“Today I am going to be open about my life with my adult kids. And I am going to do it without gritting my teeth…”
“How can I truly enjoy connecting with these kids who have outgrown me?”
“I always plan these family dinners to be happy feasts and they turn out to be times of disappointments for all of us…when can we get back to just having fun as parents and kids?”
“I realize that now that my kids have seen the world, I have to work harder to be enough of an entertainment for them.”
Parents with Adult Children who have lost the magic
Albert Einstein once observed two ways of living one’s life, “one as if nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.” Too many times as parents of adult children we present our outings, family dinners, “just hanging out” as as EVENT.
TRUTH: We need to be BOLD with JOY of LIFE.
Instead of performing for our adult children we need to celebrate our own lives and invite our adult kids to join the parade.
Often (especially in the fall when students have left home for the first or second year of college) parents feel sad, depressed, even resentful when their adult children call home or visit.
Unfortunately, a residue or gloom or sorrow invades our persona instead of the atmosphere of JOY and GRATITUDE.
What can you do to CHANGE the mood and thus the ENTIRE EXPERIENCE WITH YOUR ADULT CHILDREN?
Before the next family event, take a few minutes to pray and journal. Write several experiences from your past you are grateful for with this child. Repeat aloud the words, “I am grateful for _____ right now because of her ____.” Breathe in deeply the feeling joy and hope. Sound crazy? That is where the COURAGE comes in! Don’t be afraid of sounding CRAZY to yourself. (You might need to try this experiment when you are alone!)
In our achievement oriented society, we focus on the dinner or lunch or event to share with our adult children. We focus on the menu, the china, the setting. We want everything to be PERFECT and in that focus we arrive at the time exhausted and fatigued.
When we exhaust ourselves in preparation we inhabit the unspoken expectation that “this better be worth it.” What are we expecting? We truly set ourselves up for disappointment. A gratitude killer is the statement, “today could have been better.”
Instead, let’s turn the picture around: let’s breathe, pray, rest, order pizza, get out the scrapbooks, board games. Let’s SMILE in the mirror.
Recently, one husband changed one word in his vocabulary that turned EVERYTHING around in our morning routine.
As we stand in front of our respective mirrors and get ready for the day, instead of saying, “I have to do this today,” now Ted says, “I GET to…”
Yep, such a simple change of attitude. It makes us both smile. And that is contagious. When we are with our adult kids we make that (and a few others that I will share next week) verbal change and watch the game change.
Sometimes we have to be BOLD and COURAGEOUS about spreading JOY!
When our culture says, “go with the flow!”; when the status quo says “it is appearance that counts!” ; when it would be much easier just to turn on a movie instead of a turn on a conversation with your adult children… be bold and courageous and instead of bringing
PERFECTION to the party… BRING JOY!!!
What is your favorite way to bring joy to the lives of your adult children? I can’t wait to hear from you.
Practice Parenting 