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

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That's focusonthefamily.com slash get help. I got a call because 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 see it on TV, but you can't comprehend what it's like in reality. And the house itself was a trash can. There were just bottles everywhere. It was New Year's Eve. There would have been a party there.

I walked in there. I thought, no human being should live like this. Well, that's Allison Bottke sharing just part of her dramatic story as she told it last time on Focus on the Family, describing some of the heartbreaking situations that she experienced with her adult son, Christopher, and the introspection she had to really go through to figure out what's going on. Allison is back with us today to share more. And your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly.

I'm John Fuller. John, my heart aches for parents like Allison who have struggled to raise and encourage and support their children. Yet nothing seems to help these young adults succeed by whatever measure we're measuring that by.

Maybe you know what that's like. Maybe you're in that period of your life where your adult children are struggling and you're not quite sure what to do. You may have a prodigal who's walked away from their faith. That's probably the scariest position a Christian parent can be in. Or your adult child is living with their boyfriend or girlfriend, another common phenomenon, whether you're in the church or outside the church.

Maybe they're still living in your home and seem to have no motivation, no plans for moving out. And you're worried about that future. We know a lot of families are in that boat.

Maybe not in the same area of the sea where the storm is really cooking, but you're heading toward that difficult area. As we shared last time, we want to help you change the dynamic of what's going on in your family. That means identifying the problems, recognizing the mistakes you've made in the past as a parent, and then developing a plan of action to create healthy boundaries and ultimately entrust your adult child into God's hands. We had a great conversation with Allison Botkey last time. And I'm looking forward to more of this today and more of the solution that she's written in a great book called Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children, Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents.

And we're going to cover those six steps today. And if you'd like to get a copy of Allison's book, we do have that, of course, here at Focus on the Family. Our number is 800, the letter A, and the word family.

Or click the link in the episode notes. Allison, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Thank you for having me. We shared part of your story last time about how your son Christopher struggled with drugs and the wrong friends and all those things that we as parents are concerned about. It actually even led to illegal activity and various other problems throughout his young adult life. You've admitted or talked about what you did to enable him over the years as a loving mom, trying to help him the best way that you knew how. I think all of us as parents have that part of our heart that we're saying, yes, we want to help. Some may have a better guard about whether that help will be the best thing for that child or if withholding some of that help could be the better wisdom.

And we mentioned that last time. You finally came up with a strategy for parents who are in that same trap that you found yourself in. And it's based on a word that you've come up with called sanity. I love that. We all need sanity as parents. And we're going to hit that today.

Let's start with that quick overview. What does sanity, the acronym, what does it stand for? Sanity is what we get when we learn how to set healthy boundaries and live a life that pleases God. So for me, I was going through the insanity, the gerbil wheel of insanity that really motivated me to think, okay, I want off this gerbil wheel of insanity.

What do I need to do? And at that moment, I didn't think of sanity steps. It was I have to stop. I have to stop what I'm doing right now. I have to stop behaving the way I am. I have to stop my actions.

So I wrote down stop. So it was a whole process, Jim, to go through finding these sanity steps. I knew I had to stop repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. And I knew I needed help. I needed to be around people that would hold me accountable, that I could learn from and grow from. I started therapy.

I started really reading everything I could on boundaries. I didn't realize the issues I had. So I needed to be around. So that A was assemble supportive people. And I wrote assemble people, nip excuses in the bud. I had to stop making excuses, not just for my son's behavior, but my own.

So that was nip excuses. And I had to implement some kind of a plan. I'm a proactive woman.

I was a businesswoman. I said, OK, I can do this. I need a plan. I need a plan of action.

I need something tangible that I can look at and write down and actually do that's tangible. So that was implement a plan. T was trust the spirit. I had to trust that God was in control. And I so often went over him. Yes.

And this is really that's how that connection really. When the SWAT team raided my son's house and I was standing there dumping out liquor. I heard the voice of God say, stop, stop, stop. You can't do this. I think, OK, I can't. I have to stop this.

