How to Stop Bailing Them Out and Still Love Them Well

You wrote the check again. You said yes again. And the whole time you were doing it, you knew. This isn't help anymore. This is the same crisis on a different Tuesday.
You want to stop. You just don't know how to stop without it feeling like you've stopped loving them.

Erica walks you through the exact framework she uses to help an adult child without enabling them: a Help-With-a-Plan agreement that's time-bound, role-building, and clear enough that no one has to guess where they stand. You'll learn what to spell out as the parent, what to require from your child (including the attitudes, not just the behaviors), and why a review date is the piece most parents skip and pay for later.

You'll also hear why guilt and manipulation will show up the moment you stop being the crisis ATM, and exactly how to hold steady when they do.

And then the part most moms need most. A reminder of everything you've already modeled. You showed them what it looks like to function as an adult. You earned your voice in this relationship. Stopping the bailout isn't the end of love. It might be the start of loving them well.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You never imagined you'd still be worrying about rent, jobs, or decisions this late into motherhood. You want to help, but you're tired and maybe even a little resentful. Today we're talking about how to love your adult child well without losing yourself, your marriage, or your voice in the relationship. This is the Momentum Podcast, moving moms closer to Jesus and families closer together. I'm your host, Erica Wiggenhorn, author of Loving Your Wayward Child, a Christian guide to stand in faith when their choices break your heart. In part one of this episode, we walked through a grid to determine how do I know if I'm helping or enabling? What signs do I look for? And we talked about that icky little word entitlement. And if I am enabling, what will I need to do to be able to stop the cycle? And how it will be one of the most courageous things you will ever do as a parent. And it won't be easy. I remember volunteering in a prison ministry for several years. I certainly wouldn't choose prison for my child, but uh, as my friend Sarah reminds me, you can't keep your child from their testimony. It was that season where I interacted with so many women, and they will tell you over and over that prison was the best thing that ever happened to them because they totally surrendered their lives to God. And the miracle after miracle after miracle that so many of these women experienced in their lives and in their legacy and the entire transformation of their extended family that rippled out of that one surrender, their one surrender of their life to God, are monumental. And so coming to a place of totally surrendering our children to God, it's the scariest thing we're ever gonna do, but it's the best thing we're ever gonna do. And so, how much do we direct, how much do we pull back? What does surrendering actually look like? That's what we're gonna talk about today. And first of all, let me say this every single family is unique, every situation is unique, your child is unique, your family history is unique, your circumstances is unique, but here is one universal truth. Everybody, everybody, I mean everybody will have an opinion about what you should do. You'll have an opinion, your spouse will have an opinion, your other children will have opinions, your mother will have an opinion about how you should mother. So, for starters, you need to go to God with this. You need to ask God to guide and direct you in your parenting decisions daily because everybody, every person has perceptions and ideas and opinions, but God alone has the facts. Only He knows your heart, your child's heart, the end from the beginning of every situation. He knows everything that's happened in the past, he knows everything that's gonna happen in the future, and he knows what every single day of your child's life is gonna look like from right now till forever. He knows what your child needs from him and from you. So ask him and confess where you are afraid to trust him. Confess your fear of other people's opinions, confess your fear of the worst-case scenario, confess your fear over the loss of the relationship, confess your fear of watching them suffer. Tell him everything you're worried about. And whatever you're afraid of, confess it all to our Heavenly Father and ask him for help to show you what to do. Listen to this from James 1, 5 through 8 in the Living Bible. I love this passage of scripture. If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him and he will gladly tell you. For he's always ready to give a bountiful supply of wisdom to all who ask him. He will not resent it. But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you. For a doubtful mind will be as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. And every decision you then make will be uncertain as you turn first this way and then that. If you don't ask with faith, don't expect the Lord to give you any solid answers. So ask God for the game plan. Here's some ideas to get you started in your conversation with God and coming up with a help with a plan framework for your child. First of all, you can create a help with a plan agreement, even if it's informal. We talked about this a little bit in episode part one of this episode about how the plan needs to be time-bound and role-building. I've written this out for you in your from Despair to Repair Companion Guide, and I've made it easy to copy and paste in documents so you can use it over and over and over. But here is what this help with a plan should include. First of all, it's going to lay out what you will provide as the parent. What are you going to do as the parent? And you need to be very specific about this. Specific about the time, specific about what you will do, specific about what you won't do. And then you're going to include what your child is going to do. And this should include not just behaviors that they will stick to, but attitudes that they will display. Maybe your child gets up and goes to work every day, but when they come home, they're an absolute bear to live with. So maybe part of what you need to include in this help with a plan is that they're going to speak respectfully to you. They're going to answer you in a calm manner. They're not going to scream at you, whatever it may be. What are they going to do? So what you'll provide, what they're going to do, and then a review date. In the beginning, maybe this has to be weekly. Maybe it can move to monthly. Maybe it can move to quarterly. Um, but have a review