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Home » Episodes » Focus on the Family with Jim Daly » Learning Your New Role as the Parent of an Adult Child
John Fuller: Jim Burns has great advice for parents whose children have grown into adulthood.
Dr. Jim Burns: Now, basically, we’ve devoted at least two decades of our life to, uh, being in control, or at least semi-control of our kids, and, uh, then they became adults and we’re not in control anymore.
John: Welcome to today’s episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller.
Jim Daly: Well, John, today’s topics is very relevant to you and me, and I think it’s safe to say there are a lot of parents listening, who are gonna benefit from this message from Dr. Jim Burns. Jim’s a good friend, a parenting expert, and the president of HomeWord, uh, which seeks to build God-honoring families, which I applaud.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And as Jim is going to explain the transition from being the parent of a child to the parent (laughs) of an adult, I’m laughing ’cause I’m living it, can be, ah, a bit tricky, yeah, and this is new territory for both parties, obviously. Our kids are new to adulthood, and, uh, we’ve never been the parents of adults. So since everyone is new in their role, this is a good time to get some Godly instruction from someone who’s been there.
John: Yeah, and Jim Burns, and his wife, Cathy, have three grown daughters, and you’ll hear some of their stories here as the show unfolds. Let me mention that Jim is a prolific author, and what you’re about to hear is based on one of his books, called Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out. It is a terrific resource, and, uh, get a copy from us here at Focus on the Family, where the proceeds go right back in the ministry. Here now is Jim Burns, speaking at the Legacy Coalition Grandparenting Summit just a few years ago on today’s episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Dr. Burns: I’m gonna give you some principles today, and these principles are principles that come out of research, but mainly out of my own experience, having kids who were transitioning. And I’ll be honest with you, our kids are amazing, and they’re now in their 30’s, but they kinda bumped, and it kinda shocked us even while they were at Christian colleges and whatnot, so here’s some principles. Principle number one, are you ready for it? You may not like it, you’re fired.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: You’re fired. Well, actually, you’re not totally fired, but your role as a parent has to change. And I wanna give you part of the job description. Number one is you have to give your kids the passport to adulthood, even if they’re not acting like adults. You have to also rewrite the script of your life by letting go of control.
Like I said, that’s not easy if you’re a control freak, and often, this will deal with grief, and we’ll have to deal with some grief. C. S. Lewis said it best, “Change always involves a sense of loss.” And I don’t know that Cathy and I saw this as loss until it started happening. I remember the day that, that Heidi, our youngest, uh, we dropped her off at school, and we were driving back and w- we both cried, and we were both silent because we realized, “No, we’re going through some kind of a loss, and letting go of our children has to be counted as one of those necessary losses.” Okay?
Um, our role changes and so does theirs. There was a woman, who, uh, I speak with quite a bit. I love this woman. She is 45 years old. She is one of the top execs at, in the Silicon Valley, one of the main, main tech firms, and, uh, she has been incredibly successful.
And she was telling me back in the green room, uh, a few years ago that she had brought her mom out from, um, Asia, and her per- Her dad had died, and so she had set her, uh, her mom up in a very nice home. She named the, the city in that man- It was a multi-million-dollar home, and, uh, she had her kids over, and it was really cold that day, and so she was putting on the kids’, uh, coats and things like that after they, uh, were getting ready to leave, and her mother said to her, at 45 years old, “Honey, put your coat on. It’s cold outside.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And she said, “You know what, Jim, I don’t know why I did this, but I, I got frustrated with my mom, and so I just said to my mom, ‘You know, mom, I’m very capable. I, I’m 45 years old. I, I bought you this house. You know, I’m-I’m successful at what I do. Why do you keep telling me, you know, what to do? And furthermore, why would you tell me to put on my coat?’”
She said, “It’s cold outside, and I’m your mother.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: So I said to her, “What did you do?,” and she said, “I put on my coat.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: See? (laughs) So again, it’s not easy. Now, that woman had a problem with what I’m gonna call principle number two. Are you ready for this? I’m gonna kinda do the shotgun approach at you, but principle number two is this, you-
If you didn’t like the first one, you’re not gonna like this one either. Are you ready for it? Unsolicited advice is usually taken as criticism. Experience is a better teacher than advice. And I think one of the hardest things to do is let our kids make poor choices, and then realize that they’re gonna have to learn by experience.
