I am going to be all on-Skald and not go into huge detail with this question, certainly not making up a hypothetical situation to illustrate my point, as I am too freaking tired for that.
So define adult children however you wish. Parents includes stepparents as well as biological & adoptive ones. What really matters is that you love the adult child in question. Can you let yourself be emotionally naked with your child? Do you think you should be more open then you are or less cell?
Aside, since I’m not a parent, but… What was that last bit a typo (er, speako) for? I can’t figure out “less cell”.
Alas, Father time is not a father…
I’d guess “less so.”
Well my kids are too young for this question but speaking as an adult child, I hate to admit it but I feel uncomfortable when my parents get all weepy or serious in front of me, it’s like I automatically just shut down and clam up, I’m not sure why I’m like that. When I was a child and my parents were getting divorced we had some family therapy thing and I told my sister I didn’t like it when she would hug me and start crying over being upset about the divorce.
I’ve never held myself out to the kids (ages 17-21) as being anything other than an old kid who knows more than they do about a lot of things, but am still learning about stuff. So I’m not so much a parent as an older dude they know. An older dude who will make unconditional sacrifices for them. They know I’ve had some issues with rage and depression, and that I manage those (successfully) mainly by avoiding emotional situations and adopting a very flat affect most of the time. Once you learn how to read me (and they do know) it’s easy to tell what I’m feeling, until then there are occasionally misunderstandings, however. Apart from my own issues, it doesn’t make sense to not be genuine with the kids. In addition to everything else they learn from parents, appropriate emotional modulation is among them.
My kids are both over 30. It depends on the circumstances. I’m not going to go all emotional on them if I burn dinner or something, but I would if something awful happened. (Hasn’t so far, knock on wood.) But I kind of am for positive things, like about how smart and cute my grandson is.
I’m not a blubberer in any case.
That is a tough one. It seems to me that, at least in most generally conventional parent child relationships, the child places the parent in the role of solid reliable person, so that they can be less so. By a parent exposing their vulnerability, especially to a great degree, I think it would disturb the child, by upending their expectations severely. So, for me, I would try to find a way to express myself without going full on vulnerable, in order to maintain the roles.