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When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us: Letting Go of Their Problems, Loving Them Anyway, and Getting on with Our Lives
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.874
EAN: 9780743232814
ISBN: 074323281X
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: May 25, 2004
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
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Editorial Review:
So your adored son is nearing 30--or past it already--and still living at home, unable to hold onto a McJob for longer than six months running, relying on you to feed him and make his car payments. Your beautiful, brainy daughter is anorexic, or addicted to drugs, or unwilling to leave the man who hits her. Increasing numbers of baby boomers are finding that their grown children have fallen far short of their expectations. These parents are confused, angry, guilt-ridden, and ashamed. Jane Adams's When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us is for them. She reveals the kinds of disappointments that other parents are facing: kids who are unable or unwilling to support themselves, kids who are addicts or convicts, kids who've joined cults or seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. She stresses that these are real problems--but that they aren't the parents' problems. Adams reassures parents that they've done their jobs and that they don't have to spend the rest of their lives picking up the pieces for their grown children, emotionally, financially, or otherwise. Continuing to prop up kids who've repeatedly fallen on their own teaches them nothing; it's just a temporary fix. Beyond offering sympathy, reassurance, and wisdom, the book doesn't lay out a plan for solving anyone's problems, but reading it may help disappointed parents shuck some of their guilt and shame, gather the courage to take back their own lives, and let their grown children fend for themselves. --Jennifer Lindsay
How do today's parents cope when the dreams we had for our children clash with reality? What can we do for our twenty- and even thirty-somethings who can't seem to grow up? How can we help our depressed, dependent, or addicted adult children, the ones who can't get their lives started, who are just marking time or even doing it? What's the right strategy when our smart, capable "adultolescents" won't leave home or come boomeranging back? Who can we turn to when the kids aren't all right and we, their parents, are frightened, frustrated, resentful, embarrassed, and especially, disappointed?
In this groundbreaking book, a social psychologist who's been chronicling the lives of American families for over two decades confronts our deepest concerns, including our silence and self-imposed sense of isolation, when our grown kids have failed to thrive. She listens to a generation that "did everything right" and expected its children to grow into happy, healthy, successful adults. But they haven't, at least, not yet -- and meanwhile, we're letting their problems threaten our health, marriages, security, freedom, careers or retirement, and other family relationships.
With warmth, empathy, and perspective, Dr. Adams offers a positive, life-affirming message to parents who are still trying to "fix" their adult children -- Stop! She shows us how to separate from their problems without separating from them, and how to be a positive force in their lives while getting on with our own. As we navigate this critical passage in our second adulthood and their first, the bestselling author of I'm Still Your Mother reminds us that the pleasures and possibilities of postparenthood should not depend on how our kids turn out, but on how we do!
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great book
Every parent with grown or almost grown children should read this book even if their kids haven't dissapointed them.
Rating: - Well Worth Reading!!
This book is possibly one of the best books I have ever read.
I feel that the author knows my step-daughter as well as I do if not better.
Highly recommended reading!!!!
Rating: - Excellent, solid advice, well written
Despite the indulgent and rather cheezy-sounding title, this is a sensible, well-written book with a nice balance between general discussions and anecdotal accounts of "horror stories" of parents confronting difficult choices in dealing with grown children who can't seem to grow up. I checked a few books on the subject, and this was by far the most useful.
Rating: - Validating and Empowering!
This book helped me understand and accept that my kids could swallow my life up whole UNINTENTIONALLY and really get in the way of me doing the things that I really want to do in my life.
I have always believed that it is in my kids best interest for me to raise them exactly the same way I was (at least in certain areas). So, I paid for their college education, gave them each a Visa, bought them cars, offered to pay for graduate schools, trips, insurance, etc.
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Rating: - excellent book
i felt that the book gave alot of insight into the issues that confront parents about how to handle the difficult situations that our adult children expect us to be partners in solving their problems. they hold us accountable for thr mistakes and that tends to tear their relationship with us apart.
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