Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hi there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 367, "Loving Your Adult Children Better with Brooke Oniki." Come to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:22 

Well hello, my friends, welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here today. Before we jump in I want to remind you the Talk with Tanya coming up on July 8th. That is a free webinar. You can come and talk to me about anything. You can ask me all the questions. You can dive deeper into a concept. We can do whatever you want to do during that time. We've had some really amazing discussions and if that works for you I'd love to have you come. It is at 2 o'clock Eastern 12 o'clock Mountain. You can go to my website, click on the "group coaching" tab and sign up there and you will get the login information and be able to join us for the week for that Talk with Tanya. I think you're going to love it. 

Tanya Hale 01:03 

Also a couple of other things. I have started posting a blog on my website, so if that is something that interests you getting to go in and read just small things. If you like my "weekend win" you're going to love this as well. If you're not signed up for my "weekend win" go to my podcast and get signed up for that. It's such good stuff every week. And also another reminder and I've been doing this for several months now but I love this aspect. At the end of this podcast, if you go to the show notes you will be able to find other podcasts that have to do with topics that we discussed in this podcast. So if this podcast really speaks to you and you're like "I want to learn more about this" and go down to the show notes there will be several podcasts there that you can access. So that's going to do it with just the quick announcements. 

Tanya Hale 01:56 

Today I am sharing with you a conversation I had with a really great coach friend of mine. Her name is Brooke Oniki and she focuses specifically on coaching parents of adult kids and working through that transition and all the challenges that come with that. I recently got to hear her on another podcast and she talked about some ideas and I just thought "oh these are really great and I would love for my listeners to be able to have an opportunity to hear some of the things that she talks about and that she works about." She's a great great coach and I think you're going to really love this conversation. So enjoy this and I will. 

Tanya Hale 02:43 

Alright, Brooke so glad to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Brooke Oniki 02:48 

Oh it's a pleasure. 

Tanya Hale 02:50 

Alright I would like you first to start off, if you will please, just telling people about what kind of a coach you are and what you love about it even. 

Brooke Oniki 03:00 

I do coaching for women who are transitioning from having kids at home to having adult children. I also have a lot of clients who are further along in that, right? Their kids are all adults and they have grandkids and lots of babysitting and lots of, you know, anyway, just learning to navigate those relationships as your children grow and your influence maybe alters in some ways and learning how to let go of the more integral part you had in their lives when they were growing up in your home and learning to love them as adults. 

Brooke Oniki 03:41 

And I love it because, first of all, it's changed my relationship with my own kids and helped me to transition. I started coaching when I had one child left at home and as my kids, I had four in six years, so they came fast and they left fast and  as they started to leave, it was like, "wait a minute, like, what is going on?" You just, "hey, thanks, nice childhood." And I was kind of confused. I had given all this love and energy to this job of being their mother and then it felt like it was kind of evaporating. And it was a challenge for me to know what my role in their life was, to know what my role was just as a human being now, like I'm still going to live for 30 or 40 years. So what do I want to contribute now? Just learning how to navigate that period is really important. And I feel so much more connected to them now and more connected to myself as I've done my own personal work and then worked with so many other women as they go through that same life transition. It's just been an honor to do that with people. 

Tanya Hale 05:02 

I love this concept of parenting adult kids, because it's kind of a funny phraseology to me, because we don't parent them anymore when they become adults. And I often refer to that as we stop being a verb parent and we start being a noun parent only. You know, we're just, I am their parent, but I'm no longer parenting them. And it is such a challenge for many of us to go from being in control, having, you know, a say in all the things, to just being able to stand back and say, "oh, that sounds great. Like, how can I support you?" 

Brooke Oniki 05:38 

And as I told an old friend recently what I do, I said, "oh, I help people parent their adult children." He said, "you can do that?" I said, "well, actually, no, you can't do that. But lots of people think you can." So you help them understand that it is a spectator sport. 

Tanya Hale 06:00 

Oh gosh, I love that phraseology, yeah, for sure. Like, and it's hard for many of us to let go of that and to stand back and trust our kids to make their own decisions and to figure it out. And especially...we've invested so much in them. You know, we've given our lives to the last 18, 19 years of their lives and then to watch them start making decisions that we stand back and go, "ooh, I'm not so sure that's a really great decision." It's super hard, I think, sometimes to stand back and let them make it and just smile and love them and be supportive and create a safe space for them. Because if they fall, we can create a safe space. Or if they fly, we can go, "oh wow, guess I was wrong about that," you know? Yeah. 