I have to trust that voice. And a lot of parents and I found this to be very true. A lot of parents will say, I knew I was doing something wrong. I knew it wasn't right. I knew I should have stopped.

I knew when he asked me for more money, I shouldn't have given. But I just didn't listen to that. So we're praying for wisdom and discernment. We need to listen when it comes.

So that's the trust. And wise yield everything to God. It doesn't mean give up. It doesn't mean give up.

I'm just tossing in the towel. But it means trusting that he knows best. And if I'm leaning on him and praying for wisdom and discernment, I need to follow that growth that I'm going through and experience the pain. I needed to experience the pain so my son could eventually experience it. And that's a hard thing. And to trust that God's going to take care of him. Right. And that would be the most difficult, I think, for any of us as parents.

But let's now go back and let's dissect all this. Because I think this is the helpful part of the two-day program. And I want to make sure we do put thoughts and good ideas forward for the parents who are struggling. Starting back with S for stop negative behavior. Give examples of what parents are doing wrong to enable their adult children. Stop the flow of money is a big one. For things that have to stop, it's very individual for all of us.

We're not all making these like mistakes. But typically the big ones are stop the flow of money. Stop making excuses. Stop coming to the rescue. Stop being a landing pad for your child. Stop your own issues. Stop your own swooping in. Stop your own fear.

If you can stop fear, if you can stop being a prisoner to fear and guilt. There's a lot of stops. I had pages of stops, Jim, that I wrote down.

No, that's good. Edna was a woman that was working three jobs. And what was she doing with all that energy and the money she was making from three jobs? Why was she working three jobs? She was covering the car payment for her daughter who had this very fancy SUV. She was buying clothes and food for three grandkids. She paid for her daughter's auto insurance.

She paid for just about everything and had to take these jobs to afford it. And I met her at a yard sale. And I just kind of looked at her.

I've become very outspoken about this issue, about the boundaries and why. Because I asked her, why are you doing this to your detriment? Because she was tired. She was exhausted. She had to jump in her, beaten down. I saw her car, broken down vehicle. And her daughter is driving a fancy Navigator SUV that she's paying for.

Brand new. Yes. And I asked her, I said, why don't you think you deserve a decent vehicle?

Why don't you think at your time, don't you deserve not to work so hard? Yeah. Let's move to the A in sanity. The A stands for a symbol, a support group. Why is this critical for parents who are struggling? And what do these support groups look like?

See, accountability is a key factor here. If that's in your church family, a lot of parents don't want to bring up the challenges that we're having with our kids, especially if drugs are involved or incarceration, or if the kids are in and out of jail, if they're in and out of relationships. I've talked to parents who have daughters who have three, four, five kids, all by different fathers. So it's a nightmare what a lot of parents are living with right now. You know, often, Alison, I talk about that as chaos.

We have a great series by Ray Vanderlaan talking about that the world may know and Ray's a good friend. And that's one of the teaching points that he'll provide, that Jesus came to bring God's Shalom, his peace, to a world of chaos. And chaos entered the world when sin entered the world. And that's what you're describing, just this everyday chaos that begins to occur. Insanity.

And it's insanity. So this group, I can imagine that some of these parents, we feel like we're learning this almost just experientially. And you get into a corner of a room and you say, hey, are you experiencing this with your adult child?

And yeah, by the way I am. And then you start to figure out, wow, that's not working very well. But it is almost like a code of some sort between parents, because we don't know if we're doing it well or not doing it well. And especially there's such a pressure in Christian families that we feel we're supposed to be behaving in a certain way and our kids aren't supposed to be doing this. And I was a young believer when I was in church realizing, and I looked around and said, nobody around me could possibly have a son like mine. He's in and out of jail and the situation, they just. But once I started talking about it, I was stunned at how many people come at that same place.

