The term Emotional Intelligence, or EI in short, has become a ubiquitous term. It’s showing up in places like Dilbert comics. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive and manage emotions; it is believed to be essential for leadership. A Harvard Business Review article states that both the strategic reasoning and the execution functions require emotional-social intelligence. The prominence that Emotional Intelligence is gaining shows that EI is desirable quality for life success.

Children learn their emotional-social intelligence by being in relationships, especially in relationships with parents and siblings. When the children are still small, they begin to learn to discern emotions and exercise empathy. When children become young adults, they are often so caught up with the transition to independent living, they don’t have a lot of opportunities to interact with their parents.

One of the struggles many parents face is that their young adult children are not sensitive to the emotional needs of the parents. Moms who have become empty nest parents still need and want contact and expressions of love from their children. When these young adult children fail to show their parents love or at least express that they are thinking about mom and dad, parents feel forgotten. Should parents let their children know how they feel?

Sometimes I try too hard to be strong and not place any expectations on our children. An example is that my son didn’t bring me any Christmas present last year. I wrote him a note to tell him how disappointed I was. This year he did the same thing, saying that it’s really hard to shop for me. I was tempted to put on a happy face, but I realize he would not know how his thoughtlessness was hurting me if I was not honest with him. I let the pain show on my face. He needed to see that pain so he could develop the emotional intelligence he still needs to develop.

Parents still have the responsibility and the opportunity to teach their adult children emotional intelligence by being honest with their own emotions.
What might be some opportunities you have to teach your adult children emotional intelligence?

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When our children grow up to be adults, they will face emotional dilemmas.

Let me illustrate what I mean. My husband was 24 years old when he was away at graduate school. He was invited to the wedding of his close friend Steve. There was a conflict because his parents also invited him to a reunion with a family of close friends he grew up with. He felt the tug-of-war within him. He decided to go to the reunion event, but he felt very resentful and sad the whole time he was there.

Recently we were trying to work out the time and location for the holiday celebrations with our children. Our daughter seemed to have a difficult time deciding when and where to celebrate with us because she didn’t know what to do with her boyfriend. Should she ask for an invitation for her boyfriend? If she were to spend the night at our house, what can she do with her boyfriend, knowing that we would not allow them to spend the night together at our house? If she chooses to celebrate Christmas with her parents apart from her boyfriend, she would feel she was abandoning her boyfriend. How should she deal with this guilt?

In a Family Life article, the author describes how parents must release their children to grow independently when they get married. Her daughter Sarah was about to get married and she asked her mother to be strong at the wedding because if mom lost it, they would all lose it. This shows that mom is the emotional hub of the family.

Cutting the apron strings doesn’t begin all of a sudden when you walk your child down the aisle. Even in the day-to-day connections and interactions with our children, we have to cut the apron strings to release our children to grow, no matter how much it hurts. The more we are able to cut the emotional strings that tie down our children, the more e able to spread their wings to fly on their own.

How can we help our adult children resolve their emotional dilemmas?

1. Let your child decide. Never treat family get-togethers as an obligation. Make sure your child understands that these are invitations, not obligations.

2. Offer options that minimize or eliminate the dilemma. Sometimes changing the venue and the time may eliminate the conflict or dilemma. Helping out with transportation may also help if your child doesn’t have a car or other resources to get her to the venue. Including a boyfriend or girlfriend in the celebration, to the extent that they can respect your boundaries, will also help minimize the dilemma.

3. Refrain from loading guilt on your child. If you’re going to let your child decide, you might just hear a “no” answer. Don’t ever put your children on a guilt trip if they choose to spend time with someone else and somewhere else.

4. Assure your child of other opportunities for getting together. Unless the circumstances are unusual, or unless the relationships are estranged, grown children still want to stay connected with their parents. If they cannot participate, assure them of future opportunities to get together.

5. Be a big girl (for mom) or a big boy (for dad). In the end, we parents have to prove ourselves to be big boys and big girls. Cutting the apron strings and letting go is a painful experience, but like Sarah’s mom, we must be strong.

What have been some of your experiences of this type of emotional dilemmas? How did you help your child resolve these dilemmas? What tips can you share with us?

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The parent-child relationship is one of the longest lasting relationships in human society. As adult children begin their journey to independence, there is increasing tension in the relationship.
In a study done by Kira Birditt and her colleagues, they followed 474 parents and adult children who were at least 22 years old. The adult children lived within 50 miles of their parents. African Americans made up one-third of the sample and the rest were European Americans. They asked questions about numerous topics: personality differences, past relationship problems, children’s finances, housekeeping habits, lifestyles, and how often they contacted each other. The study reported the following findings:

• Both fathers and mothers reported more tension with their daughters than sons.

• Both adult sons and adult daughters reported more tension with their mothers than with their fathers. Most of the tension has to do with personality differences and unsolicited advice.

• Parental perception of tension increases as the adult children get older. This may have to do with the parents wanting or needing more attention as they age. The children pull away when they feel too much expectation was placed on them.

Separating from our children who at one time have been so close to us is not easy. The emotional distancing causes parents a great deal of grief. It’s been four years since our children have been living away from home. While time does make the grief a little easier to bear, time doesn’t’ wipe away the pain of the separation.

Nonetheless, parents must learn a new way of relating so as to reduce the tension in the relationship. I have found the following approach to be very effective.

1. Offer, but not demand, time together.

2. Treat your offer as an opportunity for family togetherness; never imply that it’s an obligation.

3. Refrain from any criticism of your child’s lifestyle choices. Train yourself to erase any critical attitudes. You may not realize it! Sometimes silence speaks the loudest! Your critical attitude comes out loud and clear even when you don’t say anything.

4. Before you give any advice, ask your child if he wants any. If he says “no,” shut up!

5. Don’t assume you’re more capable than your child in problem-solving. Parents often think we know best! I’ve been amazed how our children in their early 20’s have been able to solve their problems creatively when I get out of their way.

6. The sooner you can separate your finances, the better your relationship will be. As long as you’re supporting your child in any way, you’ll have a vested interest in how your child lives his or her life. This vested interest drives you to say or do things that increase the tension.

7. The sooner your child can move out into his or her own living quarters, the better your relationship will be. This is especially true if you and your child have wildly different personalities and standards for orderliness.
How would you describe the tension you feel in your relationship with your adult children? What might be the main cause? What would you do to reduce this tension?

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