What's a Parent's Role?

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Guilt is conveyed between parent and adult child before a single word is spoken.

Guilt drives parental rescue, and rescue confirms the adult child's shame.

Breaking the loop starts with a parent regulating their own guilt, not their child's behavior.

Recently, Judy* (name changed for privacy), a coaching client of mine, said, “Dr. Jeff, I feel like crap for all the things I wish I could have done better for Billy (her 29-year-old son). The divorce when he was just 7 years old, not getting him diagnosed with ADHD until almost the end of high school, and then the comments I made about his choice of friends and his smoking weed. I don’t know, it’s like I feel bad, then I bend over backward to help him, and he treats me like crap, and we are both caught up in this guilt-blame-shame cycle.”

I’m often surprised by how many parents I coach assume their guilt should be obligatory. It is almost as if they see it as an internal, emotionally draining, private tax they dutifully pay for loving imperfectly. But their guilt is........

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