My son called me last Thursday evening, not because he needed anything, but because he’d just finished helping his daughter work through a difficult situation at school and wanted to talk about it. As he described how he’d handled it, staying calm when she was upset, asking questions instead of jumping to solutions, letting her figure out her own path forward, I felt this unexpected surge of emotion.

I realized I was listening to the kind of parent I’d wished I’d been more often when he was young.

That conversation got me thinking about what success in parenting actually looks like. We spend so many years worried about grades, behavior, whether we’re doing enough or too much. But the real measure doesn’t show up until much later, when our children are out there living their own lives.

I’ve got three adult children now, Sarah is 38, Michael is 36, and Emma is 33. They’re all living their own lives, making their own choices, raising their own families or building their own paths. And watching them has taught me more about parenting than all those years of actually doing it.

So what does success look like? Not perfection, that’s for sure. But there are certain behaviors, certain ways of being in the world, that tell you your kids turned out okay. Better than okay, actually.

1) They can admit when they’re wrong

This one matters more than people realize.

I watched my daughter Emma handle a situation with her business partner last year where she’d made a significant mistake in judgment. Instead of deflecting blame or making excuses, she owned it completely. Apologized. Figured out how to fix it. Moved forward.

That’s not something kids learn naturally. They learn it from watching us take responsibility for our own mistakes, from being in a home where admitting fault didn’t mean being diminished.

I think back to that time I had to apologize to Michael after I completely overreacted about his college choices. I was too controlling with Sarah, my eldest, and by the time Michael was making his decisions, I’d learned my lesson but still struggled with letting go. That apology was hard, but it taught him something important about humility and accountability.

When your adult children can say “I was wrong” without their whole identity crumbling, you did something right.

2) They have the capacity to sit with discomfort

Life is uncomfortable. That’s just reality.

What separates people who thrive from people who merely survive is the ability to tolerate discomfort without immediately trying to escape it or numb it or blame someone else for it.

My youngest, Emma, went through a period of intense anxiety in her twenties. Instead of running from it or pretending it wasn’t happening, she sat with it. Got help. Did the work. Now she talks about mental health openly with her friends and normalizes the struggle in a way my generation never could.

That ability to face difficulty head-on, to not need everything to be comfortable all the time, that’s a sign of emotional maturity we tried to instill in all three kids, even if we didn’t always do it perfectly ourselves.

3) They maintain relationships even when it’s inconvenient

Sarah calls her grandmother every Sunday. Has for years, even when she was traveling for work, even when she was exhausted from new motherhood. Her grandmother, my wife’s mother, is 89 now and sometimes repeats the same stories three times in one conversation.

Sarah never rushes her off the phone.

That kind of commitment to relationship, even when it’s not particularly rewarding in the moment, shows character. It shows they understand that love is a verb, not just a feeling.

All three of my kids show up for family events. They remember birthdays. They check in on each other. They maintain friendships from different periods of their lives. These aren’t dramatic gestures, but they’re the foundation of a meaningful life.

4) They know how to repair relationships after conflict

Michael and his sister Sarah went through a rough patch a few years back. Disagreement about how to handle our mother’s estate planning, which brought up old sibling dynamics and resentments. It got ugly for a while.

But they worked through it. It took uncomfortable conversations and genuine apologies on both sides, but they repaired the relationship instead of letting it calcify into permanent distance.

The ability to move toward repair instead of away from relationship, that’s huge. It means they learned that conflict doesn’t have to be catastrophic, that people can hurt each other and still find their way back.

I think about those years my wife and I went through marriage counseling in our 40s. The kids were old enough to know something was wrong but young enough that we tried to shield them from the details. But they saw us work through it. They saw that hard times don’t mean you give up.

5) They can ask for help without shame

When Emma’s business was struggling two years ago, she called me. Not to ask for money, but to talk through her options. She was scared, uncertain, overwhelmed. She let me see that vulnerability.

There was a time when asking for help would have felt like failure to her. But somewhere along the way, she learned that strength includes knowing when you need support.

All three of my kids have reached out over the years when they needed help, whether it’s advice, emotional support, or yes, sometimes financial assistance. They don’t do it lightly, but they don’t refuse to do it out of pride either.

I spent too many years of my own life pretending I had everything figured out, especially early in my career when I was drowning and too stubborn to admit it. I hope we taught our kids to be wiser than that.

6) They treat service workers and strangers with respect

You really see someone’s character in how they treat people who can’t do anything for them.

I’ve watched Michael at restaurants, talking to servers like actual human beings, learning their names, tipping generously. I’ve seen Sarah be patient and kind with the teenager bagging groceries who’s clearly having a rough day. Emma treats her employees with genuine respect, not the performative kind that disappears when things get stressful.

