 Dr. Jim Burns, author, speaker, and president of HomeWord has used his experience raising three daughters and speaking with and learning from thousands of other parents to develop nine principles that can help parents of adult children through common challenges in a productive way. The first principle is that our role as the parent must change.
Our old job description for two decades of was that we were the parent, in control and it was our clear-cut responsibility to be our children's providers, caretakers, and nurturers. Even when our children disagreed, they ultimately knew that we were the bosses. The new job description requires us to, first, love them enough to let them go. In order to rewrite the script and establish a new relationship with our adult children, we need to fire ourselves from our old job of being in control and daily nurturing. In fact, this is essential for them to transition from adolescence to responsible adulthood. Dr. Burns says in our new role, we need the following four strategies: 1. Be encouraging but not intrusive 2. Be caring, but do not enable dependency 3. Invest in your own emotional, physical, and spiritual health 4. Have serious fun and enjoy life He says in his book Doing Life With Your Adult Children, " It's important to me that you know these nine principles aren't just abstract theory. They were developed and applied primarily in the lab of doing life with my own adult children. Although my career has given me a platform to write and speak on topics such as parenting, marriage, and relationships, this is a much more personal book. I wanted to figure out how to be the best possible dad to my adult children, who are the deepest joy and greatest challenge. At this stage in my journey there is more joy than challenge, but it hasn't always been easy." To support you in this journey of navigating the challenging and rewarding relationship with your adult children, join me in a 7 week online series using resources by Jim Burns, Ph.D entitled "Doing Life With Your Adult Child--Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out." For more information and to register: Adult Children If you missed the previous blogs on this topic: doing-life-with-your-adult-child.html keep-the-welcome-mat-out.html Comments are closed.
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