Tag: parenting

When Your Adult Child Stops Going to Church

When an adult child stops going to church, LDS parents need more than answers. They need steadiness, love, and hope that does not turn into pressure.

There are sentences that split a parent’s life into before and after, and one of them is this: “I don’t think I’m going to church anymore.”

Sometimes it comes in a hard conversation. Sometimes it arrives as a slow realization after months of missed meetings, changed habits, and careful silence. Either way, most Latter-day Saint parents feel the same first rush: fear, grief, guilt, confusion, and the desperate urge to fix this immediately.

That urge is understandable. It is also where a lot of families make the situation worse.

When your adult child stops going to church, the first job is not getting them back in the pew next Sunday. The first job is not losing your child while you are trying to save their testimony.

What to do when your child leaves the LDS Church

First, calm down enough to love them well.

I do not mean stop caring. I mean stop panicking in their direction. A frightened parent can turn one painful conversation into an interrogation in about thirty seconds. “What happened?” becomes cross-examination. “Help me understand” becomes a closing argument. “I love you” gets buried under tears, warnings, and the family version of emergency sirens.

Your child is very likely bracing for exactly that response. Do not confirm their fears.

Say something simple and true. “I love you.” “Thank you for telling me.” “I want to understand what this has been like for you.” Those sentences keep a door open.

“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

Christ did not chase hurting people away with panic. He moved toward them. Parents should take the hint.

This does not mean pretending the loss does not hurt. It means refusing to make your first response all about your pain. You can grieve. You probably will. But your adult child should not have to carry your entire emotional collapse while trying to tell the truth about their own life.

How to help a child who lost faith Mormon parents still love deeply

By remembering that love is not leverage.

A lot of religious parents do not mean to become manipulative. They just get scared. Then every interaction starts carrying a hidden assignment. Every dinner invitation has a spiritual agenda. Every kind text is a setup for a conference quote. Every grandchild conversation turns into a campaign to recover the covenant path by stealth.

Your child will feel that. Quickly.

If you want to help, stop making the relationship feel supervised. Be interested in their actual life. Ask about work, friends, health, stress, marriage, parenting, and what has been good or hard lately. Show up in ways that are not secretly conditional.

This is where families often need the same lesson we already covered in our article on political division in LDS families: if you care more about winning than understanding, trust starts dying fast.

You can still have convictions. You can still hope for return. But if your child starts feeling like a project instead of a person, your influence drops and your anxiety rises. Bad trade.

It also helps to remember that leaving the Church is not always the same as leaving God. Some adult children are rejecting institution, not every spiritual instinct they have ever known. Some are sorting through history. Some are reacting to pain. Some are exhausted. Some are angry. Some are relieved. Most are not as simple as the stereotypes offered in ward gossip.

How to maintain relationship with child who left church

Do normal love on purpose.

That sounds obvious until a family forgets how. Once faith becomes tense, every gathering can start feeling spiritually loaded. Parents do not know whether to pray at dinner. Adult children do not know whether they are still welcome. Grandparents do not know what to say around grandchildren. Everyone becomes weird.

Choose not to get weird.

Keep inviting them. Keep showing up. Keep celebrating birthdays, helping with moves, bringing soup when someone is sick, and asking ordinary human questions. Let family life still be family life.

A few practical rules help:

  • Do not interrogate them about church attendance
  • Do not send talks, articles, or apologetics every time you feel anxious
  • Do not compare them to siblings who stayed active
  • Do not use grandchildren as a back channel for pressure
  • Do not discuss their faith transition with ward members like it is a community project

Protecting your child’s dignity matters. So does protecting your access to the relationship.

If they want to talk, listen carefully. You do not need to agree with every conclusion to acknowledge real pain, real confusion, or real disappointment. The Church’s history is complicated. Church members can be cruel. Spiritual silence can feel unbearable. Parents who admit that reality are not betraying the gospel. They are telling the truth.

