Making the Transition to Parenting Your Adult Child

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there, I'm Dr. Zoe. I'm your host, and I'm so glad you're here. Today I have a guest. Her name is Darlene Brock, and we are going to be talking about making the transition, parenting your adult child. Darlene is author of Raising Great Girls. She was here before on episode 56, and there we talked about Raising girls, now we're gonna talk about launching them. She is also co-founder and president of the Grit and Grace Project. She is also co-host of This Grit and Grace Life podcast. An excellent podcast. I hope you guys are listening to it already, and if not, what's up? Go subscribe. So I wanted to talk about this topic today because, well, I'm launching. I have an almost 20-year-old and sent him off to, back to college a couple of weeks ago. And millions of women across the country are Sending or have sent this month their kiddos off to college again or for the first time. And I'm in the thick of launching. And so some of this is a little self-serving, but I know you're going to get a lot out of it too. You know, raising kids is one thing, launching them and trying to straddle that line between parenting and mentor and pocketbook, so much fun. So I wanted to bring Darlene on with all of her wisdom. And even if you're not in the thick of launching and maybe launching feels like it's way off in the distant horizon, I still think you can benefit from listening to this because you're gonna be there faster than you think. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Listen in. Welcome to the podcast, Darlene. I am so happy that you're here today.

Oh, Zoe, it's such an honor. It's always an honor to be with you.

Thank you. So I brought you on this episode because you are a woman of wisdom and you have written an entire book entitled Raising Great Girls, and you've also launched, your 2 adult daughters with whom I know you have good relationship with. And so you've got a lot to teach us women who are still stuck in the thick of it, including myself. I feel like this episode might be a little self-serving because I am that woman with— I have 2 adult kids, one who's really in the midst of launching, and I know I'm going to benefit from your wisdom today. So I'm looking forward to it.

Well, it's— it is a tough time, but it's all doable.

It is. I know it is. I've been through other seasons, so I know it is. So before I barrage you with all of these questions, let's start with your win and your fail.

My win. Should I do win? I want to do fail first.

Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to start with fail because I like to build up. My fail is really just not unplugging enough. In the insanity of this time, I realize it is tilting my emotions.

Yeah.

And I'm like, if I don't unplug, I'm not going to be able to just do life. So, you know, I would commit to it and I would put my phones aside and 30 minutes later I'd pick it back up and start looking again. So that one I'm still perfecting. I'd say it's my definite fail.

Thank you for sharing that. I think, I mean, we're all definitely— it's amazing how quickly you can decide I'm not going to do this. And then the next second you find yourself doing it and you did it without even thinking about it.

So true, so true. It's like your hand reaches, it's in your face, and you're back.

Yep.

And my win, I have been planning a baby shower for my youngest daughter with my eldest daughter. Okay, for her. Yeah. And what's so amazing, Zoe, and honestly, there were days I didn't think I'd get here, but we're collaborating, we're talking, we're building, no arguments, fun, entertaining. It's just, I sat back and went, Thank you, God, that she and I are doing something fun together, you know? And it wasn't always that way, but I say it's a big win.

That's a huge, huge win. And I hope that gives women encouragement who are maybe in a struggling, difficult relationship with their launching child or having launched child. So thank you for sharing that. It does get better. It can get better. It just— I know everything when it comes to relationships, it takes intention and it takes Focusing back on yourself.

It does.

Yeah, it does. Okay, so I want to talk about moving from parent to mentor, and raisingfamilies.org defines parent and mentor as: a parent provides unconditional love, establishes a sense of safety, security, stability, provides loving discipline and direction, provides for basic needs like food, clothing, health, and models family life and instills values. Now, a mentor functions as a trusted counselor who actively listens and observes without judgment, who models behaviors and shares experiences, outcomes, and lessons learned from experiences, provides feedback when asked, makes recommendations, but leaves decisions and consequences of actions to the mentees. And people can't see Darlene's face right now, but she is just like nodding.

Nodding, laughing, going, uh-huh, there you go, for sure.

Yeah. So can you share a little about, a little bit about your journey and how you got from parent to mentor?

