A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults

A solution for Adult Children

The Solution for Parents and Families of Adult and Problem Children is to let go (with love) of the chains of your expectations. When someone is around 18 years old in this world, much younger in years gone by, they are an adult. We need this guideline. Nature is shouting it at us from the mountain tops. If you are an adult child and you are twenty or thirty or so then even you need to grow up, own up and show up for yourself and become an adult and not a problem adult. The adult child syndrome is not good for you and won’t get you very far in the long term. It is a short term solution that the psychology of science shows us simply does not work. Behind every adult child is an enabler. It is a family system after all. First we need to become aware of what we’re all doing, where we’re all going, and then we need to follow a new program or system of recovery that works. A system that grows us, our self esteem and all the dimensions of wellness we need to fulfil to thrive in life.

Adults don’t need other adults doing for them what they can do for themselves. Yet, so many adults, parents and family members allow their hurts and fears and their own need to control and relive the past and predestine the future instead to help create adult children and problem adults. When we ‘love’ someone we will indeed need to be willing to set them free. Whether it is your child or not – no one who is an adult is yours, and neither do they belong to you. You do not fundamentally owe them anything and they do not owe you anything. We don’t raise children, we raise cattle. We guide children to guide themselves. This is love and love is a verb.

A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults

The Solution

Valuable lessons learned from the ACA a World Service organization said that there is a ‘solution’ and they describe the solution as follows. We will do well to grasp what solution they found. They put it like this…

From today we can teach Adult Children and Problem Adults to express all their hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carry-overs from the past.

You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you and grow up, own up and show up for yourself as an adult, learning to accept and love yourself.

The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past. We learn to look after ourselves with gentleness, humour, love, and respect. This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our existence. Our actual parent is a Higher Power whom some of us choose to call God.

Although our parents were definitely not perfect we start to share our experience, strength, and hope with other healthy and balanced adults in a healthy environment. We learn to restructure our sick thinking one day at a time.

When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthier decisions as actors, not reactors. We progress from hurting, to healing, to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible and come to understand that family dysfunction is passed endlessly from generation to generation and accept it for what it is: a trauma that infected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult. You will learn to keep the focus on yourself in the here and now.

As you learn from A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults like this you will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting of the self. This is authentic self love. You will not do this alone. Look around you and you will see others who know how you feel and accept you just as you accept them. This is a spiritual solution based on action coming from love. We are sure that as the love grows inside you, you will see beautiful changes in all your relationships, especially with God, yourself, and your parents. Because when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.

* Paragraph above adapted from Adult Children of Alcoholics®/Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, Inc.

Parents and Families of Adult and Problem Children Mission Statement

If you want to create a solution for clients, friends or your own family then a mission statement matters. We put it this way. We are parents, we are family and we are loved ones that are intimately related to you in this difficult and wonderful life and this is my wholehearted mission statement to you. The following wholehearted parenting manifesto is a bond between you and I. Whenever we get confused, defensive or unmanageable emotions arise we can turn to this mission statement wholeheartedly. This mission statement has helped me establish the terms of our relationship as I see it which are three fold. Beauty, truth and goodness. Our present relationship is based in the present moment on beauty, truth and goodness regardless of any other thoughts, feeling, perceptions, behaviours and consequences.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you”.

— Kahlil Gibran

Together we will use this mission statement designed by Mark L Lockwood and his clinical team and used at the Center for Healing & Life Transformation as an affirmation of love and as a meditation of wisdom we can use especially when we doubt ourselves into fear-responses. Perfect love eradicates that fear-response and that is what we are all growing into one day at a time. Fearless lovers of what is! A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults can, will and does heal and transform lives profoundly. So here is A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults.

A Mission Statement for Parents and Families of Adult Children and Problem Adults

I WILL RESPECT MY OWN HEALTHY BOUNDARIES FIRST, AND THEN YOUR HEALTHY BOUNDARIES. IF THEY ARE NOT HEALTHY I DON’T RESPECT THEM.

I want you to feel uncertainty and learn how to bear it.

I OWE YOU ONLY THE LOVE I HAVE FOR MYSELF. I HAVE NO MORE TO GIVE, BECAUSE I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU THE LOVE I HAVE FOR MYSELF. WHETHER YOU ACCEPT OR REJECT MY LOVE IS ONLY YOUR BUSINESS. IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS ANYMORE, AS I HAVE BEEN TAUGHT BY LIFE TO STAY IN MY OWN BUSINESS.

I want you to feel your feelings and I want me to recognise that when I try and do your feelings for you we are heading towards relapse and not recovery and problems and not solutions.

I HAVE LEARNED THAT THE PARENT CHILD RELATIONSHIP ENDS AT AROUND 18 FOR A REASON. THE 1 (in 18) STANDS FOR YOU AND THE 8 REPRESENTS INFINITY. 18 IS A METAPHOR FOR ONE INFINITY. WHEN I INTERFERE IN YOUR INFINITY, DOING WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOURSELF, YOU SUFFER. AS AN ADULT I WILL NO LONGER DO FOR YOU WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOURSELF. IT DISABLES YOU THROUGH ENABLING YOU AND TODAY I AM A SOLUTION, NOT A PROBLEM.