Brooke Oniki 06:49 

It's so true. I use that analogy, the spectator analogy, a lot with my clients. If you're watching your son play in a football game and he wasn't performing well, you would never go down and say, "coach, put me in for him. I think I can do it." 

Tanya Hale 07:09 

I've got what it takes. 

Brooke Oniki 07:10 

Right? We just, our job is to support and love and encourage and cheer and, and be there for them. And, and when they do have a game where they're tackled multiple times, praise them for getting up time and time again. But it is never our job to sub in. And we wouldn't do better. It's not our life to live. Like if you have a daughter-in-law call you and say, "your husband, my son, or your son's not treating me right," or "he's doing this wrong." You could go in and try to intervene, intervene in that marriage, but you can't actually solve it because it isn't your problem to solve. 

Tanya Hale 07:53 

It would actually create more problems than it would solve, for sure. Alright, so recently we were chatting. And you were telling me about some focus groups that you did with some young adults about parenting. And I loved the information that you shared about what you learned from these young adult focus groups. And so that's what I wanted to talk with you about today, is some of the information that you learned and that you gained from these groups. So why don't you tell us about the focus groups, first of all, and kind of give us an understanding of where all that came from. 

Brooke Oniki 08:33 

So I was speaking, I was asked to speak at BYU Women's Conference, which is a really large, thousands and thousands of women come to this conference every year. And there are lots of different topics that are covered, but I was asked to speak about how to have good relationships with your adult children. And because I talk to mothers so regularly about these things, I thought in preparation, "I think I'd like to talk to their children." So I have kids that are 28, 26, 24, and almost 22. And so I just talked to them and their friends. They just got some focus groups for me. And so some of them were in person, some of them were on zoom. And I just asked them about their relationships primarily with their mothers and what they thought was good. If they felt their relationship had improved since they left home or gotten worse, what they would like their mothers to be, you know, how they would like to be able to interact with them. 

Brooke Oniki 09:35 

And one thing I came away with is they really want to have relationships with us. I think sometimes as the mother, we think, "oh, they don't care that much," or "they don't really love us," or "we're not important to them anymore." But I don't think it's true. I think your whole life, you want the approval of your parents. You want them to think you're doing a good job. You want them to be proud of you. And I found that to be true, even though they maybe didn't want to live exactly the way their parents have parented them, they wanted to feel like their parents trusted them, that they could figure it out, that they were capable. 

Brooke Oniki 10:24 

I talked to some married kids who wished that their mothers-in-law would just talk to them more. You know, I think that's interesting too, right? We have a young married person and the mother-in-law and the mother-in-law maybe thinks, "well, she doesn't seem to talk to me much." And the daughter-in-law is thinking, "well, it doesn't seem like she's..." We're waiting for the other person to initiate a relationship. And I think we just have to recognize like, I'm just going to love her. I'm going to try to get to know her. I'm going to try to be interested in her. But a lot of these young married girls felt a little like their mother-in-law or father-in-law didn't think they were good enough for their son. "I wish they would have picked someone else," just a little unsure. And it just reminded me how important it is to really envelop the people who come into your family and try to consciously make an effort to get to know them. 

Brooke Oniki 11:32 

And sometimes it might be slow going, just like it is with anything, right? We don't ever have friendships that just blossom overnight. We have to have combined experiences together, and even hardship. You think about friends who've been there for you and something difficult has happened and how that lends to the trust that you feel and the way the relationship grows. So all of those relationships do grow, but they grow over time and, and combined, you know, togetherness, vacations and family dinners and phone calls and texts and all the things that we do that nurture a relationship. But I found that these young adults are really interested in having meaningful relationships with their parents. 

