Loving Your Adult Children E-Book

Gaye B. Clark

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 214

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Gospel-Centered Framework for Navigating Relationships with Adult Children As kids grow, so do the pains of parenthood. Patterns of miscommunication and resentment can cause damage over the years, leaving parents and adult children with a fractured relationship. Confused, hurt, and sometimes angry, moms and dads can struggle to know where to turn for help and where to look for hope.  With grace and empathy, author Gaye B. Clark comes alongside readers bearing the weight of parenthood. Encouraging readers to view themselves as image bearers of God first and parents second, Clark shifts readers' focus to their relationship with Christ while showing how the relationship between parent and child can be a catalyst for understanding the gospel. Loving Your Adult Children examines the fruit of the Spirit in relation to parenting adult children, offers study questions for reflection, and shows how walking with God is the best next step for struggling parents.   - Appeals to Parents of Adult Children: Empathetically addresses the pain and suffering associated with parenting  - Lasting Gospel-Centered Hope: Shifts readers' focus from their horizontal relationship with their children to their vertical relationship with Christ  - Biblical Perspective: Discusses each fruit of the Spirit and how they apply to relationships with adult children - Reflective: Study questions provide tools to help readers apply the book's content 

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“Our friend Gaye Clark has written a wise book on a weighty topic—long-term parental love. With engaging illustrations and biblical examples, Clark helps us care for our adult children more meaningfully. And even better, she helps us look to our Father God as we love our adult children. We—and they—are not alone in this journey.”

Ray and Jani Ortlund, President and Executive Vice President, Renewal Ministries

“There are precious few resources to help guide parents in the launch phase of their parenting years. As a father of a child in college and three more soon to follow, I am thankful for the wisdom of this book. Being a mom or dad to an adult child is complicated and fraught with potential landmines. With experience, biblical wisdom, and grace, Gaye Clark helps families move into this new season of life. You will want this book in your library.”

Daniel Darling, Director, The Land Center for Cultural Engagement; author, A Way with Words; Agents of Grace; and The Dignity Revolution

“We never stop being parents, but what does parenting look like when our children are grown? Gaye Clark’s book, Loving Your Adult Children, is a gospel-saturated, grace-infused, and Christ-exalting look at parenting adult children. She points our gaze to the one who loves our children best. As a parent on the cusp of being an empty nester, I needed this book. You will too.”

Christina Fox, counselor; speaker; author, Like Our Father: How God Parents Us and Why That Matters for Our Parenting

Loving Your Adult Children

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Growing Together: Taking Mentoring beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, by Melissa B. Kruger

Keeping Your Children’s Ministry on Mission: Practical Strategies for Discipling the Next Generation, by Jared Kennedy

Mission Affirmed: Recovering the Missionary Motivation of Paul, by Elliot Clark

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Loving Your Adult Children

The Heartache of Parenting and the Hope of the Gospel

Gaye B. Clark

Loving Your Adult Children: The Heartache of Parenting and the Hope of the Gospel

© 2024 by Gaye B. Clark

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Amanda Hudson, Faceout Studios

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers. All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-8932-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8934-8 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8933-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clark, Gaye B., 1963- author.  

Title: Loving your adult children : the heartache of parenting and the hope of the gospel / Gaye B. Clark.  

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2023034432 (print) | LCCN 2023034433 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433589324 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433589331 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433589348 (epub)  

Subjects: LCSH: Parent and adult child—Religious aspects—Christianity. 

Classification: LCC BV4529 .C5215 2024 (print) | LCC BV4529 (ebook) | DDC 248.8/45—dc23/eng/20231204 

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034432

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034433

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-03-21 10:33:01 AM

This book is dedicated to Carolyn Alcorn Clark.

Thank you for teaching me how to love my adult children.

Contents

Introduction

1  Faith

2  Repentance

3  Grace

4  Hope

5  Church

6  Patience

7  Goodness and Kindness

8  Gentleness and Self-Control

9  Faithfulness and Joy

10  Peace and Love

Conclusion

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

Children and Their Parents

Long nights battling colic. Finagling a sick child to take his medicine—and not throw it up. Crawling out of the store with a screaming toddler because he did not get the toy he demanded. Changing the messy diaper of an eighteen-month-old acrobat who leaves you covered in poop.

Experiencing events like these while the radio played “You’re Gonna Miss This” was laughable, until we realized Trace Adkins told us the truth. We blinked, and it happened. They grew into adults.

What is an adult child? Isn’t the term itself a bit of an oxymoron? A simplistic answer might be an eighteen-year-old, or in some states, a twenty-one-year-old. For the purposes of this book, I will be discussing adult children as biological or adopted children of parents who are twenty-one years old and up, living outside the home, and financially independent from their folks. However, I use adolescents and adult children who still live in the home as illustrations as well. I acknowledge those who live under a parent’s roof are under a separate set of obligations from those who do not. Yet, the twenty-four-year-old may have more in common with an eighteen-year-old than he might like to admit.

