Boomer parents and their Millennial adult children navigate many modern relationship dynamics. A recent trend has included cutting off contact completely or creating noticeable distance.
Millennial therapist Mary Beth Somich shared with her TikTok followers exactly how she explains the complicated issues between her Baby Boomer clients and their adult kids. In the post, she offers genuine advice to help them repair their relationship.
“As a family therapist, some of my favorite clients are Boomer parents who want to better understand why their adult children have set boundaries with them or slowly distanced themselves,” she wrote in the video overlay.
The dynamics of a parent and adult child relationship
Before Somich breaks down what she tells her Boomer parent clients, she explains how the parent-adult child relationship evolves.
“Parents carry a different level of responsibility in the relationship, even when their children are adults,” she shared. “Why? Because parents held the power and influence and played a larger role in shaping the relationship from the beginning. Adulthood creates more balance but doesn’t erase that history and dynamic.”
Somich makes a point that parents should not hold all the responsibility in this ever-changing relationship. It’s not a “blame game.”
“That doesn’t mean parents are always wrong or solely responsible for conflict,” she added. “It means that when there is distance, hurt, or misunderstanding, the willingness to initiate repair, get curious, and reach toward connection often belongs with the person who held the greater responsibility all along.”
Acknowledging relationship shifts
An important aspect of these conversations starts with acknowledging that many Millennial adult children may be doing personal healing work in their own lives that prompts change.
“Now they’re raising or relating to adult children who often speak a very different language,” she noted.
Somich highlights the generational differences in how Boomers and Millennials were raised. “Their children may be in therapy, talking about boundaries, attachment, trauma, emotional safety, and relationship patterns in ways that can feel confusing, foreign, or even critical,” she explained.
How repair begins
Somich explains that repairing a broken relationship between a Boomer parent and their Millennial adult child starts with a parent’s openness and curiosity.
“What I appreciate most is when parents become curious instead of defensive,” she said. Avoiding defensiveness is a big part of successful healing conversations.
“Sometimes healing begins when a parent is willing to seek out understanding, rather than demand it,” she noted. “To listen without defensiveness, become curious about perspectives that feel uncomfortable, and make room for the possibility that their child’s experience may be different from their intention.”
According to Somich, it isn’t about being “right” or “wrong.”
“Their children aren’t necessarily asking them to be perfect. They’re asking them to try to understand,” she shared. “And while therapy may not have been part of the culture they grew up in, many are willing to take a brave step and explore it for the first time because the relationship matters more than being right.”
When she has witnessed parents and their adult kids engaging in these deep (and often painful) conversations, true healing can happen.
“Those conversations are some of the most meaningful work I get to do,” she concluded. “Watching a parent say, ‘I don’t fully understand this yet, but I want to,’ can be the beginning of healing for an entire family system.”