So here’s the deal, whenever we are intrusive with giving advice, what they hear is not the lesson we’re trying to give them, what they hear is that you don’t trust them to be all grown up, even when they’re not making good decisions, and so it’s important for us to, to understand that. See these scars? Can- You guys can see the scars. That’s from biting my tongue.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Right here. Oh my goodness. Just, I have the answer. I wanna fix it, and then I have to bite my tongue. In fact, what I say, uh, under this, uh, idea of, of unsolicited advice is taken as criticism is, I think it’s important for us to ask our adult children for permission to give advice.
I remember one time Christy and, and Steve, Christy’s my oldest. Steve’s her husband, and the two grandkids, they were living with us for two months because they were transitioning from an apartment to, uh, Texas, and so they, you know, got done with their lease and they were saying, “Can we come?,” and it was the greatest thing for us ’cause we got to hang out with our grandkids, uh, and Steve. Christy was driving us a little nuts, but that’s another story.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: So they’re in an argument. Now, I would call it a full-blown argument, but it wasn’t totally a full-blown argument. It’s awkward when you have your, your, you know, grown daughter and her husband having this disagreement, and I’m in the kitchen, so I’m kinda stuck. They’re in the little family room, and they’re having an argument over the fact that they were moving to Texas and how were they gonna move, and what was the most effective way to do it, and the cheapest way, and Steve had a terrible idea, in my humble opinion. And, um …
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: I always say in my humble opinion, Cathy goes, “In your humble opinion, you think you’re always right,” but that’s another story.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: So, um, and Christy’s wasn’t much better, but I had a better idea, so I listened, and then at the opportune moment, I came in and did my advice. I said, “Hey, can I give you guys some advice?” And Ca- Christy goes, “Not now, dad. Not now,” and I went, “Okay. People pay me to give you advice, but, you know, they don’t.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: So I go, um, I go to the back room, and I told Cathy what my advice was, and she said, “You know, that is really good advice. They need to take that.” Well, they didn’t. So the next week, after they had gone to Texas, uh, I flew in. I think I was speaking in Dallas, and Cathy was there to help, you know, get the house set up, watch grandkids, things like that, and they’re talking about the fact that half of the crib had fallen off of the …
Oh, this is a horrible idea. It was like this crazy thing that he had on the back of a truck, and so the crib had fallen off. We ended up having to pay for the crib at Target, a new crib. That was great. Um, secondly, the bed, they had lost the screws to the bed, so they were not sure what to do, and the bed was just on the floor. It stayed on the floor the entire year, by the way.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And then there was one other thing. It was a dresser, where they, they had pretty much killed the dresser. And so they were talking about this. It wasn’t a good trip, right? And so I said to them, “Well, you know, you guys, that, that’s hard, but, you know, you kinda chose that way.”
And Christy said, “Dad, you had an idea. What was your idea?”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And I said, “Oh, this is what I would have done.” “Dad, why didn’t you tell us that? You would’ve saved us a lot of money.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Right? So I still think it’s best to ask for permission.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: But here’s the deal, your role changes. Your role changes from mentor, uh, and coach. That’s where it goes. So you were in control, and you, and you’re still mom and dad, but now you’re a mentor and a coach. What I have found in the 30’s, not so much in the 20’s ’cause it wasn’t easy for us, but in the 30’s, it’s a really, uh, great place to be.
In fact, yesterday, uh, we, we’re driving, we had a weird way of getting here, and Cathy was in the car, and our daughter called. She was in New York. Uh, uh, she was working in New York. She lives in California, and she called Cathy just for mentoring, and just for some insight, and I listened to Cathy handle that, and it was so beautiful, but that’s because the role has changed. Unsolicited advice is given as criticism, but she was able to give Heidi a lot of advice, because Heidi needed it, and frankly, our role changes.
The-the Bible says something very interesting. The Bible says, “So blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth.” You’re not thinking about this. No. Not at all, but they are, that sometimes when you’re giving advice, you’re giving them cursing.
I’m not talking about cussing now, but that you’re cursing them. And so it says, “Bless or curse.” What I wanna say to you loud and clear is bless them. Be the people who bless your kids. Do you agree with everything? No.
We don’t agree with everything that our kids say or do, but our job is to bless them, and when you bless them, that changes the relationship, so that’s principle number two. You ready for principle number three? Oh, boy. This is a biggie. Um, here it is, become a student of their culture, not your culture.