Tanya Hale 12:25 

You know, that's interesting. It reminds me of a few years ago. So my oldest son got married, just a delightful, amazing, incredible woman. I just really adore her. And not really knowing who's my first in law child. And not really knowing, I kind of stood back a little bit because I was like, "well, they don't want me interfering in their lives and calling too often or being too engaged. So I'm going to give them their space." And after about a year and a half, I was, you know, there were some things breaking down in the relationship. And we started to have a conversation about it. And I kind of got the impression that they were like, "well, yeah, well, we would like more from you. Like, what are you doing?" And I realized that, "oh, we just never even communicated about that." And it's interesting that I had never thought here I am like doing all this work on communication and all of this. But with my adult child and his wife, I had never thought to say, "Hey, how often do you want to have contact with us? How often do you want to have a call? How often do you feel comfortable having me reach out to you," and, you just really putting the pieces out on the table and saying "what what do you want in this relationship to be because I would love to have a great close relationship with you. And I don't want to feel like I'm imposing too much." And so let's have some communication about what we think would be what you would feel comfortable with. 

Brooke Oniki 13:56 

Right, and it may be different with every kid. There was one of the girls in the focus group who said, "I feel like my parents are giving us way too much space," like you're saying, "we'd like to be invited to more things." And she said they went on a family vacation and they didn't invite us because we were, I was the married one now so they just took all of her younger siblings and she said, "we would have loved to have gone and we would have loved to have been invited." And, but there was no communication there. So I do think it takes talking about it. 

Brooke Oniki 14:33 

And, and the other thing that I found interesting...I think with our parents, they taught us certain ways and we just did what they said, right? Like, okay, this is the way it is in our family. This is the church we go to. These are the values that we adhere to. These are the sports we like. These are the...it just sort of felt like this is just the way it is when you're in this family. And I didn't have any problem with that. It wasn't like I felt resentful about it, but I think our kids are more interested in having almost a peer-to-peer relationship with us. My kids want to know about my life when I was their age and they want to talk about the way they think about spiritual things or political things or, and we share those things with each other in a  really real way. And if I can listen and hear what they have to say and not be fearful if it doesn't align perfectly with the way I think, we can have a true connection that's actually more meaningful than just this sort of father to son, mother to daughter, hierarchical kind of relationship. 

Brooke Oniki 15:56 

And I think they're interested in that, but we have to be willing to hear what they want to share with us because sometimes the things they share feel like they might be an attack on our parenting. My kids will tell me things they wish I would have done differently or things they're going to do differently than the way we did it. And so learning how to just listen to that and tell, you know, say, "tell me more, tell me more. I'm so interested. What are you going to do? What do you wish we would have done?" And then sort of even unraveling why we didn't do it that way. It just helps us have a richer, more full understanding of each other that I think makes it a more horizontal relationship instead of vertical. Like we all have a seat at the table. We all have important opinions and ideas and thoughts about things. And they're all valid, not just the parents' ideas and thoughts. 

Tanya Hale 17:02 

You know, I, I love this idea because I think we do feel threatened. I think there's a lot of things that I do well with my adult kids, but I'm just realizing that even just last week, I was with my oldest daughter and she said something about how, and she said this before, and I'm realizing that I kind of like blow her off and tell her that she's wrong. And I haven't really picked up on this until just this minute, but she's just like, "yeah, you never talked to us about sex when we were young." And I'm like, I had the same accusation. "I know darn well that I did." And I've come back and I've said, "no, I did, you know, I know I did because I remember the conversations. I remember the inks that I had. I remember," you know, and, and I've come back and just kind of shut her down. And I'm realizing that, Oh, like whether I did or not is not the point. The point is she's trying to share something with me that has been a struggle for her. You know, the fact that that she didn't feel prepared to start engaging in a world where she was going, you know, to be, having to deal with a lot of sexual pressures and knowing what was going on and all of this stuff. And, and I was a piece of that. And so I let my defensiveness come up and go, "Nope, Nope. I know I did," rather than creating space and saying, "Oh, tell me, tell me about that. Like how, you know, do you remember any conversations? Like, did we talk about it at all? Did we never talk about it? How has that played out for you?" So rather than creating a space for her to really talk about, because why else would she bring that up if she didn't really want to talk about it? 

Brooke Oniki 18:42 

Yeah. Yeah. When my daughter brought that up, I said, "you're absolutely right." I mean, she knew we had had some conversations, but she felt ill-prepared. And so I think the first thing we have to do is just acknowledge what they experienced. So my children have sometimes told me things I said to them and it feels like I said that. I can't believe I would have ever said that, right? But instead of saying "that never would have happened." Because it doesn't matter if it happened or not. That's what they remember. And that's, that's the experience that they had. 

