When our children were small, listening came with the job. We heard about the playground, the scraped knee, the friend who was mean at lunch. As they grew, the conversations changed, and at some point most of us started doing something else as well: offering advice.
By the time our children are in their thirties, forties or fifties, the habit is well worn. They mention a problem at work and we suggest what to do. They describe a worry about the grandchildren and we tell them what we did. It comes from love and long experience. Research on younger adult children and on listening offers a useful reminder: before offering advice, it may help to check whether our children would rather simply be heard.
We may feel closer than they do
One surprising finding in family research is that parents and adult children don’t always see their relationship the same way. In a study of 4,602 parent and adult child pairs in the Netherlands, with the children aged 25 to 45, researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that “all types of parents tend to report higher levels of closeness than their children”. Sociologists have a name for this: the intergenerational stake. Parents, it seems, tend to have more invested in the relationship, and to rate it more warmly.
That doesn’t mean our children don’t love us. It does suggest it’s worth not taking closeness for granted, and paying attention to how conversations feel from their side.
Advice isn’t always the gift we think it is
Advice from a parent can be welcome. It can also land badly, and research suggests the difference often lies in whether it was asked for.
In a 2021 study in The Journals of Gerontology, a team including Karen Fingerman, a leading researcher on parents and adult children, asked 152 young adults aged 18 to 30 to keep daily diaries for up to a week about the advice they received from their parents. On days when they got advice from their mothers, they tended to be in a better mood. But advice they didn’t want was linked to worse moods that day, whichever parent it came from. Young adults in more strained relationships with a parent were also more likely to see that parent’s advice as unwanted. As the authors put it, “parental advice is not ‘the more the better,’ especially when the advice is unsolicited.”
One more detail stands out. In the same study, how much advice the young adults received wasn’t linked to how many problems they were dealing with. It was linked to how close they were to their parents. In other words, parents weren’t necessarily advising because their children were struggling. Advice was simply part of how close parents and children related to each other, which is all the more reason to check whether it’s wanted.
The participants were aged 18 to 30, so these findings don’t necessarily describe relationships with children in their forties or fifties. A diary study also can’t show cause and effect. Applying the findings to older grown children is a practical interpretation, rather than something this study established.
What careful listening does
Listening well is not the same as staying quiet. Research suggests it changes how the other person feels and even how they think.
In a set of five experiments published in 2018 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Guy Itzchakov, Avraham Kluger and colleagues compared what happened when people spoke to a high-quality listener, someone attentive, empathic and nonjudgmental, with what happened when they spoke to a poorer one. People who were listened to well felt less social anxiety, reflected more deeply on what they knew about the topic, and became clearer about their own views. Good listening didn’t make them want to persuade anyone else. It simply helped them think.
These experiments weren’t specifically about older parents and their grown children. Still, they suggest a useful possibility: listening may give a grown child space to work out what they think before we offer a solution.
A second study looked at what kind of listening makes people feel understood. Communication researchers led by H. Weger, publishing in the International Journal of Listening in 2014, had 115 university students talk with a trained conversation partner who either listened actively, by paraphrasing what they heard and asking questions, gave advice, or simply nodded along with “I see.” Those who received active listening felt more understood than those in either of the other groups.
Interestingly, the people who got advice liked the conversation about as much as those who got active listening. Advice isn’t a disaster. It just isn’t the same thing as being understood.
What listening carefully can look like
There’s no formula, but the research points to some simple habits:
- Ask what they want. “Do you want my thoughts, or would it help just to talk it through?” It’s a small question that can change the whole conversation, and it puts the choice about advice where it belongs.
- Reflect back what you hear. “It sounds as if the new manager is making things really hard” shows you’ve understood, and gives them the chance to correct you if you haven’t.
- Ask open questions. “What’s the hardest part?” or “What are you thinking of doing?” keeps the focus on them.
- Resist the story of your own. “When that happened to me…” can feel like connection, but it often turns the conversation away from them.
- Put the phone down and stay with it. Attention was a core part of the high-quality listening tested in the research.
- Let silences sit. A pause can give them room to say more.
A conversation, two ways
Imagine a daughter rings to say her teenage son has been refusing to go to school. One response goes straight to solutions: talk to the principal, take his phone away, we never put up with that. Another starts with a question: “That sounds exhausting. What’s been happening?” followed by a lot of listening and, perhaps, “Would it help to hear what I’d think about, or do you mostly need to get it off your chest?”
Both come from love. But the research suggests the second is more likely to leave her feeling understood, and to keep the door open for the next conversation.
Listening when you disagree
The hardest listening often comes when a grown child makes choices we wouldn’t make, about money, work, relationships or how they raise their own children. The urge to steer them can be strong.
The listening research offers a useful reminder here. In the Itzchakov studies, nonjudgmental listening helped people become clearer about their own views. It didn’t make them any keener to persuade others. Feeling heard, in other words, seems to help people reflect rather than simply argue their case. If you do have a concern worth raising, it’s far more likely to be heard after your child feels you have genuinely understood their side.
And sometimes the most loving thing is to accept that the decision is theirs. Our grown children are adults, with lives we only see part of.
Never too late to listen
None of this means a parent’s experience counts for nothing. There will be times when advice is exactly what’s wanted, and the diary research found that advice from mothers often went along with better moods. The difference is in letting our children lead.
The relationship with a grown child is one of the longest most of us will ever have. Listening carefully, asking before advising and letting them know we’ve understood are small habits. Over years, they can help keep that relationship one our children want to come back to.
