Adult Children & Aging Parents: Myths and Common Mistakes

Family conflict between generations rarely comes from malice. More often, it is driven by deeply held myths — beliefs that feel self-evident but quietly destroy relationships in practice.

Myth 1: "The problem is the child (or the parent)"

When something goes wrong in a family, the first impulse is to find someone to blame. The parent points at the child; the child points back. In reality, what looks like difficult behaviour almost always signals a depleted adult: someone who comes home after a long day with literally nothing left to give. Two years without proper sleep, an inability to concentrate — and any small noise triggers an explosion. Before looking for pathology in the child, the right question is: does the adult actually have the inner resources to connect?

Myth 2: "Children are our property"

This is one of the most persistent and damaging myths. Children come into the world through their parents — but they do not belong to them. They are not the property of parents, of the church, or of the state. They are separate individuals, free people. Trying to manage an adult child as if they were property is a medieval mindset, and it will inevitably generate conflict.

Myth 3: "Good parents can't be unwell"

When a parent behaves in harmful ways — calling late at night with demands, making it impossible to say no, pressuring and manipulating — the adult child often gets stuck: "But my mother/father is a good person." This is the mistake. Good people get ill too. If the parent were well, they would behave differently. Recognising that difficult behaviour may reflect a disorder is not an excuse — it is a foothold. It allows the adult child to stop experiencing the situation as a personal attack and to begin reshaping the relationship instead.

Myth 4: "You must endure everything for the children's sake"

The belief that a family must be kept together at any cost — for the children — is widespread. But when parents are constantly at war, children are forced to witness that nightmare every single day. Children need parents who are alive, healthy, and reasonably well — not parents who suffer alongside them. The pain of separation is real and must be lived through. But living through it means moving toward a normal life, not staying trapped in chronic conflict.