Brooke Oniki 19:22 

So I just always apologize. "I'm sorry that it felt like that." And if I said that, I'm very, very sorry, because I never woke up and thought today I want to ruin their lives. Yeah. Right. None of us do. Right. But about the sex thing, right? It was easy for me to say, "yeah, I didn't know much about it myself. I had very little told to me." So I read some books and things and tried to do better. And, you know, we had that conversation when they were eight or nine about where babies come from. And then I found it was difficult to talk to them about relationships or sex when they liked someone, because they got particularly defensive because it seemed very pointed. It was okay to talk about it when it was abstract, right? And hypothetical. But the minute they were in a relationship with someone, it felt very pointed. And so, you know, we had some up and down experiences with that. 

Brooke Oniki 20:26 

But this one daughter shared some things that she wasn't prepared for in her first relationship that she had with a boy that was pretty aggressive. And so I got to hear some of that. And the thing I took away from the initial conversation was I didn't teach her enough about sex, which is another interesting point that often they try to share something with us. And we immediately make it about us instead of just witnessing their pain. When I revisited her about this discussion and said, my takeaway was I didn't teach you enough about sex. And she just laughed and said, "that's not what I was trying to get at." She said, "I was just trying to share something hard I'd been through because I wanted you to know, not because I wanted to blame you." But if we immediately go to, "I did something wrong, I should have known, I should have intervened. If I would have been living, you know, more righteously, I would have been prompted to interfere in some way." And so we often like  to run it, I call it the "me filter," something happens and we just immediately run it through "how does this pertain to me" instead of just holding space for the experience that they had. 

Brooke Oniki 21:57 

Just recently I was at a wedding with a bunch of friends from college and I had some interesting things come up for me emotionally, some insecurities of those early years of college. And I think those are just parts of our mortal experience. I didn't ever think it was because of my parents that I felt that way. So I find it interesting that when our kids have something hard that we immediately want to make it mean it was because of some weakness in us. You know, my husband will often say, "Oh no, that comes from me or from my side of the family," you know, instead of just allowing them to be their own person who's going to experience highs and lows and periods of growth and challenge and, negative emotions that they have to deal with. So I do think they would like us to just learn to witness their experience and then express confidence in their ability to figure it out. 

Tanya Hale 23:10 

I love the point that you're making to take it out of the "me filter." I think that's so important that we realized because a lot of times, in somewhat of a passive aggressive way, we might respond with "Oh, I guess I was just like the worst mother in the world." You know, we make it about us. And it's such a passive aggressive statement, right? Like trying to get that validation from them, "but no, you weren't the worst mother. "But then when we do that, it really shuts down their ability to have an open conversation with us. Because every time they try and have a difficult conversation, if we make it about us and go into this martyr space of "Oh, I was so horrible, I was the worst mother, you should have had a different mother," right? You know, they're gonna stop sharing things with us because then it detracts from what they're trying to connect with us. 

Brooke Oniki 24:04 

Well, and that was the very conversation one of my daughters brought to me before I did the focus groups. She had been on a little trip with some friends and she said, "two of them said every time I tried to bring up something with my mom, she says, 'Oh, I must've been a terrible mother and they just immediately shut down because then it feels like, 'Oh, it's too painful for her to hear, she can't hear this.''" And so it breaks down the, the opportunity to create connection just goes out the window. 

Tanya Hale 24:40 

Mm hmm. 

Brooke Oniki 24:42 

Yeah, because we are not able to hear what their experience was and it is really good news when they want to share something with you. It means they're trying to connect. And so if I can see it for what it is, instead of immediately going into defensive mode... I shared this thought. I do a little weekly tip as a little video tip. So I shared this, "oh, I guess I'm just a terrible mother." And the idea I shared with them is just say, "tell me more, tell me more. What do you wish we would have done? What do you wish it would have been like? What are you going to do when you have kids," you know, and just be really open to it. And I had someone reach out to me immediately and she said, "my son called me this week and he started telling me something hard that had happened to him." And she said, "I know I would have said, 'I guess I was a terrible mother,' but I had listened to your tip." And so she said, "I just started asking him questions and he cried and I cried and we had this really powerful connecting experience because I was able to hear what he had to say and not make it mean anything about me." 

