The Real Reason Why Your Adult Child Is Manipulating You

As a coach for parents of struggling adult children, I frequently hear stories laden with feelings of helplessness, hurt, and frustration.

Are you sick and tired of your adult child doing any of the following?

• Lashing out and disrespecting you and showing no remorse for doing so.
• Texting or calling you with a financial crisis and demanding you rescue them.
• Riding into family gatherings on a horse named “Victim” creates tension all around them.
• “Losing their memory” by acting like you never did anything to help them in the past.
• Intermittently being nice to you, you let your guard down, only to then get assailed for a word choice you unwittingly made. Further, they blow off your apology and won’t let the issue go.

In my book, Anxiety, Depression, & Anger Workbook for Teens, I explain the emotional struggles that teens often persist in their lives as adult children. In fact, I am seeing an increasing number of adult children who struggle to manage anxiety, depression, and anger. When not handled well, these big emotions drive immature acting out toward targeted others.

Guess who is usually on top of the heap being gaslit, manipulated, screamed at, ignored, and trashed into the gossip dumpster? That’s right, mom and dad, you are the ones with the exalted status of being treated like garbage by your struggling adult child.

A Special Note of Empathy to Struggling Adult Children With Toxic Parents

To be fair, many adult children who act hurtful are truly hurting underneath the surface of their aggressive, avoidant, or passive-aggressive behaviors. If you are reading this as an adult child who is struggling in life, and you have parents who have traumatized you by their truly harmful behaviors, please hear that I empathize and support you. No one deserves to be abused.

Guilt Is Usually the Culprit for Enabling Parents

Guilt is the real reason that many parents fall prey to their adult children’s manipulations. It can really distort your judgment.

• Guilt will silence your assertive voice because you start to believe your own thoughts and feelings don’t matter.
• Guilt will lead you to reach for your phone to Venmo or whip out your credit card even though you owe it to your adult child (and yourself) to let them be more financially self-reliant.
• Guilt will lead you to make bogus excuses for your adult child who makes lives miserable for others.
• Guilt will lead you to believe–hook, line, and sinker–that you can never do enough to help your struggling adult child.
• Guilt will suck you into falling into manipulation and gaslighting traps set by your adult child.

Yes, if you’ve done something you regret or even if you feel ashamed, apologize to your adult child and move on. Please realize though, that if you self-destructively dwell on the past, it can continually serve as a manipulation tool by your adult child.

When I coach parents of adult children to help them break free of the shackles of guilt, in most cases the situations that are being thrown in their faces are not so egregious.

Taking a Look at Your Adult Child’s Guilt-Inducing Playbook

Do these highly charged, manipulative soundbites sound familiar to you?

• “All you do is tell me to get a job, stop pressuring me or I will kill myself.”
• “You always favor (name a sibling) and never care about me.”
• “I thought I could count on you, but now you are proving to me that I can never count on you.”

• “Fine, if you are not going to help me then I will just end up on the street and die!”

Tips for Breaking Free From the Shackles of Irrational Guilt

• Watch the interactions from above by metaphorically suspending yourself from the ceiling. Observe closely the process of how your child is manipulating you stops you from being ensnared by their unfair, distorted words. That’s right, the more you take your observing ego out of the interactions, the easier you will find it to empathize without swallowing counterproductive guilt.
• Be calm, firm, and non-controlling in your demeanor. My book, 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child (2nd Edition) provides many examples of being calm, firm, and non-controlling that work well with adult children. The more you model self-discipline over your emotions, the more you will model the same to your struggling adult child.
• Stop worrying about “not having a relationship.” Unless you have self-respect and set boundaries, they will not respect you. What kind of relationship is a lifestyle of being emotionally manipulated and abused?
• The next time you get an urgent text that says, “I need money,” respond by saying, “I’ll have to talk it over with your father [or, if you are single, ‘I’ll have to think it over’] and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” This will allow you time to consider it and give you a chance to think and talk about it beforehand. It will also show that you are remaining steady in your course while presenting a united front.
• Encourage the child to problem-solve by asking, “What are your ideas?” If they reflexively respond with, “I don’t know.” Then politely say something like, “I believe in your resourcefulness and know you’ll feel better about yourself when you give this some further thought.”
• Remember you are not in a popularity contest. Be prepared for your child to reject you. They will most likely come around later.
• Remember that you always have the right to say “I changed my mind” about a previous promise. While living with you, encourage working children to contribute part of their pay for room and board. If unemployed, for starters, have them help out around the house with gardening, cleaning, or other chores.