11 Things Adult Children Don't Realize They Do To Make Their Parents Feel Disrespected
You may not intend to make your parents feel disrespected, but if you're behaving this way, they probably do.
voronaman / Shutterrstock Genuine respect is a two-way street. If people don’t offer respect, it’s unlikely that they’ll receive it in return. This holds true for any relationship, yet it can be especially pertinent in relationships between parents and their adult children. There are things adult children don’t realize they do that make their parents feel disrespected, which often translate to a perception that their parents don’t appreciate them.
During childhood, parents need to set boundaries and model expectations for their kids to keep them safe on a physical, emotional, and psychological level. Boundaries teach kids how to treat themselves and others with kindness, something that ideally carries over into adulthood. But it’s common for adult children to take their parents for granted, even when they don’t realize they’re making their parents feel disrespected.
Here are 11 things adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected
1. Brushing off their advice
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Something adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected is brushing off their advice. More often than not, parents want to be seen as a source of support for their adult children. They might not be responsible for keeping them clothed and fed anymore, but parents never stop being parents.
Even though their kids are well into adulthood, parents still want to be of use to them, and offering advice is one way to show how much they care.
Every parent has their own unique dynamic with their children, and it’s easy for both sides to fall back into old patterns of relating to each other. It’s highly likely for an adult child’s inner teenage attitude to bubble up when their parents give them advice. They reject what their parents say without considering their perspective or appreciating the wisdom they’ve gathered over the years.
Adult children don’t always want advice from their parents, especially if that advice is unsolicited or has a critical undertone. It’s worthwhile for parents and their adult children to have open, honest conversations about the ways they want to show up for each other, including the exchange of advice.
2. Being dismissive of their experiences
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Another thing adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected is dismissing their experiences. While the world now is a very different place from the world their parents came of age in, when adult children act like their experiences don’t matter, it makes parents feel rejected.
A study published in the “International Journal of Advance Research and Innovative Ideas In Education,” described social validation as a tool people use to determine how to act in accordance with social norms, noting that “people often look to others’ behavior in deciding how to behave across situations, especially in ambiguous situations.”
The study framed people’s “innate desire and drive” for social validation as an intrinsic part of the human experience. We all want to feel seen and understood by the people around us, especially our family members.
Adult children tend to forget that their parents had full lives before becoming parents. There are aspects of life, now, that don’t align seamlessly with how older generations experienced their lives, but that doesn’t invalidate how they feel. Modern technology, the job market, and methods for raising kids don’t look like they did in the previous decades, yet underneath everything, the essential human truths remain constant.
Compassion and connection lie at the core of validating anyone’s experience, including our parents.
3. Judging their lifestyle
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Judging their lifestyle is something adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected.
There are social and cultural divisions that exist between Boomers and their Gen X and millennial kids, just as there are differences between how Gen X and millennials relate to their Gen Z and Gen Alpha children. Yet those differences aren’t an excuse to pass judgment.
Adult children might get frustrated because every FaceTime involves a reminder to move their thumb off the camera lens. They might dislike their parents’ habit of changing their order at least five times every time they go to a restaurant.
But criticizing them isn’t going to change how they live, but it will change the quality of the relationship adult children have with their parents.
4. Overlooking important occasions
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Overlooking important occasions is a thing adult children don’t realize they do that makes their parents feel disrespected. While they weren’t at their parents’ wedding in 1979, acknowledging their anniversary is still a nice thing to do and a simple way to show that they care about their parents as more than solely the people who raised them, but as fully-realized people in their own right.
Their parents might not love their birthday or embrace the fact that they’re getting older, but sending birthday wishes is a simple, tangible way to express affection and care. Important occasions are important for a reason: They represent more than just passing of time. They’re a marker of all the ways people evolve and the milestones they hit along the way.
Adult children don’t necessarily have to celebrate their parents in an extravagant, over-the-top way, but they should do what they can to recognize their parents, on special days and ideally, on regular days, as well.
5. Not spending time with them
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Something adult children don’t realize they do that makes their parents feel disrespected is not spending time with them or staying in touch. Growing up, moving out, and establishing independent lives is essential for adult children to do, but disregarding their need for continued emotional connection can make parents question what they mean to their kids.
That’s not to say that adult children should drop everything to visit their parents or respond to every text immediately. Yet the strength of any relationship depends on communication.
Love in action means showing up in the ways you can for the people you care about. Staying in touch might mean sending photos of the grandkids at the end of the week or calling while they cook dinner.
Keeping up a sense of connection doesn’t have to be an all-consuming activity. It can be as simple as sending a text asking how they’re doing. When adult children don’t make time for their parents, it sends a fairly clear message about where their priorities lie.
6. Bringing up mistakes they made in the past
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Adult children don’t realize that bringing up past mistakes makes their parents feel disrespected. It’s one thing to engage in constructive conversations about difficult memories or painful experiences, and it’s something else altogether to reopen old wounds without any attempt to heal them.
