Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out

Doing Life with Your Adult Children addresses the challenges parents face when their children reach adulthood and leave home. Jim Burns offers practical guidance and encouragement for navigating the shift in the parent-child relationship, drawing on both personal and professional experience. Burns addresses common questions parents encounter during this transition, including how to respond when a child's choices cause concern, whether to offer advice, how to distinguish between enabling and helping, what boundaries to set if an adult child moves back home, how to respond when a child seems not to be maturing, how to relate to a grown child's partner, and how to maintain healthy financial boundaries. The book also covers supporting adult children whose values differ from your own, principles related to faith, and the grandparent role. It explores how parenting evolves as adult children navigate their own lives while parents adjust to their changing role.