with pieces that seem very disparate to them. There are the ex, the new lover, the step-kids from the now-ex-spouse, the ex-in-laws, and everyone's friends, among others.

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