Now, basically, we've devoted at least two decades of our life to being in control or at least semi-control of our kids, and then they became adults and we're not in control anymore. Well, John, today's topic is very relevant to you and me, and I think it's safe to say there are a lot of parents listening who will... benefit from this message from Dr. Jim Burns.
Jim's a good friend, a parenting expert, and the president of Homeward, which seeks to build God-honoring families, which I appreciate. And as Jim is going to explain, the transition from being the parent of a child to the parent of an adult can be tricky. And that's where we're living, right, John? This new territory for both parties is tricky.
Our kids are new at adulting, and we've never been the parents of adults. So... Since everyone is in a new role, it's an excellent time to get some godly instruction from someone who's been there, and Jim Burns fits the bill. I should mention also that Jim is a prolific author, and what you're about to hear is based on his book, Doing Life With Your Adult Children, Keep Your Mouth Shut, and The Welcome Mat Out. That's an easy book title, hard to do.
Here's Jim Burns speaking at the Legacy Coalition Grandparenting Summit just a few years ago. on today's Focus on the Family. I'm gonna give you some principles today. And these principles are principles that come out of research, but mainly out of my own experience having kids who are transitioning. And I'll be honest with you, our kids are amazing.
And they're now in their 30s. But they kind of bumped and it kind of shocked us even while they were at Christian colleges and whatnot. So here's some principles.
Principle number one. Are you ready for it? You may not like it. You're fired.
You're fired. Well, actually, you're not totally fired, but your role as a parent has to change. And sometimes we try to keep parenting the way we parented them even when they were teens, and that's not the case.
So you're still the parent, but you need to reinvent your relationship with your kids. And I want to give you part of the job description. description.
Number one is you have to give your kids the passport to adulthood, even if they're not acting like adults. You have to also rewrite the script of your life by letting go of control. Like I said, that's not easy if you're a control freak. And often, this will deal with grief, and we'll have to deal with some grief.
C.S. Lewis said it best, change always involves a sense of loss. And I don't know that Kathy and I saw this as loss until it started happening.
I remember the day that Heidi, our youngest, we dropped her off at school and we were driving back. We both cried, and we were both silent because we realized, no, we're going through some kind of a loss, and letting go of our children has to be counted as one of those necessary losses, okay? Our role changes, and so does theirs. There was a woman who I speak with quite a bit.
I love this woman. She is 45 years old. She is one of the top execs in the Silicon Valley at one of the main, main tech firms, and she has been incredibly successful, and she was telling me back in the green room a few years ago, that she had brought her mom out from Asia, and her dad had died, and so she had set him up. her mom up in a very nice home.
She named the city and that meant it was a multimillion dollar home. And she had her kids over and it was really cold that day. And so she was putting on the kids'coats and things like that after they were getting ready to leave. And her mother said to her at 45 years old, honey, put your coat on, it's cold outside. And she said, you know what, Jim, I don't know why I did this, but I got frustrated with my mom.
And so I just said to my mom, you know, mom, I'm very capable. I'm 45 years old. I bought you this house.
You know, I'm successful at what I do. Why do you keep telling me what to do? And furthermore, why would you tell me to put on my coat?
She said, it's cold outside and I'm your mother. So I said to her, what did you do? And she said, I put on my coat.
So again, it's not easy. Now that woman had a problem with what I'm gonna call principle number two. Are you ready for this? I'm gonna kind of do the shotgun approach at you.
But principle number two is this. If you didn't like the first one, you're not gonna like the second one. like this one either. Are you ready for it? Unsolicited advice is usually taken as criticism.
Experience is a better teacher than advice. And I think one of the hardest things to do is let our kids make poor choices and then realize that they're going to have to learn by experience. So here's the deal. Whenever we are intrusive with giving advice, what they hear is not the lesson we're trying to give them.
What they hear is that you don't trust them to be all right. all grown up. Even when they're not making good decisions, and so it's important for us to understand that.
See these scars? You guys can see the scars. That's from biting my tongue right here. Oh my goodness. Just, I have the answer.
I want to fix it, and then I have to bite my tongue. In fact, what I say under this idea of unsolicited advice is taken as criticism, is I think it's important for us to ask our adult children for permission. to give advice.
I remember one time Christy and Steve, Christy's my oldest, Steve's her husband, and the two grandkids, they were living with us for two months because they were transitioning from an apartment to Texas. And so they, you know, got done with their lease and They were saying, can we come? And it was the greatest thing for us because we got to hang out with our grandkids and Steve.
