Abstract
Secrets to Parenting Your Adult Child, by Nancy Williams, examines the shifting roles that relate to parenting adult children. Williams provides insight into the complex dynamics that evolve from the altering nature of support, boundaries, and spiritual identity. The author offers concrete suggestions for parents who are faced with “letting go” and moving from the role of guidance-focused parent to supportive coach. Additionally, she encourages candid examination of the perceptions held about the actions, decisions, and behaviors of adult children. The author is frank and straightforward regarding the dynamics of the former roles of guardian and nurturer with the new roles of mentor, encourager, and fellow adult.
Williams pulls from both a counseling and spiritual paradigm. The needs that parents considered in their children’s youth—emotional, physical, financial, educational, spiritual, and social—are the same ones that she says must be considered in their adulthood. Williams notes that in order for this to be successful, parents must follow through on the “opportunity to seek God’s guidance in order to contribute our best offering as parents to our children” (p. 17). She implores that parents prayerfully consider that God has the ultimate plan for their adult children and that part of the letting go process involves turning their adult children over to God’s wisdom.
Williams also utilizes sound counseling theory to provide practical suggestions for setting boundaries, practicing empathy, utilizing mentorship roles, and coaching. The author explains that boundaries help shape successful relationships with adult children. She observes, “We need to set new limits—boundaries—on our actions and expectations to help our children understand the scope of our support as they learn how to manage adult life” (p. 58). This allows the focus to shift to “fostering their independence, responsibility, and personal accountability” (p. 58). To develop healthy boundaries, Williams suggests developing specific boundaries in writing to practice before communicating them to the adult child, developing an action plan of expectations and consequences, and seeking experienced counsel for clarification when uncertain about issues. Consequently, in this dynamic, the adult child will also be setting his or her own boundaries that parents must learn to adhere.
Williams reminds parents that boundaries are not punitive but meant to foster a deepening relationship for respect of the adult child’s changing needs and the parent’s need to let go. Letting go is never easy, she concedes, but is a needed transition that must occur as the parent becomes more of a coach/mentor. This does not occur without challenge as adult children are still finding their identity, beginning careers, meeting partners, and adjusting to independence. For parents, this means they must learn to show empathy to their children’s challenges and to provide support without being controlling or managing. Instead, parents must become coaches and mentors.
Williams states, “Coaching offers an approach that can help facilitate productive conversation and strengthen relationships” (p. 32). Williams suggests that coaching should not be done in a vacuum; she ties it to the spiritual process of encouraging the adult child but ultimately turning the adult child over to God. Her view is that “An effective coach affirms, asks questions, assists in planning, assists in skill development, celebrates, challenges, clarifies, encourages, guides, has integrity, hears with the heart, is caring, is confident, is faithful, is graceful, is objective, listens, provides connections, offers feedback, reconciles, seeks truth, shares wisdom, bears God’s light” (p. 42).
Secrets to parenting your adult childoffers valid suggestions on granting the adult child’s need for independence and responsibility. It shares practical ways to both establish boundaries and adhere to boundaries set by others. The author examines common challenges to parent–adult child relationships and offers resources on practical topics such as money management, organization, and goal setting that a reader can share with the adult child. The book provides a careful look at building healthy parent–adult child relationships as an extension of one’s spirituality and asserts that letting go is ultimately an act of turning the adult child over to God.