Are You Enabling Your Adult Child?

What exactly does it mean to “enable your adult child?” What the act of enabling does is to actively prevent your child from achieving appropriate developmental milestones as they age. Thus continually refusing to make your child/teenager/young adult take responsibility for their omissions and commissions of duty effectively leaves them as underperforming adults. In simpler words, if you do not make your 8-year old carry his or her plate to the kitchen after a meal and dispose of it according to age-appropriate behaviors, you are allowing that child to remain emotionally at that age, in that area of responsibility, longer … Continue reading

Are you an Enabler?

Do you have a friend who is hopeless at budgeting and you’re constantly lending her ten dollars here and twenty dollars there? Do you have a spouse with an alcohol problem and you phone his or her boss to call in sick instead of making them do it themselves? Do you constantly take on extra duties each time your older teen has an assignment due instead of allowing them to feel out of control themselves? If the answer is a resounding “Yes” then you could be an enabler. So what is an enabler? An enabler is a person who recognizes … Continue reading