How do today's parents cope when the dreams we had for our children clash with reality? What can we do for our twenty- and even thirty-somethings who can't seem to grow up? How can we help our depressed, dependent, or addicted adult children, the ones who can't get their lives started, who are just marking time or even doing it? What's the right strategy when our smart, capable "adultolescents" won't leave home or come boomeranging back? Who can we turn to when the kids aren't all right and we, their parents, are frightened, frustrated, resentful, embarrassed, and especially, disappointed? In this groundbreaking book, a social psychologist who's been chronicling the lives of American families for over two decades confronts our deepest concerns, including our silence and self-imposed sense of isolation, when our grown kids have failed to thrive. She listens to a generation that "did everything right" and expected its children to grow into happy, healthy, successful adults. But they haven't, at least, not yet -- and meanwhile, we're letting their problems threaten our health, marriages, security, freedom, careers or retirement, and other family relationships. With warmth, empathy, and perspective, Dr. Adams offers a positive, life-affirming message to parents who are still trying to "fix" their adult children -- Stop! She shows us how to separate from their problems without separating from them, and how to be a positive force in their lives while getting on with our own. As we navigate this critical passage in our second adulthood and their first, the bestselling author of I'm Still Your Mother reminds us that the pleasures and possibilities of postparenthood should not depend on how our kids turn out, but on how we do!

A book that gives parents permission to let go of their adult children's problems and reclaim their lives.

Provides access articles selected from the best of the public press. This book features: an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites; an annotated table of contents; a topic guide; a general introduction; brief overviews for each section; a topical index; and, an instructor's resource guide with testing materials.

Features a collection of articles from the public press. This title is supported by Dushkin Online, a student website that provides study support tools and links to related websites.

Targeted at women grieving their children leaving the house, this is sensitive book that shows all God has in store for their next phase of life.

This volume explores dimensions of adult development from both a research and theoretical perspective. It addresses adult learners' experience and meaning of education as on-going resource for well-being and positive development across the lifecourse. Chapters track the nature of a transition, the psychological phenomena connected to change in adulthood, learning experiences which challenge adults to achieve their developmental potential, and cultural and spiritual connections which support adult learning. Topics include the merging needs of Latina/Latino adult learners; adult learners' internal processes of differentiation and integration; ways in which educational institutions and practitioners can respond to emerging needs of adults retraining for vocational roles; creative and spiritual awakenings that can determine life course trajectory changes; changing modes of behavior and development which require shifts in holding environments; a model a well-being for adult learners who must change and yet remain true to their own cultures and relationships; and a review of the nature of transitions confronted by adult learners today. Overall, contributors ask the question of what institutional and instructional changes adult education practitioners may want to explore and provide research and theoretical underpinnings that help define the new terrain of adulthood. The chapters are interlocked in many ways, supporting the findings and principles found in each of these discussions. This is the 108th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education.