What this means is that our kids are either millennials or Gen Z. Some of your kids are a tad bit older, but pretty much, they’re living in the millennial world, if you would, and millennials are different. Millennials think different. Millennials act different, okay? And today, many of us are saying, uh, you know, “Who is this kid, and why is it taking them so long to grow up, and why aren’t they growing up at the same values that we taught them when they were younger?”
Well, one of the things we have to do is understand their distinctives. I’m not saying you agree with their distinctives, but understand their distinctives. One of the distinctives of a millennial and a Gen Z is that they are absolutely shaped by technology. We’re using technology, but they’re shaped by technology. It’s how they work, how they date, how they meet people and get married, 39% now.
39% meet online. That’s huge. But here’s some other distinctions. One of the good news distinctives is that once these millennials … And Gen Z is 24 and under, so it’s just happening now, but once these millennials get married, you know what the number one desire in their life is?
They have good marriages and have good parents. Well, guess what? That’s where they need us as grandparents, to be, you know, mentors in their life, and that’s where they need the church. And we’re actually seeing some of them who are fleeing the church are actually coming back. When?
When they get married and when they have kids, because what it was is it was, it was a good place for them, and then they took a time off, and now they’re coming back, and so that’s, that’s good news. One of the harder ones is this. This is the distinctive. Are you ready for it? They view tolerance as a form of loving, so they have problems with a biblical worldview.
They were raised in the church, they don’t have a problem with Jesus, although, they don’t agree with everything that Jesus would say, sometimes when it comes to within the scripture. So they view tolerance as a form of loving. This becomes pretty interesting at Christmas, and Easter dinners, and birthday dinners, and when the political world comes in, because they may have a different view than you, but again, we have to be students of the culture and we have to understand how they’re raised. Here’s one things that they’re raised. I call this the cringe factor, that your kids saw pornography at age 11.
You can Google me on this, okay? And so your kids, at that level, probably saw pornography, so they viewed sexuality different. Cohabitation, 1974 … I know that’s a long time ago, but hey, you were here. If I’m speaking to young people, they weren’t, but in 1974, 75% of the population in America said that they would not live with someone before, instead of marriage cohabitation.
Today, 74 plus percent say that they would live with someone before, instead of marriage. Some of you have kids who are living with people, or who did, and yet, secular research teacher says that, “If people cohabitate, there’s a greater chance, when they get married, of a divorce.” So the point that I’m saying is, is our kids have been living with different experiences than the experiences that we lived with. Gender identity confusion, I could spend all day talking about the gender identity craze, and the culture is on fire, and so they have a different view, and you can’t understand their view, and oftentimes, they can’t understand your view. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m speaking in generalities. It doesn’t mean all kids are like this, but it’s important to know that the culture is like this.
John: You’re listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and that’s Dr. Jim Burns, and you’ll find more great insights in his book, Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out. We’ll send that book to you for a donation of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family. Uh, make that a monthly pledge or a one-time gift, and we’ll include a free audio download of the entire presentation by Jim with extra content. Donate today and request those resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast, or give us a call, 800, the letter A, and the word, FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Let’s go ahead and return now to more from Jim Burns.
Dr. Burns: And we’ve gotta ask this question, and this is a tough question for a lot of us, “Are we enabling, or are we helping them?” Uh, the question we have to ask is, “If we do that, um, are we really gonna help them become responsible adults?” So here’s the principle, they will never know how far the town is if you carry them on your back. And way too many times, as parents, because we love our kids so much, we wanna do that. I mean, a woman said to me, you know, “My son is 22 years old, uh, and I wish he would schedule his own pediatrician appointments.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Now, that’s just irony on like several levels, okay? (laughs)
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: I mean, one is that he needs to have his, you know, pediatrician appointments done by his mom, but two is, “Why is he still going to a pediatrician?”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: You know, that’s just another question I have, but, you know, what was she doing? She was enabling dependency. We have to be careful not to enable dependency. It was a phrase that they used in recovery movement that kinda works for our adult kids. You earned it.
This doesn’t mean that you’re not being loving, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but you earned it. It’s that whole idea of experience, right? It’s a better teacher than advice. So Sean, he’s a graduate of UCLA. He got good grades.