Becoming Adults

Becoming an independent adult is far more nuanced than some may think. A child may legally become an adult at eighteen, however, a certain part of the brain—the prefrontal cortex—isn’t fully developed until he’s closer to twenty-five. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for reasoning, planning, attention, and focus. It helps us control our emotions and facilitates our sense of judgment.1 We also use it to understand and predict the consequences of our actions. When your teenage daughter is pulled over for going seventy miles an hour in a forty-five zone and says, “I don’t know how this happened,” she isn’t completely off her rocker.

But when you give her consequences (and you should), you are helping her prefrontal cortex develop. Knowing this detail about her brain development might also keep you from rolling your eyes, at least a little.

While the twenty-four-year-old who is living on his own and the eighteen-year-old living at home are in different circumstances, they can both benefit from parental involvement. Wisdom on the parent’s side is knowing how much involvement to have and when, especially where the twenty-four-year-old is concerned.

In this book we’ll see how troubles that remain unresolved in childhood and adolescence can come calling as our children mature into adults. With grown or nearly grown adult children, it can be easy to despair and think it is too late to improve or repair our relationship with our kids, too late to communicate our love for them in a way they can hear and receive. But is anything too difficult for God?

This is a book for parents of adult children, and yet it may also benefit parents of younger children. It is not a book on how to parent per se. Rather, it is an invitation to renew your love for Christ and shows how that love can inform your parenting. Our vertical relationship with God is the single most valuable tool for enhancing our horizontal relationship with our children.

The Goal for Christian Parents

We are all broken vessels—sinners. We have all failed to live up to God’s perfect standards and need his mercy just as much today as the moment we came to Christ. His grace alone saved us, and we need to keep that in mind as we parent our children: he alone can save them, too.

When it comes to righteousness before God, we are not superior to anyone, including our kids. In the battle for their souls, we should be fighting not against our children but beside them. We fight a common enemy: sin and unbelief.

Christians don’t primarily raise their children to become fully functioning adults, although that is part of their task. Instead, their primary aim is to teach their children to place their hope in God alone through the finished work of Jesus Christ. It would be tragic to bring up a child who was able to obtain an excellent job, marry, and raise a beautiful family—become someone who was considered an upstanding member of his community—but does not have a life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ, “for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36).

The Christian parent of an unsaved adult child has the same mission. He continues to pray and point his adult child to Christ as he is given opportunity. Since none of us know God’s exact plan for our children’s lives, we can pray, press on, and when weary, lean on our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should not feel like a failure, for none of us know God’s timing in salvation, even when it comes to our kids. His plans and purposes extend far beyond our desires.

Overall, God gives sinful moms and dads the difficult task of bearing witness to the salvation that can be found in Christ, trusting him completely with the outcome. This gives parents reason to cry out to God for the grace needed to refine their own hearts first before they seek to reprove their children. Part of evangelizing their kids is modeling what repentance looks like in their own walk with Christ. “First tak[ing] the log out of [their] own eye” (Luke 6:42) would be a great place to start.

In short, Loving Our Adult Children uses key components of the gospel (faith, repentance, forgiveness, and grace) as well as the fruit of the Spirit to enhance your relationship with Christ and, as a result, strengthen the bond with your adult child. It is my hope this book will point both you and your adult child to an everlasting love, an everlasting hope: Jesus Christ.

1  Mariam Arain, Maliha Haque, Lina Johal, Puja Mathur, Wynand Nel, Afsha Rais, Ranbir Sandhu, and Sushil Sharma, “Maturation of the Adolescent Brain,” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 9 (2013): 449–61.

1

Faith

Where did the time go? This quintessential question grips us and messes with our emotions. One car brand captured this feeling perfectly in a commercial that featured a little blond-haired boy who packs up his belongings and puts them into the back of the family car.1 His faithful puppy tags behind. The boy returns to his room for another load. Something feels strange here. His dad, looking out into the hall from a bedroom, raises an eyebrow when he notices an oversized box making its way down the stairs. Then he sees his son juggling the massive package and struggling to keep it upright.

“Buddy, you need some help?”

“No. I’m good.”

A family photo catches the boy’s eye. He stops, adds it to the box, and then heads for the car. As I watch, the knot in my gut tightens. In the garage, Mom clutches a stuffed animal she found in an old chest full of toys. She rummages through the other treasures.

“Hey, do you want these?”

“Why don’t you keep those, Mom?”

He drags a blanket to the car, but his dog pulls it back toward the house. The boy tugs the blanket in return. “Come on, Moe. I have to go.”

