Bonus: Relating to Your Adult Children (Part 2) - What Adult Children Need When They Get Married

Barbara Rainey's Top 10 Interviews

Click Here to Listen to the other parts in the series
Relating to Your Adult Children (Part 1) - Relating to Adult Singles
Relating to Your Adult Children (Part 2) - What Adult Children Need When They Get Married
Relating to Your Adult Children (Part 3) - Walking Through Crisis With Your Adult Children

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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What Adult Children Need When They Get Married

Guests: Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series: Relating to Your Adult Children (Day 4 of 5)

Air date: March 2, 2017

Bob: Alright; imagine this scene—one of your children was recently married. She is now back from the honeymoon—been back in town for a couple of days, and you haven't heard from her. Do you call her, or do you wait for her to call you? Here's Barbara Rainey.

Barbara: I think that the best course is to give your children as much freedom as you can, and then let them invite you back into their lives rather than showing up all the time and calling every day and there being a sense of "Just leave us alone!" because sometimes parents are over-involved from the beginning when they—what that other person really needs is for them to step back and be invited.

This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, March 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Are you giving your adult children the space they need? We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. We're talking this week about parents dealing with adult children and how our relationship, as parents, has to change as our children become adults. I always think about Stu Weber's wife Linda, who joined us years ago on FamilyLife Today—the point that she made when her son had just gotten engaged—you remember this story; right?

Dennis: I do remember the illustration she used.

Bob: She gave a present to her daughter-in-law, and it was the night of the rehearsal dinner; right?

Dennis: Right.

Bob: And the daughter-in-law opened up the box and pulled out two strips of cloth—

Barbara: Apron strings.

Dennis: —that had been clipped.

Bob: It was Linda’s way of saying: “The relationship is changing—I acknowledge that. The apron strings belong to you now.”

2:00

Dennis: Yes; and to talk about the apron strings—we bring Barbara back to the studio, my bride now since 1972.

Bob: Have you clipped off some apron strings?

Barbara: We have.

Dennis: No doubt about it!

Barbara: We have.

Dennis: Contrast that with parents who lengthen the apron strings when their kids get married.

Bob: The tether, you mean?

Dennis: Oh my goodness!—and the problems that that brings! You know, in raising kids, you move from high control to ultimately no control. You move from total influence to—how should I say it?—minimal influence—

Bob: Limited influence?

Dennis: Limited influence—

Barbara: Yes.

Dennis: —maybe that’s the better way to state it.

Bob: Well, and that’s what I’m wondering: “Does the relationship between a parent and child change to the point where there is virtually no influence / where there is no control?—or once they’re married, do you still have some level of control?”

3:00

Dennis: Yes; it can move to that Bob—at the decision of the child. It really does depend upon the adult child, if he or she is going to allow the parent, or the parents, to influence them.

Barbara: For us, we really wanted to be invited into our adult children's lives as opposed to assuming that we could have influence. We wanted to have some influence—we still wanted to keep the relationship going—and we hoped they would call and ask for advice on buying their first house, or a job, or some of those kinds of things; but we didn't assume that would be the case. We didn't want to presuppose anything with them because we wanted them to want our involvement in their lives.

Bob: And you've gotten that invitation from your children; right?

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: If you hadn't gotten it—let's assume for a moment that a child didn't call and ask for your opinion on buying a first house, changing a job—any of these things. There was still a cordial relationship but a clear signal of distance.

4:00

Dennis: Hands off.

Bob: Would you observe those boundaries and say, "That's the way it ought to be"?

Barbara: Yes; because to do otherwise is to not really give them their freedom—it's to not give the apron strings / it's to say, "I still know better than you, and you need me." All that's going to do is create resentment and hostility, and it's just not healthy for our relationship. So, I think if any of our kids had made it clear that they didn't want our advice, or our thoughts, or our counsel, we wouldn't have given it.

Dennis: We're talking here about what adult children need when they get married.

Bob: Yes.

Dennis: I think they have some very specific needs. First, they need the blessing and the approval of their parents as they begin to establish this new relationship that they've never had before—that they've never experienced before. They need us to, I think, provide—if not in a ceremony, certainly through our words and our attitudes—a sense of s...