Adult children have the right to question their parents and interpret their childhoods in ways that feel true to them, but constantly referring to mistakes their parents made can mean they’re stuck on past narratives that no longer serve them.
When adult children bring up old mistakes over and over, parents feel like they’re holding onto a grudge with no intention of letting go.
Psychotherapist Diane Barth revealed that holding grudges has less to do with perceived mistakes and more to do with how the grudge-holder experiences the world around them.
“An unrelenting grudge puts the grudger into the category of those who are right, and the person who wronged them in the category of those who are bad,” she explained.
“Anger toward the person who has done wrong is then justified as appropriate and well deserved,” Barth continued. “The problem is that both a grudge and the anger that accompanies it are often disproportionate to the ‘wrong.’”
“In the end, a grudge is more about the problems of the person holding it than about the person who is the target,” she concluded.
7. Comparing them to other parents
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Something adult children don’t realize they do that makes their parents feel disrespected is comparing them to other people’s parents. Every family operates differently. What works for one family unit might not work for another.
When adult children continually mention how their friends’ parents paid for everyone in their family to take a cruise around the Caribbean or that their in-laws would never cook with frozen vegetables, it makes their parents feel insecure and inferior. They start to wonder if they’re good parents, at all, or if they should act more like a set of parents they’ve never met before.
As the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy. The more that adult children compare their parents to other people, the more they focus on what they’re lacking, and the less they enjoy what their parents do give them.
8. Forgetting to extend gratitude
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Adult children don’t realize that forgetting to extend gratitude towards their parents makes them feel disrespected. One of the first things children learn after they start talking is to say “please” and “thank you.” When parents teach their kids good manners, they’re building a foundation of gratitude for their kids to draw on throughout the course of their lives.
Adult children who don’t express gratitude for their parents make them feel unappreciated, which erodes the sense of closeness between them.
Sara Algoe, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, put forward the “find-remind-bind” theory of relationships, which maintains that gratitude is essential for long-term relationships. Being grateful for each other and sharing that gratitude lends itself to having a responsive and loving relationship.
While Algoe’s theory focused on romantic relationships, her findings can extend to familial relationships, as well.
“We and others have now collected an extraordinary amount of data on expressing and receiving gratitude,” she explained. “And the thing that always strikes me is how simple it can be. It does not take much to have a big effect on the person who hears it. Doing or saying something is better than nothing.”
Adult children often underestimate how much their parents want to know that they did right by their kids, which means they forget to say that simple phrase they learned as toddlers: thank you.
9. Ignoring family traditions
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Another thing adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected is ignoring family traditions. Holidays might not mean the same thing they did when they were younger, but taking part in traditions is a way to honor their parents and keep important family customs alive for future generations.
Adult children might not be able to fly from California to Connecticut to have Thanksgiving dinner with their parents, but they can still keep up traditions with a new twist. They can bake the apple pie their mom always made, from a recipe her mom gave to her, and take photos of the finished product to share. They can record their kids on Christmas morning, opening presents and eating chocolate chip pancakes, just like they did when they were young.
As time passes, family traditions may take on different forms, but the love and care that exist at the core of those traditions stays strong.
10. Making fun of their habits
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Making fun of their parents’ habits is something adult children don’t realize they do to make their parents feel disrespected. Being called out for how you do things doesn’t feel good for anyone.
The intention behind teasing their parents might not be malicious, but it can still hurt their parents and make them feel like they’re doing something wrong. Laughing with someone is very different from laughing at someone.
Adult children might not think they’re causing any harm when they poke fun at the turtleneck and sweatpants combination their parents wear, but joking about their fashion choices or their quirky tendency to store tissues in the sleeves of that turtleneck makes their parents feel disrespected and on display.
11. Failing to recognize their parents' needs
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Adult children don’t realize that failing to recognize their parents’ needs makes them feel disrespected. Aging is inevitable, but that doesn't make it easy to accept. As parents get older, they often need more emotional and practical support from their adult children, which can be an ambivalent experience for everyone involved. When adult children don’t acknowledge that their parents’ needs are changing, it can cause friction and negatively affect how their parents feel about the aging process.
A study published in the journal “Innovation in Aging” pointed out that a person's attitude toward aging, also known as aging satisfaction or age self-stereotype, is directly connected to successful aging outcomes. Higher aging satisfaction was associated with better cognitive functioning and physical health.
The study noted that family connections are an important social resource for older people. The researchers believed that “a supportive parent–child relationship may work as a resource in developing positive views about becoming older,” not just for parents, but for their adult children, too.
“Children would experience that becoming old could mean being able to make meaningful contact and help others,” the study stated.
It’s not easy for adult children to watch their parents get older, but the aging process can reveal the depth to their relationship and make their connection to each other even stronger.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.