Are You Helping or Enabling?
Parenting adult children can be really tricky.
We love them as much as we always have.
And yet, we have had to step back from parenting, and become (noun) parents who no longer (verb) parent.
We have had to stop having a say in what they do and start letting them make their own decisions and allow them to work through the consequences of their decisions.
This can be really hard for us sometimes.
Some of the decisions have put our children, whom we love desperately, in some pretty tough circumstances.
Every part of us wants to help and protect them.
Of course we do! We love our children so much!
And sometimes, even as adults, our children may need some help.
It's always a great thing when we are still able to help our children - even when they are adults.
It makes us feel like we're still their parents, like we're still useful in that regard.
Occasionally, though, we find ourselves in situations where our help seems to be doing more harm than good.
How do we know when we have crossed the line from helping our children to enabling our children, meaning, we are allowing them to continue self-destructive patterns of behavior, behavior that is keeping them from moving forward?
It all comes down to responsibility.
When we identify who is taking the bulk of the responsibility, then we know the answer to the question.
When we are helping, our child is bearing the bulk of the responsibility.
They are working to engage and create, and we are providing occasional assistance.
When we are enabling, we are bearing the bulk of the responsibility.
We are the ones working to create movement and our child is generally poorly engaged.
This is a problem because it is not allowing our child to step into their own adulthood and grow into the responsibilities associated with being an adult.
If you have a child with whom this question is in play, now comes your challenge.
You have to be brutally honest with yourself about whether you are helping or enabling.
And if you you realize you are enabling, learning to set the appropriate boundaries would be a great step.
