As I watched seventeen retirees share their deepest regrets that Tuesday evening, a chilling pattern emerged that would forever change how I view the parent-child relationship—and the devastating cost of words left unspoken.
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Last Tuesday evening, the community center smelled like coffee and vanilla candles, that particular combination that makes any room feel instantly warmer.
I sat in a circle with seventeen other retired folks, our chairs arranged classroom-style, though we'd long since graduated from formal education.
The facilitator had asked us to share what we wished we'd told our adult children a decade ago, and as we went around the room, something extraordinary happened.
Every single person began their answer the same way: "I love you, but..."
Those four words hung in the air like a confession we'd all been carrying.
I love you, but I need boundaries.
I love you, but I can't keep rescuing you.
I love you, but your choices are yours to make.
I love you, but I have my own life to live.
1) Why we struggle to set boundaries with our grown children
There's something about watching your child take their first steps that rewires your brain permanently.
You become a human safety net, arms outstretched, ready to catch them before they hit the ground.
The problem is, we sometimes forget to lower our arms even when they're forty-five years old and have children of their own.
I think about my eldest son often when this topic comes up.
After his father died, I made the mistake of treating him like my co-pilot instead of my child.
He was barely sixteen, and I was drowning in grief, bills, and the overwhelming task of suddenly being everything to everyone.
"You're the man of the house now," I told him, as if that title came with an instruction manual he could follow.
What I really meant was, "I'm terrified and I need you to help me not fall apart."
But what he heard was that his own needs came second to keeping our family afloat.
The truth is, we struggle with boundaries because somewhere along the way, we confused love with endless availability.
We thought saying no meant we were bad parents.
We worried that having our own needs meant we were selfish.
But here's what I've learned from years of conversations with other parents: the inability to set boundaries with adult children often stems from our own unhealed wounds.
We give from empty wells because we don't know how to fill them.
2) The weight of unspoken truths
During our discussion, Margaret, a retired nurse, shared something that made everyone nod in recognition.
She said she wished she'd told her daughter, "I love you, but your anxiety is not mine to carry."
The room went quiet because we all knew that particular burden—the way our children's pain becomes a stone we carry in our chest, growing heavier with each passing year.
Have you ever noticed how the things we don't say take up more space than the things we do?
They sit between us at holiday dinners, they lurk in phone conversations that dance around the real issues, they grow larger in the silence until they become walls we can't see over.
I spent years wanting to tell my children that I was sorry for the ways grief made me smaller, less patient, less present.
But I was afraid that acknowledging my imperfections would somehow diminish their respect for me.
It wasn't until I joined a widow's support group that I realized every parent in that room carried similar regrets.
We'd all done our best with what we had, but our best sometimes wasn't what our children needed.
3) Learning to apologize without drowning in guilt
The most liberating moment of my life came when I finally apologized to my son for making him grow up too fast.
I was sixty-four, he was forty-three, and we were sitting on my back porch watching his kids play in the sprinkler.
"I'm sorry I made you the man of the house," I said.
"You were just a boy who needed a mother, not a co-parent."
He was quiet for so long, I thought I'd broken something between us.
Then he said, "I've been waiting my whole life to hear that."
What strikes me about that moment now is how I'd built it up in my mind as something that would destroy our relationship, when in reality, it was the beginning of healing it.
In our support group discussion, person after person shared similar stories.
They wished they'd said, "I love you, but I wasn't perfect."
They wished they'd acknowledged their mistakes without drowning in guilt or making excuses.
Here's what I think we need to understand: apologizing to our adult children for our past mistakes isn't about self-flagellation.
It's about giving them permission to have their own feelings about their childhood, to acknowledge that their experiences were real and valid, even if we were doing our best at the time.
4) The courage to live our own lives
Perhaps the most surprising revelation from our group was how many people wished they'd said, "I love you, but I have dreams of my own."
Robert, a retired accountant, talked about turning down a chance to travel through Europe because his daughter needed babysitting help.
"I thought I was being a good father," he said. "But I taught her that my life didn't matter."
This resonates deeply with something I wrote about in a previous post on finding purpose after retirement.
We spend so many years defining ourselves through our roles—parent, spouse, professional—that we forget we're also individuals with our own desires and ambitions.
When I started writing at sixty-six, after a friend practically dragged me to a personal essay workshop, I felt guilty every time I sat down at my computer.
Shouldn't I be available if my children called?
Shouldn't I be volunteering to watch the grandkids?
But then I realized that by pursuing my own passion, I was showing them that life doesn't end at retirement, that growth and discovery are lifelong pursuits.
Final thoughts
As I left the community center that night, I thought about those four words—"I love you, but"—and how they're really about teaching our children that love and boundaries can coexist.
That we can adore them while also having limits.
That their happiness and our happiness don't have to be mutually exclusive.
If you're reading this and thinking about your own adult children, wondering what you wish you could say, remember that it's never too late for honest conversation.
Yes, it takes courage to be vulnerable, to admit our imperfections, to establish boundaries after years of having none.
But the alternative—carrying these unspoken truths until they become regrets—is far heavier.
The most beautiful part of that evening wasn't just the similarity of our answers.
It was the relief on everyone's faces as they realized they weren't alone in their struggles.
We all love our children fiercely.
But sometimes, the most loving thing we can do is add that small but powerful word: but.
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