When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us: Letting Go of Their Problems, Loving Them Anyway, and Getting on with Our Lives
So your adored son is nearing 30--or past it already--and still living  at home, unable to hold onto a McJob for longer than six months running,  relying on you to feed him and make his car payments. Your beautiful, brainy  daughter is anorexic, or addicted to drugs, or unwilling to leave the man  who hits her. Increasing numbers of baby boomers are finding that their  grown children have fallen far short of their expectations. These parents  are confused, angry, guilt-ridden, and ashamed. Jane Adams’sWhen Our  Grown Kids Disappoint Usis for them. She reveals the kinds of  disappointments that other parents are facing: kids who are unable or  unwilling to support themselves, kids who are addicts or convicts, kids  who’ve joined cults or seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. She  stresses that these are real problems--but that they aren’t the parents’  problems. Adams reassures parents that they’ve done their jobs and that they  don’t have to spend the rest of their lives picking up the pieces for their  grown children, emotionally, financially, or otherwise. Continuing to prop  up kids who’ve repeatedly fallen on their own teaches them nothing; it’s  just a temporary fix. Beyond offering sympathy, reassurance, and wisdom, the  book doesn’t lay out a plan for solving anyone’s problems, but reading it  may help disappointed parents shuck some of their guilt and shame, gather  the courage to take back their own lives, and let their grown children fend  for themselves.--Jennifer Lindsay