These days’ children in their twenties are much more involved with one or both parents than in previous generations. This is an area of conflict between parents, even when there is not a high-conflict co-parent, because it's a different time than anyone's ever experienced before.

Think about balancing this sense of adulthood, independence and helping healthy relationships.

What you want to watch out for, which a lot of high-conflict co-parents want to do, is protecting the child too much from the outside world and discouraging the child from becoming independent. When a child calls up or text messages a question that you know the answer to, you could text back and say “Well, what do you think? You know, what are your suggestions?”

If they talk about a problem say, “Well, what do you suggest as a solution for this problem?” This is similar to the age of five to twelve in getting them to really strengthen their critical thinking skills. Don't make things too easy for them in terms of taking care of them.

A lot of young adults in their twenties live at home these days, and some parents have deadlines for how long that arrangement will work for them. Others charge rent.

I remember some cases, when I was counselling families, where there was a young adult in their twenties living in the home and we talked about charging rent. The parents talked to the young adult and the young adult said, “Well, if you are going to charge me rent, I might as well live with my friends.”

The parents learned that that was a good thing. They need to learn to live with their friends to learn responsibility: take care of the dishes, taking out the garbage and all those things that you have to do with your peers. You want to help them learn these types of real life tasks. The more delayed they are learning responsibility, the harder it is to learn later on.

Likewise, you want to support healthy partner relationships.

A tendency of some high-conflict co-parents is to discourage relationships with other people and say “Well, can’t I fill your all your needs?” No you can't. No parent can.

They need to learn relationships at this age. They need to be reaching out and finding out who is good for them and who is not good for them and making up their own minds.

Other high-conflict parents encourage and push a rejection and maybe don't even talk to their child anymore. The idea with flexible thinking, instead of all or nothing thinking, is to have a balance. Fully rejecting the child or fully staying too involved with the child are part of the all-or-nothing. You really want to find a good middle ground.

Again, get advice and support from your friends and other family members. Do not deal with this alone. It can be frustrating.

Should You Give Opinions?

In many ways, you want to share information and then say, “It's up to you.” You might say, “You know that guy you are going out with? Or that young woman you're going out with? I have some concerns.” They will roll their eyes but you can say, “Look, let me just tell you my concerns and then it's up to you. I won't bring it up again.”

They can learn from your greater experience, your point of view. So, co-parenting adult children can be similar to the younger ages in terms of using the 4 Big Skills, even though they’re more mature. You may have fewer opportunities to practice your skills, but these days there is a lot of involvement between adult children and their parents.

That's okay as long as it has these characteristics of flexibility rather than all-or-nothing thinking.

Also encourage them about how to handle work situations on their own. Give information and express your thoughts, but leave it up to them. One of the phrases that really helps with young adults is, “It's up to you.” In fact, that's a phrase you can use at any age in the areas where your child has a sense of choice, a reasonable choice.

Don't give your child choices that are not realistic, where you need to step in. Do give them choices where you can, when it’s appropriate for them to make the choice. Sometimes narrowing things down to two choices is a benefit you can give your child, rather than leaving them wondering, “Well what will I do now?” Narrowing it down to two options or three options is often quite helpful.

Continue to teach your adult child the 4 Big Skills for life and discuss those with your co-parent to the extent possible, or discuss those skills with your child yourself. Remember, you have a huge influence on your child's development.

Even though peers have a lot of influence with children, especially in adolescence and in adulthood, your role as parents is usually much more important than you realize. They are still absorbing everything they hear, even though they pretend you're not there. You want them to hear good stuff that they can use later on.