How to Connect with Your Troubled Adult Children by Allison Bottke

Author:Allison Bottke
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736962407
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

A New Connection

In some cases, building a healthy connection may require us to demolish an unhealthy one—like the connection that comes when we are enablers.

One of the most crippling wrong connections we have with our troubled children is enabling them to avoid responsibilities and escape the consequences of their actions. Rather than helping them grow into productive and responsible adults, we make it easier for them to become much less responsible. We are enablers.

An enabler notices a negative pattern of behavior yet continues to allow—to enable—the person to persist in his unhealthy actions. Simply put, a parent’s enabling provides opportunities for adult children to comfortably continue their unacceptable behavior. This scenario is never good for child or parent.

Sadly, though, the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior is blurry for many enabling parents. Not only may we be unaware of what it means to enable—and that’s often the case—but we’re equally fuzzy about what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. It should, for instance, be unacceptable for a child to borrow the family car with a full tank of gas and return it on empty and without any intention of paying for the fuel she used. It should be unacceptable for an adult child living at home to sleep all day, stay up all night playing video games, and leave a mess in the kitchen for someone else to clean up. It should also be unacceptable behavior for an adult child to scream and swear at a parent or sibling, no matter what mental illness he is dealing with.

When we parents continue to allow behaviors like these, we are establishing, if not reinforcing, a pattern with our children that will be hard to break. When we allow their inappropriate behavior to occur again and again—when we accept behavior that should be unacceptable and allow bad habits to take root and even thrive—our enabling eventually becomes as natural to many of us as breathing. All the while, though, a nagging feeling deep in our hearts and souls tells us that something very wrong is happening.

Yet, accepting unacceptable behavior seems to be standard operating procedure for many parents of troubled adult children. Why do you suppose that’s the case?

Far too often, it’s because we haven’t stopped to apply the N step in SANITY, which is “NIP Excuses in the Bud.” Enabling parents have an uncanny ability to make excuses for troubled kids.

We make excuses for their anger, disrespect, lying, cheating, stealing, verbal abuse, property damage, laziness, and additional actions we would never accept from anyone else. Yes, many of our sons and daughters are struggling with serious issues, but that is no excuse for their negative behavior or for us to tolerate, much less enable, it.

Does any part of this discussion of enabling resonate in your spirit? Grab your notebook and make a list of your child’s behaviors you think should be unacceptable—and some of them may be actions you’ve tolerated far too long. If your child is living with you, add these items to the Residential Agreement contract you’re going to develop.

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