He and his mom and dad come into my office, and Sean just kinda has a smirk on his face, and he’s just graduated from UCLA, spent a summer traveling in Europe. They seemed to have a lot of money. They live in New Port Beach, California, and, uh, now he’s back at home, but he’s getting up at 1:00, and he’s playing a lot of video games, he’s smoking a little bit of pot, and he’s not getting a job, and it’s driving the parents nuts, and he’s a vegan, and they’re not vegan, so the mom cooks a vegan meal for him-
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: … and then cooks their meal.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Please don’t do that, okay? I mean, vegan … If you want a … Your kids wanna be vegan, fine, but let them figure that out. So he’s sitting on the couch and, uh, (laughs) and the mom and the dad are on the, also on the couch, but she’s hugging one side, the dad is hugging the other, and Sean just has the whole middle couch, and he’s just thinking, “This is the funniest thing.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: ‘Cause the mom and dad are in a fight, and I’m standing … I- It’s … They’re out of control. I am doing a terrible job counseling ’cause both of them are out of control.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And they’re blaming each other, and they’re saying how bad it is, and how Sean is. Finally, the dad just goes, “Sean has a problem!”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Sean kinda looks at his dad, and I said, “Can I be … Can I just jump in here for a minute?”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: I said, “I don’t think Sean has a problem. I think you have a problem. Sean has a great life. You’re paying for everything.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And Sean all of a sudden looks at me, and I said, “Who’s paying for his pot?” “Well, not us.” “Well, how does he get money?” “Well, we give him, uh, some money.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: “You’re paying for his pot. Sh- You need a, uh, a plan to help watch Sean, and he’s got way too good of a deal, so he doesn’t have a problem, you do.” “So what do we do?” “We have to land the helicopter.” We do.
We need to land the helicopter. And we still sometimes have the helicopter. You know, when I wrote the book, Doing Life with Your Adult Children, I’m so shocked and honored what a bestseller it is on Amazon and whatnot, but I laughed ’cause I was speaking in Hawaii. There was a group of about 4,500. They interviewed me, and then there was a little signing, and there would be not a, you know, parents of adults …
Well, they, they came through, and they want me to sign the book. You know who it was? It was like 28-year-olds, and I’d go, “You can’t be a parent of an adult.” They go, “Oh, no. The- This is for my mom.”
“She really needs this. Her name is Claire.”
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: You know?
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: Now, what’s fascinating is this next one is the biggie. And the next principle is the one that we probably get the most response from our, you know, courses and small groups that churches use and all this, and, and they’re always were … They write me every day on this stuff, okay? And it’s basically this, when your grown child violates values. Now, I realize everybody in this room does not have grown children who are violating your values.
I, I totally understand that. But what I’m hearing more and more is that we’re in shock, right? And that’s, again, like I said, it’s the biggie, and, and here’s the principle, you can’t want it more than they want it. Hmm. So hard.
I love this, this phrase, “Good thing Easter is a season, and not just a day because some miracles take time.” And I wanna say to some of you who have your kids for violating their values, I want you to know that kids do come back, and sometimes, maybe if you have a younger, uh, adult who’s still kinda going through that process, you know, sometimes it is when they get married. Some of the issues that we’re dealing with i-in, in empty nest work and in grandparenting work is that when kids have a troubled, uh, situation, and the parents aren’t letting you connect with the grandkids, uh, for church, or things like that. I totally get that. But in many ways, there’s some good things coming out of it, and especially people who live with these principles.
So let me give you some, under this principle number five, you can’t want it more than they want it. Let me, let me give you some good advice. Number one is you’ve got to offer them tough love. Now, please do not mix tough love with being mean, or getting angry and getting frustrated always at them. No.
Tough love means you allow the consequences of their poor choices to happen. They’re adults. There’s nothing you can do about that. A woman asked me one time, you know, “Wa- What do I do with this?,” and I said, “Does she know what you believe?” She was living with her boyfriend.
“Does she know what you believe?” “Yes.” “Does she know how you feel?” “Yes.” “Then, expand the relationship, because she’s not gonna stay with this guy, odds are saying, and if it crashes, then you need to be safe. That doesn’t mean you have to agree.
It means you can be in a relationship, loving, God-honoring relationship with them, and still expand the relationship.” It’s … You can’t be a one-topic parent, is what I’m saying, because too many times, when our heart is breaking because a kid is violating a value, and it could be drugs, it could be that they’re living with somebody, it could be that they blocked away from faith, and the list goes on, but when that’s the case, we become one-topic parents, and so we pour our energy and our time and our effort just into that, when in fact, we’ve gotta expand the relationship because they still like to go get coffee. They still wanna talk about snowboarding or surfing, or whatever it might be, see. And so it’s so key for us, and yet, it’s hard.