Christy was driving us a little nuts, but that's another story. So they're in an argument and I'm in the kitchen. So I'm kind of stuck.
They're in the little family room and they're having, having an argument over the fact that they were moving to Texas and how were they going to move and what was the most effective way to do it and the cheapest way. And Steve had a terrible idea, in my humble opinion. And I always say in my humble opinion, Kathy goes, in your humble opinion, you think you're always right, but that's another story.
So, and Christie's wasn't much better, but I had a better idea. So I listened. And then at the opportune moment, I came in and did my advice.
I said, hey, can I give you guys some advice? And Christie goes, not now. now, dad, not now.
And I went, okay, people pay me to give you advice, but they don't. So I go to the back room and I told Kathy what my advice was. And she said, that is really good advice. They need to take that.
Well, they didn't. So the next week after they had gone to Texas, I flew in, I think I was speaking in Dallas and Kathy was there to help get the house set up, watch the grandkids, things like that. And they're talking about the fact that half of the crib had had fallen off of the, oh, it was just as a horrible idea. It was like this crazy thing that he had on the back of a truck.
And so the crib had fallen off. We ended up having to pay for the crib at Target, a new crib. That was great.
Secondly, the bed, they had lost the screws to the bed, so they were not sure what to do. And the bed was just on the floor. It stayed on the floor the entire year, by the way. And then there was one other thing.
It was a dresser where they had pretty much killed the dresser. And so they were talking about this. It wasn't a good trip, right? And so I I said to them, well, you know, you guys, that's hard. But, you know, you kind of chose that way.
And Christy said, Dad, you had an idea. What was your idea? And I said, oh, this is what I would have done.
Dad, why didn't you tell us that? You would have saved us a lot of money, right? So I still think it's best to ask for permission. But here's the deal.
Your role changes. Your role changes from mentor and coach. That's where it goes.
So you were in control, and you're still mom and dad. but now you're a mentor and a coach. What I have found in the 30s, not so much in the 20s because it wasn't easy for us, but in the 30s, it's a really great place to be. In fact, yesterday we were driving.
We had a weird way of getting here and Kathy was in the car and our daughter called. She was in New York. She was working in New York.
She lives in California and she called Kathy just for mentoring and just for some insight and I listened to Kathy handle that and it was so beautiful but that's because the role has changed. Unsolicited. solicit advice is given as criticism, but she was able to give Heidi a lot of advice because Heidi needed it.
And frankly, our role changes. The Bible says something very interesting. The Bible says, so blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth.
You're not thinking about this. No, not at all. But they are, that sometimes when you're giving advice, you're giving them cursing. I'm not talking about cussing now, but that you're cursing them.
And so it says, bless or curse. What I want to say to you loud and clear is bless them. Be the people. bless your kids. Do you agree with everything?
No. We don't agree with everything that our kids say or do, but our job is to bless them. And when you bless them, that changes the relationship.
So that's principle number two. You ready for principle number three? Oh boy, this is a biggie. Here it is.
Become a student of their culture, not your culture. Their culture, okay? Become a student of their culture. What this means is that our kids are either millennials or Gen Z. Some of your kids are a tad bit older, but pretty much they're living in the millennial world. if you would, and millennials are different.
Millennials think different. Millennials act different. And today, many of us are saying, who is this kid, and why is it taking them so long to grow up, and why aren't they growing up with the same values that we taught them when they were younger? That's the main issue.
Our kids were raised in a Christian home, and now they're not living with our same values. Well, one of the things we have to do is understand their distinctives. I'm not saying you agree with their distinctives, but understand their distinctives. One of the distinctives of a millennial and a Gen Z is that they are absolutely shaped by technology. We're using technology, but they're shaped by technology.
It's how they work, how they date. How they meet people and get married, 39% now, 39% meet online, that's huge. But here's some other distinctives. One of the good news distinctives is that once these millennials, and Gen Z is 24 and under, so it's just happening now, but once these millennials get married, you know what the number one?
desire in their life is? To have good marriages and have good parents. Well, guess what?
That's where they need us as grandparents to be, you know, mentors in their life. And that's where they need the church. And we're actually seeing some of them who are fleeing the church are actually coming back when? When they get married and when they have kids. Because what it was, it was a good place for them.
And then they took a time off and now they're coming back. And so that's good news. One of the harder ones is this.
This is the distinctive. Are you ready for it? They view tolerance as a form of loving. So they have problems with a biblical worldview.
