Establishing Healthy Boundaries With Adult Children (Part 1 of 2)

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That's focusonthefamily.com slash get help. I bought a life insurance policy for my son when he was 25, 26 years old so I could afford to bury him because I knew he wasn't going to live. I knew he was going to die. He was going to kill himself. Drugs, motorcycles, something.

So I'm thinking proactively, what can I do? Okay, I can't afford to bury him. I better pay for this life insurance policy. And I remember sitting there thinking, this is just not how it's supposed to be. This is not how parenting is supposed to be. That's Allison Botke describing one of the more extreme challenges that moms and dads may face with their adult kids, especially when there's a lack of healthy boundaries within a family. I'm John Fuller and Allison is our guest today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly. John, a significant part of what we do every day here at Focus is to encourage and empower parents. We want to help you.

That's the bottom line. Mom and dad, we're here for you as you partner with God to do the best job possible with your children. And now we're aware that some family situations are more difficult than others. And we often hear from you about where your children are at, especially the 20, 30-somethings. Adult children who maybe launched well, maybe haven't launched so well. Maybe they didn't get accepted into college or maybe they're in a slump with the job market. Or maybe there's been an issue through the teen years and that has now imploded in their 20s.

Whatever it might be, we're here for you. And this is a concern, adult kids. This is something every parent can relate to at some point in time, the fear that my child is going to fail to launch. They're going to get stuck somewhere in that transition to adulthood. We all know families where the adult kids are still living at home and the parents are still wondering, will they ever leave? Or like my family, it's been a revolving door.

They leave and then they come back and then they leave again. It can be a trying time. Maybe your young adult or someone you know as young adult is a prodigal or they're choosing a lifestyle that's contrary to how you raise them. That often is the conflict.

There may be addiction or something worse. Whatever the issue is, we know it's breaking your heart as a parent. And again, we at Focus are here to help. Today, we're going to explore how you can love those adult children well even when it's hard going through it. Our guest is Allison Botkey and she has first-hand experience in this area. Her personal story is dramatic. And while some details may not directly apply to your situation, she has some great parenting advice and wisdom to share with all of us. And Allison is a popular author and speaker.

She's written more than 32 books. And the one we're going to be referring to today is called Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children, Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents. Get in touch for a copy and let us know if we can be of any help. We do have caring Christian counselors here as well. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or click the link in the episode notes. Allison, welcome to Focus on the Family. Welcome back, really. Thank you. Thanks for having me back.

It's good to have you back. Let's start with that failure to launch concept. We're seeing that is growing in our culture today. Why do you think this is a growing problem for today's families? Well, a lot of it's financial. The financial challenges that young people have on the outside, whether they've not budgeted well, and that happens a lot. They don't know how to live. They don't know how to financially budget their lives. So they come back home.

You know what? It becomes so easy. Parents have allowed this, and why not go back home if I'm going to have my rent paid and my electricity paid and food and somebody's going to cook for me? It's a double-edged sword there. We know all parents, I think, have that, especially with your junior and senior in high school. I mean, I'm in that spot right now.

I've got a senior in high school, and I thankfully have one who's two years into his journey with college. But you do begin to wonder, are we going to get there? Has that launch platform going to go? You know, the steam and the combustible engines and all those things you need.

And it may not even be that there's a failure to launch. It's just a shift in our economy, a shift in lifestyle. It's not always a bad thing to have adult children living at home. If it's an equitable situation, if everyone's helping each other, then boundaries aren't being stepped on. We've spent generations just to live together, multi-generations. So it's only been in modern times that these kids are pushed out like this.

We expect them to be out on their own. In some instances, that might not be a possibility. Yeah, and I appreciate that. And we're going to talk more about how to create something that's constructive for everybody. But we want to talk about the issues before that. And sometimes parents can create this problem, at least contribute to it, correct?

Absolutely. I mean, that's certainly something that can happen. And you can actually cause things to go worse than you anticipated.

How do parents contribute negatively to their children's failure to launch? They become that safe landing place for them and don't want them to feel pain. That sounds so right, though.

