Parents Crucial to Steering Children Into Adulthood
Mother and recognized author borrows real life stories and experiences to help parents recognize their role in the transition to adulthood of their twenty-something children.

/Virginia News Articles/ - MOUNT JACKSON, VA, October 25, 2007 - Martha Pope Gorris, mother and author of multiple inspirational publications and books, including Parenting 20-Something Kids: Recognizing Your Role as They Find Their Way wants parents to understand that communication and maintaining a good relationship is pivotal in helping their college-aged children become mature and responsible adults.

"Our kids aren't mature adults yet, but they want to be and they're acting like they are, but they're not yet. It can take a lot of sensitivity of our part to allow them to fly without making a lot of mistakes," Gorris shared in a recent interview with Jodie Lynn on the Inside Parenting Success Show, "Our role as parents is shifting and it's becoming different. It's important to be aware of that."

After speaking with parents on the difficulty of parenting twenty-something children, and finding a lack of material on the subject, Gorris felt a necessity to compile the experiences and stories of successful parents to help others struggling with parenting young adults. "When I was interested in this stage of parenting I went to the bookstore and found very little," says Gorris, "I started talking to other parents and decided it was time...to write the book."

Gorris feels the problem is that parents continue to try parenting in a way that worked with their children at a younger age, but is now ineffective, leading to a breakdown in communication as kids begin to rebuff their parent's control. "...You get so used to that mode of parenting and instructing that when they get into their twenties, we're still doing that and that's not what our children need."

To avoid alienating a child, Gorris advises parents to resist their natural urge to control, but rather to help their children to find a way to independently control their own lives. "We want them to become independent citizens able to take care of themselves...and if we're controlling them, telling them what to do all the time, we're not going to have that result," warns Gorris.

Gorris hopes arents will learn to judge the health of their relationship with their children, and wants parents to understand the signs to look for when a relationship needs improvement. "Perhaps they respond with sarcasm or they may just be outright hostile towards you," Gorris advises, "I think these are important clues that there is a problem in the relationship."

Although a parent may feel as if they are promoting communication by advising their children on every step of their adult lives, it is important to allow a young adult to make decisions on their own. Gorris emphasizes the importance of sharing stories from the parent's own life experience at that age. "It...puts a little more humanity on you as a parent instead of being an authoritarian figure," says Gorris, "It shows you're a person too and that you've had to learn and grow just like they are."

To help in communication, Gorris aims to help parents reframe their role, and modify it to hold a different, but no less important, place in their children's adult lives. Rather than giving direct advice, ask questions as if the child were interviewing for a job. "That helps to reframe their direction and helps you to find out where they're going, what they want and keep the focus on them instead of you and what you think they should do," shares Gorris.

By enhancing and reframing the traditional idea of parent-child communication, Gorris hopes to strengthen the bond between parents and their twenty-something children by helping parents to change how they view their relationship with their children. "I think allowing that freedom for someone to be who they are is very empowering," says Gorris, "The important thing is to show them that we love them regardless of the fact that they have a different viewpoint."

More about Martha Pope Gorris is available on her website at: http://www.marthapopegorris.com/

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