The Importance of Forgiveness

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You can acknowledge your parenting mistakes without accepting responsibility for everything that followed.

Repeatedly defending, explaining, and even apologies keeps you and your adult child stuck in a courtroom.

The goal is not to win agreement about the past. Rather, it is to build a healthier relationship in the now.

I hear some version of this from my parent coaching fairly often: "Dr. Jeff, I just want her to understand that I did the best I could." What I then try to do is gently explore the painful question that often lurks underneath these parents' understandable concerns: to feel appreciated by their adult children. And that question is, "When will my adult child finally admit I wasn't such a bad parent?"

The sobering answer for many parents is that they may never hear enough words (or maybe even any words) of appreciation from their adult children. Or, as we dig deeper, many of........

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