Exactly. But it's not helpful. Everything good grows out of pain. It's like physical therapy.

You're not going to get healthier if you've got an injured bone until you go through physical therapy. And it's painful. Life spurts.

Growing is painful sometimes. How else do we learn consequences? This is really the key that parents are challenged with. They don't allow their children to experience the consequences of their actions. You've got a couple of stories in this way. I think you call it enabling parents in training. So what are those stories?

Just get our listeners and viewers up to speed. I think finding myself dealing with boundaries as much as I do. I'm very aware when boundaries are an issue. I was at a store once and saw a woman who's obviously frazzled. I could say that a customer was in front of her. She got rid of her and I was standing there and I said, are you OK? And just to say that she lost it.

Yes. And she said, no, I'm not. I'm so mad.

I'm so angry. And she just started talking about her family and her kids. And she loans them money and they don't pay her back. And they'll say, can I borrow a 10? She gives them a 20 and never sees change. And I ask questions.

Why do you do that? If he is consistently doing that, why do you continue to give him money? Well, because of excuses. And her husband was the same way. He didn't clean. He didn't help in the house. She's working.

They own the business. It was just a litany of anger and resentment, anger. And when it comes down to it, you know, well, you can make different choices. And she kind of looked at me and it went like right over her head that she could do anything different was hard for her to realize. What did you have in mind for her? And I would think sanity. She needed sanity. She needed to stop doing what she was doing and really get around some supportive people to talk about this. Otherwise, she's I don't know what's going to happen. Who knows whether she's going to burn out or I don't know what the children were like if they were at all respectful or dangerous. What's the other story?

So I was standing in line at a sandwich shop and there was a mom and a son in front of me. And he he was, I would say, maybe 17. I don't know. It's hard to tell.

But he had a coupon in his hand. He was reading and he couldn't understand really what what it meant. I heard him talk to her. He said, what do you suppose this means for the sandwich? So I don't know.

When you get up there, ask him. So I'm watching them. They get up to the counter and he speaks up that he started to speak up and said, you know, what does this? And she jumped right in and took over. It took over the whole conversation. And I watched him physically just shrink.

Yeah. And my heart ached for him, too. I thought, Mom, you're giving mixed messages here. You're telling him, go ahead and ask, which is good.

This is how he learned. And yet you don't trust him enough or maybe is it trust? What what is the issue that you don't think he can speak for himself? That you just are in such a hurry that you want to just what? I don't know what it is. So. So. But I saw that and thought, boy, that that young man now is learning.

How many times has she done that? So how hard will it be for him to launch to trust himself that he knows what to ask or do? Alison, let's get that definition of enabling versus helping. I mean, I think with parents, that's where that tough line is.

And I don't even know if there's a clear distinction. But what would you suggest to parents to understand what is helpful help and what is enabling or counterproductive help? I've always said that helping is doing something for someone that they can't do for themselves. You help them. Enabling is doing something for someone that they can and frankly should be doing for themselves.

Right. I often use the example of a young child learning to tie their shoes. You're helping them by tying it for them and showing them how to do this. But if they're 10, 12 years old and just don't want to tie their shoes and you're bending down to tie their shoes for them.

Something is wrong with this picture. So they can do it on their own. So it's really looking at what they are capable of doing.

And this is a big issue. We don't really know what our kids are capable of doing because we've done it for them so often. And, you know, some listeners, they're probably they may have 20 something kids and they're doing well.

They're off to college or whatever it might be. I want to kind of give a contour of this out of the statistics. I think Pew Research Center in 2016 identified that 15 percent of 25 to 35 year old millennials were living in their parents' homes, which was a higher rate than generation Xers in 2000. Between 2005 and 2010, more than 20 percent of 25 year old high school graduates who never attended college were not employed or in the military.

For those with some college employment rates were slightly higher. But basically, it's like an 80-20 rule. There's about 20 percent of 20 somethings that aren't launching well. Does that sound about right?

It does. And a lot of that I keep coming back to that financial issues. A lot of them are education is expensive, so they may not be able to have afford to live on their own.

