4 Things Parents Need to Tell Their Adult Children

I spend most of my clinical time helping clients, both adult children and their parents, negotiate the sometimes treacherous, painful territory of parent/child relationships. And while the scenarios and specifics change, adult children return to the same few core needs again and again. Here are the things adult children most want to hear:

1. "I’m so proud of you." Just like younger children, adult children want and need to hear their parents feel proud of them. I'm not sure children ever completely stop wanting their parents' approval. But adult children may feel embarrassed to ask for that kind of pride. And parents have told me that their children must know already, so they do not say it regularly. The good news is that parents can pick up this phrase at any time and hand it to their beloved children. Just as a reminder. Even if their child already knows.
2. "You are enough." This phrase goes hand in hand with "I'm proud of you." I work with many physicians, and, recently, one described transitioning from a resident to an attending physician. When she told her parents about her first job and the money she would earn, her mother did not express pride and joy at her daughter's hard work. Instead, Mom compared her daughter's new job to a more "prestigious" medical specialty with higher earning potential. With tears in her eyes, the accomplished woman in front of me described the feeling that she would never do or be enough. What did she need to hear? "Wow. We’re so proud of you and the choices you made. What you are doing is amazing." She needed to hear, “You are enough.”
3. "I believe in you." While parents sometimes think their children want them to have all the answers, adult children are often looking for their parents’ confidence in them. Parents are in the unique position to speak from knowing their child their whole life and the ups and downs their child went through. From that place of knowing their child, parents can hand their children the gift of confidence in them. In doing this, parents express their love and admiration for their child. They also bolster the adult child's confidence to solve their own problems instead of stepping in to fix things.
4. "I love you." Children do not outgrow the desire to hear that they are loved. And while the words do not expire if they’ve been said in the past, they carry new importance each and every time they are spoken.

Do these phrases feel obvious? Trite? Simple?

I hope so. I hope that these ring so obvious and true that reading them leaves you feeling like they are the bare minimum. In many families, these messages never happened, rarely happen, or stopped in adulthood. Far from babying an adult child, these phrases offer clear declarations of a love that has spanned decades.

And if these phrases have fallen off in recent years as your child has aged into adulthood, there's good news. They can be rediscovered.

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