parenting skills.

[LaLou]

Thesis: If parents do not have confidence in their grown-up children to be responsible and well behaving adults, they don't have confidence in their own parenting skills.

I witnessed a "fight" between a father and his twenty something daughter. Often I hear about fights between parents and their children about school, friends, going out, etcetera. I have been wondering why I don't fight my children.
I have confidence that they will make the right choices for them, and I have that confidence because I know that I set the right example.

Please discuss above mentioned thesis.

[chex]

In normal cases, I'd agree with you. But there are exceptions. Some adults with special needs or delays look just like everyone else, and since I can't know, I try to give the benefit of doubt. Parenting is hard shazam!!

[TwistingtheShadows]

A parent's job is to guide their child. That can continue into adult life. If your friend was going to make a bad decision, you would help them to make a right one, and I suppose that would be the same with a child, expect they would probably be less likely to accept the advice.

You have to remember that there are more factors than just parenting involved in growing up, and factors in school, in location, in genetics, produce different circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone, and parents have a right, even a responsibility, to prevent their sons/daughters, of any age, making some of them.

I do agree, though, that there are better ways of doing so than an all-out row, and that there are some people who raise their children so badly that the children end up as (insert word here)s

[Beany]

I think it's also important to consider that no matter how good someone's parenting skills are, they probably won't be told about everything their child does in life, meaning that if certain situations affect their child's future, they'd have been unpreventable. I know a couple who were fantastic parents - their kids loved them and didn't disobey, until one child died. The other one was so thrown by that that he moved out and went into a massive downward spiral. His parents didn't have any confidence that he would be responsible and well-behaved after that, but there was nothing they could do.

[LaLou]

Yes, I agree that a parents job is to guide their child.
That guiding though, is that giving them a map and explain how it works and then let them go, or is it holding their hands all the way? I'm talking about children reaching adulthood here. I think that we have children to let them go at a certain point, not to hold on to them forever.
I could give my adult children advice, but they don't have to follow it. They are their own person, make their own decision. Go their own way. If I force my way onto them, it might just drive them away from me.
I think the guiding part ends at a certain age. After that it's mentioning pro's and cons and have them make their own decision. Be at an equal level with them, like I would be with a friend.

[TwistingtheShadows]

Not all born into this wold are bless with the intelligence to take pros and cons and make a balanced decision, and that isn't always to do with how they were brought up. No one is perfect, and not everyone can be a perfect parent.