Can you parent an adult child?

When your child is an adult, there is no more parenting work left to do. The time to raise, teach, imbue, educate, and [fill in the blank] is over. It was over long ago. The problem is no longer about “parenting”—it is about how you view your role as a parent. If you are the parent of a highly dependent adult child, it is useful to now think of your relationship as one of adult-to-adult rather than of parent-to-child. This change is difficult for parents due to fear, anxiety and legitimate worry, so they often try different approaches to no avail. Meanwhile, their adult child is no closer to launching and the parent fears they never will.

If that sounds like you, then, unfortunately, these repeated attempts renew and reinforce your child's dependency—and your own. You've become dependent, too. When you are dependent, it is scary to let go and you won't want to. This is natural. However, to launch something or someone requires letting go.

All this may sound counterintuitive, but dependence (the parent's) is what can happen when a parent funnels misguided energy into their adult child. This leads to a progressively worsening need to know what is going on, an increased frequency of checking in, and an intensity in the quest to monitor and keep track or successes, failures, and the like. These are signs of the parent's need to alleviate their own anxiety about what might happen or go wrong. This is a different kind of dependency, but it is dependence, nonetheless.

Stop Counting the Hours: Stop Enabling. Start Living—Parenting the Highly Dependent Adult Child: 50 Days of Change can help.

Meredith Resnick