7 tips to make the relationship with adult children very good

The relationship between parents and their children does not end when the latter reach the age of majority. Adult children also need love and support. At the same time, they lead their own lives and continue to develop. Psychotherapist Jörg Berger gives seven tips for a good relationship.

The perspectives that I present to you here usually develop in personal support. In a few lines, they could seem like a catalogue of requirements that can hardly be met. But feel your parents' heart. Isn't that exactly what you want to be and give to your children? As advanced parents, we look back on an encouraging experience: Many things succeed even though we are not perfect. Love counts.

1. Adult children need parents who are aware of their emotional power

It often doesn't feel like it at all. Instead, we parents feel vulnerable – at the latest when adolescent children get angry with us, shut down or judge us harshly. And one day they leave us. We parents have to let go.

Many – like my wife and I right now – also stay sad and think about what fills our lives now. But emotionally, we unconsciously wield more power than we think. When children react violently, they do so because they oppose our parental power. We have imprinted ourselves deeply on their souls, with valuable and also burdensome things. The emotional life, the conscience and the spontaneous thoughts of our children will always remain influenced by us, even if fortunately new imprints are added.

That's why adult children continue to detach themselves from us parents. In order to be able to develop what they are made of, our children still have to shed one or the other of us. What follows from this? First of all, a wide heart for overreactions. Our adult children can and should get angry once in a while. They can and should also close themselves off or be overly critical from time to time. Because every reaction to the present can contain a reaction to earlier experiences. Parents who do not weigh such reactions on the gold scales make it easier for their children to feel like equal counterparts. Then the overreactions subside over the years.

2. Adult children appreciate parents who are good at dealing with guilt

Parents become guilty of their children. The more mature parents deal with this fact, the easier they make it for their children. Exaggerated feelings of guilt are not helpful, because then the message would get through: "I have failed you. You're all screwed up." Our children are wonderful; So we can't have done everything wrong. It would also be of little help to seek absolution from our children: "Can you forgive me for what I did wrong?" Children cannot relieve parents of feelings of guilt. A basic forgiveness could also make it more difficult to address concretely at some point what has not gone well in the past. After all, are children still allowed to do that when they have already given away "everything"?

If parents are concerned with the question of their own guilt, I advise them: "Just be open, attentive and inviting if you notice that your child is dealing with something from the past. When something comes up, you can admit mistakes and ask for forgiveness. But maybe what you feel guilty about right now is not a problem for your child at all."

3. Adult children are amazed at parents who are willing to correct

Whether we can deal with past mistakes in a relaxed manner is also shown by how we react today when children show us with their reaction that we have just been careless, unjust, too critical, too insensitive and other things. Of course, our children are not saints either. Nevertheless, when dealing with them, I encourage a willingness to correct – if necessary even one-sidedly: "You're right, I was really ... I'm sorry. You have to ... ."

I have already experienced and been told many examples in which this relaxes a situation and the adult children then admit: "Thank you. I also have ..." Sometimes parents need a little patience for this. In certain phases of detachment, it is simply important for children not to always be the ones with whom something is wrong, who are not enough or do something wrong.

4. Adults Children are happy about discretion

Our children are our big project. We would be lying if we said that in our pride in our children there is not also a little pride in ourselves. At the same time, the well-being of our children is our most vulnerable point. What threatens them worries us. What hurts her gets to our kidneys.

All this makes our children an obvious topic of conversation. But who should know about what is happening in the lives of our children? Who is allowed to know about them what they themselves entrust to only a few people? This should be based on what our children feel comfortable with. Those who opt for discretion will sometimes bite their tongues. But it's worth it. Children feel the level of our confidentiality and that determines the level of their trust.

When it comes to sensitive topics, I would even say that not everything that a father's ear hears is also intended for the cervix ear and vice versa. And there are topics that you prefer to discuss with those who have some distance from things. For other topics, anything but a sentimental reaction would be hurtful. You are more likely to look for them in the more emotional parent. Sometimes children long for a clear standard that keeps them on track. Sometimes they need a counterpart who lets fives be straight. Here, depending on the topic, children sometimes open up to one parent, sometimes to the other.

Adult children would feel weird when they asked, "Don't tell mom/dad." But that's exactly what can be true. The other parent can then perhaps be included in cues: "We talked about how Pia is doing right now in training."

Nevertheless, I would recommend one or two secret places to all parents. There are things that would be too heavy to carry on your own and that you have to say. People who are not too close to the adult children and who keep to themselves what is entrusted to them are suitable for this.

5. Adult children want happy parents

Have we made sacrifices for our children? Hopefully not. Because the effort, the lack of sleep, the pause of personal freedoms and a material renunciation are more than outweighed by the happiness we have experienced in and with our children. Still, it's possible that, depending on your life and family history, parenthood may have been a struggle that left wounds and scars behind.

Then it is all the more important that parents reconcile themselves with their history. You can be proud of the wounds and scars. Because they have contracted it in the fight for something valuable. Parents should not rest until they are happy with it. Perhaps this requires places of regeneration, accompaniment or a time in which healing self-care is in the foreground.

No sooner have we mastered our parental task than comes the phase of life that can take a hard toll on our happiness: signs of old age, illness, broken relationships, losses, life dreams that you will no longer realize. But this should not burden our adult children. They should start their own lives happily and unburdened. May I go so far as to argue that it is our advanced parental duty to be happy?

Happiness is not dependent on good living conditions. Discovering this challenges one's own development and perhaps one's own faith. Only a few understand happiness in midlife as a life without burdens. Rather, it means outweighing burdens with valuable things until happiness is on top.

6. Of course, children need what you do anyway

There is so much support when parents help, take an interest, give gifts, cook, invite to something... It cannot be valued highly enough. Precisely because we parents always retain an emotional power, what comes from us goes to the heart. The knowledge that we can count on us gives our children strength when situations require special courage.

At the same time, the support in the parental home protects against false strength, which could be found in accumulating money, in success or in an "I don't need anyone" mentality. Life only succeeds when the ability to make oneself vulnerable comes together with courage. This is only possible with support. You can also find it in others. But it's nice to have him with your parents.

7. Adult children appreciate a second home

Children-in-law often find a second home with their "new parents". They experience a sense of belonging and a love that is not tied to conditions. They can enjoy something that their own parents may not have been able to give so well and satisfy a need to catch up. Where one's own parents may have been serious and responsible, one enjoys humor and relaxation in the in-law family. Where parents could not show their love so openly, the warmth of the family-in-law fills the emotional tank.

It can be very motivating for in-laws when they feel how important they are to daughters-in-law and sons-in-law. This also helps to open up to the unfamiliar that comes into the family with children-in-law. Sooner or later, you will have to deal with a conflict with children-in-law. But this can be determined by the love you have for your own children and the tact you show towards guests.

By the way, our emotional brain does not know a "in-law". It has no category for that. Where our mind thinks "parents-in-law," our heart feels, "parents." Parents-in-law can therefore also apply the first theses to their children-in-law. In some respects, it's even easier. Because a tolerance for overreactions and a willingness to self-correct then compensate for what other parents have neglected.

Jörg Berger works as a psychotherapist and couples therapist in his own practice in Heidelberg (epaartherapie.de). You can find out more about this topic in his book "Prickly Parents and In-laws. How to make peace and live reconciled" (Francke).

The original of this article "7 tips make the relationship with adult children very good" comes from Family.de.