So when you can be around other people and realize you're not alone. Alison, let's go to N for sanity. It stands for nip excuses in the bud. What are some of those typical excuses a dysfunctional adult child will try to use on their parents? Well, they've become, sadly, become master manipulators in many instances. What does that look like?

I think I know it. Yeah, it's like I couldn't get to work because my car broke down because I didn't have the money to fix my car. So I didn't go to work, so I need you to loan me this money so I can get this. And it's one excuse after another. You can take a bus, walk, do something.

You can get there if you need to go. So that nip excuses is a big one for me with my son when he was in his 20s and early 30s was the cell phone. I paid for his cell phone, and it got to be very expensive. And he, of course, told me he would pay me back.

And that happened multiple times. I didn't get paid back, and there I am in major debt paying for this. But the excuse was if he doesn't have a phone, he can't call me or I won't be able to know if he's safe or not, like he ever really called me a lot on this phone. I'm paying for it, but I didn't hear from him.

So excuses are rampant. In that regard, with nipping it in the bud, you were in the courthouse, and you had a realization about how oblivious Christopher was to your pain. What happened in that courthouse that caught your attention? I am a very emotional person, and I was sitting there watching him go through this. They walked him out with the shackles and the orange suit, and I started to cry. I'm not weeping crazily, but I'm definitely sad. And I found out later that he'd called a friend of mine and said that I was just trying to get sympathy, that I was just trying to make it all about me. And I said, I don't understand this because it's not all about me. I'm caring for you.

I'm sad at what's happening. But at that point, I'd stopped bailing him out. He knew he was there. I wasn't bailing him out.

So he was trying to maybe manipulate you. Exactly. It all gets so convoluted when we've been on this gerbil wheel of insanity for so long. To extricate ourselves from this and really step back and look at what the next steps are is critical because we're caught up in the chaos and the insanity. We're caught up in fixing. We're caught up in the fear and the shame and the guilt. And until that's where S comes in, until we can stop and step back, we're not going to be able to nip any excuses.

We're not going to be able to get support. We're not going to be able to do any of these things until we can separate ourselves from our children's actions and see how much of us is involved in this, what choices we've made that have contributed to this. I often think if I hadn't started bailing him out so soon, things might have changed from his history because I would bail him out and I made excuses. You can't stay in jail. I'm going to bail you out. My son can't be in jail. Well, he should very well have been there because he did something incredibly wrong and there's consequences. He never had to experience consequences for a long time because I bailed him out all the time. And when you get to that realization as a parent, it's hard because then we want to beat ourselves up and that's not going to serve any purpose either. So that's part of that nip excuses. This is happening to my son because I was a bad parent.

That's not it at all. I did make poor choices. So did he. We all do. God's going to forgive me and allow me to move on. But what does moving on look like? Allison, we've covered the S, the A, and the N of sanity. Now let's talk about the I, which you have as implement rules and boundaries.

This probably is the most difficult. We can recognize where we've fallen short as a parent, our own misgivings, et cetera. When we talk about implementing rules and boundaries, and that comes out of Galatians 6, I believe, carrying each other's burdens, how do we do that? How do we begin to set those rules and boundaries and really change our own behavior?

That's exactly what it is, is changing our own behavior. Being able to have an action plan is critical. If you don't have anything to aim for, what's that saying?

You'll hit nothing every time. So we've got to have a plan. What's the outcome that you want as a parent? Is it for your child to launch? Or is it to perhaps help them through addiction? Or is it to know if you're supposed to take care of your grandkids?

Because a lot of parents now are taking care of grandkids because their kids can't, because they're either in jail or prison or they're addicts and they aren't capable. So it's really what is it that you as a parent, what do you feel that you need to do? What's the next step? What are expectations? And write that down.

