Every week I hear the same story from parents of struggling adult children: “I’ve apologized. Nothing changes.” These parents admit (often readily) that they were too strict, too controlling, or perhaps too permissive. They may have missed identifying (or following up on) their adult child’s anxiety when they were younger, or maybe did not follow up on addressing depression, ADHD, or learning problems. Parents who divorced also acknowledge that the divorce left scars. So why do these parents who say they are sorry (often many times) find their apologies only make things worse?
Leah Apologized to No Avail
Let’s take a quick look at a mother that we can call Leah. She apologized to her 27-year-old son, Dan, three times in one year for how strict she’d been growing up. To Leah’s dismay, each apology (I’m sorry I made you feel that way”) made Dan more distant and quieter, not warmer. After the third one, he stopped responding to her texts and calls for a few weeks. What didn’t help was that Leah went into what I call “constantly taking the temperature mode,” flooding Dan with even more repeated messages, essentially the same, “just checking to see if you are okay.”
Leah wasn’t wrong to apologize, but she was wrong about what an apology needs to do, and who it’s actually for. When Dan finally responded, he told Leah the apologies felt artificial (Mom, “I’m sorry you feel that way does not cut it). Dan elaborated, saying it was like a performance she needed him to watch. In other words, Leah’s apologies didn’t land well because Dan felt they didn’t match what he saw as a legitimate apology.
This is the pattern of problematic apologies I write about in my book You Ruined My Life—Now You Owe Me! From the parents’ perspective, they are doing all the work in the relationship and get none of the change back. A faulty apology is often part of that pattern, repeated for years without anyone noticing it isn’t working. My point here is that if you are going to apologize to your adult child, then make it count.
Here’s what usually goes wrong when parents go down the “Bad Apology Expressway:”
1. The Apology Secretly Asks for Something Back
When I coach parents of adult children and help them unpack their failed apologies, they learn that most apologies aren’t apologies; they’re requests. Your adult child hears “please forgive me” as a way to take away your pain, not theirs. I get that parents want relief and even want their adult child to say it’s okay, to soften, to move on. But in these types of relief-driven apologies, the”I’m sorry” reads as “please forgive me so I can stop feeling bad,” and now the emotional messiness lands right back on the parents.
2. The Apology Explains More Than It Owns
When you tie the apology to explaining (usually it’s overexplaining) the circumstances, it convolutes, dilutes, and outright refutes the apology you are trying to give. For example, “I’m sorry I was so strict, but I was scared for you.” Or, “I’m sorry about the divorce, but your father and I tried everything we could.”
The moment that dreaded “but” shows up, the apology is over in your adult child’s ears and mind. They stop hearing remorse, and because it starts screaming as a case for your own defense. Once it feels like your apology is about proving a point, then they check out, and the next apology starts from a deeper hole.
3. It’s Timed for Your Guilt, Not Their Readiness
You apologize after the hard phone call, the sleepless night, that enduring memory that won’t quit. That’s your timeline, but it may not be your adult child’s. Dropped on them uninvited, an apology becomes one more thing they now have to manage on your behalf, on top of whatever they were already carrying that day. A better apology is shorter, undefended, and asks for nothing back. For example, you could say, “I’ve thought about how strict I was when you were growing up. I was wrong, and I understand if it still affects you.” Then stop talking (the hardest part for all of us as parents). So please do yourself a huge favor: don’t fill the silence, and don’t ask what they’re thinking.
Final Thoughts
You can’t out-explain or over-apologize your way out of the past. You can only demonstrate, consistently and without announcing it, that you’ve changed, and let your adult child decide, on their own timeline, when to believe it.
