How To Set Boundaries When Your Adult Child Keeps Asking For Money
Does your adult son or daughter keep asking you for money? It can feel impossible to say no. Ava's story (from my book How Kind People Get Tough) might sound familiar.
Ava, 67, was having problems with her daughter, Gill.
Gill, a single mum of twins, was always struggling and short of funds. She was in the habit of asking Ava for money, and Ava was in the habit of giving it to her. But Ava retired and living on a very small pension, really couldn’t afford to keep bailing her daughter out.
There was a pattern. Whenever Gill borrowed money from Ava, she’d promise to pay it back. She would pay some of it back, but then the payments would stop. Ava just didn’t feel able to ask her for it. I was curious. I asked her why not.
Ava explained that she’d made mistakes when Gill was growing up. She didn’t feel she’d been a good enough mother, and she felt so guilty about that. Now she felt that it was her responsibility to try to make it up to Gill.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with helping out family members, and to a certain extent, no matter what their age, our kids will always be ‘our kids’. That’s just human nature. But there comes a time when we must set some limits.
How to say no to an adult child asking for money.
When we care about someone, we want to make sure they’re secure and happy: of course! The problem is that we can get muddled up between supporting someone and rescuing them. Rescuing someone means rushing in and sorting out their problems for them, regardless of our own needs. This is often when things can get out of control and we can end up feeling overwhelmed.
On the other hand, to support someone means empowering them to help themselves. It also means taking our own needs into consideration as well as theirs.
Setting a boundary from this more supporting perspective might look something like this:
'I love you and want you to be secure, but I can't give you money anymore. I'm happy to help you find a money advisor or sit down and look at your budget together.'
How Ava stopped bailing out her grown up daughter.
When Gill ran out of money again she asked Ava to bail her out. But this time Ava said no.
Ava took a support rather than rescue approach by helping Gill make an appointment with a money-management advice centre, and she accompanied her to the meeting.
In time, Gill stopped asking Ava for money, as she came to terms with taking more responsibility for her own finances.
I had so much admiration for Ava for finding the courage to be assertive with her daughter. Gill wasn’t a bad person; she just had no confidence with money, and the mixed messages she’d been getting from her mother had simply made it easier for her to carry on asking to be rescued.
In a relatively short time, mother and daughter became happier. Their relationship grew closer, as Ava let go of past guilt, and Gill became more confident and empowered. She became more of an adult friend to Ava, rather than remaining the needy child.
If you recognise yourself in Ava's tendency to rescue , you're certainly not alone. It's a very typical pattern. Alongside that, you might notice yourself overgiving from a need to stay connected with them, avoiding conflict due to a fear of arguments, or jumping in to fix their problems out of anxiety.
These are typical people-pleasing habits that we all do.
Recognising the different ways you people-please is a great step in letting these tendencies go so that you can start building a more adult-to-adult relationship with your son or daughter, instead of staying stuck in a fraught parent-to-child relationship. In fact, stopping people-pleasing is great for all your relationships!
Start by taking the quiz.
Discover your score for each people-pleasing habit, and I’ll send you guidance on how to let go of each, so that you can set boundaries with confidence and have relationships where you’re seen, heard and valued.
