Is a healthy relationship with your adult child possible?
I’ve seen my share of relationships destroyed by addiction. So, when parents ask me if it’s really possible to have a good relationship with their addicted adult children, I get the mixture of skepticism and hope in their voices.
The short answer: Yes, it’s absolutely possible to achieve a healthy relationship with your child - no matter their personal choices. Even when they drive you a little crazy.
The nuance: It depends on how you define healthy - which we’ll get to soon.
In this post, we’ll cover:
⭐ Why it’s so important - and so difficult - to have a healthy relationship
⭐ Common signs that you have a relationship that needs improvement
⭐ What a healthy relationship with your adult child can look like
⭐ Five Keys to a Healthy Relationship with your adult child that you can start acting on today!
⭐ Why I don’t teach “communication skills” here
⭐ Suggestions for practice
Let’s get started, shall we? 🏫
You love your child more than anything. There is an unbreakable bond between you. So, of course you want to stay connected, know they’re okay; and you want to be there for them. You wish you could have the close, healthy relationship you once had and just be a loving Mom or Dad.
But, when addiction strikes, the behavior that comes with it is so undesirable (putting it nicely), that it is also completely normal to want your adult child to just do what you tell them to do, get their *!@# together, and leave you alone. 😒
Instead of looking forward to seeing your child - and being the doting, helpful parent you once were - your relationship now looks like:
Arguing with or lecturing them repeatedly about the effects of drugs and what they need to do to change
Trying to be your child’s therapist by using “motivational interviewing” or reinforcing “good behavior”
Being called names, being yelled at or blamed for all their woes
Dreading their texts or phone calls, because you just know they want something from you (probably money)
Bracing for the next disaster, and feeling like you’ll be the one who will have to pay for it
Blocking their phone number because you can’t even…
Sacrificing your own well-being by overfunctioning for them
Ongoing resentment, anger, or cutting them out of your life
You are not a rare case, if some (or all) of these examples resonate. Addiction wreaks havoc on the best of relationships.
It can feel impossible to turn things around and have a “normal,” healthy relationship with your child again. And, you may just give up trying…or you may try so hard that it takes a huge toll on your own well-being.
It’s not your fault that a healthy relationship has been elusive. Addiction turns everything upside down and sideways.
But, here’s the thing… Parents and children are interdependent.
When we don’t treat our children with love, kindness, and acceptance for who and how they are right now…
We not only increase the likelihood of causing suffering for them…
We can’t help but hurt ourselves. Because when we behave in ways that we don’t like toward our children, we violate our deepest instincts, values… and our own hearts.
When you aren’t on good terms with your children, it creates ongoing stress, depression, and/or anxiety. You may feel guilt, resentment, or grief that you want to avoid and push through. You may think the only way to stop them from treating you with disrespect or from requests for money is to be mean or critical, or to just avoid answering the phone.
The good news: it truly doesn’t have to be this way!
You can have a healthy, loving relationship with your adult child - no matter what they do or don’t do. Even if they never go into recovery or get help for their issues. Even if they are just plain unpleasant to be around.
And, let’s be honest: drug/alcohol addiction is a life-threatening illness. Which means we never know what will happen (this is true for all our loved ones, but addiction increases the risk of bad things happening). For me, I think this is an extra incentive to be loving and kind to our addicted adult children.
When you heal your relationship with your adult child, you’ll be able to once again:
💖 Show your adult child how much you love and care about them
💖 Be empathetic and compassionate when they tell you what they’re struggling with
💖 Listen to them without getting drawn into any chaos or drama
💖 Give what you want to give - instead of feeling like you have to give on demand, which is a recipe for stress
Take my previous client, Jane (not her real name)...
When Jane came to see me, she was so fed up with her adult son that she had been blocking his number, on and off, for over a year. Before we met, she had even avoided calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday.
This made me so sad, because I wanted her son to feel loved by his Mom. This is one of the most important reasons I do the work I do! I knew there was a high probability that it caused him suffering to not hear from his mother, in a loving way, on his birthday.
This caused guilt and significant pain for Jane too. But, she didn’t think she could handle the anxiety that usually came during and after talking with her son. She wanted to avoid the difficulty of saying no to requests for money, and the usual onslaught of name-calling and blaming that her son hurled at her.
She also felt like their relationship had become so strained that he might not even want to hear from her. 😢
After we worked together, Jane was able to face her fears and start showing up the way she wanted to for her son. She started feeling good about her interactions with him again - even when he reacted in a less than civil way.
She unblocked his number, started to see that she could put limits on their conversations, and she resumed being the parent in the relationship again - meaning:
Jane started showing her son what the relationship would look like.