I'm a big believer. I'm a writer, obviously. I'm a big believer in writing things down so we can see it because we don't know what we're remembering in that throes of emotion that we're so often in. And if we're communicating with adult children that are dysfunctional or troubled, they may not remember. So I'm a big proponent of writing things down in a plan and presenting it to our adult child if they play a part in this, such as maybe moving out or what it is that that looks like to you. And if you're going to no longer give money, if you're no longer going to support them or they have to do this in order to get that, you've got to write that down.

So that plan, I had to write down everything, how I saw my life, what the steps were. This is not because of a troubled adult child, but we had two girls living with us for about a year each for some college time. And I finally had to kind of set a boundary for my wife and myself and say, you know what, we've been parenting a long time and we've loved having you, but it's time for you to move on.

We need some room for ourselves. Now, that conversation went down pretty well. What do you do if the child doesn't get it? Well, some of them don't get it, and I have chapters on dealing with anger. It depends on what situation your child is dealing with. There are mental and emotional illnesses. We've got a lot of kids that are bipolar, that are depressed, that are addicts. So what are they capable of doing? You've got to be aware of this. And if they're showing psychopathic behavior, there's some kids that don't have empathy, they don't have sympathy, and they can get extremely angry. So you've got to be prepared.

If you are going to set this boundary, what might happen? And brainstorm the heck out of that in your support group. He might get physical. What am I going to do? And be prepared to do it.

If you've got to call and get a restraining warrant, that's what you have to do. So it's hard, but if you start looking at it and writing this down, and on the other side of that coin, it's not all negative. On the other side, a lot of our kids don't know what they're capable of accomplishing because we've been accomplishing it for them. So when we step back, there's a very strong possibility that these kids are going to get a clue and get a grip and be able to move forward. We've just been hanging on to them for too long. So we've got to have that hope that if we can weather this storm, they may come out on the other side incredibly independent and feeling self-respect, feeling that they've done something good.

When you've been taken care of all these years, and now it's up to you to do it, and you make these small successes, that's pretty amazing for young people. And you can see the changes that happens in their life. Exactly. Allison, we've got to get through the other two letters, the T and the Y. T is trust your instincts.

Y, yield everything to God. The trusting of your instincts, oftentimes that can be borne out of fear. And your instincts may be right, but you have to, I think, be checking with other parents that have the network to be able to do that. But normally instincts are correct. I don't want to understate that. But I'm just saying sometimes fear can overplay that instinct that you have, but you should always be listening to your heart. Let me put it that way. Yes, and being able to trust that and deal with the fact that you may go through some pain and fear through that. What's an example of that for you?

I have a really good one. There was a woman who contacted me, and this actually happens a lot. Parents are saying that their kids have fancy cars, and they've got money, and they're taking trips, and yet they're still living at home. This son was living at home, drove a fancy car, had a fancy motorcycle, had a lot of money, and wasn't really working.

Mom didn't see him really go out to work much, so she's kind of giving excuses to herself how is he affording this. It turns out he was dealing drugs, had dug a hole, drilled a hole in the floor of his bedroom, and had a floor safe put in the house underneath the carpet. He was arrested. The police came in to Mom and Dad's house and searched the whole house, found this floor safe filled with money and drugs, cocaine, a lot of cocaine.

Mom is really clueless to this, but the police aren't buying that she's clueless to this. She ended up getting arrested and ended up being an accomplice. She had to clear her name. It cost her a lot of money for a turkey feast to clear her name. She wasn't an accomplice, but it's her house. She's paying the bills. He's living there right with her. How on earth could she not know he's doing something illegal when he's driving and not working? She ignored these feelings, and she said to me, I just knew something was wrong. She didn't have a support group at that time. She didn't know what she was going to do. It was tough. I see these stories unfolding often, and it's frightening.

