Bonus: Relating to Your Adult Children (Part 3) - Walking Through Crisis With Your Adult Children

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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Walking Through Crisis with Your Adult Children

Guests: Dennis and Barbara Rainey

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

Air date: March 3, 2017

Bob: Even after your children have grown up and left the nest, what's happening in their lives can continue to have an impact on your marriage. Here is Dennis Rainey.

Dennis: A crisis with an adult child?—it can threaten the marriage of the parents, because the parents can begin to turn against one another as they process grief and they're not off the same page. One wants to rescue and the other wants to let them hit the wall. I mean, the combinations are endless here; but what has to happen is—I think a couple has to go to their knees before God and then ask, in faith, for wisdom.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, March 3rd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. It still requires a lot of wisdom on the part of a parent to know how to relate to a child when he or she is all grown up. We’ll talk more about that today. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Friday edition. You know the story from the Bible of the Good Samaritan; right?

Dennis: Right.

Bob: The guy is off in the ditch—he's been beaten by robbers, who have taken his money—left him for dead. The people pass by and ignore him until a Samaritan comes by. The Samaritan stops and helps him out. I mention that because we've been talking this week about relating, as parents, to our adult children. You and your wife Barbara, who joins us again today—Barbara, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Barbara: Thank you, Bob.

Bob: You guys have told us that what we need to do, as our children reach adulthood, is to get to a point where they are emancipated—where they are no longer under our authority. But there may be times when we pass by, and they're in the ditch.

Barbara: Yes.

Bob: Then: “Do we ignore them when we find them in that situation?” That's the subject we want to explore today:

2:00

“What happens when your adult child finds himself or herself in trouble / in crisis? When do you step back in; or when do you pull away and say: ‘You know what? You're grown up. You're going to have to work your way out of this one yourself.’” That's a tough issue for parents.

Dennis: It is, Bob; and I think, on this one, instead of beginning with what your adult child needs, I want to pull back. In the midst of a crisis—I want to talk to parents about what the parents need as they relate to their adult children in crisis; alright? First of all, I think we need, as we relate to our children, a healthy perspective of God's grace, His mercy, and His forgiveness. You know, Ephesians, Chapter 4, verse 32 says that "We are to forgive one another just as God, in Christ, has forgiven us."

3:00

The problem is, as parents, when our children fail, as adults—and they go through an abusive marriage, or get involved in a relationship that's shameful, or an addiction, or maybe go off the deep end and become a full-blown prodigal / publicly dishonoring us—

Bob: Yes.

Dennis: —well, a part of our fiber, as parents, is—we want to grow old, being honored by our children and fulfilling the fifth commandment. The fifth commandment commands children, “Honor your father and mother, that it may be well with you, and that you may live a long life in the land which God gives you.” Well, it’s a command to the children to honor their parents; but it's also a need of the parents to be honored in their later years by their children.

When our children go through a crisis, whether it's self-inflicted or whether they are a victim of some other person, there is a sense in which their shame becomes our shame.

Bob: Yes.

4:00

Dennis: And if we, as parents, do not have a healthy perspective of grace—that we're all sinners / that all have failed and that we all are in need of Jesus Christ to have a right standing with God—then they're going to find it very difficult to relate to their adult children.

Bob: Right.

Barbara, you've heard of those young ladies, in particular, who—in the first few years of marriage, have marital issues come up—and they run back home to Mom and Dad and say: "Oh, he's doing this. He's doing that," and they're crying and all of that. I've heard every response from parents—from taking them back in and comforting them / to leaving the door locked and saying, "You go home and work this out on your own." And you never are sure: “Which is the right decision?” because you don't know all the circumstances that are going on back home. How does an adult parent make a decision in a moment like that?

5:00

Barbara: Well, I think you have to have a basic framework to operate from; that is that you are assuming some things about the health of the marriage. Basically, what our approach would be is—their first responsibility is to their spouse. And so, when our daughters have talked to me about issues, I'm always pointing them back to their husband.

I even wrote one of my letters—we talked on another broadcast about some letters that I've written—and one of the letters that I wrote was about being careful about how much you say about what's really going on in your marriage; because it is private—it's between you and your husband. You have to be so wise and cautious about what you say and to whom you say it, because you are going to color someone else's thinking about your spouse.

It's so important that you coach your kids—your married kids—on what to say...