How do you cope with less-than-happy feelings resulting from your relationship with your children?

My daughter is 21 and, legally, an adult. However, like most people her age (I teach college and have some experience with this), she is less an adult and more of a delayed adolescent. As such, her behavior can swing wildly from very mature and tempered, to child-like, pissy, and moody. To add to it, she has social and generalized anxiety.

She lives with us and likely won’t be out on her own for 5–10 years.

So, what do I do when I’m not pleased with her behavior? I call her on her behavior immediately, explaining how it’s inappropriate or hurtful and then I drop it immediately. I try not to engage past that and avoid lengthy debates. They never prove fruitful and can devolve into yelling, which I have no interest in (despite being really good at it).

Instead, by saying my peace and moving on quickly she can sit with what I said and either learn from it or ignore it. It’s honestly 50/50 which way it goes. Either way, I remind myself she’s just an overgrown teenager and try not to take it personally.

Then I go rewatch Star Wars.

I get along great with one of my sons now that I have gotten past the bumps of adjusting to the way that he and his wife are living their lives. My other son is much more problematic. We went through a period of estrangement and over a number of years had many honest conversations about mistakes I had made in rearing him. I was coached to just listen and not defend and I got better and better at it. We have reconciled but we are still not intimate in the way I would like and I do not get to see his family as much as I would like. This is still a heartache but I’ve realized the control is all his and has more to do with his own issues than anything I can do.

I can’t edit what I wrote but I realized it may not be answering your question. I guess what I’m saying about the problematic relationship is that I’ve ceded control to that son who lives far away and generally do not express my dissatisfactions. If he were still living in my house or close by, I might be inclined to bring up issues. With the other son, I have more leeway but I still think the parent has to do a lot of accommodating to continue a relationship. Obviously, if either were being self-destructive or destroying parts of my life, I would bring up the issue with them. Btu sons are well into adult now; it would be different if they were young adults perhaps.

Do either of these answers help?

It really depends on what the challenges in our relationship are and, of course, how old they are. I had many challenges with my children as they were growing up. When I got divorced, I got primary custody of my three children, my 6 yo daughter and my twin 2.5 yo sons. Over the years, their mother (and her parents to an extent) would lie about me or say things to try turning the kids against me. Of course this was confusing for the kids. I made it a point to never bad mouth their mother or their grandparents to the kids or when they could overhear me if I did to someone else. Example: One day my daughter who was only 6 or 7 at the time was having a good day. We were doing things together and things were great. The phone rang and it was their mother. She asked to talk to the kids. I put my daughter on and after a few minutes the phone call ended and my daughter came back into the room, as angry as a hornet at me. Her mother had told her how horrible I was and that I had attacked her and pushed her down one time. This was a partial truth. I came home from work, she was supposed to be taking care of the kids but instead was living online and was shit-faced drunk. She started a fight and ended up getting into my face. After she pushed me several times and hit me several times, I pushed our of my space. She backed into a chair and plopped into it. It had happened almost 2 years before the conversation with my daughter, but that was the mentality I was dealing with.

So when my daughter came in angry at me, I asked her why she was mad at me. She told me that she was mad because I had pushed mommy down one time. So we talked about it. I told her what happened and told her I did, indeed, push mommy because I wanted her to stop hitting me. But I didn’t take pride in it and told her I wasn’t happy about doing it. She looked thoughtful and said “I remember that.” I asked her what she remembered and she said “I remember that happened just like you said. Why doesn’t mommy remember it that way?” So then I had to have a talk about how mommy had had some drinks that day and sometimes when people drink they don’t remember things clearly. Of course when she told her mom that the next time she called I, of course, had her ranting at me. But that is another story.

I guess in short, when the kids get upset with me or when there is a rift between us, I try to open up the lines of communication and tell them as much as I think they can handle or as much as is appropriate. Yes, it bothers me when there is strife between us, but I have to at least try to understand what they are upset about and to talk through it.

I see now I was not precisely clear in the details. I’m looking for how you handle your more difficult emotions that arise from your relationship with your adult child.

First help is Acceptance. It is not necessarily anything you did.
Be careful not to be negative. Come from a caring place in your conversations. Do not be afraid to ask for what you need in an non judgmental way. Things like this take time especially as they are growing as a young adult. They are changing and spreading their wings and may need some distance. Some may never get it.
Just don’t beat yourself up over it and try to not overthink it.
I wish you all the peace you can have in moving through this.

I understand that I am not central to the lives of my children anymore and that is both a loss and a liberation. Relations are good with both my children and if we are not invited round for Christmas this year I can accept the reasons for it. I rarely, if ever, feel upset with my kids and I’m happy they are now parents themselves and are quite independent of me. Relations with my grandchildren are excellent.

@Hawaii_Jake The same way. Communication. The last “rift” I had with my children is when the babies were 18. I wanted to move to NC but they didn’t. They didn’t understand why I was just up and moving, giving them the option to move with us or stay in the house until it sold. When I talked to them about the reasoning, they fully understood and the issue went away.

I think that letting unhappy feelings fester is the real problem. Address them, get them out so everyone can fully understand what everyone is feeling and then get it settled.

One of my adult children thinks their mother is the cause of all the negatives in their life, and has cut all contact with their mother. Much of this has to do with “repressed” memories of certain traumatic events in their childhood (personally, I think those memories are false memories).

It is devastating to my wife and I am very saddened. There is nothing to be done, they have made their decision. We will honor that, and will go on with our lives.