Most parents daydream about the kinds of lives that their children will lead. From early on, they envision everything from ballet class and baseball practice to the kids’ college graduations, wedding days, and what the grandkids might look like.
So when their adult children are struggling, or fail to meet the milestones they envisioned — especially if they themselves met those milestones with relative ease — they often end up feeling like failures. If this is something you’re experiencing, it’s time for you to regroup and say goodbye to the things listed below.
1. The feeling that their kids should always be happy or never face struggles or adversity.
It’s immensely kind of parents who want to ensure that their kids never face struggles or adversity. This often happens with parents who struggled a great deal when they were younger and therefore try to protect their offspring from similar situations.
The problem with this is that everyone is going to struggle at some point. And young people who don’t deal with difficulty never learn coping mechanisms to help them deal with issues when they inevitably arise.
You aren’t a failure if your adult child is going through a rough patch: that’s just part of life! Be there for them how you can, but also recognize how important it is for them to learn how to cope with life’s many challenges.
2. Guilt about their own struggles.
Life can throw all manner of curveballs in a person’s direction, and kids aren’t always aware of the trials and tribulations that their parents go through. As such, they may develop a great deal of anger and resentment about their adolescence, not realizing just how bad their parents had it. You may have struggled with countless personal trials as your kids are growing up, and now that they’re adults, they’re guilt-tripping you about not having done more for them.
It’s honorable that you shielded them from the reality of your own struggles, but you can let go of the guilt you’re carrying by being honest with them about how awful things were. Case in point: my friend’s adult daughter condemned her for years about having “kept her” from her father, until her mom finally told her about how abusive her dad had been. Sometimes, the entire ugly story needs to be shared for the sake of perspective.
3. Shame about the path your child has taken.
Those who had high hopes and dreams about the lives their kids would lead often feel shame when their adult children fail to meet those daydreams. Children don’t come made to order, and they grow up to be individuals with their own interests and leanings, much to some of their parents’ dismay.
If your kid didn’t grow up to be a doctor or lawyer and is instead pursuing a lifestyle that you can’t understand, you don’t need to feel shame about that. They’re following their own path, and they need you to accept them as they are rather than feeling humiliated that they aren’t the child that you ordered. Your child isn’t an accessory by which you will be judged.
4. Unrealistic expectations about how life is now.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how bad they feel that their kids are struggling so much more than they did. Many of these people went to university right after high school, got jobs, bought houses, started families, and went about their daily lives fairly easily. Although they might have dealt with personal stresses at times, they made do without extreme difficulty.
Meanwhile, it seems like younger generations are struggling more than the previous few have, for several reasons. Many millennials and Gen Z people know that they’ll never be able to afford a house, and the constant onslaught of awful news worldwide has stopped many of them from wanting kids.
Parents who feel like failures because their adult children are struggling need to recognize that their kids live very different lives than they did. They likely aren’t being “lazy” if they can’t find jobs or have to live at home for longer than expected. They simply don’t have the opportunities that their parents or grandparents had, for reasons that are beyond their control.
5. The obligation to “fix things.”
It’s sweet if you’ve tried to shield your children from various hardships throughout life, but they eventually need to figure out how to fix things on their own. This can range from difficulties in their personal relationships to fixing issues in their living spaces, like a clogged drain or broken drywall.
You aren’t a failure if you don’t step in and fix your adult child’s marriage for them, or if you’re unable to drop everything to help them install a new toilet. It’s not your obligation to fix everything “wrong” in their life until the day you die. They may always be your child, but they’re no longer a child, and they need to step up and embrace adult responsibility.
6. The worry that they didn’t teach their kids “enough.”
It’s important for parents to teach their offspring foundational skills so they can grow into capable, self-sufficient adults, but that doesn’t mean that parents have to teach their kids absolutely everything. It’s each individual’s responsibility to educate themselves (or get training in) the subjects and skills that will serve them best over time. If they choose not to, due to a lack of initiative or weaponized incompetence, that’s their own problem, not their parents.
For example, parents may not have taught their kids how to prepare every dish on the planet, but if they’ve taught them the basics of food preparation and cooking, they’ve given their kids the tools they’ll need to sort the rest out for themselves. If their kid is resentful because “nobody taught them” how to roast a turkey, that’s on them: not their parents.
7. The feeling that they are owed “more” from their child.
If a person’s adult child is struggling because life is much different and more difficult to navigate now than it was for them, it isn’t going to help to get angry or resentful towards them. This is particularly important if they feel like they’re “owed” grandchildren, or to be taken care of by their adult children, to pay them back for all the time and energy they put into rearing them.
Choosing to be a parent is an inherently selfish act, even if many of the actions a person does while raising their offspring seem selfless. Children don’t ask to come into this world, and it’s unfair to expect certain behaviors from them to pay their parents back for an existence they never had a say in.
Your adult children may not be able to have children or take care of you the way you want them to for countless reasons, ranging from financial instability to mental or physical illness. You aren’t a “failure” if you aren’t given grandkids: life is just very different for your adult children than it was for you.
8. Responsibility for their adult children’s choices.
It’s a sad truth that a person can do everything “right” and still do poorly at an endeavor, and that goes for child rearing as well. The thing about raising kids that many people fail to remember is that those kids grow up to be autonomous adults with their own thoughts, opinions, and freedom to make their own choices.
If your adult child has made some questionable choices, despite having all the resources available to them to take a different path, then they have to deal with the consequences of those choices.
You aren’t responsible for their actions, nor is it your job to save them from themselves. If and when they ask for support in trying to sort their lives out, by all means be there for them with love and support — but you can’t do the work for them.
Final thoughts…
Your children came from you, and they’re part of you, but they aren’t extensions of you. If they have difficulties as they go through life for various reasons, that isn’t all your fault, nor should it reflect badly upon you.
Basically, you aren’t a failure because your adult kids are struggling. There are millions of reasons why they may be having a hard time, and unless you level up to being an omnipotent deity sometime soon, you can’t fix all of them.