These days, Jane feels free to communicate with her son whenever she wants - without fear that she’ll be sucked into his chaos. And, her son is now communicating with her in a much more respectful way.
Sure, it’s not perfect - we can’t aim for perfection with active addiction in the mix (or in any relationship). But now, Jane expresses her love to her son routinely; she offers to help in ways that she’s willing to help; and her son receives unconditional love and support from his Mom. He knows that she wants him in his life.
This makes my heart happy. 💗
Important Note: I want to acknowledge that there are cases where parents simply cannot communicate and interact with their adult child. Usually, this is due to violent or other extreme behaviors - that make it clearly unsafe or unhelpful. It could also be that you simply don’t have a way to contact your child.
So, I want to honor that there are situations that make it difficult - if not impossible - to work on a relationship; and I want to emphasize that safety comes first.
For the many parents who are still in contact with their adult children (or who may be in the future), you can have a healthy relationship… even when it seems impossible.
Before we get to some strategies, we need to be clear that:
Having a healthy relationship does not necessarily mean having the relationship that you want.
And, this is not actually a problem, in and of itself.
In fact, there are many relationships between parents and adult children - when addiction is NOT involved - that aren’t exactly how we want them to be.
For example:
You may have a child who lives in a different area…or even country… whom you don’t get to see or talk too nearly as much as you’d like
You may have a child who has a job that entails risks and danger (I’m thinking firefighter, police officer, in the military) - and you wish they were safer
You may have a child with special needs or an illness, and you wish they were healthier or able to be more independent
So, It’s important to remember that it’s just a fact of life that You can’t always get what you want… which could be a song. 😊
Of course, when addiction is in the mix, it magnifies the truth of how we cannot get what we want.
I mean, we’re not asking for much, are we????
Another issue is that our children may not have the capacity to contribute to a healthy relationship, when they have a substance use disorder. This puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders. It requires us to be the “grown up in the room” and learn some lessons that may be difficult… lessons that a lot of parents may never have to learn.
NOT FAIR! (foot stomp)... But true. 🙄
So what do you need to do to have a healthy, loving, peaceful, relationship with your addicted adult child?
I could easily write an entire book on this topic. So, this list is not comprehensive.
But if you implement the following “Keys,” your relationship will begin to transform.
Five Keys to a Healthy Relationship with Your Adult Child
🔑 One: Accept that your child is not here to make you happy.
If they do, you can enjoy that. But, it’s certainly not their job. And it’s not your job to like what they do in life. As an ADULT, they get to make their own decisions, have their own lifestyle, and discover their own values which may be very different from yours. We are never going to be able to find “magic words” or somehow hypnotize them into doing what we want. 😵💫
This also means that you need to show your child acceptance and love for who they are right now. I know you love your child more than anything. But, when it comes to having a good relationship, it’s not enough to just feel a certain way toward someone. We need to BE LOVING, not just feel it.
Sometimes parents think that if they show their addicted adult child love and affection, this will somehow put a stamp of approval on how they’re living. Or, parents might think they need to reject their child or keep telling them how they need to change in order to motivate them to get healthy.
But, experience usually tells us that this is completely untrue. You cannot change your child or control whether or not they decide to seek recovery or make the lifestyle changes you wish they would - no matter what you say or do.
But, you do have a huge impact on your relationship with them. You can contribute to a peaceful, loving relationship that shows them that you accept them exactly how they are. Or you can damage your relationship by trying to control them, by doing things for them that cause you chronic resentment, or by rejecting them somehow.
Extra-Credit:
If you have trouble giving up control and accepting your adult child for exactly how they are right now, you might need to look at…
Your Ego or Self-concept
You may be clinging to what you think a “good parent” would do. Or you may want your child to be “normal” so badly that you just can’t give up the control attempts.
Wisdom comes when we KNOW that our kids are not a reflection of our parenting. Many people really don’t get this. With messages like, “you raised them right” or “you must be so proud,” when your adult children are living a healthy, “normal” lifestyle, it’s a common misconception that we must have done something special for our kids to turn out “well.” But we PAAC truly have the opportunity to understand that effort does not always equal outcome.
We can smile at these expressions, while knowing that no parent can do anything to make their child turn out the way they want. Most parents don’t do anything extraordinarily good or bad. You’re not responsible for your child’s addiction, and you're not responsible for your child’s greatest achievements. You cannot be responsible for that which you cannot control.
It’s also important to realize or remember that addiction is all too common a problem these days. Even though it feels like it shouldn’t be happening to your child; it actually makes sense that it’s happening to many of our adult children. It’s not personal… It's ubiquitous.
🔑 Two: Give them what they need; not what you think they need.