I want you to practice self-compassion, no longer will I naively try and do it for you.

I WANT US TO KEEP LEARNING HOW TO BE ACCOUNTABLE AND TO OWN UP, SHOW UP AND GROW UP FOR OURSELVES.

I want you to know about life and death and I want you to learn how to choose life, KNOWING that whatever you choose is your choice and not my choice. I want you to be who you think you should be and not who I think you should be. That game is over as you take wholehearted accountability for your OWN life; as I do the very same thing.

I WILL TEACH YOU AUTONOMY. WHEN MONEY, FAVOURS & MATERIAL THINGS ARE EXPECTED OF ME I PUT UP A FIRM BOUNDARY AND REMAIN PART OF THE SOLUTION.

I want you to know that I see you, believe in you and am willing to watch you learn from your mistakes, from your impulsiveness, your selfishness and your ego so that you will grow.

I WILL PRACTICE ONLY BEING PART OF THE SOLUTION AND NOT THE PROBLEM. LET US ALL LEARN FROM THE RECORD OF THE PAST AND NOT FOOLISHLY REPEAT IT.

I want you to learn from your own mistakes and I will learn from my own mistakes.

I AM NO LONGER AN ADDICT. ADDICTION IS DOING THE SAME THINGS OVER AND OVER AGAIN THAT DOESN’T WORK. TODAY WE ARE ALL IN RECOVERY FROM FEAR. NOW LOVE REIGNS SUPREME. TODAY I AM IN LOVE.

I want you to know that resentment and blaming are yours to let go of. As of now I live only in the present moment, with lessons and not failures.

I WILL TEACH YOU COMPASSION BY FIRST PRACTISING COMPASSION WITH MYSELF.

I want you to know your hearts longing and feel the aching of that longing as you rise from the ashes like a phoenix learning how to choose beauty over the ashes and the ugly.

I WANT US TO LEARN TO HAVE FUN & TRUST THE PROCESS OF LIFE RATHER THAN CONTROL IT

I want you to know how to always be yourself around me and know that I will do the same

I WILL TEACH YOU THROUGH WHAT I DO AND NOT WHAT I SAY. I WILL NO LONGER TEACH YOU THROUGH MAKING OR ALLOWING YOU DEPENDENT ON ME.

I want you to know how to stay out of the drama, the distractions and the confusion. No longer will we play the gaslighting game. A game that says “but you said, you owe me and it’s your fault

I WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO STICK TO YOUR HEALTHY BOUNDARIES THROUGH THE WAY I STICK TO MINE.

I want you to understand that when you try and punish, resent, and blame me for my failures or mistakes that it is work you need to do on yourself and not work I can do for you. By reading my Mission Statement I will remember always that I have now forgiven myself for my past and am looking with faith, hope and love to the future.

I HAVE LEARNED TO ANSWER SLOWLY AND GIVE NO GUARANTEES.

I want you to learn that victim mentality is a trap. Victims become violent, volatile and vengeful people. Today I choose vulnerability and radical acceptance over the victim roles I once played.

I HAVE LEARNED YOUR CRISIS IS NOT MY CRISIS AND SELDOM IS THEIR EVER A CRISIS THAT WE DID NOT MAKE HAPPEN. THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS IN GOD’S WORLD.

I want you to know that I acknowledge your perspective. They are your perspectives to learn from and not mine to judge. From today I am grateful enough to let you learn, live, laugh and love the way you want to do it. It is not ‘our’ life. It is your life as an adult individual and yours alone. I want you and me to let life have you. IN this way we will become unlimited.

I HAVE TAUGHT MYSELF TO STAND FIRM AND STILL BE OPEN AND VULNERABLE.

I want you to know that withholding, punishing, blaming, playing the victim card and shifting responsibility onto me no longer works as a solution, but only a problem based in fear, and I will no longer do what does not work! I will always try and trust the truth and do the next best thing I can think of for myself. These things that you can now watch me do and learn from; whether successes or failures they are all a gracious gift for which I am truly thankful.

I HAVE LEARNED TO BE AUTHENTIC AND HONEST AND NOT TO LIE, MINIMISE, DENY OR HIDE ANYTHING FROM ANYONE, INCLUDING THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE, DO OR SAY. IT IS WHAT IT IS AND IT IS THE TRUTH THAT WILL SET US FREE.

I want you to learn perseverance and hard work as you move from struggle to strength and from fear to love. Learn, live and grow through your life staying open in order to courageously connect with life on life’s terms. I’ve learned that Life, and you and me, are beautiful and when we start to take action from a place of love – and love is a verb – miracles happen. It is through this self-loving action that I will teach myself how to show you how to find the same love for yourself in your own time and in your own way. We will both learn that love leads the way and love wins, but only every time!

I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO LOVE AND LET GO, WILL YOU ?

Whether you do or not is your choice. I want you to make all your decisions for yourself and bear the consequences for yourself. This is the one plus one arithmetic of life and it never gets the answers wrong. I want you to trust or not trust, to believe or not believe, to respect or resent yourself and others. How you treat life is how you treat yourself, God and other people. This is the science of finding your spiritual self and find it YOU will.