Tanya Hale 25:58 

I've had that experience with my kids as well. And when I have created that safe space that just says, "oh, I see what you're saying. And gosh, I'm sorry." There's a difference between owning it and taking responsibility for, "oh, I see that. And I'm sorry that that's how I showed up. If I could do it now, I would do it so differently." And going into this space where we make it all about us and say, "oh, but I was a horrible mother. I need your validation." You know, it creates a much safer place when we can really see them and hear them and acknowledge them and own our peace in their pain. But in a responsible way, not in a martyr way. 

Brooke Oniki 26:42 

Right. And sometimes it is me saying, "I'm sorry that I said that." And other times the story has nothing to do with me. So there's no reason to make it about me. The one little, I don't know, caveat or exception or thing that sometimes happens. I  have one client who said, "I have a son who comes home regularly and tells me that, you know, because our house was so religious and because we were always doing religious things like that has ruined his life. And he wants to rehash it over and over." And she shared with me, "it gets a little wearing to hear it again and again and again." And so my conversation with her, we talked about, it's also okay when we've listened and heard and apologized and validated to say, "here's what my experience was. Here's what I was trying to do and trying to create. And I see that it didn't meet up with your expectations very well." But I believe that as you are willing to listen and hear them, they're actually better at listening and hearing your story as well and where you are trying to come from. 

Brooke Oniki 28:04 

And even if we can't connect, even if he may always feel like his childhood was wrong and you were trying to do it right, we could just decide, "so where do we want to go from here? We can talk about this till you're 80 years old, but we're both adults now. So how do you want to have a relationship with me now? I know that you're struggling to get through what you felt like happened in your childhood, but I do want to show up for you in a way that's helpful now. What would be, you know, better for you now. We don't ever have to invite you to anything that has anything to do with church. We can just have you here, right? But we also still love church, right?" And so like learning to have an honest conversation about where you are and where they are, and then what do we want to do going forward rather than rehashing the past every time we get together? If you need to do that, we can. But when you're ready to move forward, you know, 'cause she had felt like I've apologized over and over and over again. And so that can be tricky sometimes. But oftentimes I find the moment we're willing to hear them and witness their pain or the heartache they've gone through, that there's a lot of healing. I don't think every child wants to talk about it over and over and over again. 

Tanya Hale 29:39 

it just seems like it comes back to this place of communication, which I think when our kids are young, we're not in the habit of talking to them as equals. You know, we are in that more vertical relationship. And so we're used to being in charge and telling them what to do and where they need to go and how they need to do things. And yet when they move into adulthood, we really have to start communicating in a different way than we have in the past and see them as equals, and their viewpoint matters as much as my viewpoint. And so now how do we communicate about this? So I love this piece that you're talking about of we hear them out, we ask the questions, we dive in, we apologize when necessary and then we also have the conversation of what do we want this to look for, look like going forward? How do we, you know, how do we create a new relationship between us? 

Brooke Oniki 30:34 

Yeah, especially if we feel different about things that we thought we were all on the same page about at one time. Right. So if we have different political views, different religious views, different, you know, views about money or marriage or children or all of those things, right. Learning to hear what someone has to say. I think sometimes people feel like, "well, if they share something with me and I just listen, they might think I agree with them, but they grew up in your home." They know how you feel because of the things that you've taught. I don't think we have to remind them of those things every time we're together. So I do think being respectful and hearing what they have to say can create more respect. It can create more of that horizontal relationship. 

Tanya Hale 31:28 

Yeah, I love that. And then another piece that you you moved into a little bit earlier that I want to go back and revisit is this place of of really learning to trust our kids to to make their own decisions and to figure out their own path. What what are the thoughts come up for you in in the work that you've done along those lines? 

