While the perfect parents don't exist, those whose children eagerly return home for holidays mastered something the others didn't—and it has nothing to do with how much they sacrificed or how few mistakes they made.
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Last Thanksgiving, I watched two different scenes unfold at neighboring houses on my street. In one driveway, adult children unloaded caskets of food and grandchildren tumbled out of minivans, voices bright with excitement. Next door, an elderly couple ate alone, their grown children having sent a card but nothing more. The contrast haunted me for weeks.
After three decades teaching high school and now, in my later years, observing countless families navigate these waters, I've noticed something striking. The families who stay close, who genuinely enjoy each other's company decades after the kids have left home, share certain patterns. And the families who drift apart? They often missed these same crucial elements along the way.
The difference isn't about perfect parenting. Lord knows none of us managed that. But there are specific choices, specific ways of being with our children that seem to determine whether they'll want to stay connected once they have the freedom to choose.
1. They apologized when they were wrong
How many of us grew up in homes where parents never admitted fault? Where being the authority meant never showing vulnerability? I carried this belief into my own parenting for far too long. After my husband died, I leaned too heavily on my eldest, telling him he was "the man of the house" when he was just fourteen. Years later, when he was in his thirties, I finally found the courage to apologize for stealing part of his childhood.
"Mom, I've been waiting twenty years to hear that," he said, and something shifted between us.
Parents who maintain close relationships with their adult children have mastered the art of the genuine apology. Not the defensive "I'm sorry you feel that way" or the guilt-laden "I was a terrible mother," but the simple, clear acknowledgment of harm done and responsibility taken. These parents understand that apologizing to their children doesn't diminish their authority; it enhances their humanity.
2. They recognized their children as separate people
Virginia Woolf once wrote that "we do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others." This becomes especially true with our children. We think we know them because we raised them, but do we really see them for who they are, not who we expected them to be?
I learned this lesson slowly, painfully. My two children needed entirely different things from me. One craved closeness, wanted weekly phone calls and regular visits. The other needed space, time to process, room to breathe. For years, I took my younger child's need for distance personally, interpreting it as rejection rather than simply their way of being in the world.
Parents whose children stay close have learned to honor these differences. They don't demand uniformity in how love is expressed. They adapt their approach to each child's temperament rather than forcing their children to conform to their own emotional needs.
3. They built relationships, not dependencies
There's a particular kind of parent who confuses closeness with enmeshment. They need their children to need them, and when their children naturally grow toward independence, they experience it as abandonment. These parents often find themselves alone, wondering why their children seem to avoid them.
The parents who stay connected understand that healthy relationships require healthy boundaries. They celebrated their children's independence rather than mourning it. They found their own purposes and identities beyond being parents. They have their own friends, their own interests, their own lives that don't revolve entirely around their children's achievements or failures.
4. They learned to listen without fixing
Remember when your teenager would come home upset about something at school, and before they'd finished their first sentence, you were already dispensing advice? I certainly do. We meant well, but what message did we send? That their problems were simple, that we had all the answers, that they couldn't be trusted to figure things out themselves.
The parents whose adult children call them regularly have mastered the art of listening without immediately jumping to solutions. They've learned to ask, "Do you want advice, or do you just need someone to listen?" They've discovered that sometimes being heard is more valuable than being helped.
5. They respected their children's chosen families
How we treat our children's partners can make or break our relationship with them. Do we welcome their choices, even when they're different from what we imagined? Do we make room at our table for the people they love, or do we make every gathering a subtle battlefield?
I've watched parents lose their children entirely because they couldn't accept a spouse, couldn't embrace a lifestyle, couldn't expand their definition of family. The parents who remain close have learned that their children's happiness matters more than their own expectations. They understand that rejecting their child's partner is, ultimately, rejecting their child.
6. They stopped keeping score
"I did everything for you, and this is how you repay me?" How many of us have heard these words? How many of us have said them? Parents who maintain warm relationships with their adult children have released the ledger. They don't catalog sacrifices or weaponize their past generosity. They gave because they chose to give, not because they were building up credit for future emotional withdrawals.
This doesn't mean accepting disrespect or neglect. It means understanding that love freely given is the only love worth having. When we parent from a place of genuine care rather than anticipated reciprocation, our children feel free to love us back without the weight of unpayable debt.
7. They evolved with time
The parents whose children visit regularly have learned to shift their role as their children age. They stopped trying to parent forty-year-olds the way they parented four-year-olds. They became advisors when asked, friends when appropriate, and supporters always, but they stopped trying to manage and control.
Recently, I've discovered the joy of grandparenting, which I've come to understand is parenting with more wisdom and less exhaustion. It's shown me how much I've learned, how much I've grown. The rigid mother I was at thirty would barely recognize the flexible grandmother I've become at seventy.
Final thoughts
None of us get it all right. We stumble, we fail, we hurt the people we love most. But the parents whose children choose to stay close aren't the perfect ones. They're the ones who keep growing, keep learning, keep trying to do better. They're the ones who see their children not as extensions of themselves but as whole people worthy of respect, understanding, and unconditional love.
The good news? It's never too late to start. Every phone call, every visit, every interaction is an opportunity to practice these principles. Our children may be adults now, but we're still their parents. We can still choose to be the kind of parents they want to stay connected to, the kind whose driveways fill with laughter on holidays, whose phones ring with genuine "how are you?" calls, whose children come not from obligation but from love.
