High divorce rates, the trophy generation, helicopter parenting, delayed childbearing, people choosing to have fewer children or being richer when having their first child. We live in a time where there are countless variables impacting child-rearing.
Parenting can feel like a rollercoaster ride. As soon as you think you know where you’re going and what you’re doing, it turns you upside down and right around.
Our own four children are all now over the age of 18. All have graduated school, two have left the nest to do all kinds of different things. So, when a friend recommended Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out, we knew we had to read it.
Doing Life With Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut And The Welcome Mat Out
Jim Burns
Doing Life With Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut And The Welcome Mat Out
Jim Burns
If you’ve raised a child, you know that parenting doesn’t stop when they turn eighteen. In many ways, your relationship gets even more complicated–your heart and your head are as involved as ever, but you can feel things shifting, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact.
Doing Life with Your Adult Children helps you navigate this rich and challenging season of parenting. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to the most common questions
The author, Jim Burns, is a Christian writer and speaker who has coordinated focus groups with his wife Cathy; spent hundreds of hours pastorally counselling families experiencing difficulties; and extensively researched how parents can navigate life and relationships with their adult children. This pastoral expertise and life experience shines through to produce what we consider to be an immensely practical and helpful book.
A Wisdom Smorgasbord
This is a ‘how to’ book, not just an ‘ought to’ book. There were literally scores and scores of sentences that demanded underlining.
For instance, here are just four of the nine lists Burns includes: “Six Strategies for Keeping Young Adults Engaged in the Faith and the Church”; “How to Maintain a Positive Relationship in the Messy Middle”; “What to Do When Your Child Makes Regrettable Choices”; and “Practical Ideas for Influencing Your Grandkid”.
We also loved the three elements of each chapter title page: the chapter title, principle and quote. For example:
- Chapter 2: Keep your mouth shut and the welcome mat out
- Principle 2: Unsolicited advice is usually taken as criticism
- Quote: “But why does she need to go to Europe to find herself when I have all the answers for her life right here?”
In that particular chapter, Burns shares stories of parents who forgot that “unsolicited advice is usually taken as criticism”; where the pushy and intrusive parent had strained the relationship with their child. We kept thinking to ourselves, “Shouldn’t Christian adults just follow the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 7:1, ‘Do to others as you’d have them do to you’?” Burns does write from a Christian worldview and uses Scripture to make many points, but at times like these could have used Scripture rather than a general revelation wisdom principle. We felt a noticeable absence of Scriptural backing.
We are in two minds writing this observation, because we’d feel very comfortable giving this book to family and friends who are not followers of Christ. Still, Doing Life with Your Adult Children would only benefit from greater explicit engagement with Scripture.
Not Just For Parents of Adult Children
This book is very gracious in tone with a real ‘fellow traveller’ feel. Burns prays fervently for his kids and gives glory to God when his prayers are answered. He also has a great sense of humour, sharing stories and quotes that elicit laughter and cut to the core.
Of course, the main target audience is parents of adult children, who can also make use of each chapter’s reflection questions. But we’d encourage adult children to read it with their parents and enjoy the blessings of a shared vocabulary and aligned goals. Grandparents would benefit from tips for building strong intergenerational family relationships (for example, see page 163, “Organise a Cousins’ Camp”).
In addition, it would be worth reading to parents of small children: if you aim for nothing you are sure to hit it. In our family parenthood is preparation for separation. We raised our children to expect to move out of home when they finished high school and became adults (around 18 years old). That clearly communicated goal helped everyone manage expectations all the way through family life. Likewise this book can help parents think through the adult child stage well before it happens.
The subtitle, ‘Keep your mouth shut and the welcome mat out’ is the main application of Doing Life With Your Adult Children. It is sensational advice and very memorable. This advice alone has been profoundly helpful to us, our adult children and anyone else we’ve shared it with. We commend it and this book to you.
