5 Tips from a Therapist that Adult Children Can Use to Improve Their Relationship with Their Parents

Conversations about adult children and their parents have been making headlines recently. Some people are wondering whether therapy encourages adult children to distance themselves from their families.

At Light the Way Counseling Center, we believe effective therapy isn't about creating division—it's about helping people build healthier relationships whenever it is safe and possible.

Every family has conflict. Every family experiences misunderstandings. While some relationships require firm boundaries or even distance for safety, many strained relationships can improve through honest communication, greater understanding, emotional healing, and intentional effort from both parents and adult children.

Often hurts and wounds from childhood are in need of healing. Parents may not be aware of the hurts or come from a family where you just “suck it up”. You desire to have a relationship with your parents but you have been hurt by them.  Parents aren’t perfect.  Parents have their own wounds and generational baggage, too.

Establishing one’s individuality as an adult can also be challenging for both parents and children. Parents may have difficulty seeing their child as an adult, and the adult child wants to be their own person.

There is hope for adult children and their parents to have a healthy relationship.

In our last blog, we had tips for parents to improve communication with their adult children. Today, we have tips for the adult children to help heal the relationship with their parents.

How can I improve my relationship with my parents?

• Talk more

As counselors, we usually encourage people to listen more and talk less. If the parents are willing to listen, the adult child needs to be willing to talk more and express what they are thinking and feeling.

The extreme of talking less is the silent treatment. Silent treatments are often used for power and control. It does not help the relationship.

Sometimes a break may be necessary. If so, it is imperative to provide clear communication on why you feel a break is necessary and needs to be done (by one or both parties) during the time of silence to help heal the relationship for when communication starts again.

• Talk face to face or by phone

Often, because it is the easiest and most common form of comunication for their age group, the adult child texts their complaints to the parents. Text and email can easily cause misunderstandings, tone can be easily misunderstood in text formats and things can be misinterpreted very easily. In addition, parents might not be as adept at email or texting, and not understand some of the acronyms that are commonly used in texting.

The best communication is face to face, where expressions and voice ton can be heard and seen. If that is not possible, at least voice ton can be heard in a phone call.

Please know that if speaking directly with your parents is too overwhelming, it’s okay to bring a neutral, safe person to help with communication, especially if it’s a tense and potentially dangerous situation. In some situations involving abuse, violence, or ongoing harm, creating distance may be necessary.

• Boundaries are good

Boundaries are good. Walls are not. Too many people set up walls instead of establishing healthy boundakeep everything out, even the good.

Healthy boundaries allow for give and take, allowing for good to flow and keeping out the bad. The flow goes both ways.

Boundaries work best when each person knows their job is to control themselves, not anyone else. Know how to allow people to be responsible for their stuff. But that means you have to be responsible for your stuff, too.

Healthy boundaries might mean

• limiting certain conversations

• meeting in neutral places

• reducing conflict

• communicating expectations

• taking temporary space

Putting up walls and estrangement means ending contact entirely. Those are very different.

• Use “I” statements

When we start sentences with, “You made me…” we almost guarantee the response we will get will be defensiveness. We want the goal to be healing of the relationship so your parent and you can have a good relationship. This is not the way to achieve the goal.

Start with, “I feel or I think…” It allows your parent to hear you. In relationships we want to be heard and understood. When we use “I” statements and active listening we can move to a deeper understanding of one another.

• Be responsible for you

We each are responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Blaming our parents isn’t helpful in taking ownership of ourselves. When we own our stuff, we have the power to make changes. When we put the responsibility for how we feel onto someone else, we give them the power.

Broken relationships are hard. Even relationships that have experienced years of conflict can improve when both people are willing to grow.

But they can be healed when both parties are willing to take steps towards one another. New ways of communicating help facilitate the healing.

Communicating clearly with your parents isn’t easy, but it can bring a deeper understanding of one another. Appreciate who they are and where they have come from. They’re human, too. Even though it’s hard, as you work to be more vulnerable with your parents, and them with you, old hurts can be transformed into deep connection.

Keep loving them.

Is family counseling worth it?

And if you need a little help with that, there is nothing wrong with that - a good therapist can help guide you and your parents.

Therapy isn't about deciding who is right or wrong. It's about helping people communicate better, understand one another more deeply, heal emotional wounds, establish healthy boundaries, and build relationships marked by greater respect, trust, and compassion. The goal of good counseling is not to convince someone to stay or leave a relationship. The goal is to help individuals make thoughtful, healthy decisions based on truth, safety, emotional health, and hope for healing whenever possible. Sometimes that journey leads to reconciliation. Sometimes it requires stronger boundaries. Every family's story deserves compassionate, individualized care.

If you're an adult child hoping to strengthen your relationship with your parents, you don't have to navigate that journey alone.

Written by Cindy Picht, LPC, CEO

About Cindy:

Cindy is director and co-founder of Light the Way Counseling. She is a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional and a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional. She combines her skills with compassion and encouragement to help people find hope and healing.