Brooke Oniki 31:49 

And I think the most important thing, I look at my own life, right? You think about the decisions you made about what you wanted to major in and where you wanted to live and who your roommates were and all of those kinds of things. And some people they go out...my mom and dad had nine kids. So I had a lot of independence because that's just too many people to micromanage, you know, they weren't really micromanaging us, but I had someone reach out to me this past week. And she said, "I try to run interference every time my daughter likes someone, everybody she brings home, I don't think they're good enough for her or good looking enough for her or on a successful path trajectory that I think they should be on." And so when we try to undermine their choices, we're subtly telling them, "we don't think you can do this on your own. We don't think you know what's best." So even it doesn't have to be saying, "I don't trust you." It's just me trying to sabotage the decisions they make. You know, this woman in particular was saying things to her daughter like, "you have lots of friends to talk to. Why would you spend all your time talking to him?" 

Tanya Hale 33:18 

Mm-hmm. 

Brooke Oniki 33:18 

There's a lot of other people here right or you know, we do it with "are you sure you want to major in that?" I made a mistake when my daughter was dating someone of saying this. I feel so bad about this now. "Do you think he fits in our family?" 

Tanya Hale 33:35 

Mm-hmm. 

Brooke Oniki 33:36 

And she said to me later, "that was so hurtful because I know that if you thought he fit in our family, you wouldn't ever have said that," right? And so you think, "oh, I'm just being curious and I'm just being inquisitive", right? Or I had clients who their kids are getting married and they'll say things like, "have you prayed about it?" They'll ask them that many times. And one client, her son said, "mom, why do you keep asking me that? Of course I've prayed about it. This is the biggest decision of my life." But she wasn't super excited about who he was choosing. 

Tanya Hale 34:11 

And so it's kind of a passive aggressive back way of trying to have a say without saying it. 

Brooke Oniki 34:18 

Right. And that's more common, I think, than coming right out and saying, "I don't like the girl you're dating." So we just have to notice what is my intent. 

Tanya Hale 34:30 

Mm hmm. 

Brooke Oniki 34:31 

Am I trying to alter their choices through some backdoor by the kinds of questions that I ask or the things that I'm doing? And it just undermines their confidence when we can't just trust them that they're figuring it out. 

Tanya Hale 34:52 

Yeah, I love that. I often talk with my clients about how important it is to get curious. And then I qualify that by saying, "and we're just getting curious to understand them, we're not getting curious, so we can gather information, so we can back them into a corner, or prove where they're wrong, or try and, you know, show them something else." We really just need to get curious solely, so that we can understand them and and love and appreciate them better rather than to use it for some nefarious means in the future. 

Brooke Oniki 35:24 

Right. And in the case of dating relationships, don't we want our children to date lots of different people so they can figure out what they really want and what kind of person they want to be with? Which might mean they're going to have some breakups and those are really hard. So I think we feel like, "Oh, I'm just trying to save them from going through painful things. So I just want to help them never make a mistake or do anything wrong." But the mistakes are where the growth comes. The mistakes are where people build relationships with God, right? If everything always goes well, like I think about my marriage. If we just always agreed and we always thought the same way, it seems like your relationship wouldn't be that deep. But when you go through hardship and trials and you lean on each other and you learn and you support and help each other, it's like drop by drop, those experiences meld us together as a couple. 

Brooke Oniki 36:30 

So I think the same thing is true as a child maybe starts taking classes in one major or starts a job and then decides he doesn't really love it and, you know, wants to go onto something else, right? Rather than thinking, "Oh, they're never figuring it out and they wasted all that money going through that program." Everything is teaching them so that they're more clear about what they want to do next time and the road isn't just direct, right? It's bumpy and it's curvy and all of those curves are teaching them things. 

Brooke Oniki 37:08 

I had a client whose son, she really wanted to serve a mission and she didn't talk to him really about it. He didn't seem that interested and he went through a plumbing journeyman's program for two years. And at the end he got a job and he did it for like a week and a half and he quit. And she came to me and was like, "I can't believe that and it's cost so much money and it took so much time and I just didn't raise a quitter." And so we started talking about his life and he wasn't a quitter. I'm like, "tell me some ways that he's really showed up." And she just said, "he's had all these jobs and he was always on time and he was a good hard worker and he was a good hard worker through this whole program that he just went through." So then she started thinking, "maybe there's a reason. Maybe he felt prompted. Maybe he didn't like the culture, right?" Like trust that he's got his reasons. And if you can trust people, they're more likely to share their reasons. But when we think, "oh, he's a quitter and I didn't raise a quitter," we get so uptight about it, then it's hard for them to want to share what's going on for them emotionally. And as she backed away, then he was more willing to and supported him and just said, "I know that you're a good hard worker and that you're a smart guy and you have your reasons," right? He's the one who went through the program. He was probably having similar things. Do I just let go of this right now? But he felt really strongly that it wasn't what he wanted to do. And within a few months, he decided to serve a mission and now he's on a mission. 