I remember when our daughter, Becca, was going through some tough times, Azusa Pacific University, a Christian school. And I would go up most Tuesdays. Cathy teaches the Bible study on Tuesday, and so I would go up on Tuesdays and have dinner with her, and I would always have something in my pocket. I’m always prepared. And it was like a long list of things I wanted to talk to her about.
And there were days we had that conversation and days we didn’t, days I listen to her talk about boys and life, and, you know, school and complain about this or whatever. But what I realized was that once she did crash, and she kinda did, (laughs) that I needed to be that safe person. So again, she knew what I believed, no doubt. She knew how I felt, but constant criticism, even if it’s true, breaks a relationship apart, as long as they know what you believe, okay? And I think that’s a real … It got quiet in here, by the way.
Audience: (laughs)
Dr. Burns: And I think one of the reasons it got quiet is because we know. We even know this, but sometimes we don’t do this, so we can’t bail them out. I have a friend who had a daughter, who in college, uh, had an open container. Really, a neat girl. I’ve known this girl most of her life, and she had an open container. She was just barely at the intoxication level, um, probably semi-safe to drive.
This guy has so much money, that he could have easily had an attorney get her off of it. They decided not to. They didn’t bail her out. So here’s a woman who, um, was caught. He picked her up at jail, talk about a bad experience for him, and it was mainly the open container that was the problem.
So she had to go to DUI school, she had to pay her insurance, which went up like $2,000. It was on her record at school. It was on her record in business for 10 years. Best decision they could’ve ever made. Guess what?
She doesn’t do that, so he didn’t bail her out. Now, he had the capacity to do that, but he chose not to. That was good parenting, okay? And, uh, and also, you just can’t dump your anger and your frustration on them. So in a, in a time, when all of us are probably concerned about certain issues with our adult children, one level or another, I mean, we still are, it’s what we talk about.
We, we … Cathy and I have been together for a couple of days, trying to get here, and what do we talk about? We talked about our adult kids. We talked about our grandkids. We talked about our fears, we talked about the culture. We talked about, “What do our grand …”
“What kind of culture our grandkids’ gonna be growing up in, even with our kids growing up in a culture that wasn’t all that friendly to God-honoring values?,” see. So, again, for us, it’s so key that, that we realize that we can’t want it more than they want it. Here’s the bottom line. The bottom line is if your kids are, you know, messing up, and you have heartbreak, here’s the bottom line. You know what they’re asking?
Just one question, “Do you still love me?” Do they know that you love them, even though you don’t approve of some of their actions? Who’s the safe person in their life? Who’s the cheerleader?,” because there’s other things that you can be cheering about, and I know stories are really, really tough. Last principle, find joy in the empty nest.
And I think it’s important for us to understand this concept, that when your child leaves home, and their life fills up with fresh experiences, follow their lead and do the same thing. You’ve gotta find fresh experiences. Part of those fresh experiences is that, uh, what has happened in our empty nest is it’s given the freedom and, and the excitement to put energy into our grandkids. Learning from things from the Legacy Coalition from me, I’ve read through the Bible three times with James, who’s my grandson and my namesake, and my heart is wrapped around his. I’ve read through the Children’s Bible three times.
I didn’t do that with my kids. I wish I could say I did, but I didn’t. But all of a sudden, it’s got much more serious in that way, a successful life and a well-lived family life is never accidental. Lean into this. You have so much time now on your hands to build a legacy of faith between your grandchildren and you.
And I know sometimes it’s complicated. I like to call it a love affair between generations, and it is a love affair between generations. Cathy retired from working with kids who have autism so that she could be a fully engaged grandma, and I respect her so much for doing that, you know, sometimes when we are exhausted, but it’s good. Here’s a scripture that I wanna leave you with, and it’s a scripture I kinda just found in, in my own life, and I found it through the Message version, and it goes like this. It says, “Be alert, be present. Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert and rivers through the badlands.” Now, I think our job is to be alert, be present because God is not finished with you yet, and I’m sure you’ve heard that in almost every session. This is the time for us to lean into our legacy and make a difference from generation to generation.
