Q: Our 23-year-old son makes a lot of bad decisions, but my counsellor tells me not to interfere.
We don’t want to continue watching him go from challenge to crisis to disappointment, but we don’t know what to do.
A: Your counsellor is half right. You should not be interfering in your son’s life even when you see the mistakes he is making and have probably figured out what he could be doing differently.
If your son is asking for help, that is a completely different story. As long as he is asking, you can offer all kinds of guidance and my guess is that much of what you advise him is potentially good and useful.
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Just don’t turn that advice into dollars and cents. If you are going to lend him money, make sure you never put yourself into the poor house by doing so, and don’t release a cent to him until you and he know exactly how he is going to pay it back.
Please remember that advice not tied into your chequing account is always better.
But I digress. The essence of parenting our adult-aged children has something to do with differentiation from the family of origin. That is a complicated way of saying that parenting children who are now adults means the parents are learning to “let go of” their children while their children are learning to “let go of” their parents.
Let’s face it, our kids are going to have all sorts of successes and failures, wins and losses, victories and defeats. That is what life is all about.
The wins and losses are important to them. That is how they discover who and what they are, what are their special abilities and how best can they learn to handle stress.
If we don’t let go of our kids and let them have their wins and losses they may never learn who they are.
Letting go of kids means I don’t worry about them anymore. Why would I worry when I have the confidence that what I taught them will see them through life’s challenges? Letting go means I cut back on the advice.
With the world changing as rapidly as it does, much of the advice I have is dated, out of touch and most likely not helpful.
It might even be harmful.
Finally, letting go means cutting back on the guilt trips. Our kids do not need to feel badly or in some way responsible for our disappointments. All that they really need to do is to love us and appreciate all that we have done over the years. That love is a whole lot more nurturing than any form of guilt could ever be.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