These weren’t things we explicitly taught. Or maybe we did, just by example. But seeing your kids extend basic human dignity to everyone they encounter, regardless of status or utility, that tells you their values are in the right place.

7) They can be happy for others without comparison

This is harder than it sounds in our current culture.

But I’ve watched my kids celebrate each other’s wins genuinely, even when they’re going through their own struggles. I’ve seen them be happy for friends’ successes without that edge of envy or resentment.

Sarah went through years of infertility while several of her close friends were having babies. It was brutal for her. But she still showed up to baby showers. Still celebrated with them. Still found a way to be genuinely happy even while her heart was breaking.

That kind of emotional generosity, the ability to hold your own pain and someone else’s joy at the same time, that’s profound.

8) They have boundaries and actually maintain them

Emma had to set some hard boundaries with a toxic friend last year. It wasn’t dramatic or cruel, but it was firm. She explained what she needed, what behavior she could no longer tolerate, and she followed through.

Watching your kids set healthy boundaries, even with people they love, even when it’s uncomfortable, that’s a sign they value themselves appropriately.

Michael sets boundaries with his kids around screen time, even when it makes him unpopular. Sarah sets boundaries in her marriage about individual time and space. They’re not rigid or punitive about it, but they know what they need and they communicate it clearly.

I wish I’d been better at this earlier in my life. I spent decades letting my difficult boss walk all over me, saying yes when I meant no, afraid that boundaries meant being difficult or selfish. I’m glad my kids are wiser.

9) They can tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty

None of my kids have had the linear career paths I had. Michael’s changed directions twice, Emma’s an entrepreneur in an uncertain industry, Sarah’s navigating a field that didn’t exist when she was in college.

But they handle the uncertainty without falling apart. They make decisions with incomplete information. They adapt when plans change. They don’t need everything figured out and locked down to feel okay.

That tolerance for not knowing, for being in process rather than arrived, that’s essential for modern life. Things change too fast, too unpredictably. The ability to be comfortable with uncertainty is maybe the most important life skill there is.

10) They have their own values, even when they differ from ours

This might be the hardest one to watch as a parent, but it’s also the most important.

All three of my kids have values and beliefs that differ from mine in various ways. Political views, parenting philosophies, life choices that I wouldn’t make. And you know what? That’s exactly how it should be.

When your adult children have thought through their own values, made their own choices about what matters and how to live, even when those choices challenge or differ from yours, that means they’re actually adults. Not just older versions of your expectations, but fully formed people with their own minds.

I had to confront my own biases when my daughter married outside our race. It wasn’t comfortable. But watching her live her values with integrity, seeing her build a beautiful life based on her own sense of what’s right, that taught me as much as I’d ever taught her.

What success really means

Here’s what I’ve learned after watching my kids become adults: success in parenting isn’t about whether they followed your blueprint. It’s not about whether they made the choices you would have made or built the lives you imagined for them.

Success is whether they’re capable of building lives that are meaningful to them. Whether they have the tools to handle adversity, the character to treat others well, the self-awareness to keep growing, and the courage to be themselves.

My kids aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, they struggle, they have bad days and difficult seasons. But they’re good people. They’re handling their lives with integrity and compassion and resilience.

And honestly? They’re better at a lot of things than I was at their age. Better at emotional intelligence, better at work-life balance, better at asking for help, better at self-awareness.

Maybe that’s the real measure of successful parenting. Not that they turned out exactly like us, but that they turned out better.

The ongoing relationship

The beautiful thing about adult children is that your relationship keeps evolving. I’m learning from them now as much as they ever learned from me. They teach me about new ways of thinking, challenge my assumptions, introduce me to perspectives I’d never considered.

Michael teaches me about patience with his kids in ways I never managed. Sarah shows me what authentic vulnerability looks like in relationships. Emma demonstrates a kind of entrepreneurial courage I never had.

Being a parent doesn’t end when kids turn 18, but it does transform into something different. Something more mutual, if you let it be.

A thought to sit with

So if you’re wondering whether you succeeded as a parent, look at your adult children and ask yourself: Are they becoming people you respect? Not people you agree with on everything, not people who made all the choices you wanted them to make, but people who are trying to live with integrity and treat others well?

If the answer is yes, even imperfectly, you did alright.

And if your kids are still young and you’re worried about whether you’re doing enough, remember this: they don’t need you to be perfect. They need you to be honest, present, willing to repair when you mess up, and committed to your own growth.

The rest tends to work itself out.