Setting Boundaries With Adult Children

Save your sanity with these tips.
By Julie Baumgardner
August 23, 2017
boundaries with adult children

You might be the parent of adult children if you:

  • Still pay their car insurance because your name is on the car title.
  • Have paid for a new tire because they don’t have any money to pay for it. Besides, it’s their only way to get back and forth to work.
  • Have argued with them about how much they eat out and they do not understand your concern.
  • Still pay their cell phone bill because they are part of the “family plan.”
  • Saw them really struggling with something and, although you wanted to step in and help, you didn’t.

The parents who tell their adult children once they have a job, “Congratulations, you are officially off the payroll! Good luck!” are probably in the minority. Many of today’s parents seem to struggle with letting their kids experience the ups and downs of self-sufficiency.

Are parents too quick to come to the rescue? Are we too accessible today?

Allison Bottke’s challenges with her own adult son led her to write Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children. After years of being her son’s failsafe, she realized she wasn’t helping him.

“I looked at what was happening around me and came to the conclusion this really isn’t about my son, it’s about me,” says Bottke. “Instead of focusing on what I thought he needed to do, I really needed to focus on changes I needed to make. The steps I came up with led to the acronym – SANITY, which I had a lot more of when I implemented the steps.”

Here’s what SANITY means:

  • Stop: We need to change how we respond to our kids. Don’t try to change them. Stop the money flow. End our own negative behavior. “For so long we were in the midst of drama, chaos and crisis,” Bottke says. “I had to stop letting my son push my buttons and I needed to stop accepting the consequences for his behavior.”
  • Assemble supportive people: Find other people who are experiencing this or who have adult children and have already been down this road. Enlist their support. It is powerful to know you are not the only one.
  • Nip excuses in the bud: It is easy to let excuses coax you into doing things you would not typically do.
  • Implement rules and boundaries: Make a plan, implement it and stick to it. Meet with your young adult and share the plan. Explain to them that, as of this date, you are no longer going to support them financially. Clearly, if you have been participating in this behavior for a while, giving them a timeline with specific dates to work off of is helpful and is an excellent teaching tool.
  • Trust your instincts: If your gut or your intuition is telling you something isn’t right or you shouldn’t be doing this – trust your gut. “For me this meant getting in touch with my own life and fixing the messy person in my life – me,” Bottke says.
  • Yield everything: There is a plan for your child’s life and you do not control it. Swooping in and trying to fix it hinders their ability to learn and grow. Love them and support them, but don’t enable them.

According to Bottke, this is easier said than done.

Although it took some time, Bottke says that letting go was very freeing and the right thing to do. Her son has had to face some difficult circumstances, and she is the first to admit it is sometimes hard to sit on the sidelines. But since she has gotten out of the way her son is doing better. Their relationship has improved and she feels better about who she is as a person – and as a parent.

Image from Unsplash.com

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  1. Aurora Reyes
    Aurora Reyes says:

    this dose make sense, Its so hard with all the excuses kids make , these days how its the parents fault .That if parents were financially stable they wouldn’t be in there predicament.

    Reply