Love With Your Presence

There's a moment when your adult kid stops bringing you their problems and starts just... bringing themselves. No agenda. No crisis. Just showing up. I had started to wonder if I'd done something wrong. I figured out eventually that it's the whole point.

For a long time, I thought being a good dad meant having the answer. You protect, you provide, you solve. That's the job when they're young. But somewhere in the transition to adulthood, the job description changes, and nobody sends you a memo. The calls that used to start with "Dad, what should I do?" start to sound different. Sometimes they don't start at all, and you realize the connection you thought you had was actually built around your usefulness, not your presence. That stings a little (I'm being honest here). But it's also information.

Connection with adult children isn't built through counsel anymore, although that still makes up a portion of it. It's built through presence. Being interested without being invested in the outcome (well, depends on if they're on the payroll still, then you might still be "invested"). Showing up without a solution in your back pocket. Asking about their life instead of diagnosing it.

This is a harder skill than it sounds for people who are wired to lead. Leaders are selected for judgment, decisiveness, and the ability to move things forward. Those instincts don't turn off at the dinner table. But the relationship your adult kid actually wants with you isn't a performance review that ended with their last piano recital or football game. It's just time with someone who's genuinely glad they're there and makes them feel like they belong.

The executives I've seen navigate this well are the same ones who learned to listen differently at work: with curiosity instead of conclusion. The skills transfer. They just take longer to internalize when the stakes are personal. So show up. No advice, no questions about what they're doing with their life (which is a question laden with judgment just by asking it), no subtle redirects. Just there. That's the version of you they're looking for. Love with your presence.