When Birthday Celebrations Go Awry: Valuable Lessons for Parents of Adult Children

Earlier this year, a birthday celebration for my grown son went sideways. It was an experience that left me wondering what had just happened and how I could have made such a mess of things. I was stepping right into a lesson I didn’t know I needed. But it wasn’t my birthday, and I didn’t want a gift!

In a nutshell, I messed up the celebration. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he told me. It could have been simple, but I began considering some of the other factors in the scenario. I decided to celebrate at our house, rather than where my son wanted to go. I took what I thought was the path of least resistance. Ultimately, it proved to be the most challenging path.

If you don’t have adult children, don’t stop reading. Your empty-nest friends need your support more than ever at this stage of life. Parenting grown kids comes with a whole new set of challenges no one warns you about. And as I found out, the lessons are rarely clear until you’ve stumbled your way into them.

I also bought my son a gift I thought he would love—a gift card for tickets to a major league baseball game. The choice was inspired by a recent experience we had just shared. It seemed like a great idea to me. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t refundable. Strike two.

This wasn’t really about the party or the present, though. As painful as it was to admit, the problem was I hadn’t honoured my son in a way that made him feel seen. I had done the opposite. I had slipped into a people-pleasing, accommodating mode that had little to do with what he wanted or needed. That hit me hard. I like to make people happy, and realizing I’d missed the mark left me feeling raw and vulnerable.

We talked it through. I am grateful that my kids are willing to have difficult conversations, and it was hard. I apologized, but it stung. I don’t cry easily, but this discussion turned me into a snotty mess of tears.

Along the way, I heard some of the very things I’ve said to my mother—“You do too much. I wanted this to be simple, not a big deal. You spend too much. We can help out more.” We even dove into a deeper conversation about gift-giving and how it’s become an unspoken expectation in our family.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with my kids. When they were growing up, I made birthdays and holidays a big deal—I loved creating traditions and celebrating together. Now that they have their own families, I try to hold those traditions lightly. But I still find myself asking: What is my role in my adult children’s lives?

I know I’m not alone in this. I work with women who are emotionally intelligent and accomplished, yet many of us wrestle with this same question. How do we support our grown kids without overstepping? How do we avoid being seen as co-dependent while still wanting a close connection? And when grandkids arrive, everything changes again.

This week, I binge-watched Season 4 of The Bear. (Spoiler alert: skip this paragraph if you are still watching it.) Maybe because I’ve been thinking about adult children, I watched closely how the characters related to their parents. The Bear is as much about family dynamics as it is about fine dining.

I winced when Sydney kept sending her dad’s calls to voicemail. It was painful watching Carmen drop something off to his mother and telling her he couldn’t stay, only to soften after she pleaded with him to come in for a few minutes. I was watching a millennial’s perspective of their relationships with their parents. And it wasn’t encouraging. Parents often get a bad rap in most movies and series. We are portrayed as incompetent, controlling and annoying.

I heard someone say that when our kids leave home, we become their extended family. It makes sense, but what that looks like in practice isn’t straightforward. I see a spectrum of involvement with my peers and their kids. It ranges from multi-generational living to being cancelled, as a few friends call their current status. Many exchange multiple texts each day. And it varies from child to child within a family. (I know people who are tracking their adult children’s movements with AirTags and Find My Friends. No shade. I could easily be that person.)

Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis wrote, “Letting go of children during our middle passage is not only helpful for them but necessary for us, since it releases energy for our further development.”

I love this reframe of letting go. It’s not just for them you let go - it’s for you. Think about that for a moment.

Here’s the challenge. You can let go and still talk to your kids frequently. Letting go can look different in each relationship. We let go incrementally as well. It isn’t about how much contact you have, but whether it is driven by a need to be central in their lives. Only you can answer that question.

Managing expectations has always been a part of my family’s language—my husband even wrote a book on it, which I later turned into a corporate training program. Yet, no matter how much we discuss expectations, we still need to revisit them regularly. Life changes year to year, and so do our relationships.

For women, these changes may be even more challenging. We are used to being the ones who organize things and buy the gifts for our kids, at least in my generation. I’m the one who usually calls my kids. I’m the one who makes the plans - well-received or not. I am the one who initiates most family gatherings. I do this willingly, but I want to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons. And because women don’t always think about what we want, it’s worthwhile to sit down and reflect on what feels good for you in your relationship at this stage of life.

I named this Substack A Crone in the Woods. Sometimes, we find ourselves in the woods as we age. We are finding the path as we go. And it’s not always the one that seems clear. Conscious aging invites us to delve deeper into our life reflection and discover the gifts this season of life has to offer us.

Letting go of old roles and expectations can be one of the most profound gifts we give ourselves. We think we’ve figured it out, only to realize there’s more growth waiting in the woods ahead.

We think we’ve got it all figured out, only to find, sometimes harshly, that there is more growing to do. I am grateful for a community of wise elders who get what I’m experiencing. My Crone Circle has my back. (Get on the waitlist for one starting later this year.)

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