Sure. However, the caveat to that is a lot of these young people are, you know, driving very fancy vehicles that they've managed to pay for and very fancy electronic devices. And so parents are funding a lifestyle. And that's the problem. And it doesn't always happen that way. Like I said, there are parents that understand those boundaries and the kids are home. And for whatever reason, again, whether it's financial, maybe it's emotional, maybe they have a breakup.

You know, young people, especially these young men, they have breakups that devastate them, whether it's a divorce or just a breakup from a girlfriend. Yeah. You know, Allison, so often the older I get, the simpler some things get when I look at scripture and I see the metaphors of what God is talking to us about. He uses marriage as a metaphor.

He's the bride where the bridegroom, those kinds of things. And specifically when I look at parenting, of course, we're made in his image. So my thought is some of our desires are from God's heart. And then some of those things that are maybe unhealthy are from the sin that enters our heart.

In this world, right? So when I look at the parenting approach, I feel like when we're trying to give good things to our children, that is a personality of God. In other words, it says in scripture, he too wants to give good things to his children. But there is also this side of God that he allows us to go through valleys to grow, to gain wisdom, to better appreciate the good things that we have in life when they come our way. How do we as parents pull back from the rescue mentality? Oftentimes, think about it, spiritually we will pray, God help us out of this situation. And then we're frustrated that God has not helped us out of that situation.

We might even go as far as asking, are you truly there, God? Don't you know this situation that I'm in? And like a good parent, he says, yeah, but I think you're going to learn something good through this. You allude to that in parenting, but it's so hard for us to let our adult children particularly, again, 20, 30 somethings, walk through a valley where they've got to figure out how to get out of it. Even though we could jump in, we can help them out of our retirement account. If it's financial, we can help them. But restraint is often the wiser choice.

Yes, it is. And that's where we need people around us to hold us accountable, that we can really share these challenges that we have with. And if it's a hole in our heart that we're trying to fill, we've got to look at that and pray for wisdom and discernment to shine the light on us. And that's the key right there, to be able to see how to respond to your child in a positive way. You really have to turn the light on you and say, what is it about me, God? Instead of praying, oh, my son needs this, or my daughter needs this, or how do I?

Lord, give me the insight and the wisdom to know what I have to change about myself. Yes, but I'm thinking more of allowing your children to suffer consequences for their decisions. And that should really start when they're young. But we bail them out because we don't want to see them suffer. We haven't learned the right parenting skills in many instances. A lot of us don't know what – this is a job that we don't even get education for. Our parents just are dropped into parenthood.

Allison, it's hard. I've got to tell you, you're calloused as a mom. You're not going to bail – he's supposed to bring brownies to the school luncheon, and you didn't make them. Exactly, boy. And the guilt – don't we have guilt? And that's a whole other story, how to get over the guilt and the fear.

You know, I think it's really helpful for people to understand from your own experience the things that God taught you. Help us understand the background and factors that led to the troubles that you experienced with your son. You've stated it started with your own rough upbringing. What happened for you?

What were those triggers for you? I was raised in a very poor family as well. My parents were divorced. I had a single mom and three siblings. I was the middle child. I was the middle child. You were the overlooked child. I know.

I laugh about it. But I didn't know I was poor. You don't know you're poor when there's other things. And my mom was a great provider. But she got very sick, and I was sent to foster care. And during foster care, I was abused and beaten. My brother was, too.

So it was a horrible situation. We were gone. She was in the hospital for two weeks, and we were in a foster home for two weeks. Just two weeks. But had the police not found me, the foster parents left my brother and I in an abandoned house.

They were gone. How old are you at this point? I was five years old. And your brother was younger? My brother was a couple months old in a crib. They found me locked underneath a stairwell. My eyes were punched shut.

I don't remember any of this. But I had a fear of the dark. Horrible fear of the dark. And really grew up not understanding what that fear came from, but also being in a broken home. That love of a father was really... we all need that. And I didn't have that from an earthly father. And I didn't grow up in a Christian family, so I didn't have that love of a heavenly father.

And I wanted to fill that with something. So I was one of those young people that went off and ran away and got married. Very young. I was 15 years old.