Where is this little fella going, and why don’t his parents stop him? His folks join him at the car; an open trunk obscures the view. When Dad shuts the trunk, he and his wife have aged fifteen years. They turn to hug their son, who has transformed into a young adult. The young man then stoops to pet his beloved old dog. “See ya later, Moe.”

The narrator, voice tender with emotion, says, “We always trusted our Subaru would be there for him someday. We just didn’t think someday would come so fast.”

The vehicle pulls away from the drive, his parents hold each other as they watch the car drive out of sight, and the word “love” closes out the one-minute spot. Cue the tissues because we’re all a mess just watching.

Hidden Idols

No pain grabs us quite like parental pain. It seizes our hearts as we raise our children, but more so as they embark on the grand adventure called adulthood. We roll back the video of our kids’ childhood, smile at the happy times, and, if we’re honest, wince at things we regret. Some of us even weep. Is it too late?

Through tears, this is what I’ve heard parents say: “He’s all I’ve got,” “If I lost my daughter, you’d have to just put me in a mental institution,” “He’s my heart and soul,” and “They are everything to me.”

When you have a healthy relationship with your adult children, all can seem right with the world. Research has borne this out—“young adults and their parents perceiving their relationship as good has been associated with low psychological distress and high life satisfaction.”2 But parents and adult children don’t always agree on the state of their relationship.

Parents may believe their relationship is healthier than their adult kids think it is,3 and this mismatch can blindside them when an adult child cuts off communication. One study found that “1 in 4 U.S. adults have become estranged from their families.”4 A Journal of Marriage and Family article reported that 11 percent of mothers ages sixty-five to seventy-five with two or more grown children were estranged from at least one of them.5 Clinical psychologist Dr. Joshua Coleman, who surveyed 1600 estranged parents, explained in an interview,

Ironically . . . estrangement happens because the adult child is in some ways too loved, too taken care of. And one of the consequences of a much more intensive, anxious, guilt-ridden, worried, involved parenting that has been going on in the past three or four decades is that sometimes adult children get too much of the parent, and they don’t know any other way to feel separate from the parent than to estrange themselves.6

Getting too much of a parent—resulting from what is referred to as “helicopter parenting” and identified by a lack of boundaries—is the most common (but certainly not the only) reason adult children distance themselves from their parents. Yet how could caring—or caring too much—for the children God gave us be wrong? Christian counselor Christina Fox writes, “There is a fine line between doing all the necessary things to care for and raise our children and making all that we do be about them.”7 Our outward behavior has an inward motivation. And it all goes back to what or who we treasure.

Worship God Alone

Who are we supposed to treasure? More specifically, who are we to treasure the most? The psalmist writes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing [and no one] on earth that I desire besides you” (Ps. 73:25). Could desires for our children actually be a turning away from this kind of worship, an idolatry?

Tim Keller defines idolatry as

anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything that you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would hardly be worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources on it without a second thought.8

Fox offers a similar definition of idols as turning to another source for “things only God can provide.”9

Overall, parents need both the truth of God’s word and his love to care for their kids without making them an idol. If we point our kids to Christ as we raise them, we will reinforce our primary devotion to God as we offer our children life-giving love and care. Some parents think they can teach their kids the gospel by simply taking them to church. But it isn’t just the church who will give an account before God concerning the care of children—it is primarily mom and dad.

So how are parents doing in this area? What kinds of regular conversations are they having about Jesus with their kids? Do children know how their parents came to Christ? Do children know how God is working in their parents’ lives now? Are parents willing to share some of the mistakes they’ve made and how God’s grace transformed them? Far from making them appear weak in their kid’s eyes, conversations like these can strengthen the bond between parent and child. These conversations empower parents’ faith in God because they remind parents that they are flawed vessels, dependent on the Lord to accomplish anything redemptive.

Model Empathy

A friend, Russel, expressed frustration because his son made careless errors in math that could have easily been avoided if he had only double-checked his work. His son, who tended to rush through many things, didn’t seem convinced that looking over his work would make a significant difference in his grade, let alone a difference in life outside of math class.

Around that time, Russ’s family had to postpone a long-anticipated family vacation. The reason? When balancing his checkbook, Russel had made a math error several weeks earlier. He added an entry that should have been subtracted. When he finally caught the error the following month, several hundred dollars he thought he had saved for the vacation just weren’t there.

He decided to use his own mistake to help his son. With tears in his eyes, he said, “It’s my fault we must postpone our vacation.”10 He explained his error and how he’d forgotten to double-check his work. “This is just one area where math will matter outside of class, son.” Without any lectures or ultimatums, his son’s efforts in math improved. Sometimes we can more effectively point out our child’s shortcomings by using empathy instead of condemnation. Loving God first includes bringing children “up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), but discipline isn’t always negative. It can also mean affirming our children when they do right.

