Why does parent-child communication change as children get older?
Parents' interactions with their children naturally change over time. Children start to crawl, walk, go to school, then enter puberty; challenging years for both them and their parents pass and the age of 18 comes. The age of 18 and the period of adult childhood, defined in the literature as adult children, which includes the next few years, brings with it many differences. Some adult children stay in the family home, some move out, but in both cases, parent-child communication is put to the test. While parents do not want to accept that their children are growing up, adult children want to emphasize that they are old enough to make their own decisions. Consequently, the gap in the parent-child relationship grows and communication becomes awkward.
Parents get older, children grow up, adolescence ends and the transition to adulthood begins. Naturally, parent-child relationships are also affected by these changes. So why does communication falter, why do conversations change and become more difficult?
Technology is advancing rapidly, habits are changing, changes that manifest themselves in every subject that the new generation is exposed to find a place in their lives without slowing down. The gap between Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Z is widening, making it impossible to speak the same language. It becomes extremely difficult to establish dialogues that bring both adult children and parents together on a common ground. This can lead to awkward or dysfunctional communication.
As age advances, everyone's responsibilities, workload, experiences, emotional-social and similar accumulations increase; in short, both children and parents may unintentionally distance themselves from each other while trying to get things done in their own worlds. As they grow further apart, the emotional distance between them grows exponentially and it becomes harder to build strong communication.
Many of us are familiar with the fact that some individuals are not successful enough in communication. Sometimes it's our partner, sometimes it's our coworkers. The same can be said for parents and their children. Individuals who have difficulty expressing their feelings and thoughts, or who prefer not to speak at all because they think they cannot have a meaningful conversation, cannot be part of a functional communication. In short, differences in individual communication skills can lead to a failure to establish the desired relationship between parents and their adult children.
Especially when they live in separate homes, conversations between adult children and parents do not go beyond 'checking in', i.e. asking 'Is everything in order; is everything okay? In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, phone calls are shaped by cursory questions such as how are you, how's work, how's the weather, etc., leaving it unclear what is really going on in the lives of both parents and adult children. Relationships therefore turn into small talk rather than deep, meaningful, detailed conversations.
Some parents can become too wrapped up in their parental role, i.e. they go to extra lengths to make their children feel that they are parents at every opportunity, and risk compromising their communication with their children so that their role is not jeopardized. For example, when an adult child wants to share an emotional problem with his/her mother and she tries to lecture him/her instead of just listening, letting him/her know that she is there for him/her or trying to understand him/her, the child may not want to engage in the same kind of sharing ever again. When these and similar situations become more frequent, parent-child communication can be disrupted.
Some negativities that are hardly noticed as a child, or that are not given enough time to think about and focus on while dealing with growing pains, may come to light as the child grows older. Perhaps the oppressive attitudes of parents, perhaps childhood traumas, perhaps destructive feelings and thoughts such as lack of love can cause children to not want to communicate deeply with their parents in their adult childhood.