This relates to what we wrote in our article on why young adults are leaving the LDS Church. Many are not walking away because nobody ever bore testimony to them. They are walking away because the questions felt unsafe, the culture felt brittle, or the relationship cost of honesty felt too high.

Dealing with inactive children LDS parents still hope for

Hope is good. Pressure is not the same thing as hope.

Many parents swing between two bad extremes. One is frantic intervention. The other is emotionally checking out to protect themselves from disappointment. Neither works well. Better is patient hope with grounded realism.

Yes, many people do return. Some return after years. Some return after marriage, children, loss, failure, or just time. Others do not. Faith paths are messy, and the idea that one clean conversation will settle everything is fantasy.

The parable of the prodigal son remains useful here, mostly because the father did not chase the son into a far country with monthly lectures. He stayed relationally open. He watched. He waited. When the son returned, he did not punish him with a retrospective speech.

That story does not mean parents should become passive or indifferent. It does mean they should stop acting like anxiety is a sacrament.

Parents also need somewhere to put their grief. That may mean therapy. It may mean one trusted friend. It may mean a support group. It may mean prayer that is less tidy than usual. What it should not mean is dumping all your sorrow onto the child who is already carrying enough.

This matters for mental health too. In our piece on the mental health crisis among LDS youth, the core point was that pressure and shame do real damage. That does not magically stop at age eighteen. Adult children still feel family pressure with tremendous force.

My adult child stopped going to church. What about my grandchildren?

This is where many faithful parents start feeling desperate.

You love your grandchildren. You want them to know the gospel. You do not want your family story to thin out spiritually with each generation. All of that is real. It still does not give you the right to undermine your adult child in their own home.

Respect parental stewardship. That does not mean you hide your faith or act embarrassed by your beliefs. It means you do not turn every visit into a covert lesson plan.

You can still do a lot of good:

  • Let grandchildren see your faith as warm, steady, and unforced
  • Pray naturally when appropriate
  • Talk about God the way you talk about someone you actually know
  • Be the kind of grandparent whose love makes the gospel believable
  • Refuse the temptation to compete with their parents for spiritual influence

People remember the emotional climate around faith long after they forget specific arguments. If grandchildren experience your discipleship as peaceful, generous, and free of manipulation, that witness will matter more than a stack of forced conversations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I do when my adult child tells me they’re leaving the Church?

Respond with calm love, not panic. Thank them for telling you, make it clear your love is not conditional, and avoid turning the first conversation into a debate or a guilt session.

Is it my fault that my child left the Church?

No. Parents matter, but they are not the sole authors of an adult child’s faith path. Agency is real, personality is real, experience is real, and your worth as a parent is not measured by perfect religious outcomes.

How can I maintain a relationship with my child who no longer believes?

Keep loving them in ordinary ways that do not feel strategic. Stay interested in their life, protect their dignity, and resist the urge to make every interaction about church status.

Should I still hope my child will return to the Church?

Yes, but let hope stay patient. Many people do return, often after years and in ways nobody could have predicted. Hope works best when it is paired with love, not pressure.

What about my grandchildren and their religious upbringing?

Respect your adult child’s authority while still letting your own faith be visible and peaceful. Grandchildren do not need a secret campaign. They need a trustworthy example.

Your child’s faith transition may have changed the future you imagined, but it has not canceled your calling to love them well. Start there, and stay there.

Navigating Political Division in LDS Families

LDS families can survive political disagreement if they put the gospel above party loyalty and learn to talk without contempt.

A lot of LDS families can survive bad weather, job changes, mission calls, moves, illnesses, and the usual assortment of household chaos. Then one political conversation at Sunday dinner turns the room into a low-budget civil war.

That is not because politics suddenly matters more than faith or family. It is because politics has started acting like a substitute religion for a lot of people. It gives identity, enemies, rituals, sacred language, and a steady supply of outrage. Once that happens, disagreement stops feeling like disagreement and starts feeling like betrayal.