John: What wisdom from Dr. Jim Burns, speaking at a Grandparenting Summit, hosted by our friends at the Legacy Coalition on today’s episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim: I love that vision Jim’s giving us there, to, uh, let go of control and have a respect-based relationship with our adult children, and by extension, our grandchildren. And I know many of you might have a prodigal adult child, and if there’s grandchildren involved, you might not have access to them, and my heart breaks for you. If that’s the case, give us a call here at Focus on the Family. Our friendly staff would count it a privilege to listen to your story and pray with you, and if needed, uh, you can request to call back from one of our caring Christian counselors. It’s all free, and we provide that service because others have, uh, helped us financially to be able to do that.
John: Yeah, and our number is 800, the letter A, and the word, FAMILY. 800-232-6459.
Jim: And if you’d like to learn more about having a healthy relationship with your adult child, I’d highly recommend the book by Jim Burns called Doing Life with Your Adult Children: Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out. Uh, it’s a great book title-
John: Hmm.
Jim: … but putting it into action could be tough. Uh, the book will give you encouragement for all the changing seasons of your child’s journey through adulthood with much more detail than what we can cover today. And we’ll send you, uh, Jim’s book-
John: Yeah.
Jim: … uh, when you make a monthly pledge of any amount to the work here at Focus on the Family. It doesn’t have to be a large amount. Uh, it’s the consistency that really helps us budget throughout the year. If you can’t make that monthly commitment, I get it. Uh, if you can make a one-time gift, that would be really helpful too. And please, don’t view this as a transactional thing.
It, it is, but much more so. It’s investing in the work of the Kingdom. I think last year alone, John, we had 193,000 decisions for Christ. Half a million couples helped, so be a part of that.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Let that accrue to your account in Heaven.
John: Yeah, get your copy of the book, Doing Life with Your Adult Children, when you call 800-A-FAMILY. That’s 800-232-6459, or you can donate online and request that book at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And remember, when you get the book from us today, we’ll include a free audio download of the entire presentation from Jim Burns with extra content. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Jim Burns is the president of HomeWord, which seeks to advance the work of God in the world by educating, equipping, and encouraging parents and churches to build God-honoring families. He is a popular public speaker and writer who has almost two million resources in print in 20 languages. He primarily addresses the topics of building strong marriages, encouraging parents and empowering kids and healthy leaders. Jim’s books include Finding Joy in the Empty Nest, Have Serious Fun, and Getting Ready for Marriage. He and his wife, Cathy, reside in Southern California and have three grown daughters and four grandchildren.
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Understanding the motives that complicate our communication with our adult children is necessary for strengthening this complex relationship. Keep reading to learn how to you approach this age and stage for your adult kids.
Dr. John Townsend offers parents guidance and encouragement for resolving a strained relationship with their adult children.
When someone you love makes poor choices in their lifestyle, relationships, or moral decision-making, there IS hope! Phil Waldrep provides concrete steps to removing any barriers that might stop your prodigal child from coming back to the Lord.
As our children become adults, it’s natural to wonder how we can effectively parent our grown children. Learn three helpful habits for a great relationship.
Blessing our adult children may seem harder than blessing our kids when they are young. However, it’s still vitally important.
Focus on the Family's staff of licensed, professional counselors can help you bring healing and restoration to your family with Christian perspectives you can trust.
Trillia Newbell passionately equips parents to celebrate Black History Month with their children around the dinner table and teach them the power of the gospel to create racial reconciliation.
Based on his book More Than Just the Talk, Jonathan McKee explains how parents can move beyond just having “the talk” with their kids, to engaging them in ongoing conversations about sex including purity, pornography and more.
As a parent, you have great influence with your children, especially when it comes to teaching the truths of the Bible. Mom and counselor Kristen Hatton gives you some tools to establish a gospel foundation for your family in preparation for the teen years. She will help you better learn how to spiritually invest into your kids so they can begin to stand on their own as they launch into adulthood.
Larnelle Harris shares stories about how God redeemed the dysfunctional past of his parents, the many African-American teachers who sacrificed their time and energy to give young men like himself a better future, and how his faithfulness to godly principles gave him greater opportunities and career success than anything else.
Amy Carroll shares how her perfectionism led to her being discontent in her marriage for over a decade, how she learned to find value in who Christ is, not in what she does, and practical ways everyone can accept the messiness of marriage and of life.
Jonathan McKee offers parents practical advice and encouragement in a discussion based on his book If I Had a Parenting Do Over: 7 Vital Changes I’d Make.