You may be a naturally helpful person who’s eager to offer advice to others if you think you can make a positive impact in their life. But that doesn’t mean your assessments are accurate, or that your advice is relevant for the situation at hand. This is particularly true when it comes to your adult children. Although your advice may be well-meaning, and you honestly believe you’re being helpful by offering it, there are many reasons why your kids may not want it.
1. The world they live in now is completely different from the one you grew up in.
One of my partner’s friends is struggling with unemployment right now, in her late 40s, which is incredibly difficult on numerous levels. This woman’s well-meaning father told her that she should follow in her mother’s footsteps and reach out to the local university: “They’re always looking for girls for the typing pool, you know — just show up there with a resume and ask them for a job.” When she told him that wasn’t an option, he scoffed at her and phoned the university himself to show her how ridiculous she was being.
Needless to say, he was shocked (and irritated) to discover that they hadn’t had a typing pool since 1992, thus rendering his advice utterly useless.
Similarly, you’ve likely noticed that everything has gotten significantly more expensive in recent years. The average cost of a two-bedroom house in a major North American city was around $220,000 in 2002. Now, that same house costs over a million dollars. If you’re giving your adult kids life advice based on outdated personal experience, please be aware that your advice is about as useful as a wooden frying pan.
2. They didn’t ask for your advice.
Unless your kids specifically ask for your input and advice about something, don’t offer any. They may come to you with problems that they’re experiencing, either in their relationship or with life in general, because they’re looking for support and comfort — not advice. They need to vent about their frustrations with someone they can trust, and offering advice when it isn’t asked for can damage your dynamic.
There are many reasons why parents offer unsolicited advice, but according to Psych Central, parents who do, often end up doing more harm than good. For instance, let’s say your child vents to you about their partner and you insult that person and suggest that they split up. If they don’t, your child will spend the rest of their life aware that you can’t stand their partner. Similarly, if you suggest something to your kid that they’ve already known about for years, they’ll feel condescended to, and may assume that you think they’re incompetent. Eventually, they’ll stop opening up to you, or worse, your adult children might cut you off.
3. You’re suggesting things that you value, not what’s right for them.
As much as you may desire to live vicariously through your kids and have them succeed in areas you think are ideal for them, that doesn’t mean that those things are right for the individuals you brought into the world. As Kahlil Gibran expressed so eloquently in his poem On Children: “You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.”
Sure, you might think that your kid would be amazing at a particular pursuit, but that doesn’t mean they have any interest in doing so. Perhaps you even feel that they need to justify their stance to your satisfaction before you’ll deign to accept it. And if they don’t have a reasonable enough explanation (in your opinion) as to why they’re uninterested, then they should follow the advice of their elders.
Psychology Today advises parents to listen to their adult kids and then ask how they can best support them with their goals and personal challenges. For example, the adult child who’s trying to figure out how to turn their life passion into a career would benefit more from you helping them apply to schools or for grants, than listening to you lecture them for hours about how they should join the military like every other generation in the family did.
4. You don’t know all the nuanced reasons why your advice won’t work for them.
Just because something worked well for you, that doesn’t mean it’s ideal for your offspring. Your adult child might have an entire smorgasbord of personal struggles that you’ve never had to contend with. The two of you might share DNA, and have many aspects in common, but that’s where the similarities end.
Telling your kid with hypermobility, or arthritis caused by former injuries that they should take up jogging or Ashtanga yoga to get in shape isn’t going to be helpful on any level. The same goes for recommending foods when you don’t know all their sensitivities/allergies, or computer programs that won’t work with their operating system.
5. They feel that you’re invading their privacy.
This one is particularly relevant if the subject you’re offering advice about is absolutely none of your concern. For instance, taking your adult kid aside and mentioning that you’ve noticed they haven’t had a baby yet despite being married for a few years, and then offering advice on the best ways to go about conceiving.
This is inappropriate on countless levels, and is a massive invasion of personal privacy. It’s also likely to make your adult child start avoiding you. You don’t know whether they’ve been trying to conceive, if they’re dealing with fertility issues, if they’ve suffered pregnancy losses, etc. Besides, asking your children about their reproductive habits is essentially prying into their sex lives, which is never okay.
6. What you’re advising is wrong.
As well-meaning as you think you’re being, you may be offering advice that isn’t just wrong and unhelpful — it may be harmful and deeply upsetting to them. For example, telling your neurodivergent adult child to “Just act like you’re not autistic” in order to perform “well” in a job interview isn’t going to win you any parenting points, and it’s going to do a lot of harm to their mental health too.
The same goes for advice that goes against what they know is right, like advising them not to live with their partners before getting married, to “just ignore” people who are bullying or mistreating them instead of standing up for themselves, or to keep pushing themselves through illness or injury instead of taking enough time to rest and heal up properly.
7. They want to be respected as autonomous adults.
When you think about the decisions you make on a daily basis, you’re secure in the fact that you’ve made them yourself instead of having your actions dictated to you by someone else, correct? Your children are now adults, and want to experience that freedom as well. Respecting their freedom and autonomy is key if you want to maintain strong bonds with your adult child. They’ve spent the last couple of decades being told what to do by all the adults in their lives, and now it’s time for them to live life on their own terms, even if that includes taking some wrong turns here and there.
Each of us has made mistakes in the past, but those missteps have been immensely beneficial learning opportunities. Although you might truly have your adult child’s best interests at heart, and you want to spare them the difficulties and pains you may have experienced, attempting to tell them what to do (for their own good!) comes across as controlling and domineering. Furthermore, you may try to convince them to perpetually err on the side of safety and caution when they want adventure and risk-taking experience.
They may always be your kids, but they aren’t children anymore. Stop treating them as such.
Final thoughts…
If you find yourself about to offer your kids advice about something, take a moment — like a brief walk or a coffee break — to examine the intentions behind your actions. Are you offering this advice because it makes you feel needed by your children? Or because you think you know what’s best for them, despite the fact they’re grown, capable adults in their own right? This is a great opportunity for introspection, as well as the chance to cultivate a healthier, more respectful relationship between you and your adult kids.