Oh, really? Because I knew. I was strong-willed.

I knew that this is what I wanted to do. This man was a wonderful human being. We belonged together. This man who was 16? Actually, he was 18.

Okay. This older man. Right.

The older man. It was a nightmare. He turned out to be incredibly abusive.

Right. The first time he hit me was the day we were married. And I thought, whoa, wait a minute.

What is happening here? So my whole life and issues was all caught up in how I responded to people and how I needed and wanted love and how I perceived love, what that was to me. And control was a big issue. Being able to be so out of control with abuse.

It's a horrible thing to experience that and be able to become strong enough to get out of that relationship. And I had my son. I had my son when I was 16. And I vowed I was going to be a great mom and take care of him and do everything I could to take care of him. And to me, that equated to money.

A lot of it was money. Yeah, and Allison, I can imagine. I mean, my heart goes out to you because of those experiences. No child should ever experience that. And seriously, but it does create some formative inputs for you. And I can only imagine, you know, your greatest goal as a mom was not to let your son suffer in any way. Exactly.

And so the basis is right, but then the outcome can be really wrong, right? Exactly. And it's amazing how many parents do have skeletons in their closet as young people. We don't all grow up in perfect families. And how we become parents and how we learn that role is very tied into our youth. How we were raised.

What we're filling or not filling in our heart. Going back to that question of enabling versus helping in a loving way. What were those things specifically with your son that you think back on now that you enabled him?

That it actually worked against him? For me, I think it was making excuses. Making excuses for the trouble he was getting into and the... What did that sound like in your head when he got into trouble?

What did you say to yourself? Well, we were living in Southern California, Huntington Beach. He was a young kid that got caught up in the punk crowd. And the very anarchistic movement, you know, it was all anti-establishment and he would get thrown out of school.

He'd play hooky. I'd make excuses. Well, you know, the teachers don't understand him or they don't really appreciate his intellect. Well, these are things that all of us as parents do. I mean, that's why I wanted you to express them. I think to some extent we all do, but that's a hard one because I think a lot of parents don't have that bet. You know, the history that I have, but a lot of them have gone through some painful things.

So they're compensating somehow. Well, you want to be understanding. Oh, well, yes. There you go.

You got it. So for me, that excuses was a big thing for me. What was the breaking point between you and your son? What was that incident that arrested your attention? And you went, oh, we've got a lot of work in front of arrest.

That's a good term arrested because my son was arrested on New Year's Eve. Actually, in fact, he got he had a horrible motorcycle accident, almost killed himself. He was metal pins in his arms and his legs. He was lucky to be alive and got caught back up in the drug movement. But see, it was pain. It was pain management. Opioids were so prescribed.

So there he is back into drugs again. And the SWAT team broke into his house and arrested him. And I got a call because I my name was on his lease. I paid for the house for a lease.

I put my name on it. And it was a nightmare when I walked into that house after a SWAT team. You don't even you see it on TV, but you can't comprehend what it's like in reality. And the house itself was a trash can. I mean, there were just bottles everywhere. It was New Year's Eve. There was a bit of party there. It was I walked in there.

I thought this is no human being should live like this. But then the connection to me really was that I put my name on the lease. I pay for this. It's not this mess I'm looking at. I'm financially liable.

So that's one enabling right there. Oh, my gosh. Big, big, big hit. And that woke me up in a way that, you know, I don't know that I have ever really realized before. So I'm standing at the sink, dumping out liquor into a sink, looking out this window that was broken, because that's where they threw the smoke bomb in the window. The whole house smelled acrid like chemicals from the SWAT teams. It was crazy.

And I'm thinking, how does somebody live like this? And that connection was just so hard for me to make that Chris was back into this lifestyle again. Why couldn't he get off that gerbil wheel? But it wasn't just why couldn't he get off the gerbil wheel? Why couldn't I get off of it? And I realized at that point I had to stop. I had to completely stop. And that's my sanity steps.

I had to stop doing what I was doing and figure out why I was doing it. And no more focusing on him. I wasn't going to bail him out either.

