Don’t Blame the Parents of Adult Children

Date Published: 07/07/2010

On this day (July 7, 2010) when Dallas Police Chief David Brown is scheduled to return to work two weeks after his son was killed in a shoot out that left a Lancaster police officer and a young father dead, I feel compelled to acknowledge the risk of pain as the parent of adult children. Having only recently been named Dallas Police Chief, taking a couple of weeks for personal family leave is awkward but legitimate, necessary and understandable. Unfortunately, considerable controversy has swirled around the actions of some of those left in charge during this leave, which came before Chief Brown had opportunity to establish his leadership. Most unfortunately, the most volatile of these decisions touched Chief Brown’s family (the motorcycle escort for his son’s funeral and the assignment of an officer to assist the family). Though it appears Chief Brown was not culpable or even privy to these decisions, it has brought his ability to lead the department into question.

However, my concern is not so much with Chief Brown’s professional life as with family life for all parents of adult children. As both a pastor for 35+ years and as a parent for 38+ years, I have plenty of experience with the risk of pain of being the parent of adult children. As children emerge out of adolescence into adulthood, they almost inevitably make some decisions and take some actions that are out of sync with their parents’ hopes, expectations and teaching. Sometimes these are the benign steps of distinguishing themselves from their parents which lead to healthy independence. Sometimes they are short-term missteps that are corrected by life’s natural consequences. They can lead children down a different and sometimes conflicting path than their parents. After some journeying, some of these do return to a path that more closely approximates that of their parents. Occasionally, the decisions and actions of adult children take irremediable and tragic turns that parents are powerless to prevent, over which they have no control.

Old Testament heroes Eli, Samuel and David all had tragic experiences with their adult children. I know that plenty of preachers and writers have analyzed how these fathers’ failures contributed to their son’s tragedies, and I know that none of us parents do everything right all of the time. Yet, plenty of the children of responsible, loving, quality parents have chosen a path that led to tragedy through no fault of their parents. Many if not most parents of adult children have felt at least the anxiety if not the sting that prompted King David’s cry, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33)

Sometimes that cry is evoked, not by a bad decision by the adult child but by events totally out of everyone’s control: illness, accident, loss of job, break up of marriage, even becoming a crime victim. To be a parent is to embrace a risk that never stops. To be a parent may be the greatest incentive to live by faith we could ever imagine. Regardless of how well we did raising our children, our control over what happens to them is an illusion that diminishes as they grow up and vanishes at they emerge from adolescence into adulthood. To paraphrase Psalm 31:5, the prayer of parents of adult children is, “Heavenly Father, into your hands I commit my child.”