Absolutely. My first daughter, when we launched her out of our home, we had actually just sold all of our businesses. We were leaving Nashville, Tennessee to move to Florida, basically to completely unplug for a while. And she was going to college in California. She had always wanted to go into film. And we, you know, we knew that was her road. And where else should she be but—

Right.

LA. So we moved to Florida. I put her— she and I got on a plane out of Nashville, because we still had a home there, took her to college, dumped her in her dorm, set up her dorm. I took a red-eye back because I knew I'd be crying the whole way. So I might as well save money. You know, so what the heck, and got back to Florida. And there was this void of my baby is gone. She's all the way in California. And we don't even own the house that she grew up in. We were selling it, which, okay, let me sidebar. If you really want to pull the emotions down, sell your house so you're not walking by the room she grew up in. It actually helps. But that was my first venture into my daughter being away from home, not under my care, and starting her own world.

It's so funny that you talk about the room because my son launched and then COVID came back, long story about some other things too. And then he left again. And this time when he left, I remember feeling like, okay, this feels like it's forever. Like I don't, unless something really bad happens, which I don't want to happen, I don't think he's coming back. And I went downstairs to his room, which he left a wreck moving all of his stuff out.

Of course.

And that was the first thing I did the morning, you know, after he left is I went down there and I sat in his room. And I remember, you know, that feeling and I texted him, I'm sitting in your room and I'm feeling so sad that you're gone, but I'm happy for you, blah, blah, blah. But yes, it would be helpful to maybe not have that room as like the gravestone.

It's true. For sure.

So then what happened? Did she flourish? How did that go?

She stumbled. She flourished, she stumbled. She did all of what they're supposed to do in that period. And that's something you have to kind of adapt to is that they're transitioning as much as you're transitioning.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So she went— we knew she would never go finish college. Okay, we started with thinking this child's not going to finish college, she wants to go into film. We sent her to Biola University, they had a good film department, and they were a Christian university. So every semester, she would say, what should I take? And I'd say film and Bible, Bible and film. I didn't care about English or math.

Right.

So she went 2 years, and then we said, you need to go intern. And we will pay— we will give you the money that you— we would have given toward college, so you can pay rent. And you can go work for somebody for nothing. Because that's where you have to start in industries like this.

That's right.

And so she did. So she went from 2 years in a Bible college to— we looked for an apartment for her in LA. And the apartment hunters said West Hollywood, because it is the gay community. And she's safe there. You know, I'm in Florida. And this is what the apartment hunter told me. And I went, well, there's logic in that. Okay. Right. So yeah, it really was. So she went from that to the gay community in LA, and lived there and worked for 2 years interning at a talent agency. And a man, personal manager of actors, she started a children's division. And then she ended up Working in a— at a studio. But all of that, every single transition, and even in it, came with hard knocks because, you know, she knew everything.

Right.

She was smart, not as smart as she thought she was. And so each step, she kind of had her own way of how she wanted to do it. And often we would look at it and go, all right. You, you give it a try, knowing that she was gonna land on her hiney. And she did. And then she learned and the whole, the whole experience was great. It really was. But there were a lot of hard knocks to get from putting her on an airplane to college to actually entering the industry that she wanted.

Well, I love what you just said about saying give it a try. And we knew she was gonna land on her butt. You know, I think that runs counter to kind of some of the things that we do when we're parenting a young child, we're trying to protect them. And we're trying to Sometimes coddle them. It's reality. And I think that's so crucial though, even into the teenage years, is letting them try things that even though we know what they're going to fail, we know they're going to learn something from. So let me ask you this question. At what age do you consider a person an adult?

Ah, yeah. That, that to me is a loaded question. I mean, technically when they're completely supporting themselves, you go, now they're an adult. But the reality is, Adulthood is an ever-evolving thing.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, it is a process of learning. It is a process of recognizing what you've done wrong, how to do it right, admitting you're wrong, um, learning from others. So I don't, you know, I don't know if I necessarily consider myself an adult, you know, and I'm pretty well in years. So I, I think it's a process and every kid is different. So it's not like you go, I want you to be an adult. You need to act like an adult. I wanted my child to be responsible and mature and thoughtful and kind and admit when she blew it and celebrate when she didn't. So I think for me, I was looking less at, are they an adult, and more, are they humans that I'm proud of that are accomplishing things in life?

