All posts tagged: Adult

Why Are You Still Nice to Your Rude Adult Child?

Why Are You Still Nice to Your Rude Adult Child?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Each week during parent coaching sessions, I hear something that goes like this: “Jimmy (age 31, fictitious name) constantly snaps at me, dismisses my feelings, and only reaches out when he needs something.” Yet so many parents on the receiving end of similar rudeness still buy groceries, send money, rearrange their schedules, and carefully word each text. Later, these parents wonder: “Why am I doing so much for someone who treats me this way?” The answer usually runs deeper than “I’m too nice.” Look, I get it: You love your child, and you remember your happier moments. You hope your next thoughtful gesture will soften the tension and bring back the connection you miss. Wanting that connection isn’t foolish. But when kindness becomes your strategy for preventing rejection, you can lose sight of your own needs. A Brief Example of Susan and Veronica Let’s consider a woman I’ll call Susan who contacted me last week about her adult daughter Veronica (fictitious name as well), who criticizes her and then asks her to cover another one …

Best YA Mysteries/Thrillers for Adult Readers

Best YA Mysteries/Thrillers for Adult Readers

Published by Jenni Sidey

Underlined Five years ago, Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. Case closed—or so everyone in Fairview believes. But Pip remembers Sal differently. When she reexamines the case for her senior project, she uncovers dark secrets that could prove his innocence. Someone in Fairview wants the truth to stay buried—and the closer Pip gets to uncovering it, the more danger she’s in. Available in deluxe editions! YA should first and foremost always be written for young adults. That doesn’t mean, however, that adults shouldn’t also read YA—even when they’ve crossed into an age where they would never get into a time machine that went back to being a teenager (IYKYK).  Part of being a teenager is navigating a changing body and world while being expected to act like an adult, as you’re treated like a child and have yet to fully develop your prefrontal cortex. It’s a lot, and every adult has been through their own unique version of it. The latter makes it especially baffling that so many …

Why Your Apologies Are Not Enough for Your Adult Child

Why Your Apologies Are Not Enough for Your Adult Child

Published by Jenni Sidey

Every week I hear the same story from parents of struggling adult children: “I’ve apologized. Nothing changes.” These parents admit (often readily) that they were too strict, too controlling, or perhaps too permissive. They may have missed identifying (or following up on) their adult child’s anxiety when they were younger, or maybe did not follow up on addressing depression, ADHD, or learning problems. Parents who divorced also acknowledge that the divorce left scars. So why do these parents who say they are sorry (often many times) find their apologies only make things worse? Leah Apologized to No Avail Let’s take a quick look at a mother that we can call Leah. She apologized to her 27-year-old son, Dan, three times in one year for how strict she’d been growing up. To Leah’s dismay, each apology (I’m sorry I made you feel that way”) made Dan more distant and quieter, not warmer. After the third one, he stopped responding to her texts and calls for a few weeks. What didn’t help was that Leah went into …

In Praise of Adult Silliness

In Praise of Adult Silliness

Published by Sam Flores

Silliness, in general, is not hard for me to come by: I have a toddler who is, as she declares often, a “silly person.” Still, the very pleasure I take in being silly with my child and her friends reveals to me its rarity in adult public life. Few social situations encourage or even allow unadulterated loopiness. In general, art made for adults tends to abide by this taboo. We get satire, scatological jokes, imitations, and absurdity, but rarely do we get silliness. A new play, Bocking, reminds us that this is a mistake. A wild, sometimes surreal, and ultimately tenderhearted farce that premiered last month at Baltimore Center Stage, Bocking does not suggest at the outset that it will be silly. It does, however, seem interested in provocation. It begins with a pair of glamorously behatted ladies moving through the crowd, thanking theatergoers for “coming to church.” When the show’s action begins, some of it is, indeed, a church service—but as a pastor delivers at the center of the stage a sermon that turns …

Hide your vegetables. You’re an adult

Hide your vegetables. You’re an adult

Published by Sam Flores

The other day, I grated two enormous zucchini into a bowl containing a quarter-can of pumpkin, brown sugar, cocoa powder and enough chopped bittersweet chocolate to make the whole operation look suspiciously like brownie batter. Which, essentially, it was. The zucchini disappeared almost immediately, leaving behind only a few green flecks and the vague knowledge that somewhere beneath all that chocolate was a respectable amount of produce.  In Chicago, we have a phrase for what happens to a hot dog after it has been loaded with tomatoes, onions, peppers and pickle: it’s been “dragged through the garden.” I had, apparently, dragged my brownies through the garden. When I sent the recipe to a friend, she replied, “I wish I could say I was making these for my toddler to hide his vegetables. But I’m making these for me to hide my vegetables!” This struck me as both very funny and strangely revealing. Hiding vegetables is a technique we tend to leave behind somewhere around the age of dino nuggets and mashed-potato volcanoes. Eventually, adulthood is …

