What's a Parent's Role?

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Rescuing usually begins with love. Parents step in to ease distress, not create dependence.

Repeated rescue can change expectations. What starts as help can gradually come to feel owed.

Parents can support without rescuing. Stepping back can build confidence and independence.

Parents rarely wake up one morning and decide to make their adult child dependent on them. The process is usually much more gradual. Let's say a daughter cannot make her car payment, so her parents cover it. A son loses another job, so his father pays his car insurance. Or, suppose an adult child becomes overwhelmed by a problem, and Mom makes the phone calls, negotiates the bill, or steps in to prevent the consequences.

How Helping Gradually Starts to Feel Owed

I use the term rescue entitlement dependency (RED) to describe a relational pattern I have repeatedly observed among parents and struggling adult........

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