News > Reality check: Are you enabling your adult child?

Reality check: Are you enabling your adult child?

When I coach parents of struggling adult children, I repeatedly see that many well-intended parents end up on what I call "the Enabling Expressway." Enabling is fixing problems for others and doing so in a way that interferes with growth and responsibility. Overparenting is a term used in the parenting literature that captures the concept of enabling. Past research by Segrin et al. (2015) shows that this type of parenting is associated with increased emotional health issues in adult children.