I think that's great. And looking at their maturity, which just like all children in development, it's going to be in different places. They might be really mature in one area and not in another. And I used to always tell my kids, and I'd still do, but I don't really believe it anymore. I would say you're not an adult until you are fully supporting yourself, then you become the adult. But as now I have adult children, I'm realizing, like you said, that's not really the truth. Because despite the fact that, yeah, I'm still supporting my 20-year-old, he's in college, of course I am. There are many things that he really is an adult about. And I've got to respect that. Because part of that whole respect part is Okay, well, you're not an adult, so maybe I don't have to fully respect you as an adult. But the reality is we do. How did you navigate that whole respect thing as an adult when you are allowing— you're supporting her, you're allowing her to kind of make her own choices. But what about when she makes choices that you're not happy with and you're supporting her? Did that ever happen?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that you have to choose when you step in and step up. Okay, because some of the choices, you just want them to make the choices and deal with whatever they're dealing with. But then others you're supporting, so you have expectations. If I am helping pay for college, then your grades will be X. And if they're not, you need to have a really good reason they're not, or you need to work it out, or you're going to start paying for it for yourself. If you're in the transition time, I think setting expectations is more important than delivering consequences, where instead of just saying later after it happened, you should have— why didn't you say, here's what I expect of you. You're going to college. I'm underwriting it. Like even when we made the transition for Lauren from college to working as an intern, We had expectations. If we were going to continue to help her financially during that time, then what she was going to do was find a good internship, go there every day, tell us how it's going, and make sure that she is producing quality work within that time period. So as long as she met those, then we continued supporting. When she didn't, we challenged her and said, so— What happened? Do you want to continue this or not? Because if you don't do it on the track that we want you to and expect from you, then you're going to have to figure out how to pay rent in West Hollywood,

which is expensive. Okay, so you, you said a word, consequences, which I think is really important because it's simple when they're in your house and they're young. So I'm going to get to some— I'm going to just go ahead and dive in on some really hard things that I'm thinking about because I have friends and I have people who are in this place of dealing with especially daughters, which I think on some level is a little bit harder than the boys, where daughters are, you know, hooking up with guys that they don't, you know, agree with. Daughters are— maybe our daughters and sons are smoking weed, or they're doing things, maybe even moving someone in, you know, where parents are like, all right, you know, I had— I don't want to give away anybody's confidence. I've heard of things like, you know, well, my daughter's making this decision and we don't agree with it religiously. We don't agree with it politically and how, how can we respond to her because we're supporting her but we don't want to hold money over her head. We can't really give her consequences. So I love that you use that word because of course there's natural consequences and then there's parental consequences. How do you navigate that? And I know I'm asking you hard questions.

You are, but it's a good one, Zoe. It's a good one. We have to allow them mistakes. We have to allow them to put themselves in situations that, you know, are dead-end streets, that, you know, they are going to one day have a problem with, with that. Let's just start with a girl in a relationship. You know, moving in with them and making the compromise that I'm going to live this life as if I'm married to them, but I'm not.

Right.

You know, ultimately it's not going to pan out. It— I think very, very, very seldom does it become a healthy relationship. I'm not saying never, but very seldom. So what are you going to do? You're going to say, I don't agree with it. You're, you're at a dead end. You're, you know, or you're going to say, I love you. Uh, I actually love him. And I am going to— you know what, how I feel about this, and you know my concerns. But you know what? I'm your mom. And I'm here no matter what. You're welcome in my home. Even he's welcome in my home. Because I love you. And the reason you do that, Zoe, is because when that day comes, that probably will,

Right.