They were raised in the church. They don't have a problem with Jesus, although they don't agree with everything that Jesus would say sometimes when it comes to within the scripture. So they view tolerance as a form of loving. This becomes pretty interesting at Christmas and Easter dinners and birthday dinners. political world comes in because they may have a different view than you.
But again, we have to be students of the culture and we have to understand how they were raised. Here's one thing that they were raised. I call this the cringe factor, that your kids saw pornography at age 11. And today, your grandkids are going to see pornography probably at a younger age. Notice I didn't say some.
I said kids see pornography at age 11. You can Google me on this, okay? And so your kids at that level probably saw pornography. So they viewed sexuality different. Cohabitation.
1974, I know that's a long time ago, but hey, you were here. If I'm speaking to young people, they weren't. But in 1974, 75% of the population in America said that they would not live with someone before or instead of marriage.
Cohabitation. Today, 74 plus percent say that they would live with someone before or instead of marriage. Some of you have kids who are living with people.
or who did. And yet secular research teaches us that if people cohabitate, there is a greater chance when they get married of a divorce, there's a greater chance of adultery in the marriage, and less sexual satisfaction for some reason. So the point that I'm saying is our kids have been living with different experiences than the experiences that we lived with.
Gender identity confusion. I could spend all day talking about the gender identity craze. And the culture is on fire.
And so they have a different view and you can't understand their view and oftentimes they can't understand your view. Now that doesn't mean, I'm speaking in generalities, it doesn't mean all kids are like this, but it's important to know that the culture is like this. And we've got to ask this question, and this is a tough question for a lot of us.
Are we enabling or are we helping them? Nobody walks in and goes, I want to enable my kids so that they have a failure to launch. But the fact is, is that a lot of us do and we don't understand why.
So are we helping or are we enabling? That's a question we have to ask. The question we have to ask is, if we do that, are we really going to help them become responsible adults?
So here's the principle. They will never know how far the town is if you carry them on your back. And way too many times as parents, because we love our kids so much, we want to do that. I mean, a woman said to me, you know, my son is 22 years old, and I wish he would schedule his own pediatrician appointments.
Now, that's just irony on, like, several levels, okay? But, you know, what was she doing? She was enabling dependency.
We have to be careful not to enable dependency. So, Sean, he's a graduate of UCLA. He got good grades.
He and his mom and dad come into my office. And Sean just kind of has a smirk on his face. And he's just graduated from UCLA, spent a summer traveling in Europe. They seem to have a lot of money.
They live in Newport Beach, California. And now he's back at home, but he's getting up at one o'clock and he's playing a lot of video games. He's smoking a little bit of pot and he's not getting a job and it's driving the parents nuts. And he's a vegan and they're not vegan.
So the mom cooks a vegan meal for him and then cooks their meal. Please don't do that, okay? I mean, vegan, if you want to, your kids want to be vegan, fine, but let them figure that out.
So he's sitting on the couch and the mom and the dad are also on the couch, but she's hugging one side, the dad is hugging the other and Sean just has the whole middle couch and he's just thinking this is the funniest thing because the mom and dad are in a fight and I'm standing, they're out of control. I am doing it too. terrible job counseling because both of them are out of control and they're blaming each other and they're saying how bad it is and how Sean is. Finally, the dad just goes, Sean has a problem.
Sean kind of looks at his dad and I said, can I be, can I just jump in here for a minute? I said, I don't think Sean has a problem. I think you have a problem.
Sean has a great life. You're paying for everything. Sean all of a sudden looks at me and I said, who's paying for his pot?
Well, not us. Well, how does he get money? Well, we give him some money.
You're paying for his pot. You need a plan to help launch Sean, and he's got way too good of a deal. So he doesn't have a problem, you do.
Well, again, the goal is responsible adulthood. And I like to call this the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. So during the pandemic, I gained some weight, whatever. So I've been working out on weights.
I'd let you guys feel... Okay, but the other day I must have done something because my chest is painful and I know when we're you're at our age people are going to go, oh wow, is it a heart attack? No, it's not a heart attack.
It was pumping weights at 24-hour fitness. I think I was doing 35 pounds right here. So Pumping weight.
So this is the pain of discipline. This is the pain of regret right here. Right?
So we need to teach our kids that when it comes to this particular principle or they're going to have a failure to launch because entitled kids have a failure to launch. So what do we do? We have to land the helicopter.
