Don't Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with your Adult Children

by Ruth Nemzoff

Parents make enormous sacrifices helping children become healthy and autonomous adults. And when children are older, popular wisdom advises parents to let go, disconnect, and bite their tongues. But increasing life spans mean that parents and children can spend as many as five or six decades as adults together: actively parenting adult children is a reality for many families.

Dr. Ruth Nemzoff--a leading expert in family dynamics--empowers parents to create close relationships with their adult children, while respecting their independence. Based on personal stories as well as advice that she has accrued from years of coaching, this lively and readable book shows parents how to:

-communicate at long distances
-discuss financial issues without using money as a form of control
-speak up when disapproving of an adult child's partner or childrearing practices
-handle adult children's career choices or other midlife changes
-navigate an adult child's interreligious, interracial or same sex relationships

No other book treats the challenges of parent and adult offspring relationships as part and parcel of a healthy family dynamic. This practical lessons of Don't Bite Your Tongue will help parents play a vital and positive role in their children's lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Parenting, Family

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2008

About the author

Ruth Nemzoff, EdD, is the author of Don’t Bite Your Tongue, and a popular speaker on the topic of parenting adult children and family dynamics. Ruth was profiled or interviewed for many national and local papers and radio and television, including The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Jewish Advocate, and InterFaith Family. She is a resident scholar at Brandeis University's Women's Studies Research Center, and lives in Boston, MA.

Reviews

[Julie]

This is a hard book to rate. It was a breeze to read and I have little recall of any earth shattering advice. I thought that most of it was what my Mum called "common sense". The book is fine for everyday type miss-communication or lack of communication, however, if you have deeper issues or behavior you need to confront, look elsewhere.

[Beth Haynes]

This book was ok and I am glad I read it, but much of it was a lot of common sense:
The transition and change can be hard.
Practice good communication skills like listen first.
If you provide suggestions and advice, first ask if they are interested, and then empahsize you are just sharing your opinion and that you realize the decision is theirs.
Ask lots of questions with the goal of understanding what they want.
Lead with your feelings - as in why the relationship matters to you.

There were some helpful vignettes including about the importance of clarity of expectations if you give or lend money, or open your home for an extended stay.

Helpful reminders though were things like:
Be honest with yourself about your own agenda and intentions.
Most likely your relationship has already weathered some tough times and still survived.
We all have more than one opportunity to improve our relationships.
Our kids are in a different economic and cultural setting than we were around matters of job stablity, timing of marriage and kids, approach to career, and more. ("we are all immigrants in each other's generation.")
Somethimges uncertainty rules: "Parents can never be sure if they are helping a child over a difficult hump-something we all want to do for family and firedns-or if they are enabling their children to regress and avoid responsibility. we can only take our best guess."
"Many decisions are not right or wrong; they simply reflect the needs and values of each individual."
Not speaking up could be causing more distress or distancing than what I imagine would happen if I did speak up.
Both kids and parents are trying to figure out these new roles and how to relate.
"A good relationship is not necessarily a smoth relationship.
"Our bonds give both of us the power to hurt."

[Antonia]

An easy read and through provoking. Recommend it for anyone who either has an adult parent that has difficulty adjusting or for parents with adult children or about to have adult children.

The advise is clear - the 'say nothing' option and usual modern day advice is not the best way always. More importantly you need to know HOW to have the conversations you want to have, and WHEN to have them. Does it pass the 'does it matter test'? And if it does, then work out how best to have that conversation.

I would recommend this above the other books such as "Walking on Egg shells" which recommend the say nothing at all costs strategy. Isnt it much more fruitful to have a meaningful adult relationship with your child?

[Andy Oram]

Nemzoff is thoughtful and perceptive to a high degree. She shines light on an aspect of life many of us worry about but that doesn't receive much professional attention. She is quite a professional. In a short and nicely paced book (I basically absorbed it in a couple hours) she touches on a huge range of issues: kids moving back home, disagreements over marriage, communication blocks, etc. And she rarely issues dicta: instead she shows the diversity of life and makes you think about all your options--including options you didn't realize you had.

[LeeAnne]

Really good advice for parenting adult-children in this day and age.

Parenting no longer stops when your child turns 21, 25, or even 30.

A family is an interactive, interconnected dynamic. What happens to one person in your family affects everyone else in the family. In other words, a change in one part of the system results in a change to all other parts of the system. It's all connected.

Your adult child's decisions and behavior have an impact on your entire family: on you, your spouse, your other children. Similarly, what you do affects your whole familial system.

Popular culture has long advised parents to suddenly let go as soon as their children turn a certain age. We are instructed to suddenly disconnect, bite our tongue, zip-it. This is terrible, naive advice.

Biting your tongue and silence mistakenly communicates approval and consent. It's also misleading, deceptive, and a vague form of dishonesty.

Even worse, biting your tongue guarantees your adult child will continue making horrible life decisions and you must live with the knowledge that you did absolutely nothing in your power to guide them or teach them otherwise.

How can you have an authentic relationship with no foundation in truth, honesty, and reality? You can't.

This book provides parents with ideas and suggestions on how to honestly communicate with your adult child on decisions you may disagree about in a respectful, gracious manner while also owning the fact that these are your subjective perceptions.

[Mckinley]

I read this from the child side. Some chapters didn't apply to my situation with my parents. I liked the questions at the end of each chapter.

[Nancy]

Interesting book. Basically, only incremental learning but valuable nonetheless in learning how to walk this interesting extension of the parental path. Would be good for discussion.

[Terry]

Some good points. Many examples of where/how communication may go wrong.
The first chapter and last were the most useful