In my last post, Perceptions of Irresponsible Adult Adopted Child, I talked about how insulting it is to an irresponsible young adult to assume that he does not have the ability to learn how to make better choices. I promised to provide advice for how to teach an adult adopted child responsibility in this post. Here is my advice: Love your adult adopted child enough to allow him to make his own choices and experience the resulting consequences. This is very hard to do, but it really is that simple. If you allow your adult adopted child to experience the consequences of his choices, he will learn responsibility.

I speak from experience here. I do not have an adult adopted child, but I do have a close relative who I, along with other relatives, bailed out repeatedly for over a decade. This relative and I were severely abused together throughout our childhoods, so I felt an added responsibility to bail her out. The problem is that no amount of money or help was ever enough. Over a ten-year period, this relative received tens of thousands of dollars from several family members, and yet she still “needed” more assistance just to get by.

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I asked for advice on a message board for adult survivors of childhood abuse. Several people responded that they had once been the same way and that no amount of money or assistance would ever have been enough. It was when everyone in their lives said no and they fell flat on their faces that they learned responsibility. While they were very angry with their families at the time, they are extremely grateful today. They told me that saying no was the best gift that I could give this relative.

I came to realize that bailing out this relative was encouraging her dependency and robbing her of the possibility of developing self-confidence as she learned how to stand on her own two feet. It was also insulting to her because each time I sent her a check, I was saying that I did not have the confidence in her ability to solve her own problems. By ending this support, I was making a statement that I believed in her: I believed in her ability to make responsible choices.

And you know what? She now has a budget. She still struggles, but she is getting by with no help from anyone else. I have seen her confidence rise as she has realized that she can take care of herself. She also appreciates what she has so much more because she has had to work so hard to earn it.

Making the choice to say no was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, but it was truly a decision made in love. She is now making much more responsible choices, and she no longer has to feel badly about herself because she is unable to take care of herself in adulthood.

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