That they find that it's not the place they really want to be, you're there. You have not driven them away from you. You have not made them not want to come to you out of shame or guilt, or not— they don't want to reveal their hurt to you because it's too personal. And, you know, they know how you felt. So to me, ultimately, you want the consequences of their lives to affect them, because that affects all of us. All of us have to do that. There's this emotional muscle of I will get through it that has to be built, and the only way it could be built is through experience. So you can't deny your children that, but you always want them to know you are in their life for good. You're not going to— you're not going to bring it up all the time. You're not going to make mention of it. You're going to let it lie. They know how you feel. You're going to love them. Then when that day comes, Zoe, you're there. You're there to help them. You're there to walk through the hurt with them. You're there to support them if you need to at that point, whatever. So, you know, I may be a little different than some people who say kick them out because they made this decision or they'll never be allowed in my home. I don't believe that. I don't think that's what you should ever do. Let them feel the pain, but make sure you're there when they do.

I absolutely love that. And mamas, if you're listening, I know that's hard. But that is such good, wise advice. And if you think back to when you were in your 20s, when you were a kid who thought you knew everything, what would you have wanted and needed from your parents from, you know, that lens now? Obviously, 20-year-olds have this idea of what they want, but they're not looking through that lens of, you know, of an adult. But I think ultimately, as humans, that's what we all want, right? Is we want love and acceptance. It is. And we want Forgiveness. We don't want the I told you so's when we make the mistakes, and we want to know that the people we love love us unconditionally. So thank you, that was beautiful. And I hope a mama who's out there who is in the middle of, you know, this place with their kid, son or daughter, is able to take that at heart and realize that that's really sound advice. Even if your drive is to do something punitive, even if your drive is to do something different, I hope you take that to heart. Oh, that was good. Okay, so I want to ask, at what point do you swoop in and save the day? And I'm going to tell a little story, which I hope my son will forgive me for, but this just, this just recently happened. But he chose, he chose an apartment. And our deal was, if I had to pay whatever I paid to the college is $1,100 a month for his room and board. And so he wanted to get out with his roommates and they wanted to be on their own and have their apartment. And so I said, okay, that's cool, you can do that. I'm only going to contribute $1,100 because that's what I would pay if you were in the dorm, which I really think is where you should stay for another year. So he found an apartment that his portion is $1,400. And I said, okay, well, there you go, I'll give you your $1,100. And he just moved in, we did all the move-in stuff and Rent's due and he's short.

So,

I mean, I can tell you what I've done is I've let him just kind of sweat it out. I knew, because I, I check his bank account all the time, and I knew he was going to be short, and I saw him doing these uber things. But at what point do you go ahead and swoop in and save the day? And at what point do you really let them just crash?

You know, I, I love the word grace. I absolutely love the word grace. And I think, you know, we all need to be allowed to make mistakes once or twice, but not past that.

Hmm.

So I think sometimes in these situations you can say, you know what, you, you know what I said, and I'm going to give you 1 month. That means you need to get your act together and you need to come up with the $300 you're going to pay me back. So that means you're going to have to figure out how to make $600 this month because you'll have $300 next, and then you pay me back, you know, whatever. So, but I think that sometimes you give them grace. Sometimes you go, all right, I'll pay the difference only this month. You know, honestly, Zoe, it is more do the best you can that day.

Mm-hmm.

And think, all right, I am going to make this decision today. And the next decision might be a little bit harder. I might kick them a little bit harder. I might push them a little bit harder. But it's a process and they're not always the same. I had, I had a similar experience with my daughter that I had to get her out of a bad rent situation. It ended up being her choice of apartment, her choice of roommates went completely south with the people that were living there, completely south. The gentleman who was the head or who owned the house was one of the kids' fathers, and he was an attorney who was a litigator. Okay, you could imagine that.

Yeah.

Contracts and everything. So at Christmas, she— we needed to get her out of this contract. So I, at midnight Florida time, got on the phone with him and his wife And negotiated an out. Okay. Now,

that's a boss mama move.

Oh yeah, it was tough. But at that point, I needed to get her out of— it was an unhealthy scenario, and it was beyond her capacity at that point in her life to get herself out of it. So I rescued her. Okay, I rescued her. We found a new place, a new world. And she learned an enormous lesson because we told her at the front end, this may not be a bad idea. We had to bail her out. And it was at least one of those, maybe my parents aren't as dumb as I think they are scenarios, which is a great byproduct.

