Tag Archives: ” adult children

Healing Family Wounds

Tuesday’s blog post focused on how divorce and parenting style can cause a breach in your relationship with your adult children. As a marriage and family therapist, I know there are all kinds of reasons why parents and adult children become distant. The experts used to think that negative behavior was due to bad parenting. But decent parents can raise difficult kids. Some may have a demanding temperament from birth, are harder to parent or are less responsive to influence. It’s been said that you’re only as happy as your least … Continue reading

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Rifts With Grown Kids

  When our adult children leave home, we expect them to be independent and manage on their own. But a falling out or family crisis can destroy this new  equilibrium. Estrangement has been called a silent epidemic and parents, humiliated and hurt, are too embarrassed to talk about it. Divorce can be a major factor in these painful situations. It’s common for children to believe that one parent is responsible and to align with the other whom they perceive as wronged. Since there’s already animosity between their parents, they may … Continue reading

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Covering Expenses of Adult Children

A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 40% of parents of adult children were still paying for their digital services such as cellphone data plans and streaming entertainment. Two years ago, another survey by Harris found that 60% of parents were providing financial support to their adult children – housing, transportation, living expenses, insurance, medical – even after they had completed college. Are you one of these? If you’re a parent continuing to support your adult children, it may be because of the relative lack of employment opportunities available to … Continue reading

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Supporting Grown Kids

Parenting today seems to be a lot more complicated than it was in the past. Do you home school, look for a charter or send your youngsters to public school? How do you protect your teens from bullies, substance abuse and on-line sexual predators? Where do you draw the line between supporting your college-age kids and being a helicopter parent? And now there’s a new set of decisions for parents of adult children – do you pay for their digital expenses even after they’re working and on their own? A … Continue reading

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