That was the last time I bailed him out. I think, you know, that's where we're going to come back next time and speak to those things that you learned, the acronym sanity and what that stands for. And that's really the basis of your book, trying to help parents be better equipped than you were as they begin to face these difficulties with their, I would say, codependent adult children and what they're, you know, what they're getting out of the relationship with mom and dad. So let's do that at the end here, Allison, without knowing those things, I'm mindful that we have pretty much ripped a Band-Aid off of some parents that are listening, that they have that 20 something child. And perhaps it is a prodigal child. Perhaps it is related to drug abuse or some of those extreme behavioral things that some people get themselves into, particularly in their 20s.

And what word would you have for them? Before you had your moment, your realization that I've got to change direction, God, I need your help. What would you say to that parent that is listening, going, wow, OK, I need change? I would say that one word is hope. Never give up hope. There's you can change.

Your child can change. God is beyond capable of taking care of this nightmare that you're in. So hang on to that hope. Realize that if we have hearts filled with hope, nothing's impossible. So we just can't give up hope.

And that's it. We get so frustrated and fearful and just tired. Parents get tired. So especially at this time, 20s, chances are this didn't just happen overnight, that they're having challenges with whether it's a dysfunctional child, failure to launch child, a troubled child. This isn't an overnight thing.

So it's been going on for a while. And we just get tired and we want to give up. So I would say just hang on to hope that anything's possible. What did you do specifically when you felt you were leaning into hopelessness, though? There had to be those nights when you're laying your head on your pillow and you're saying to God, I don't want to assume, so correct me if I'm wrong, but, Lord, I don't see hope here.

Absolutely. And it was hard just to say I just I just can't deal this. I bought a life insurance policy for my son when he was 25, 26 years old, so I could afford to bury him because I knew he wasn't going to live. I knew he was going to die. He was going to kill himself.

Drugs, motorcycles, something. So I'm thinking proactively, what can I do? OK, I can't I can't afford to bury him. I better pay for this life insurance policy. And I remember sitting there thinking this is just not how it's supposed to be. This is not how parenting is supposed to be. And realizing that, OK, I had to shine again. That's where I had to shine the light back on me.

Why am I doing this? It's not so much why why our kids are doing the things they're doing. That's important. But how have we contributed to this? What is it that we have to do? What is it that we have to change to be able to have hope, to be able to help these kids in a helpful way and be able to separate? It's a separation because we're just you know, we're still connected to these kids, you know, and there's got to be that separation. Yeah, no, I so appreciate that, Alison, in your heart. And I see the tears and, you know, it's still raw. And that's appreciated by the people that are suffering and going through it right now.

And I love the idea. Hang on to hope. That's all you've got. And let's come back next time and cover the steps and the ideas that brought you even greater hope than simply buying an insurance policy.

Right. Alison, thanks so much. And I hope if this is an area that you're living in or you know somebody who is living in this space as the parent of an adult child who's struggling, call us, get a copy of the book. We'd love for you to be a part of the ministry to help other families. If you can join us in that way, either with a monthly gift or a one time gift, we'll send you a copy of Alison's book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.

If you can't afford it, the content is so important, I believe, to put help into your hands. Just get in touch with us. We'll get you a copy of the book. We'll trust other people.

We'll take care of the expense of that. And boy, the main point here is if you are in trouble, call us. We have a great counseling team who can help you, who can talk with you about what you're seeing and what you're experiencing so you can find, hopefully, godly equilibrium and good ideas on how to move forward.

Yeah, don't go this journey alone. Our number is 800-AFAMILY, 800-232-6459, or the link for help is in the episode notes. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for this episode of Focus on the Family. Plan to be back with us next time as Alison continues sharing her story and insights and we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. Did you know nearly 60% of American adults don't have a will in place?

That's a big number. And not having a will can leave a heavy burden for family left behind. If you need a will but don't know where to begin, let Focus on the Family help. Download our resource, 15 Questions to Ask When Preparing a Will. It's our gift to you at focusonthefamily.com slash prepare my will. That's focusonthefamily.com slash prepare my will.