APOSTOLIC News

Too often, the biggest problems in our lives are not our adult children’s inability to get a good job, or pay their bills or even their use of drugs.  As parents, sometimes the problem is the part that we play in stepping in to soften the blow of the consequences that come from the bad choices they are making.  We sometimes make excuses for their irresponsible behaviors, “I feel bad because he never had a father to role model after” or “If I don’t help her, who will?”  

Dr. Dennis Hensley, professor of English at Taylor University once said, “When I graduated from high school, my father gave me a clock.  It was a four-year clock that ran backwards.  My dad handed it to me and said, For the next four years, your mother and I will keep a roof over your head, food in your stomach, clothes on your back, and help you through school.  But when this clock runs out of time, so do you.  You’re on your own after that. I knew my dad, and I knew he wasn’t bluffing.  I made it through my first four years of college living at home, but then I left and joined the service, completing my education on the GI Bill.  It was the best thing my parents could have done.”

Dr. Hensley’s parents helped; they did not enable.  So what is the difference between helping and enabling?   

Helping your adult child is doing something for them that they are not capable of doing for themselves.

Enabling your adult child is doing what they could and should be doing for themselves.

Simply put, enabling creates an atmosphere in which our adult children can comfortably continue their unacceptable behavior.    I am not saying that we never help our kids.  However, we must know the difference between a responsible adult child asking for a loan when something unexpected pops up and one who habitually asks for money and seldom pays it back.

It wasn’t too long ago that respect for parents was paramount.  Somehow this has been lost and we have substituted it for bad manners.  Slowly, but surely, children became the center of the universe, spoiled and disrespectful and the result of this is our twenty-somethings child returning home rather than facing the world on their own.  College kids are flunking out because they don’t know how to manage their time and money.  Kids are growing up without problem-solving skills because their parents think love means solving all their problems.  Many adolescents have no respect for authority because their parents didn’t command their respect.  Instead these parents gave too much and expected too little!

Only when our adult children are forced to face the consequences of their own actions and the choices they make for their lives, will it finally begin to sink in how deep their patterns of dependence and avoidance have become.   Only then will we as parents be able to take the next step to real healing, forever ending our enabling habits and behaviors.

Adapted from the book, Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children, Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents by Allison Bottke, Copyright 2008 ©. Harvest House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Allison Bottke is a bestselling inspirational author and speaker, and the founder of the acclaimed God Allows U-Turns © book series and outreach ministry, and the Setting Boundaries SANITY Support Group Network. She is the author or editor of twenty-five published non-fiction and fiction books. Visit her web site at: www.AllisonBottke.com

Beth Baus is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and has a private practice in Riverside, California.  She attends Inland Lighthouse Church in Rialto California pastored by Rev. Larry Booker.  To check out her website and books, go to www.ourhealthyfamilies.org