You know, I love what you just said is when it's something that is beyond their capacity, I think that's a perfect barometer. So I hope you guys are listening out. And to tell you what I did, I let him sweat it out. I let him Uber Eats or whatever you do to try to earn extra money. I let him do all of that because I wanted him to feel

Love

it. Yeah, to feel the pressure, to recognize what it is that he's doing. But ultimately, and he was only $50 short at the end, at the very end. So I, you know, obviously I threw him the $50. But I wanted him to feel it and not have that assumption that I was going to do it, you know, so I waited till the end. But I like what you said, when it gets to a point where they are beyond their capacity and development and maturity, then that's our place as a mentor, right? That's our place As it

is

a parent is to help them so that they can learn and grow. I love that. Beautiful. Thank you. Oh, okay. Another hard one. So I think maybe this will be our last hard one. What advice would you give to a woman whose husband doesn't agree with how she's mentoring her adult child? Maybe giving too much money, not enough, interfering too much, whatever it is. What advice would you give to a woman in that place? And I have clients who are in this place right

Oh, it's a tough one. You have to be on the same page, even if you're really not. Okay.

What does that look like?

All right. That means you, hopefully you have enough of a relationship with your husband that you can have a conversation. Okay. Starting place, conversation. Here's why I feel this way. Here's why you feel this way. So someone usually has to give. Okay. Sometimes my husband had to give. Sometimes I had to give. And we would trust the other to take the lead. Even when I didn't agree with him and I felt like it was important to him that we do it his way because he really, really, really felt strongly, I would step back and say, for our daughters, we're on the same page. I don't think this is a great idea.

Right.

I think this may blow up in our face, but we're on the same page. So we would take that road. Sometimes he would do it with me, sometimes I would do it with him. Sometimes it was right. Whoever was the dominant personality or choice had it right, and sometimes we had it wrong. And I think it's almost like an extra— it's like a muscle exercise, Zoe. Mm-hmm. It's like, you know, you, you try it a little bit, you try to find your compromise, you take your position collectively because Every child, whether they're 2 or 22, know how to play their parents against each other.

Of course. So

you've got to have a united front. But what happens when you take that road and you decide you're going to go one route or another, when you win in that route or you lose in that route, there's an education for both parents to listen a little bit more to the other one because maybe they were a little more right, or to give that other— that spouse the latitude because you didn't see it the way they did. And They were right or wrong. And I think if you do that enough, you start learning how to compromise even better and come up with the same solution.

I love that. So basically the United Parental Front applies in raising kids just like it did— it does in mentoring kids. And I, and hopefully you've already had the exercise of doing that as you raise this child. Right.

Right.

And it's just continuing to apply that. In their adulthood. Beautiful. I like that. We talked a lot about some logistics and I asked you some really hard questions. So thank you for answering those. And I hope that other, other moms are, are feeling a benefit from that. So I just want to dive in a little bit about the emotional relationship and not just necessarily the relationship, but even your own now changing relationship with yourself. You've now lost this role of parenting, which you've been doing for, you know, 20 years. And how do you navigate that with yourself in terms of, okay, some women are stay-at-home moms and now it's like, well, now what do I do? And then of course other women, you know, might've been, you know, working and having careers, but a lot of their focus was still very much on their kids. And so now it's that changing, the empty nest, and, and how do you shift the focus back to yourself in a healthy way?

Oh, you think that's an easy question, Zoe? Yeah, no, um, it is, it is a really hard transition. I mean, I, I worked full-time, traveled the entire time my girls were growing up, but when— but motherhood was extremely important to me. So when my youngest daughter left, I remember thinking, I was a mom. Am I a mom?

Hmm.