Brooke Oniki 38:51 

And anyway, but it's just a fascinating thing how we want to jump in and say, "you can't do that. We've just spent all this money" or "you've just spent all this money" or "it took all these" or our kids get certain way in a major and they're like, "I don't know if I want to do this." And you're like, "but you're almost done now," right? We just have a lot of opinions about how they should do things. 

Tanya Hale 39:15 

Yeah. And we've really got to stop having opinions. And let's wait. 

Brooke Oniki 39:19 

I think it's fine if they want our opinions, right? Because sometimes they come and say, "what do you think I should do?" But when we just start spouting off opinions that are unsolicited, I think it just causes our kids to shut down and feel like they're not approved of. I think the other piece that I tapped into there was when this mother was saying, "I didn't raise a quitter." Again, that takes it to the "me filter," right? It makes it all about her. That this decision reflects poorly on me, that I didn't raise him correctly. 

Brooke Oniki 39:54 

Yeah, but as we coached together and she was like, he isn't a quitter. And I realized he's not, it was, she was able to let go of that, right? And realize there's no evidence that he's not capable of making this decision. He's a really great kid and he's made a lot of good decisions. 

Brooke Oniki 40:15 

And some of your listeners might be thinking, "well, my kids only made stupid decisions. So that doesn't apply to me." And that may be true, right? If you have a kid who has addictions or things like that, it's really, really hard. But we can also trust that those are also teaching him things. Alright. Everything we go through is teaching us the good things, the hard things. I think we really analyze the hard things way more, right? When we get the job, the first time we're like, "I'm so amazing," right? When we don't get it, we're, "what could I have said differently? Or what could I have explained more or how could I convey things better," right? We really evaluate when things go wrong and that's really where the learning comes. 

Tanya Hale 41:08 

Oh, this parenting adult kids, we have to change our whole mindset about what the relationship is. And I think it's more, I think it's easier for the kids because their brain is like, "okay, listen, I'm ready to grow up. I'm ready to be an adult." For them, it's a natural transition to grow into the independence. And for us, I think sometimes it's not so natural. And I think we really, really have to watch and pay attention to the thoughts that we're having, the way that we're interacting, and really strive to do so from a different place. You know, from this place of just being the noun parent instead of the verb parent, you know, time for me to step back and become a support for you. And when you ask a counselor, but if you don't ask, you know, I just support you and let you know that I'm here if you need anything. And that's, that's a transition for a lot of us, I think. 

Brooke Oniki 42:13 

Yeah. And it takes practice and you're going to have to apologize sometimes because sometimes you're going to go back into that old way of doing things, but you can let them know like, "I'm learning and working at it." I have clients that I tell  them I'm working with a coach right now because I want to know how to be a good parent to adults. And I know that I've done things. This woman that was worried about the one that was interfering with all the boyfriends, she said, "nobody likes to be around my mom because she is always giving advice and telling people what to do." And she said, "I'm afraid if I don't learn how to not do that, that that's where I'm going to be as well." Right? So it's something that doesn't come naturally to any of us. So we need some tools to learn how to let go better and just allow them to have the experience they're going to have. 

Brooke Oniki 43:12 

And I do think they love to be cheered on and acknowledged for the things that they're doing that are hard and challenging. Just remember like they're leaving home, they're getting jobs, they're learning to cook for themselves and wash their own clothes. And I mean, some of them have done a little bit of this at home, but not to this extent, right? If they're going to college, they're managing their classes, they're in relationships, they're wondering what they think about God and their relationship with God. Like there's so many things that you were trained to do as a child and now you're going out and thinking, "so do I want to incorporate all those things in my life now that I'm an adult?" And so a lot of things are going on. And one of them isn't, "I wonder how my mom's doing. I wonder how she's coping with this," right? Because they've got so much on their mind. So let's not be another obligation that they have, like, "Oh, and if I don't call my mom, she's going to fall apart or she's going to be passive aggressive when we do talk like, 'Oh, well, it's so nice to hear from you. You haven't called me in three weeks,'" right? That doesn't help people feel endeared to you. It just makes you think, "well, I won't call her for a month now." 

