3 Ways to Manage an Emotionally Abusive Adult Child

Being emotionally abused and manipulated by an adult child takes a huge tool mental health toll. While coaching parents of struggling adult children, I have heard countless stories from parents who are emotionally distraught.

There is a saying that, "Hurt people, hurt people." I feel compassion for adult children who are hurting and I also feel compassion for their parents. Adult children may be struggling for many reasons, including mental health issues, addictions, learning differences, ADHD, traumatic past events, and deep-seated pain from their childhoods.

As I explain in my book, 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child, to truly function well in life, children of all ages need to learn two crucial skills: Calming down, and solving problems. A calm, firm, non-controlling approach empowers parents to "switch into the emotion coach lane" when they feel stuck. This works very well for managing reactive adult children. When adult children don't learn to calm themselves and problem-solve, life gets quite stressful and overwhelming for them.

That said, as a parent of a hurting adult child, allowing yourself to wear a "kick me" sign is not going to help them or you. In fact, it just makes things worse. The parents of abusive and manipulative adult children who contact me for coaching commonly report feeling the following:

• Highly Anxious: Because you never know when manipulative interactions will occur.
• Exceedingly Remorseful: Yes, you made some mistakes and those have likely overshadowed how you also tried really hard to learn from those mistakes, yet they are thrown in your face.
• Exasperated and Exhausted: From walking on eggshells, anticipating hurtful attacks consisting of distortions and the rewriting of history.
• Alone and Isolated: Because it seems so many other families have adult children who are more respectful and appreciative of their parents.

Following are three signs of emotional abuse experienced by parents of adult children that I often encounter when I coach them to set better boundaries:

• Over-The-Top Blame. Sadly, many of my parent clients actually believe they are solely at fault for an adult child's lack of success in sustaining independence. Perhaps you distortedly think, "Maybe if I just tried harder or did this instead of that, things would be different." This blame-guilt cycle is sparked when your adult child persistently blames you for his or her problems and refuses to accept responsibility for their struggles and issues. Adult children who think this way are laden with distortions and use their parents as an outlet to vent their anger.
• Merciless Manipulation. Struggling adult children with distorted views may use whatever tactics they can muster to make parents feel they "owe" them and so must indefinitely support them. In many cases, I hear about struggling adult children who unfairly sling guilt at parents or even make threats of self-harm or suicide. You wish you could just return to the days of their youth when things were better, so you look past the manipulation and cling to the idea that things will turn around.
• Toxic Put-downs. Criticism from struggling adult children is common. They bring up how you seemingly treat their siblings better, rip on your spending habits, or criticize your past choices. When you try to confront your adult child about it, you are met with gaslighting—questioning your memory of the incident or the past in general, trying to make you second-guess yourself, or telling you that you’re "always overreacting" or are just “crazy.”

If you recognize some or any of these behaviors in your relationship with an adult child, don't accept them as normal. These behaviors are common in emotionally abusive relationships. Just because you are not being physically harmed doesn’t mean that the abuse isn’t taking its toll.

3 Helpful Strategies for Parents

1. Know Your Value. If you care enough to read this post, then you likely did your best as a parent. In fact, I suggest you make a list of all you have done—and do—for your struggling adult child. (Do not show this list to your adult child. It is for you, not them.) This list is going to be your truth—your shield of protective armor. All those years of school functions, sports, music lessons, camp sign-ups, other activities you supported, educational support, love and affection, and caring and listening—they are all yours and can't be taken away.
2. Take Off Your "Kick Me" Sign. Are you unwittingly, or even wittingly (because you just feel so worn down) wearing a "Kick Me" sign, thereby enabling mistreatment? One way to keep knowing your value is to stop setting yourself to be further abused and manipulated. In my 33-plus years of coaching parents of adult children to help restore boundaries, improve communication, and gain a much-desired sense of emotional balance, I have seen too many parents of adult children metaphorically wear "Kick Me" signs. What I mean by this is that your adult child's frustration and shame over the failure to launch comes out sideways, directed at you as emotional abuse.
3. Become Your Adult Child's Boundaries Coach. Setting boundaries with your adult child may seem impossible at this point because you hopelessly feel that the ship set sail way too long ago. Please don't feel that way. There is no such thing as false hope when it comes to managing how an adult child treats you. There is only true hope, if you can recognize what is going on, take off your "Kick Me" sign, and do things differently going forward. Saying, for example, "Wouldn't we both benefit more from having a calm, constructive conversation about this?" is a lot healthier than getting sucked in to manipulation. And remember, even if your adult child does not acknowledge a healthy boundary at the time, you are still modeling and teaching, which is what great coaches do.

Author's note: The image used for this article was provided only for illustrative purposes. The subject in the photo has no relevance to the topic of this post.