Shrinky's Guide to Parenting: How to Help Your Troubled Adult-Child (Part 6)

If you have read parts 1 through 5 of this series, you now have a terrific plan for helping your troubled adult-child. In this final part, I will discuss the importance of compassion, both for your child, and especially for yourselves as parents, as you work to make this plan work.

There are probably many factors that brought your child to this point. One cause may be the way your child's brain operates. It may be that your child has a difficult time learning from experience. Whereas most of us only need to touch the stove once to learn not to touch it again, kids like this often need to get burned many times before they get the lesson. This is nobody's fault. Some brains just take longer to make these connections and mature.

If this is the case, then this road will not be a straight one. There will be victories and hope, and defeats and despair. In response to this, you will do it all right one day, and the next you will lose your cool and break all the rules. You have been trying to parent this kid for decades, sometimes you just wonít have the strength to do the harder thing.

As a result, in order to sustain this long-term project over the long haul, you need to be gentle with yourself. You need to recognize that not only will your child not be perfect, but neither will you. This doesnít exonerate anyone from responsibility; just know that this is a learning process for all of you.

All too often, when parents learn how they could have been handling things better, or they come to finally get a reliable diagnosis for their child, they feel remorse for wasted years. You might say, "I wish I would've known 15 years ago what I know today!" You must forgive yourself for this, too. You probably could have done better, but that is something we can all say. The important thing is to be open and willing to grow and change now.

The road to your child's independence and well-being is long, hard, and uncertain, but the rewards of doing the work to get there are great. I have seen many children that parents were ready to give up on achieve astounding things. Struggling with issues can make these children compassionate, caring, and more loving than the rest.

So, in closing, assume competence, for both yourselves, and your child. When you and your family have a deeper, richer, more meaningful bond because of going through this work together, and you see your child flower into a wonderful adult human being, the satisfaction you feel will be greater than anything you have ever known. You and your child will have an achievement that will remain for a lifetime and inspire generations to come.