Graduations bring anxiety and excitement to parents and their children. New family dynamics require monumental shifts as children move into a new season of independence, which means parents must move into a new season of release. The most dramatic adjustment involves sending your kids to college or living independently as working adults.
As a Christian parent, you may experience a heightened sense of worry when your child graduates and enters the “real world,” particularly over concerns about their faith. Will they gravitate toward Christ-followers or find friends who embrace a secular mindset? Will they believe what professors and classmates tell them about God, the world, and their own psyche?
According to Lifeway Research, two-thirds of young adults drop out of church or fall away from faith during the ages of 18-22. The post-Christian culture we all live in bombards kids and young adults with godless messaging about their body image, love, gender, success, and faith. As parents, we can easily feel afraid because we’ve watched the world’s impact on other young people, and we know we’re releasing our kids into this same world. Good teens often go off to college or the workplace and return home agnostic, pluralistic, or just plain uninterested in following Jesus.
Although your child, as an “adult,” will make his/her own decisions, you can and will still have a profound effect on their decisions at launch time and afterward. To help you embrace and succeed in your newest role as the parent of a graduate, here are ten ways to support and coach your son or daughter as they enter a world that you can no longer supervise or control:
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1. Pray for them.
1. Pray for them.
This may seem obvious, but your prayers for your kids deepen when you don’t see them every day. Pray for discernment; God knows what’s going on with them, even when you don’t. Pray for their spiritual influences, for their future spouse, for their friend group, for their sense of self and their identity in Christ. Pray for their schools, employers, and influencers. Your most important role in your young adult children is your role as an intercessor. “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9).
2. Listen to them.
Now, more than ever before, you must listen to what your kids talk about. Ask them to explain their emotions and conclusions. When graduates move away and forge new relationships, they naturally reassess and reinvestigate their beliefs and priorities. They weigh new philosophies and ideologies with what they’ve understood previously. This is what thinking children do, and it’s healthy; they must own their faith, or they will not keep it anyway. In this season, try not to lecture or debate. You can disagree with your kids’ conclusions but disagree with them respectfully, through biblical study and not religious dogma. They’ve already heard what you have to say; they are reconsidering it. Often, our kids process out loud and need to hear how we process out loud and how we’re open to re-examining current issues through Scripture. Explain how you’ve come to faith and how you keep choosing Jesus. “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20).
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3. Encourage their dreams and skip the you-don’t-understand lecture.
3. Encourage their dreams and skip the you-don’t-understand lecture.
Young adults will be open to processing their plans with you if you don’t tell them what to do or why their ideas are foolish or short-sighted. Ask what-next questions. Affirm that their dreams can be reached through multiple ways; discuss the financial implications so your kids don’t end up walking away from their dreams because they can’t afford to pursue them. Remind them that failing is learning, mistakes are necessary, and difficulties are blessings. Encourage an ”adventure” mentality in your young adults; soon enough, they will be bogged down with bills and responsibilities. Children are not afraid to launch and achieve if there’s no shame in changing their direction or destination once they’ve gone down the road a bit. If their goal is obeying and serving Christ, why not encourage their creativity in pursuing that? “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12).
4. Give grace, not I-told-you-so’s.
When they blow it—and they will—make sure you’re a safe landing spot. If kids must be perfect to feel loved, they will stop being honest and/or stop coming home. You can love your launched child without loving or approving of all their decisions. Understanding and forgiveness are acts of mercy—it’s how God treats all of us when we make poor decisions. Model God’s love with grace. He never gives up on us. “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
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5. Prepare them for reality.
5. Prepare them for reality.
Discuss (not preach) the dangers associated with independent living and the joys of responsibility. Be specific about your expectations and describe natural consequences. For example, what allowance, if any, will they receive, and what happens if they overspend? What are your expectations for grades, work, partying, dating, bill-paying, and tuition debt? While you can’t be physically present to monitor or control your kids’ choices, laying out your expectations communicates your values and invites them into accountability. Give your graduates the security of your unconditional love and the natural consequences of their actions. This should probably involve your access to bank records, school records, social media, etc., until they have proven themselves capable and responsible enough to manage everything on their own. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-23).
6. Remind them of the Truth.
When your child comes home spouting secular philosophies or investigating unscriptural religions, point them to God’s truth. Remind them of God’s faithfulness and presence. Encourage them to investigate Scripture and talk to a trusted spiritual mentor. People learn to recognize error once they recognize truth, so keep pointing them to Jesus as the author and finisher of their faith. The Holy Spirit can clarify their doubt and confusion. Pray for the Holy Spirit to speak to them and for them to listen. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[a] in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:16-18).
7. Believe that God is faithful.
Your faith will be stretched while parenting young adults. Your control has decreased, and the ramifications of their decisions have increased. But God’s Word doesn’t return void. It has power and life, no matter what age we are. God’s Word is like a seed planted in their hearts that grows over time. Many Scriptures reinforce the principle of harvest after a season of watering and waiting. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
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8. Encourage responsibility for their spiritual growth.
8. Encourage responsibility for their spiritual growth.
College is a great place to establish adult habits, like finding a church, attending and serving in a campus ministry, joining a Bible study, and dating a Christian. We required our kids to visit all their campus ministries until they found one they liked and asked them to plug into it. We regularly asked about the intentionality of their spiritual growth, like what they were studying in small group. How did they like their church? What Christians were they meeting? Unless you’ve never had these conversations before, continue talking about their spiritual growth even though your children have moved away; this is an amazing topic of conversation you can continue throughout their lives. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:23-25).
9. Give them space to grow.
Give your kids some time to adjust to their new life before you descend on their campus and ask to meet all their new friends. Don’t do things for them that they need to learn for themselves. It’s difficult to watch them struggle, but let them wrestle with grown-up issues and offer emotional support over difficult roommates or homesickness. Rarely do young adults want you to fix things; mostly, they want to know you care and that they are capable in fixing things themselves. Just keep the conversations going and pray with them. There’s a balance between allowing your kids to swim in the current versus letting them drown. (Never let them drown.) “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:1-5).
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10. Empower them to be courageous.
10. Empower them to be courageous.
We spend decades trying to protect our kids. Yet during their teen and young adult years, we can begin empowering them to be warriors, to stand and fight in the power of the Holy Spirit, on their own with God. Pray with them and for them when they attempt difficult things, but release them into God’s protection. Affirm their God-given identities, gifting, and calling. Speak life over their futures. Your kids don’t want your flattery, but they desperately need to hear that God has created them to succeed. Believe that they will prosper because of the Lord’s covering, not because you will come to their rescue if you’re needed. “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).
This statistic about young adults is encouraging: about one-third of young adults who attended church in their teens remain committed to church attendance in their early 20s. College campuses across America are seeing huge responses to evangelism, worship, prayer, and baptism. Generation Z has shown an interest in spiritual health, unlike any previous generation.
Although your graduate is launching into adulthood, your role as a parent is still crucial. You were their coach during their teen years; now you are their counselor as well. If your graduates feel safe and heard, they will ask for your advice. They will listen to your wisdom. They will consider your perspectives.
Through it all, and in spite of all that comes against them, your graduate can successfully navigate an increasingly anti-Christian culture. That is true success.
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light” (Colossians 1:9-12).
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Originally published June 09, 2025.
