Doing Life with Your Adult Children by Jim Burns Ph.D

Author:Jim Burns, Ph.D
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2019-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUATION

When a child is born, that child is totally dependent on his or her parents for survival. The bond that takes place is quite amazing. I remember telling one of my daughters that the day she was born, a piece of my heart was taken from me and placed squarely in her heart. From that day on, I was never the same. I would have died for her. But as strong as that bond is, an inevitable and essential part of a healthy parent-child relationship is moving the child from dependence to independence.

In their bestselling book Boundaries, psychologists Henry Cloud and John Townsend describe the healthy and necessary process of individuation and separating from parents as “the child’s need to perceive himself or herself as distinct from mother, a ‘not me’ experience.” I like how they sum it up: “You can’t have ‘me’ until you first have a ‘not-me.’”19 Cathy and I experienced this process with all three of our girls, but I especially remember one experience that marked the transition for our oldest daughter. When she was just graduating from college, she wrote an article for the school newspaper that included this statement: “I had to disown my parents’ faith to begin to own my own faith.” Those were hard words for us to hear, but then we realized that this was a healthy move of individuation in her faith.

Jesus made a compelling statement about individuation when he said, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Matt. 19:5). You can’t have a successful marital relationship if you are still tied to your parents’ apron strings. This need to leave parents is key to healthy individuation. For young adults to experience maturity and autonomy, they need to leave emotionally, spiritually, and physically. So the individuation process requires something of both the adult child and the parent. The adult child needs to leave to become mature and responsible, and the parent must release the adult child to become an independent person. This process rarely happens without a few bumps and bruises.

Each stage of parenting has its set of joys and challenges. From potty training to dealing with a troubled teen, we may sometimes think there could not be a more confusing or difficult stage than the one we’re in. Yet for many parents, it’s this final stage of trying to balance care and concern with respect for privacy and individuation that truly is the most difficult stage of all. The natural distancing from parents that takes place in young adulthood comes as a shock to parents, although they probably engaged in the same distancing with their own parents. When communication is reduced—sending fewer texts, keeping things private, not sharing information about friends or who they might be dating—this stage of parenting can be both painful and confusing. Parents who spend nearly two decades knowing virtually everything there is to know about their child suddenly feel left in the dark.

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