No one needs, as an adult, to be told what to do. Our adult children don’t want to be controlled. If they did, I wouldn’t be writing this because none of us would be in this situation. We would have fixed it a long time ago.
But there are things that our adult children DO need.
These are sometimes referred to as “universal human needs,” which are basic needs that everyone yearns for and seeks to fulfill. Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, worked to resolve conflicts in relationships. He hypothesized that everything we humans do is in order to meet certain needs that we all share.
What do you think is on that list of human needs?
You can probably guess, but they are things like:
Autonomy, independence, acceptance, love, compassion, respect, being seen and heard, and belonging.
So, these are what your addicted adult child is most likely to need from you.
The question then becomes: how can you behave toward your adult child in order to meet these needs?
They need to feel loved and accepted for who they are right now. They need you to be compassionate, loving, and kind. They need to be respected as autonomous, independent adults. And, they need to know that what happens to them matters to you.
What they DON’T NEED:
For you to keep buying them things or giving them money
To live in your house indefinitely
You spending all your free time running around doing errands for them - and then suffering for it
You constantly telling them what they need to do - putting yourself back in the position of “authority”
To be controlled
As a matter of fact, these examples would be the OPPOSITE of their human needs for independence and autonomy.
Now, if you simply want or actually need to give them money, your car, do their laundry, etc. and there is NO negative consequence for you, your child, OR OTHERS, this could be fine. But, usually there are negative consequences with this kind of *giving on demand,* such as: resentment, exhaustion, stress, ongoing dependence on you, financial concerns…
Which leads to the next key:
🔑 Three: Get clear on what you need for your own well-being
This means you need to get honest about what you are willing to do for your child - and then do it with acceptance and no strings attached.
Here’s a simple example of this with my own experience:
I wanted to spend some time with my son and give him a present for his birthday. 🎂
I talked to him and we arranged to meet at a specific time and place. I bought him his present and some cake to share, and drove to meet him at 5:30 PM.
Well, he was a no-show… Womp womp… 🤷
I could have gotten angry and blamed him for wasting my time. I could have waited all evening for him to show up, and then been even more resentful that he ruined my evening hanging out in a park. 😡 I could have texted or called him, and given him a piece of my mind!
I didn’t do any of that.
What I did was: Before I asked him to meet, I got very clear on what I was willing to give in terms of my time, energy, and money.
I accepted that he may not show up. In fact, we talked about that possibility. He told me that it might not happen due to logistics, but that he would try.
Cool… 😎
I decided I was fine with driving 10 minutes each way, hanging out in a beautiful area, spending money on his present and on cake…and then eating said cake if necessary. 😋
I decided I would wait half an hour. And, then I texted him that I’m leaving, sorry it didn’t work out, love you, let’s try again soon. Easy, peasy. ✅
Would I do that weekly, or monthly? Nope. But, I’m willing to do it once in a while when it’s important to me.
So, get honest and clear about what you’re willing to do or not. Give what you’re willing to give with no strings attached.
This means not depending on the other person to make it “okay” for you to do what you’ve decided to spend your money, time, and energy on. You are committing to the process… and not trying to control the outcome.
🔑 Four: Practice restraint.
Any healthy relationship requires restraint. You need to be able to respond wisely and not react to or express every thought and feeling you have. And, you’ll probably need to NOT react to lots of things your adult child might say.
Sometimes, parents think they should express how they feel to their adult child.
You can ask yourself three questions to determine if it makes sense to say certain things:
Will it be helpful to them or me to say this? You can base this on your experience or just your own knowledge of your child. How are they likely to respond?
What is your motivation? Are you trying to control them…or guilt them into behaving a certain way? If so, it will probably only lead to hurt feelings and more suffering for you both.
Is it kind? Which I’ll address more later.
Basically, if you’re not sure if something is kind to say, treat it like a comma:
When in doubt, leave it out. 🧑🏼🏫
You can always give yourself some time and space, and say it another time.
Extra-Credit:
If you have trouble practicing restraint when talking with your adult child, it probably means you need to work more on Keys one through three. Rinse and repeat.
It could also mean that you need to acknowledge and allow the emotional pain that feeds your communication and behavior. If you avoid feeling the myriad “negative” emotions that frequently arise in this situation, they can’t help but “leak out” - or explode 🧨 - from time to time. Seek out a professional (like a therapist) if you have trouble doing this in a helpful way.
🔑 Five: Shower your adult child and yourself with kindness.
The Dalai Lama once said: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
Consistent with the “universal human needs” I talked about earlier, we always want to be kind, compassionate, empathetic, and loving in our communication and interactions with our children. We want to show them we care about them and want to help. This is what they really need.
There are times, however, when you may feel anything but compassionate toward your adult child.
