While most parents obsess over saying the right things when their kids are young, the conversations that actually determine whether you'll be estranged or embraced at 70 are the ones you're probably too proud, scared, or stubborn to have right now.
Add VegOut to your Google News feed. 
Last week, I sat in my living room staring at a photo from my 70th birthday party. Everyone was there, even my son who lives across the country. But what struck me wasn't just their presence. It was the genuine warmth in their eyes, the easy laughter, the way they lingered long after cake was served. Not all my friends can say the same about their relationships with their adult children, and I know exactly why.
The difference comes down to three crucial conversations that most of us either bungle completely or avoid altogether. After watching countless friendships fracture along family lines and navigating my own near-misses with my children, I've realized these conversations aren't just important. They're everything.
1. The apology you never thought you'd need to make
Remember that parent you swore you'd never become? The one who was too harsh, too absent, too something? Here's what nobody tells you: you probably became that parent anyway, just in different ways. And your kids remember.
When my husband died, survival mode kicked in hard. Bills needed paying, grief needed managing, and somehow dinner still needed to appear on the table every night. My eldest son was fourteen, and without really meaning to, I started referring to him as "the man of the house." God, how those words make me cringe now. He was a boy who'd just lost his father, not a replacement adult. He needed permission to fall apart, not pressure to hold us together.
Years passed before I understood the weight I'd placed on his young shoulders. Even more years passed before I found the courage to acknowledge it out loud. The conversation happened when he was thirty-two, married, with his own son on the way. We were washing dishes after Sunday dinner when I finally said it: "I'm sorry I made you grow up so fast. You deserved to just be a kid."
He stopped drying the plate in his hands. For a moment, I thought I'd opened a wound better left alone. Then he said, "I've been waiting twenty years to hear that."
That apology changed everything between us. Not because it erased the past, but because it acknowledged it. It said: I see what happened. I take responsibility. Your feelings about it are valid.
Most parents skip this conversation entirely. They hide behind "I did my best" or "You turned out fine" or my personal favorite, "That's just how things were back then." But here's the truth: your best might not have been good enough. Your kids might have turned out fine despite what you did, not because of it. And "how things were" doesn't heal the wounds those things left behind.
2. The moment you choose their happiness over being right
When my son brought home the woman he wanted to marry, every alarm bell in my maternal head went off. She was perfectly nice, don't get me wrong. But they seemed so different. She was quiet where he was boisterous, careful where he was spontaneous. I watched them together and thought: this will never work.
The old me would have said something. Would have pulled him aside with "concerns" disguised as wisdom. Would have planted seeds of doubt while calling it love. But I'd learned something from watching other parents poison their children's relationships with their need to be right. I'd seen how "I told you so" becomes a wedge that never quite comes out.
So instead, I asked myself a different question. Not "What do I think about this?" but "What does his face look like when he talks about her?"
The answer was illuminating. Joy, pure and simple. The kind I hadn't seen since before his father died.
During their engagement, I had exactly one job: to be genuinely happy for them. Not fake-happy while harboring reservations. Not polite-happy while waiting for problems to arise. Actually happy. This meant changing my internal narrative from "She's not right for him" to "I'm still learning who she is."
That was fifteen years ago. She's now one of my dearest friends, the mother of my grandchildren, and exactly the partner my son needed. She grounds him in ways I never could. Their differences, which I saw as incompatibilities, turned out to be perfect complementary strengths.
But here's the kicker: even if I'd been right, even if they'd divorced after two years, choosing his happiness over my need to be right would still have been the correct choice. Because the conversation where you choose their joy over your judgment? That's the conversation that keeps them coming back to you, no matter what life throws their way.
3. The admission that you need them too
Parents spend so many years being needed that we forget how to need in return. We build these facades of self-sufficiency, terrified that showing vulnerability will burden our children or flip some essential parent-child dynamic. But maintaining that wall past a certain point doesn't protect them. It isolates us.
The Sunday evening phone calls with my daughter started three years ago, though not in the way you might think. I didn't establish them; she did. After missing my son's college graduation because I couldn't afford the plane ticket (a regret that still visits me in quiet moments), I'd gotten good at pretending everything was always fine. Too good, apparently.
"Mom," my daughter said one day, "I have no idea what's actually going on with you. You tell me you're fine, but that tells me nothing."
She was right. In trying to avoid being a burden, I'd become a stranger. Our conversations had turned into pleasant but surface-level exchanges. Weather, work, what we'd had for lunch. Nothing real. Nothing that mattered.
That's when she suggested our Sunday calls. But here was her rule: we both had to share something true. Something that wasn't "fine."
The first few calls were awkward. Admitting loneliness felt like failure. Sharing financial worries seemed inappropriate. Talking about dating at my age? Mortifying. But gradually, something shifted. My daughter wasn't traumatized by my humanity; she was relieved by it. She'd spent years feeling like she couldn't measure up to my apparent perfection. My struggles gave her permission to share her own.
Now our Sunday calls are sacred. We've talked through her fertility struggles and my fears about aging alone. She knows about the poem I'm too scared to submit for publication. I know about the promotion she's afraid she doesn't deserve. We need each other's perspective, encouragement, and occasionally, gentle reality checks. The parent-child dynamic hasn't disappeared; it's evolved into something richer.
Final thoughts
These three conversations aren't one-time events. They're ongoing practices. I still find myself apologizing for new insights into old mistakes. I still bite my tongue when my instinct is to offer unsolicited advice. I still push myself to be vulnerable when protecting my image would be easier.
The photo from my 70th birthday isn't remarkable because my children showed up. It's remarkable because they wanted to. That's the difference these conversations make. They transform obligation into desire, duty into genuine connection. They're the bridge between raising children and having adult children who actually like spending time with you.
Most parents have already failed at least one of these conversations. But here's the grace: it's never too late to try again. The apology can still be offered. The choice to support over being right can still be made. The walls can still come down.
Your adult children are waiting. They might not even know they're waiting, but they are. For you to see them clearly, to choose them fully, to need them honestly. These three conversations won't just determine whether they'll be close to you at 70. They'll determine whether that closeness will be real or just another thing everyone pretends is fine.
