Prayers of Blessing Over My Adult ChildrenНамуна

Each person who reaches adulthood is responsible for their own choices and actions. Yet parents everywhere take on themselves the blame for their adult children’s mistakes, illegal actions, addictions, and divorces, thinking “If only I would have… ”

This trap is devastating and potentially endless. Every time one of our adult children chooses another destructive attitude or action, we have an additional reason to blame ourselves for not parenting better. This trap deceives us into believing that our adult children are locked in failure because we failed in some way as their parents. We grab responsibility from them and assign it to ourselves. Our illogical thinking concludes that our children aren’t really responsible for their terrible decisions—we are! 

But if our adult children are well-adjusted and flourishing, how many of us respond to their successes as if our amazing parenting were its sole cause? In all these years, I’ve never heard a parent take that responsibility. Instead, they are proud of their children’s choices and actions. Somehow, we slide into the misconception that our children’s successes are from their own choices, and their failures are from our bad parental choices. 

Somewhere along the line, we parents must cut the cords of false responsibility for the decisions of our adult children. Too many parents live in self-blame for decisions and actions that were in no way related to their parenting.

Does God hold parents accountable for the sins of their children? Absolutely not. God disciplines us if we continue to be abusive or irresponsible parents—but not for our adult children’s choices and actions. Romans 14:12 states that “Each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” When we’re giving this account, we won’t get to defend our poor choices by blaming our parents. Everyone is held accountable for their own decisions and actions.

Therefore, stop taking responsibility for any of your adult children’s decisions and actions. Although we may experience pain and disappointment by their decisions and actions, we must not ever start blaming ourselves for their decisions. We may not have been always a perfect role model, but role models do not force their attitudes or actions on their offspring. Instead, our adult children make their decisions and live their lives by their choices.

Make a clean and permanent decision right now: “I am not responsible or accountable before God or anyone else, including myself, for the attitudes and lifestyle choices of my adult children. I will not allow anyone to place blame on me for their choices. I am fully responsible for my choices and attitudes, and they are responsible for theirs.”

We must relinquish all responsibility for our adult children’s decisions, including the positive and wonderful consequences from good decisions or the negative and destructive consequences from poor ones. We must guard against relieving the negative consequences from their poor decisions or they will not learn from them. When parents still carry the guilt of previous parental insufficiencies and mistakes, they are emotionally driven to intervene and relieve those painful consequences in their children’s lives. But they shouldn’t. God teaches us by the consequences of our behaviors.

Does this mean we should never intervene to help our adult children? Of course not. But if our intervention is driven from our guilt, then God’s not behind our seeming compassion to “help them one more time.” 

We must offload our guilt from the past and walk in the conviction that our adult children are responsible for their own lives. Isn’t it about time that you embrace this truth? If you don’t, your prayers will be tainted with self-guilt instead of a heart free to discern the real truth: Your children are fully responsible for every one of their choices, both good and bad.

Lord, help me to cut the apron strings of false responsibility for the decisions of my adult children. I release self-blame and exchange it for Your assurance of grace. Lord, help me not reflect the collective conscience of this generation of adult children, which seems to blame parents well into adulthood for anything and everything. Help my adult children to wake up in their own hearts and minds and stop leaning on the crutch of blame toward their parent(s). In Jesus’ name, amen.