We do. We need to land that helicopter. And we still sometimes have the helicopter.
You know, when I wrote the book, Doing Life With Your Adult Children, I'm so shocked and honored what a bestseller it is on Amazon and whatnot. But I laugh because I was speaking in Hawaii. There was a group of about 4,500. They interviewed me.
And then there was a little sign. and there would be not, you know, parents of adults. Well, they came through and they wanted me to sign the book.
You know who it was? It was like 28-year-olds. And I'd go, you can't be a parent of an adult. They, oh no, this is for my mom. She really needs this.
Her name is Claire, you know. So some of us just have to land the helicopter so that we can have a great relationship with them, so that we can build that legacy with our grandkids. Now what's fascinating is this next one is the biggie.
And it's basically this. when your grown child violates values. And we're in shock, right?
And that's, again, like I said, it's the biggie. And here's the principle. You can't want it more than they want it. So hard.
I love this phrase. Good thing Easter is a season and not just a day because some miracles take time. And I want to say to some of you who have your kids who are violating their values, I want you to know that kids do come back.
And sometimes, maybe if you have a younger adult who's still kind of going through that process, you know, sometimes it is when they get married, sometimes it was. And I know some of the issues that we're dealing with in in empty nest work and in grandparenting work is that when kids have a troubled situation and the parents aren't letting you connect with the grandkids for church or things like that. I totally get that.
But in many ways, there's some good things coming out of it. And especially people who live with these principles. So let me give you some, under this principle number five, you can't want it more than they want it.
Let me give you some good advice. Number one is you've got to offer them tough love. Now, please do not mix tough love with being mean or getting angry and getting frustrated always at them. No, tough love means you allow the consequences of their poor choices. to happen.
They're adults. There's nothing you can do about that. A woman asked me one time, you know, what do I do with this?
And I said, does she know what you believe? She was living with her boyfriend. Does she know what you believe? Yes.
Does she know how you feel? Yes. Then expand the relationship because she's not going to stay with this guy, odds are saying.
And if it crashes, then you need to be safe. That doesn't mean you have to agree. It means you can be in a relationship loving. God honoring relationship with them and still expand the relationship.
You can't be a one-topic parent is what I'm saying. Because too many times when our heart is breaking because a kid is violating a value, and it could be drugs, it could be that they're living with somebody, it could be that they've walked away from faith and the list goes on. But when that's the case, we become one-topic parents.
And so we pour our energy and our time and our effort just into that when in fact we've got to expand the relationship because they still like to go get coffee. They still want to talk about. snowboarding or surfing or whatever it might be, see.
And so it's so key for us, and yet it's hard. I remember when our daughter Becca was going through some tough times at Azusa Pacific University, a Christian school. And I would go up most Tuesdays.
Kathy teaches a Bible study on Tuesday. And so I would go up on Tuesdays and have. dinner with her and I would always have something in my pocket.
I'm always prepared and it was like a long list of things I wanted to talk to her about. And there were days we had that conversation and days we didn't. Days I listened to her talk about boys and life and, you know, school and complain about this or whatever.
But what I realized was that once... she did crash, and she kind of did, that I needed to be that safe person. So again, she knew what I believed, no doubt.
She knew how I felt. But constant criticism, even if it's true, breaks the relationship apart as long as they know what you believe. Okay. And I think that's a real, it got quiet in here, by the way. And I think one of the reasons it got quiet is because we know.
We even know this, but sometimes we don't do this. So we can't bail them out. I have a friend who had a daughter who, in college, had an open container.
Really a neat girl. I've known this girl most of her life. and she had an open container.
She was just barely at the intoxication level, probably semi-safe to drive. This guy has so much money that he could have easily had an attorney get her off of it. They decided not to.
They didn't bail her out. So here was a woman. woman who was caught.
He picked her up at jail. Talk about a bad experience for him. And it was mainly the open container that was the problem.
So she had to go to DUI school. She had to pay her insurance, which went up like $2,000. It was on her record at school. It was on her record in business for 10 years. Best decision they could have ever made.
Guess what? She doesn't do that. So they didn't bail her out.
Now, he had the capacity to do that, but he chose not to. That was good parenting, okay? And also, you just can't dump your anger and your frustration on them. So in a time when all of us are probably concerned about certain issues with our adult children, one level or another, I mean, we still are. It's what we talk about.
I mean, Kathy and I have been together for a couple of days trying to get here. and what did we talk about? We talked about our adult kids.