date. This is the time-bound piece. This help that you're offering to provide is temporary. At the end of this, the end of this review date, we're going to revisit this help that I've offered to give you. And I may pull back that help or I may increase that help, depending on what you're doing on your end. And then last is the purpose. What is the purpose of this agreement? We're helping you to maintain solid employment. We're helping you to take your next steps in your career. We're helping you to stay sober. We're helping you to repair your uh marriage. What is the purpose? Because when we go back to the why we are helping, um, it really helps us clarify: are we entitling, are we enabling, or are we actually doing something here that has a long-term transformational effect? So, what is the purpose of our help? You want them to realize their full potential and you want them to feel proud of themselves, and you want them to feel the reward of hard work and you want them to gain confidence, right? Maybe you want them to learn patience, you want them to learn to trust God, whatever the why is behind it. What's the deeper value in this lesson? The spiritual or the emotional growth that you want to occur, the change in the behavior. The message is not that we just want you to follow a set of rules. We want you to obey, you know, this checklist that we've laid out here for you. There's a deeper thing going on here. We want you to become a better person. We want you to see the reward of making good decisions. We want you to build healthy relationships. Think about the deeper why behind this help that you're offering. And, you know, they might, they might balk at this and they might try to turn it against you with things like, well, I'm just never good enough for you, am I? Or they might use other, you know, guilt-inducing statements or manipulation. Don't take the bait. You're the one in control. You've made an offer to help. They don't have to take it. They don't have to take your help if they don't want to. But if they do want to, if they do want help and they're asking for help, then part of that expectation is that they're going to receive that help graciously and not with contempt or building up a pile of guilt on you in the process. And here's the good part it is temporary. And if it isn't working, you stop helping. If they don't hold up their end of the bargain, you're not obligated to keep helping them. But this is when you're really gonna need support from others because I've said it here on the podcast previously, and I'll say it again. Tough love is the hardest type of love there is. And it's gonna deepen their expectation that if you love me, you'll rescue me from every irresponsible and dumb decision I make. Which is not a true definition of love, by the way. There's a time for rescue. There's a time for rescue. But when there is a pattern of needing to be rescued over and over and over, and in entitled attitude that they deserve it, and you have to do it because you're mom and dad, you're not helping them grow into an adult. Here's some hope. You've done a lot of things right. And I'm gonna go out on a limb here and I'm gonna suggest you've modeled dependability for them. You didn't do everything right. No mother on the planet did, but you showed up, you fed them, you drove them to school, you took them to activities, you washed their clothes, you made sure their homework was done, you tucked them in at night, you brought some semblance of order to their world. You modeled dependability, you modeled consistency. Even when you were tired or you were weary, you woke up, you had breakfast on the table, you had a lunch bag on the table, you went to work, you got them out the door for school, you made sure they had work or food to eat. You demonstrated the sacrifice of caring for others and making responsible decisions. You showed them what it looks like to function as an adult. And your presence sent messages, you did hard things, you kept things together when it would have been easier to fall apart. You were and still are mom, and that means something. It means you have a voice in this relationship, not a critical, nagging, demeaning voice, but a voice that has earned the right to be heard because you survived some stuff, you've kept going, and you know that life can take a whole lot more from us than we feel like we can give. And you aren't prepping your adult child for a life at Disneyland. You know what it's like to have to function in the real world, and you've done it, and you want to make sure they can do it too. So you've got to set some standards, not harshly, not in a I know so much more than you do kind of attitude, but in a way that compassionately and honestly says, Life is hard. Life's hard. I love you, and I want you to be ready. I see how much potential you have, and I believe in good things for you, and I believe God has gifted you in beautiful ways, and I see the incredible adult you're becoming, and I'm in your corner, which is why it's my job to help you become all that you were created to be and never stop fighting for you and teaching you to seek the good things God has for you. It's my greatest privilege to be your mom. I love you more than life itself, and I don't ever want to do anything to keep you from reaching your full potential. Boundaries are loving. Saying no is the best thing we can say sometimes. And God is at work in ways beyond what we can control and we can trust his faithfulness. I'm Erica Wiggenhorn, author of Loving Your Wayward Child and host of the Momenta Podcast. And in our final episode, we'll talk about keeping our marriages strong when we are struggling with a difficult child. Be sure and subscribe so you don't miss this next episode. But let's close with this reminder from God's Word. Psalm 37, 23 through 24 from the Living Bible. The steps of good men are directed by the Lord. He delights in each step they take. If they fall, it isn't fatal, for the Lord holds them with his hand. Father, you are our provider and our guide. Give us wisdom to know when to help and when to step back. Help us trust that you are at work in our children's lives, even when we loosen our grip. Thank you for being faithful to finish what you start. In Jesus' name. Amen. Friend, if you'd like a weekend away with some very practical advice on setting up these game plans for going forward and setting boundaries in your home, I want to invite you to join us for the Momentum Conference. We will have some real conversations about how to work through tough love and how to prepare our own hearts as moms to be able to walk that road. You can find out more at Erica Wiganhorn dot com Slash Momentum. See you next week.