Am I, am I— is that, is that part of my life completely over? Or is it just changing? And can I adapt to that change? Am I going to be successful? Are they going to want to come home? Do they still like me? You know, you go through all of those emotions. You do. But it comes back to, I think, you as a woman. Who do I want to be today? All right, I have fulfilled that part of my motherhood journey. And this really is another part of my motherhood journey. It's not that you're not a mom. It's not that you won't always be their mother. You will always be that, but it's going to look differently. And actually, I can say, except for some of the bumps and some of the bad decisions both of my daughters made at different times, where we got through some tough times, but I can honestly say this is a richer part of my motherhood.

Hmm.

This is a part where I can sit back a little bit And they do ask my advice. I have chosen not to give it unless they ask, or prayerfully go, should I say anything? Should I say anything? Should I say anything? Or should I keep my mouth shut? You know, because—

That's a hard one.

Yeah, it's a hard one. But we have a really rich relationship, and I am mom, but I'm also their mentor in some ways and their friend in others, and I love it. I love it. So I'm not saying it's not hard to go through that transition, because it is, because you're losing one side of your connection. But you're gaining a whole different one that you didn't have before, because you can look at your adult child and say, I like who you are. And I like that we can go places together and experience life as grown-ups, quote unquote. And enjoy it together as more of the adult community. Even though I'm still your mom, I like your company. I like the joy you bring. I like the personality that has come out in you and who you are and the delight you bring to my heart. So I guess I want to say to the moms who are going through it, yes, it's hard, but the other side of it is incredibly rich and rewarding. And you know, you're not. You're not going to have any other relationship like it in the world as you do— you can with an adult child.

Beautiful. Thank you. You know, when I had my first son, I got a card from a friend of mine and it said, congratulations on your baby. Only the first 40 years are the hardest. And I remember kind of chuckling then, but now, you know, 20 years in, I'm like, okay, I can definitely see that.

Yeah, it's true. And I think if we look back, I think you said this earlier, if we look back at our lives, from at least my life, from my teen years until I was in my 30s, I had a lot of growing up to do. And I am quite sure that the parents that my— well, especially my husband's parents, I'm sure because they were the kind of in-laws you wanted. I'm sure they sat back sometimes and just said, I'm going to keep my mouth shut because Dan and Dar are Just not making the best decisions.

And

so, you know, you just, you look back at your life and think, why would I expect my child to not make their own decisions that could be problematic and not? So yeah, it takes a while for all of us to grow up.

And learn that sometimes we do just have to keep our mouths shut and love them.

Yes.

Yeah. Thank you, Dar. Is there any last thing you would want to say to a woman who is, you know, because so many Kids are going off to college this week, next week. And any last thing you want to say to a mom who's in this launching phase?

Yeah, I think the magic formula, if there is one, to dealing with children who are transitioning from being in your home to adulthood is to listen more and speak less.

You need

to— yeah, you need to hear what they want to say, or even sometimes watch what they're doing so you can hear what they're saying. And don't speak up all the time. They don't need your opinion on everything they're doing. They need to hear from you when they ask, or if you need to step in because you know they're really in trouble. But you need to listen to them, even if you need to create scenarios where you're going somewhere exciting together that they might want to go with you just because the trip's totally cool, not because they want to go with you. So you create those. So you have those opportunities to do exactly that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your wisdom. I know that it's serving women out there and thank you for Grit and Grace. So can you tell women how they can find you, how they can connect with Grit and Grace?

Sure. Absolutely. gritandgracelife.com is where, and your column, Ask Dr. Zoe, is there, which ladies, it's amazing. And We are, we are a community of writers. I'm there, I probably write the most, but we're a community of women who share our lives, which I personally think that learning from someone who's walked through it is one of the best ways to learn life. And that's what greatgracelife.com is.

Great, thank you. And I'll put all of that, including your book Raising Great Girls, I will put that in the, in the show notes because some of you women are still in the place of raising the great girls, but I hope that this still served you because one day you will be here. Thank you so much, Starlene.

Thank you, Zoe.

Well, that was good. And for you women in the thick of it, you're halfway through the hardest part. Actually, I hope that you are enjoying this new chapter in your journey of parenting. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. We are fixing you, we're not fixing them, and that changes everything. Episodes usually go up on Tuesday every week. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and get on my mailing list so you can get my encouragement. Have a strong week.