We talked about our grandkids. We talked about our fears. We talked about the culture.
We talked about what kind of culture our grandkids are going to be growing up in, even with our kids growing up in a culture that wasn't all that friendly to God-honoring values. So again, for us, it's so key that we realize that we can't want it more than they want it. Here's the bottom line.
The bottom line is if your kids are messing up and you have heartbreak, here's the bottom line. You know what they're asking? Just one question. Do you still love me?
Do they know that you love them, even though you don't approve of some of their actions? Who's the safe person in their life? Who's the cheerleader? Because there's other things that you can be cheering about.
And I know stories are really, really tough. But if you want to make an impact on their life, the way we continue to do that is to show unconditional love. Jesus did this. He looked at a prostitute and said, go and sin no more. And so in that process, he wasn't saying what you, you've been doing is great, but he didn't kill her either when he had the capacity to do that in that story.
So, do you still love me? You know, girls are in their 30s now, and we were at a wedding in Italy, actually. My daughter did a destination wedding. It was actually her second wedding. So, she had a COVID wedding, and then they were going to go on this destination wedding.
So, I got to do both of the ceremonies, and I said, I hope your second marriage is as good as your first one has been, you know. But Kathy and I were sitting there, and we were just kind of watching what was going on, and our grandkids were running around, and actually they had been on our laps, and we were throwing them in the pool, and we were swimming at this place in Italy. And our kids were doing better after a while. They'd adjusted. Life is better.
And I put my arm around Kathy, and I said, you know, it's working. It's not working perfect. None of them married youth pastors.
I thought they were going to. But you know what? It's working. To the best of our ability, it's working.
And I thought of a, I know I should think of scripture, but I thought of a Disney movie, Lilo and Stitch. This is my family. It may be small.
It may be broken, but it's still good. Yeah, it's still good. That's how I feel about my family. It's not perfect. It's somewhat small.
There are times when we would have to say it's broken, but it's still good. Yeah, it's still good. Last principle, find joy in the empty nest.
And I think it's important. important for us to understand this concept, that when your child leaves home and their life fills up with fresh experiences, follow their lead and do the same thing. You've got to find fresh experiences.
Part of those fresh experiences is what has happened in our emptiness is It's given the freedom and the excitement to put energy into our grandkids. Learning from things from the Legacy Coalition, from me, I've read through the Bible three times with James, who's my grandson and my namesake, and my heart is wrapped around his. I've read through the children's Bible three times. I didn't do that with my kids. I wish I could say I did, but I didn't.
But all of a sudden, it's gotten much more serious in that way. A successful life and a well-lived family life is never accidental. Lean into this.
You have so much time now on your hands to build a legacy. of faith between your grandchildren and you. And I know sometimes it's complicated.
I like to call it a love affair between generations, and it is a love affair between generations. Kathy retired from working with kids who have autism so that she could be a fully engaged grandma, and I respect her so much for doing that. She is a fully engaged grandma. There's sometimes when we are exhausted. but it's good.
There's a scripture that I want to leave you with, and it's a scripture I've kind of just found in my own life, and I found it through the message version, and it goes like this. It says, be alert, be present, don't you see it? There it is. I'm making a road through the desert and rivers through the badlands.
And I think our job is to be alert, be present because God is not finished with you yet. This is the time for us to lean into our legacy and make a difference from generation to generation. Well, I love that vision Jim is giving us there to let go of control and have a respect-based relationship. with our adult children, and by extension, our grandchildren.
And I know many of you might have a prodigal adult child, and if there's grandchildren involved, you might not have access to them, and that breaks my heart to know that you're in that spot. If that's you, give us a call. Our friendly staff would count it a privilege to listen to your situation and pray with you. And if needed, you can request a call back from one of our Caring Christian counselors. It's all free.
We provide that service because others have supported us and give us the ability to do that. If you'd like to learn more about having a healthy relationship with your adult child, I want to recommend the full book by Jim Burns called Doing Life with Your Adult Children. Keep your mouth shut and the welcome mat out.
The book will give you encouragement for all of the changing seasons of your child's journey. through adulthood with much more detail than what we're able to cover today. We'll send Jim's book to you for a gift of any amount.
If you can do that monthly, it really, really helps us. And again, don't think of it as transactionally. It's something we're doing together to build the kingdom of God. Make your donation and request your copy of the book, Doing Life with Your Adult Children, when you follow the link in the program description, or give us a call. 800-the letter A and the word family.
Thanks for watching Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.