Eyes to See the Good

When a mom came by to speak with me about her adult son, she said, “He won’t talk with me.” I happened to know both her and her son well. Mom was a demanding parent who had unrealistic expectations of her children. I asked her, “When was the last time you affirmed your son about anything he said or did? Even the smallest thing would do.” She told me she didn’t know of anything positive to praise. Ouch. No wonder her son refused to speak.

When we are angry with our kids or feel disappointed by them, it can be hard to see the positive. We need to pray for God to give us eyes to see past our frustration and annoyance. Sometimes amazing gifts hide amid the mess.

Historians call Benjamin West one of the great masters among American artists. His paintings line the halls of museums in America and Great Britain. In 1745, when he was seven years old, his mother asked him to look after his baby sister, Sally. When his sister fell asleep, he gathered his ink, paintbrush, and paper and began to work. His tools were homemade and weren’t neatly contained in airtight containers or ziplock bags. Ink spilled everywhere.

His mother’s return startled him. She surveyed the mess in front of her, but she was able to see beyond the obvious chaos of a child’s unsupervised creativity. She picked up Benjamin’s “masterpiece” and said, “Why, it’s Sally!” and kissed him.11 Benjamin West later remarked, “My mother's kiss made me a painter.”12 Benjamin West’s mother could have scolded her son and unwittingly frustrated his budding talent. But she didn’t. Instead, she had eyes to see the good.

Don’t Exasperate Your Children

In that same verse in Ephesians where Paul speaks of discipline and instruction he writes, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children” (6:4 CSB). Most dictionaries define “exasperate” as having strong feelings of irritation or annoyance. It builds up slowly over time with this significant wrinkle of misery: when we are exasperated, we feel as though there isn’t anything we can do to alleviate the circumstance.

Consider a teenager who said the loaded phrase, “But I can explain!” to which his mom raised her hand and said, “I don’t want to hear it. I’ve listened to your nonsense too many times before.” Mom had heard his share of excuses. But parents aren’t mind readers. She didn’t know what her son was going to say that day. He might have been about to give another lame excuse, or this might have been a different circumstance entirely. Unless mom was clued in by a dependable eyewitness, she ought to have at least heard him out. But she opted to cut him off instead.

And the son? He concluded that his mom not only refused to listen but also didn’t care. That’s exasperation. Over time, it can boil over into fury.

Parents exasperate their kids when they focus only on rules (or personal preferences) above their relationship with God or overdiscipline their kids in the name of holding them accountable. One way these can happen is when parents misunderstand their child’s developmental capabilities associated with his current age and place unreasonable expectations on him because they believe he is “wise beyond his years.” It’s possible for any child to display extraordinary wisdom in a given circumstance, but all of us need time to grow up properly in Christ.

Children can also become exasperated if their parents underdiscipline them. These parents could be blind to their child’s behaviors or simply have no idea how to address a particular behavior. As a result, their children grow up having no idea where the boundaries lay. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but one can begin to consider ways parents might exasperate their children.

Of course, Paul’s words in Ephesians do not mean that a parent must never make his children mad. Children (and adults, for that matter) don’t especially like being told no, even if it is for their own good. Sometimes children will be angry because their parents are being godly parents. Further, when dealing with adult children with an exceptionally long history of self-absorbed behavior, blame-shifting answers for their actions, there may come a time when it would be wise to no longer be willing to hear them out until you see evidence of repentance. Yet, this action shouldn’t be taken in the heat of frustration but only after serious prayer and seeking appropriate counsel.

Don’t Lose Heart

Navigating a balance between allowing our children the freedom to grow and flourish while at the same time disciplining them when necessary is not for the fainthearted. Parents of an adult child may feel they have done all these things to the best of their ability but their son still isn’t walking with the Lord. They are devastated when they hear him speak as confidently of his unbelief as they do about their Savior. Where is their hope now?

In Habakkuk 2, God assures the prophet, “the vision awaits its appointed time. . . . If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Hab. 2:3). Sometimes parents will have to white-knuckle their fingers around the promises of God’s word and not let go. They must keep trusting a loving and merciful God to order the ways of their child. In so doing, they remind themselves that they worship the Lord, not their children.

Later in this book, you will read a mother’s story who kept bringing her son before the Lord and almost drove her pastor crazy—yet never wearied her God. The fruit of her prayers benefited not only her son but thousands of Christians for centuries afterward.

Be about discovering the mercies of God. Scripture says his mercies are “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23). Every morning pursue them—to your last breath. Lost children can still come to Christ after the death of a parent. We must keep our eyes fixed first and foremost on God, not our adult child.

Hidden in Plain Sight

We know better than to place our children in a position where only God should be, but has that exchange perhaps taken place without our knowledge? Like the hidden fees on my cable bill, idols have a way of creeping into our lives and costing us more than we know. Where our children are concerned, idols can be years in the making. When we think of idols, we might think of evil gods such as Molech, a Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice in the Old Testament (Lev.