Trusting your instincts is a good rule of thumb, and formulating how to approach that with your adult child, etc., really important. Yielding everything to God. That sounds so easy, but probably the most difficult. Well, I say giving in isn't giving up, so sometimes we have to realize that we're going to go through a mess for a while. I've got this plan now. It's going to be tough, but God, you're going to help me. You're going to help me get through this and yield that. Letting go of expectations is really a critical thing, and to expect that God is in control. I'm going to walk through this one day at a time and trust that the plan is going to work out, but realize it's going to be painful. That's the bottom line, and that being able to be painful is having your support group that you can lean on. It all ties together. Stopping beating ourselves up.

Talk to a counselor if you need to. It's so intricate in this surrender, which is what it is. It's surrendering that, okay, I've made some mistakes, but it's a new day.

It's a new dawn. I'm moving forward, and we'll see what happens. Allison, that old cliché of letting go and let God do his thing with your adult child sounds so easy. It sounds so good, but it's not.

No, it's not. It's not easy. It's not easy. My son now is a believer and strong believer and has been free of heroin for 20-some years now, but has a real challenge with pain meds. After being in so many accidents, so many motorcycle accidents, he's now reaping the consequences of a very rough lifestyle. For me, I'm not bailing him out. He's in prison. He's serving time. That surrender is trusting that God's going to bring him around has been a very positive thing for Chris. He's exactly where I think God wants him to be. He's learned the Bible back and forth. He's in a prison fellowship study. So he's looking at life in a very different way now, but it's taken a long time. And to respect that he knows now, he won't ask for money to bail him out because he knows that's not going to happen. So we've now developed a different connection.

Yeah, that dependency is over. For parents to develop a true connection with their adult kids is important, not the symbiotic one where you're bailing them out all the time, but a true connection. Describe the need to apologize as you develop that action plan with your adult child.

The parent should apologize to the child. What does that apology sound like? I'm sorry that I didn't trust you enough to live your life. I'm sorry I didn't give you the independence that you needed to grow on your own. I'm sorry that I kept bailing you out. I'm sorry that I didn't believe in you enough.

And I'm sorry that I didn't take care of myself. And that makes me sad now because so many parents are going through this, and they aren't taking care of themselves. God has a plan for us as well as our kids. So if we don't know what that plan is and we aren't trusting in him and we aren't depending on him and really walking that faith walk, they're going to continue on that drill wheel.

They're never going to get fixed. So that's what the apology is. It's really saying, I'm sorry, and I'm moving on now. I'm sorry you're going to go through some pain now, but this is how it is. Allison, you have hit the nail on the head, and I think your book has really helped us to think through those things that we need to know. Parents with adult children, where have we blown it? What do we need to do? How do we help them? By helping ourselves see things a little differently.

I love the way you've laid this out. I mean, I'm even thinking for Jean and I, things that we did well and things that we may have done not so well and the consequences to our boys. And one of the great things to do is simply to talk with our adult children. Hopefully you have a kind of relationship where that, I guess that awareness that hopefully this program has brought you will allow you to have that discussion and certainly get a copy of the book so you can become more familiar with what Allison is talking about.

You know, a radio program like this just touches on the surface. We can't go into all the detail, and the book does do that, so I would really encourage you to get a hold of us, get a copy of the book. If you can give a gift of focus of any amount, if you can support us monthly, that'd be great. To be a part of the ministry here at Focus on the Family, we'll send you a copy of the book to say thank you. If you can't afford it, like I said last time, we'll get it to you because these types of resources are so critical and so important to you in your parenting journey that you need them.

And I believe in it, I know Focus believes in it, and just get a hold of us, we'll get it to you, and trust others, we'll cover the expense of that. But again, Allison, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for your tears of pain, and I think tears of joy that God is moving this along. Your hope is evident, and your trust in Him is evident, but it ain't easy.

It ain't. You are absolutely right. Yeah, so keep on being that good mom that you've been. Amen? Thank you.

Yeah, you bet. Well, get in touch with us if you'd like to talk to one of our counselors, if you need or would like that book for somebody else, Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children. And if you can, donate generously. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or the link is in the episode notes. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.