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Parenting Adult Children

August 31, 2026 Randy Phillips Collective
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Message Notes

Pastor Randy Phillips speaks to parents who still want to drive a car their children are now steering. The biblical purpose of parenting, he says, is not to keep kids in the quiver. It is to release healthy, Christ-following children into the world.

Psalm 127 calls parents warriors and children arrows. A warrior trains, guards, and guides. Then the warrior pulls the bow and lets the arrow fly toward its purpose. Culture resists that release. Many adult children delay “adulting.” Many parents delay letting go—because their deepest fear is failing to pass on their values.

Randy maps the changing job description:

  • Ages 0–5: caretaker
  • Ages 5–12: cop
  • Ages 12–17: coach
  • Age 18 and up: consultant

The trouble starts when the child grows and the parent keeps the old title. Control feels like love. It usually produces frustration. C.S. Lewis was right: change always involves a sense of loss. Moving to consultant means mourning the old role.

The new job description is simple and hard:

  • No intrusion—encouragement only. Be the biggest cheerleader, not the uninvited manager. Earn the right to be heard. Be available when asked. Experience is often a better teacher than a parent’s advice.
  • Care without creating dependence. “I care for you, but don’t depend on me.” Enabling can grow out of a parent’s need to be needed. Generosity that removes delayed gratification can hurt both generations.
  • Find your place in the back seat. Pull over. Get out of the driver’s seat—and the passenger seat. Enjoy the view. Learn the difference between a conversation and a lecture. If adult children brace themselves when they see you coming, the role has not changed.

    • He tells the story of a faithful couple whose adult daughter moved in with her boyfriend. Shame and condemnation flooded in. Neither comes from God. You did not fail as a parent because an adult child chose differently. Put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Get healthy. Express disappointment without lecturing. Lecturing leads to alienation, and then they stop coming home.

    The parent’s prayer becomes: Lord, teach me to parent the children I have, not the children I thought I would have. Accept them without having to affirm every choice. Talk with them, not at them. Wait to be invited. Cheer them on: “I believe in you. I trust your judgment.” Let them set the amount of time. Don’t do for them what they can do for themselves. Let them fail. Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

    Jesus’ story of the prodigal is, Randy says, really the parable of the loving father. The father named the risk, released the son, refused to rescue him from consequences—and kept a place at the table for the return. Welcome, not shame, is what meets the child who comes home.

    The last work of a parent who has released the arrow is prayer. Call their names before God, the way Job did. In the living years, make peace. Release them. Watch them fly.

    Key Scriptures: Psalm 127:3–4; Luke 15; James 3:10 (implied in the shift from curse-words to blessing); the example of Job praying for his children.

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