When Your Adult Child Strays: Trading Heartache for Hope

By Jim Burns Ph.D

No matter what comes between you and your adult child, you can still foster a strong relationship.

In his 2019 bestseller, Doing Life with Your Adult Children, author, speaker, and podcaster Jim Burns gave hopeful encouragement on how to navigate the tough yet rewarding transition to parenting adult children. Now in When Your Adult Child Strays, Jim takes it one step further, giving practical advice on key areas of conflict and ways to foster a strong relationship with your adult child.

Parents are often stunned when their children reach adulthood and disregard the values, practices, and faith commitments they were raised with. Whether these differences are over church, politics, sexuality and gender, addiction, or another issue, parents struggle to know what went wrong.

But there's good news: In the midst of uncertainty, you can trade heartache for hope. As a trusted expert on family, parenting, and marriage, Jim will help you:

Rebuild trust with an adult child who has rejected your traditionsLower your emotional reactivity in heated conversationsLearn how to validate your adult child's feelings without trying to be rightMove from advice giver to mentorUnderstand the differences between Nomads, Prodigals, and ExilesAvoid being defined by your adult child's choices

Maintaining a healthy relationship with your adult child is hard. But with God's help, hope and healing are within reach.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0310370477
• ISBN13: 9780310370475
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.4"