No worries. It’s normal to sometimes feel anger, annoyance, frustration, etc. But, you don’t want to “marinate” in them, fuel them with your thoughts, or ACT on them.
We also don’t want to withhold our affection or love out of anxiety, anger, or some kind of expectation. Again, this is a control attempt and does way more harm than good. It doesn’t motivate anyone, long-term, to change.
I remember saying “mean things” to my adult child (I did apologize!) and feeling guilty afterward. Parents often do this out of fear and love for their children - but it usually isn’t helpful. And, I’ve worked with many parents who felt like “rejecting” their kids was a last resource to keep themselves sane.
You don’t need to beat yourself up if you’ve done this, but you don’t need to stay in this unhealthy place. There are many simple ways to heal your relationship, even when you think it’s beyond repair. Sometimes, it just takes someone objective and knowledgable to see how.
By the way, being kind to your adult child does not mean doing things for them that lead to your continued stress, anxiety, financial hardship; or allowing them to treat you badly.
It also doesn’t mean that they’ll be kind in return. We can’t expect that to happen, but it will be more likely as you teach them how you want your relationship to be.
I want to emphasize that it will be really difficult, if not impossible, to be kind without taking good care of yourself. Compassion must always include yourself. And, self-compassion has been shown to decrease stress and anxiety, and to grow the capacity to be compassionate to others.
You also don’t need to be “fake” or contrive compliments or “positive reinforcement.” This could actually be a form of control: you’re trying to “motivate” them! Whenever we have our own agenda, we get a bit weird. So, just be yourself and the parent you want to be. You are not going to say or do “the thing” that makes them see the light.
One more thing to keep in mind is that compassion doesn’t mean talking your child out of their suffering. It means validating and showing them that you care about their suffering. It means that you don’t need to “fix” their experiences; you just need to express your concern and love, and offer what you can to help. You can also simply ask them if they would be willing to do what you think would help them. Parents often feel they need to “walk on eggshells” or “beat around the bush” with their children. Nope - you’re allowed to ask directly for what you want. Just don’t expect to get what you want.
Ok, there you have it: Five Keys to nurturing a healthy relationship with your addicted adult child.
Thank you for reading my dissertation. 😂
P.S. You may be wondering why I don’t write about specific “communication skills” here …Or not, but I’ll tell you anyway. 😊
Communication techniques tend to only be helpful when certain conditions exist in a relationship, and they cannot plan for the dialogue that follows. So, although I teach them when appropriate, I need to know more about a unique situation for them to be effective (why I love role plays instead).
When we learn only communication skills, we tend to misuse them. For example, we will twist them into control attempts that backfire, leaving you more frustrated.
Emotions take over when we really need our “skills,” and then we forget what we’re “supposed to” say.
Instead, when you practice and apply the principles that I talk about here, skillful communication develops naturally - no matter the specific situation you’re in. Moreover, you can see for yourself if your words and actions are consistent with these five keys or not.
How to practice:
I suggest familiarizing yourself with the Five Keys and asking yourself if they are true in your experience.
Can you remember an interaction between you and your child that didn’t go well? Were you doing the opposite of any of these keys?
What happens when you do practice the Five Keys? How is your relationship affected? How do you feel in your body and mind?
If you read the Keys, and you feel resistance to practicing them, what does your mind say about them? In other words, what is your “yeah, but…”? Usually, this is about fear, anxiety, or not wanting to let go of control. Recognizing and allowing these to surface means that you can address them in helpful ways.
Are you still routinely stressed out about your adult child? Are you wondering “When is it going to end?” If so, are you aligned with these Keys or not?
Feel free to tweak these principles in order to apply them to your own experience, your adult child’s personality, and your own values - just make sure that you get honest about what leads to your suffering and what doesn’t, both short and long-term.
You might want to choose just one of the *Keys* to work on at a time - you can start with the one you need most, or the one that you think may be easiest. However, they do interconnect - when you work on one, you most likely work on others automatically.
As always, be compassionate with yourself while looking at your own behavior and relationships. No beating yourself up if/when you don’t “measure up” to these practices.
Also, remember that it totally makes sense if you’ve fallen into unhealthy relationship patterns with your adult child…
Addiction makes this a well-known, predictable dynamic.
At first, it will take energy and intention to practice, but it does gets easier. Be gentle with yourself when default patterns make it challenging! Progress usually isn’t linear - it’s more like “one step forward, two steps back” and then, “two steps forward, one step back,” etc.
My wish is that you feel the peace and confidence that come from knowing that you’re doing what you can to contribute to a healthy relationship with your child… showing them that you love and accept them no matter what.
It’s (almost) never too late to turn things around, have a loving and peaceful relationship, and feel good about how you treat them…and yourself in the process.
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