The One Thing I Won't Let My Grown Kids Do

And they are better off because of it.

Published March 13, 2026
gif illustration of hand cutting phone cord of adult child calling for mom
Elizabeth Brockway

A few years ago I was having lunch with my sister. She was telling me, in great detail, all the things my mother and other sister had said about me. It felt awful to hear, but I realized she was telling me all this because she had probably participated too and didn’t stick up for me at all.

It hit me at that moment that I had been just as guilty of gossiping about my mom and siblings without even trying to put a stop to it.

And suddenly, I saw the danger in what we’d been doing. I didn’t trust my mom or sisters with anything. It had made some family get togethers uncomfortable. And it had torn our family apart a little and fractured trust.

So I decided to do something about it even though I was really nervous to speak up. I looked at her and said, “The reason why they are telling you this stuff about me is because you let them. And I’ve been letting them do the same thing and I think we should stop it.”

While I do believe we all need a safe place to vent, and oftentimes that safe place is with a family member, I think we need to be very, very careful, not only of what we say, but what we listen to and put up with.

My kids were very young when I had that talk with my sister. Things got a little better in my family, but old habits are hard to break. I thought a lot about that conversation because it made me realize I don’t want the same dynamic with my kids. I never wanted them to feel like they couldn’t trust me or each other, or that we were all sitting around discussing their lives when they weren’t there.

So when they got a bit older and something about one of their siblings bothered them and they came to me with it, I was careful about how I handled it. I didn’t want to shame them or ignore them, but I wanted to teach them a better way to deal with it. So, I’d encourage them to bring their concerns to the brother or sister they were struggling with.

For example, I remember a day when my daughter came to me very upset that her brothers left her out of a game they were playing. The three of us had a family meeting and I could see my oldest son getting defensive, and that it seemed very important to him to stay aligned with his younger brother and continue to leave his sister out.

“See!” my daughter said.

It was so hard not to get upset with my son and speak up for my daughter, but I resisted, and told her to tell her brother how she was feeling. I was exhausted by the end of the conversation, and not sure if what I was trying to establish would work, but eventually my efforts paid off.

I wanted my kids to learn it was a lot more effective to go to the person they had a problem with versus going to someone else because they were more likely to fix the problem which should be the goal. I wanted them to gain confidence and see that they could do that and strengthen a relationship and not know they were worth being heard.

It’s so easy to go to other people and leave the person you should actually be talking to in the dark. Yet nothing changes when you do that except for now, another person is dragged into the situation. And most of the time, they have no business being there.

For me and my sisters, I think it had become a habit. And so, when someone else in my life upset me, whether it was a friend, my husband,or a co-worker, I’d lean on someone else. I really wanted my kids to have better communication skills and more confidence.

Now that they are all in their 20s, they know I won’t indulge them if they bad mouth each other in front of me. Of course it still happens. A few weeks ago, my son was upset with his sister for not doing something she said she’d do and he was starting to complain about her.

I told him that I understood his frustration and he should talk to her about it. When he told me he didn’t want to, I reminded him that the situation would stay the same until he did and if he needed help communicating something to her, I’d be happy to help him figure it out, but he couldn’t talk badly about my daughter to me.

This also has helped them trust me because they know that I’m not going to gossip about them, share their secrets or vent to family members about them because they don’t see or hear me doing it. To me that’s priceless because I grew up watching my mom complain about all her family members, including her daughters, so I knew if she was talking about them, she was talking about me too.

I’m not saying I’ve handled everything perfectly, but I do know that the relationship I have with my kids, and the relationship that they have with each other is different than the one I had with my siblings growing up, which is exactly what I wanted. I’ve also watched my kids handle people and certain situations better in their 20s than I ever did.

I often look back to the talk I had with my sister because as hard as it was, I’m so glad it happened.