Balancing Advice and Autonomy with Adult Children
I am seventy years old and still struggle as a father of adult children, but I am making progress. At breakfast this week with a friend, I realized I’m not alone.
Because of my age, I know a little about how life works. I lived it. I analyzed my choices. I lived the consequences. I’ve observed close friends and their choices over the years. I see behavioral patterns. I have regrets. I saw and lived the results of life choices. In short, I know more about life because I’ve been through a lot of it. And the kicker is, I’m still learning.
The big change in moving from being the dad of children to being the father of adults is the answer to this question: Whose life is it to live?
It took me a while to get to this seminal question.
You move from being a dad with authority over your children’s lives to being a father with only influence.
It is so hard to see bad choices being made. You see the train way off in the distance, which will result in a head-on collision.
The transition from dad to father takes place over the four years your children are in college. They enter as children and exit as adults. They change, and so must you—transition from being a dad to becoming a father.
Do you remember how open you were to your father’s advice as an adult? Not.
Each of these bits of advice is true. But these are truths circling a theme. And the theme is: Whose life is it to live?
Answering this question caused me to take a hard look at my interactions with my adult children. I realized I was judging their life choices. Their friends, their goals, their occupation, their dating life. Well, you get it. I would then tell them about the better choice. I believed I had the license to share my years of experience. My expectation was they would listen. They didn’t.
When they didn’t listen, a chasm would develop in our relationship. What adult wants to be around someone who is always telling them, in effect, that they are screwing up? Even if it is someone who loves them deeply. The issue was with me. I no longer had authority over their lives. Their lives are now their lives. All I could do was watch, hoping they would ask for my advice. Watching is so difficult.
I know I still do this. I cross the line frequently, much too frequently. I tell myself I know the right way to behave. “Don’t say it!” Instead, I find myself being softly critical of the choices made. Sometimes, it is soft criticism, but often, it is harsh. This happens when I can’t hold back anymore. The moment when I want to say, “Can’t you see what I see?”.
But as I told my friend over breakfast, “When we behave this way, we are putting our advice ahead of our relationship.” In short, we are trying to exercise authority over a life that is not ours. My children’s lives are theirs, not mine.
What about really bad choices?
People know I’m a recovering alcoholic. Because of this, I have parents who come to me seeking my advice on how to help their child who is struggling with addiction. They tell me the horrible choices their adult child is making. They describe how heartbroken they are. How helpless they feel. “What do I do? What should I say? How can I get through?” they ask in desperation.
The answer is always the same. You really can’t do anything until your child decides they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They have to be willing to do anything to get better. To get better without negotiating. The most important and only goal for them is to stop the insanity of addiction. They made the decision to become substance addicted. They must make the decision to not be substance addicted. To go from no hope to some hope. To stop living a life that is unmanageable.
So, when it comes to life and death decisions, my advice is clear, confident, and firm. It is up to the adult child to want to live.
But when dealing with the serious but non-life threatening choices in life, like careers or friends, my advice is muddled. I fall back into “dad” mode, thinking I should offer advice not asked for. In other words, I become a critic.
This results in an adult child who feels like a failure for not pleasing his father. How long does this go on? I don’t know, but I know how it ends. The adult child tells his father, “This ain’t working,” and they hash it out. Or the adult child simply falls out of touch as a way to avoid parental criticism and the feeling of disappointment.
Like I said, I’m getting better about this. It’s hard, I know. But you and I both know it is their life and not yours.
How have you navigated this? Let me know your thoughts.