Lachlan Brown
A mate of mine said something over coffee last month that I haven’t been able to shake. His daughter is 26, lives in another city, and still rings him most Sunday nights. Not to ask for anything. Just to talk about her week.
He said it casually, like it was nothing. And I remember thinking that a lot of parents I know would give up quite a bit for that phone call.
Because there’s a real difference between a kid who shows up and a kid who wants to. From the outside they look almost identical. Same Christmas lunch, same birthday text, same hug at the airport. Only one of them actually feels good on both ends.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve cracked this. I’ve just spent a lot of years watching families up close, and a fair few being somebody’s son and getting it wrong. Here’s what I notice in the households where the grown kid clearly likes their parents, not just loves them out of duty.
1. They call when nothing is wrong
This is the big one, and it’s almost embarrassing how simple it is.
Obligation calls have a shape to them. They happen on birthdays, after bad news, or when something needs organising. There’s an agenda, and once the agenda is done, the call ends.
The other kind has no agenda at all. They ring because they’re walking home and they’ve got fifteen minutes. Nothing happened. That’s the point. Nobody makes a pointless phone call to someone whose company they’re enduring.
2. You hear about the small stuff
Ask most adult children how work is going and you’ll get a summary. Fine. Busy. Same as always.
Then there are the ones who tell you about the bloke in the next cubicle who microwaves fish, or the argument they had with their landlord, or the terrible film they watched at 2am and enjoyed anyway.
None of that is important. That’s exactly why it matters. People edit heavily for audiences they’re managing. They ramble for the ones they’re comfortable with.
3. They bring other people into your orbit
Watch what happens when their world and your world overlap.
A kid who’s just getting through the visit keeps everything separate. You meet the partner once things are serious, and briefly. Friends are a completely different life.
A kid who enjoys you does the opposite. They bring the new girlfriend around early. They invite a mate along to dinner. They’re not worried about how you’ll come across, because somewhere along the line they decided you’re worth showing off a bit.
4. The silences don’t need filling
I think this one gets underrated.
Tolerance is loud. It fills every gap with news and weather and questions about the neighbours, because a quiet stretch might expose that there’s nothing underneath.
Genuine ease is quiet. You can sit in the same room, one reading, one doing the crossword, and forty minutes go by without a word, and neither of you feels the need to fix it. If you can be boring together, you’re doing alright.
5. They give you a hard time
Nobody teases a person they’re being careful around.
If your kid takes the mickey out of your parking, your playlist, your inability to send a text without three full stops in it, that’s not disrespect. That’s a signal that they feel safe enough to poke you and know the relationship will hold.
The reverse is worth noticing too. Excessive politeness from your own child is not a good sign. It usually means they’re managing you rather than enjoying you.
6. They actually ask what you think
Not about everything, and usually not about the things you most want to weigh in on. But somewhere in there, they ask.
And here’s the part that catches people out. Sometimes they ask, listen properly, and then go and do the opposite. That’s still a good sign. They wanted your read on it. They just didn’t want a ruling.
Parents who can hold that distinction tend to get asked a lot more often.
7. Do they linger?
Pay attention to the end of a visit rather than the start.
Anyone can arrive warm. It’s the departure that tells you things. Do they stand at the door with their keys in hand for another twenty minutes because a conversation started? Do they say “one more coffee” and mean it?
Or is there a bag already packed by the door, and a bit of relief in the goodbye? You know the answer to this. Most parents do, even when they’d rather not.
8. They let you see them unpolished
Broke. Unshowered. Between jobs. Crying in your kitchen at 11pm over something they’d be mortified for anyone else to see.
It’s easy to read those moments as the relationship going badly. Often it’s the opposite. Kids who are performing for their parents show up shined. Kids who trust their parents show up as they are, because they’ve worked out you’re not keeping score.
If your adult child lets you see them at their worst, they’ve paid you a compliment they’ll probably never say out loud.
9. You catch them doing your things
The phrases. The way they cook eggs. The habit of arriving fifteen minutes early to everything and pretending that’s normal.
We copy the people we admire, usually without noticing and often while insisting we’re nothing like them. So when your kid says something and then stops, horrified, because it came out in your exact voice, take the win.
They didn’t absorb that under duress. Nobody absorbs anything under duress. They absorbed it because they were paying attention, and people only pay that kind of attention to company they like.
A last thought
If you read through those and only ticked three, please don’t take it as a report card. I’d be careful with anyone who tries to grade a family on a list they found on the internet, including me.
What I will say is that none of this gets locked in at eighteen. Every one of those nine things is a small behaviour, and small behaviours move. The parents I’ve seen turn a stiff relationship into a warm one didn’t do it with a big conversation. They did it by becoming easier to be around, one visit at a time. Less advice. More curiosity. Fewer questions that sound like tests.
Being liked by your own children is a slower project than being respected by them. It’s also the one that keeps the phone ringing on a Sunday night for no reason at all.
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