Tanya Hale 44:31 

Yeah. 

Brooke Oniki 44:32 

Yeah. Right. So if we can just be encouraging and loving and supportive as they navigate through this, then we're a place that feels safe, right? We're a soft place to land. We're someone that glories in their successes and sits with them and walks the road with them in their time of need. And it just makes that relationship with us more like a mentor instead of like an evaluator. 

Tanya Hale 45:09 

Yeah. And I think it's a hardship for a lot of us, and yet it's a place we need to, we really need to move into if we want to continue to have a relationship with this person in our lives. Yeah, for sure. 

Brooke Oniki 45:25 

I love the thought, "I'm always in your corner." 

Tanya Hale 45:28 

Mm. Yeah. 

Brooke Oniki 45:31 

Like I just always want my kids to know I'm always in your corner. When you're doing things that I love, when you're doing things that I'm don't love, I'm always in your corner. 

Tanya Hale 45:43 

I think that's beautiful, thank you. And I'm realizing that I'm going to reach out to my daughter and circle back around and apologize for my defensiveness with her trying to share with me her ideas about being taught about sex because I'm realizing that there's a whole conversation there that I have shut down. So I'm glad that in this conversation, I received that awareness. This is what coaching is so valuable in helping us see things that we don't see for sure. 

Brooke Oniki 46:14 

Yeah. And I've learned that from you, the circling back around, I had a really interesting conversation with my son a few months ago where I apologized for a way I reacted to something and it just opened up a conversation that was really sweet that I would have never anticipated all of that. 

Tanya Hale 46:33 

I think it does. And I think we just get so cut off on our own insecurities sometimes that we have a hard time moving outside of that to see the bigger picture of what's going on, which is an opportunity to really connect and understand and develop a more equal friendship with these people that we love so much. So, Brooke, this has been delightful. So fun to chat with you  about all of this. Thank you. 

Brooke Oniki 47:04 

Well, I just long to help people have a better experience in this space. I know there are lots of people who are suffering because they don't know how to do it. They feel like it's either too late, they've made too many mistakes or their kids have really distanced themselves, but I think as you just nurture it, I like to think about it like a little plant, right? It just grows small and we just keep watering it and nourishing it and there's more sunlight and the dirt is good and all of those things, right? And the plant keeps growing and I don't want to run out and pull it up to see if the roots are, are working every day, right? We just continue to nourish it. So we nourish those new relationships with in-laws and even thinking of our own kids as a new relationship, right? They're a young adult, they're this young seedling and I can nourish that, right? Or I can demand it to grow large immediately and we know that doesn't, right? I can't turn it into a tree overnight, I just nourish it and trust in the process. There's been neglect. Then I come back and try again, you know. 

Tanya Hale 48:29 

Yeah. And I love that idea that once they become adults, it is a brand new relationship. We're both learning how to navigate interacting with each other differently once they're adults. So good stuff, my friend. Thank you for joining me today. Will you just share your website, you know, where people can reach you and find you if they want to get your email or something like that so they can connect with you? 

Brooke Oniki 49:01 

My website is just brookeoniki.com. So it's, Brooke has an E on the end and my last name is O N I K I. And there's a little pop up there that you can join the newsletter. And then every week I give a tip and I also have a podcast that I just started. I've only had like six podcasts. 

Tanya Hale 49:26 

Good for you, I didn't know that. 

Brooke Oniki 49:27 

Yeah. If you wanted to link the BYU women's conference talk I gave in your show notes, that's all about relationships with adult kids. 

Tanya Hale 49:37 

I absolutely will. So I will put that and your website and your podcast. Okay, that'll be great. That will be great. Thank you, Brooke. 

Brooke Oniki 49:46 

Oh, thanks, Tanya. It was so fun. 

Tanya Hale 49:48 

Oh, it was fun. I'm always game to have a good conversation about, about this kind of stuff. So thank you. 

Tanya Hale 49:57 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.