Paleontologists discover first adult ‘T. rex’ footpath

Paleontologists discover first adult ‘T. rex’ footpath

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Tyrannosaurus rex fossils are relatively common finds, with dozens of variously complete examples on display in museums around the world. But T. rex tracks? That’s an entirely different story. Even when stomped into the mud by a 17,500-pound apex predator, dinosaur footprints rarely last long enough to fossilize over millions of years. That’s what makes a recent discovery in southwestern North Dakota so remarkable. Paleontologists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Liverpool John Moores University in England have documented not one, but four footprints preserved along a 23-foot-long path within the famous Hell Creek Formation. The prints are the first known trackway made by an adult T. rex, and are described in a study recently published in the Journal of …

Respecting Digital Boundaries During Emerging Adult Identity

Respecting Digital Boundaries During Emerging Adult Identity

Published by Jenni Sidey

This post is in response to Why Some People Lurk But Never Like By Jasmine Mohsen Ph.D. I was thrilled to see a recent Psychology Today Essential Read about social media users who watch others’ posts but don’t engage. It’s a behavior that, anecdotally, appears to be prevalent when I receive followers who don’t actually post on their own accounts. As well, my own behavior falls in the category, but only specifically as I am motivated to follow the lived experiences of my late friend’s now college-aged daughter. A swirl of emotions and thoughts explains my motivation. The explanation for my behavior wasn’t mentioned in the Essential Read; I will address it here. Coping With Grief I ran across research about the use of social media to mourn the loss of a loved one, or for support and connection when grieving (Kakar & Oberoi, 2016); the authors were clear that irrespective of the varying opinions on the sincerity of social media bereavement, such behavior is a reality. It was comforting to learn that researchers were …

4 Guilt Trips Adult Children Use When You Say No

4 Guilt Trips Adult Children Use When You Say No

Published by Jenni Sidey

“No”—it’s just a two-letter word, right? Yet, each week, parents who see me for parent coaching sessions lament how the word “no” is loaded with guilt and pain as they see their adult children struggle. Let’s be clear: I’m very much OK with parents who provide emotional and financial support for their adult children. But my ongoing caution is to first ask yourself whether your help truly helps them, or makes them feel dependent, or leads them to feel entitled rather than appreciative. A recent post of mine, “Enough Already! Stop Trying to Prove You Were a Good Parent,” is about parents internally feeling they need to continuously prove they are a good parent to their struggling adult child. In this post, I want to share what to say when you say no, and your adult child responds with manipulative, guilt-injecting responses that may make you cave in. By cave in, I mean changing your no to yes while inwardly knowing that you are just creating more unhealthy dependency. Please hear that, as parents, we …

The Link Between Self-Mistrust and Adult ADHD

The Link Between Self-Mistrust and Adult ADHD

Published by Jenni Sidey

Mistrust beliefs are typically other-focused, rooted in one’s experiences of having been wronged, abandoned, or abused by others in trusted relationships. These experiences leave them wary and on guard about others’ motives. Self-Mistrust and Adult ADHD My first book on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for adult ADHD,1 is where I first made mention of “self-mistrust” beliefs. They became apparent to me in countless sessions hearing clients’ self-doubts and corresponding self-recriminations and frustrations with themselves for consistently not doing what they know they needed to do and that they knew full well they could do. But the insidiousness of the effects of ADHD is that they were still unable to reliably count on themselves to implement intentions as a consequence. The consistent inconsistency of ADHD left them believing, and often saying aloud, “I can’t trust myself.” Several years later, I stumbled across Albert Bandura’s construct of self-regulatory efficacy (SRE) while I was writing a book in which I took a stab at proposing a cognitive theme germane to adult ADHD.2 SRE’s description, that of a kind of …

Friendkeeping and the Work of Sustaining Adult Friendships

Friendkeeping and the Work of Sustaining Adult Friendships

Published by Jenni Sidey

No matter what life stage you are in, it is worth considering the well-being of your friendships. In my own case, I have lived in eight different U.S. states and moved across country several times, including as I retired. Most people regard friends as part of our convoy of life, much like long-haul truckers or ships that travel together. Some members of our life convoy are there for the length of our lifespan, others join in periodically, and others may exit. Each of us makes choices about maintaining friendships and support boundaries (Johnson, 2025). My observation is that some people seem to find it easier to let friendships lapse, especially when we change jobs, move, graduate, find a new church or sports team, join new families, or see friends move on. Others find a way to sustain friendships beyond those times when we have regular contact. It certainly has become easier to maintain and renew friendships via digital and social media. However, most people will have times they need additional support or to hook into …