Latter-day Saints are not immune. We talk a lot about eternal families, but plenty of families can barely survive group texts during election season. If we want better than that, we need more than a truce. We need a better order of loyalty.

How to deal with political differences in Mormon family life

Start by saying the quiet part out loud: no political party is the restored gospel.

That should be obvious. It often is not. Many members grew up absorbing the idea that faithful Latter-day Saints were supposed to land in one political camp by default. That assumption was cultural, not doctrinal, and it is aging badly.

The Church’s institutional neutrality is not accidental background noise. It is a needed correction. The Church does not endorse parties or candidates, and members who imply otherwise are usually baptizing their own preferences.

“For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention.” (3 Nephi 11:29)

That verse is awkward for partisans on every side, which is one reason it is so useful.

Families dealing with political tension need to ask a hard question: do we want to understand one another, or do we want to win a courtroom case at Thanksgiving? A lot of homes are running cross-examinations and calling it conversation.

A better approach looks less dramatic and more adult:

  • Stop assuming different politics always mean different morals
  • Ask what concern or fear sits underneath a person’s position
  • Refuse lazy caricatures of the other side
  • Do not make every family gathering a referendum on the nation
  • Remember that preserving trust may matter more than landing one more point

That is not cowardice. It is stewardship.

Can Mormons be Democrats and Republicans?

Yes. Obviously yes.

Faithful Latter-day Saints can be Democrats, Republicans, independents, or politically homeless and still be trying to live the gospel seriously. The Church teaches principles. Parties package coalitions. Those are not the same thing.

This can feel threatening to members who want the Church to speak more directly through partisan lines. But the minute you decide your party is the natural home of the covenant path, you are already in trouble. Every party asks for tradeoffs. Every party protects some goods and damages some others. Every party tempts voters to excuse obvious wrongs because the team jersey matters more than the person wearing it.

That is one reason younger members often feel so politically restless. They may be more progressive on immigration, poverty, race, or climate, while still holding traditional views on life, family, or religious belief. Older members sometimes read that as drift. Sometimes it is just a refusal to let party identity do all the thinking.

We have already seen something similar in the broader conversation about young adults leaving the Church. A younger generation is less willing to accept inherited scripts, whether the topic is Church history, culture, or politics. Parents may not always like that shift. They still need to understand it.

What does the LDS Church say about political neutrality?

It says more than some members seem willing to hear.

The Church does not endorse parties, candidates, or platforms. It may speak clearly on moral issues, but it usually does so at the level of principle, not partisan marching orders. Members are encouraged to be informed and engaged, but not to confuse their own political conclusions with official doctrine.

That matters because Latter-day Saints are often tempted to treat moral concern and political certainty as the same thing. They are not. You can care deeply about religious liberty, abortion, immigration, poverty, race, education, or public decency and still disagree about policy means.

Politics is full of prudential judgment. Prudential judgment is not the same thing as revealed doctrine.

Families need that distinction if they want to survive the current climate. It creates room for disagreement without turning every policy dispute into a spiritual loyalty test.

This is also where intellectual humility matters. Very few people are as informed as their confidence level suggests. Social media has not helped. It has trained millions of people to confuse strong feelings with mastery. In our article on screen time and family formation, the concern was drift, distraction, and algorithmic shaping. Politics online works the same way. If families do not choose their media diets carefully, outrage will catechize them for free.

How to talk politics without fighting LDS families into exhaustion

Some conversations do need to happen. Not every disagreement should be buried under fake niceness. But a lot of families need rules of engagement before they need one more debate.

Try a few basic ones:

  • No mind-reading. Say what you think the person means only after they say it themselves.
  • No assigning secret motives. “You just want…” is usually garbage.
  • No social-media style dunking at the dinner table.
  • No treating one cable host, podcast, or influencer as a substitute for serious thought.
  • No continuing the conversation once contempt enters the room.

That last one is big. Once contempt shows up, clarity usually leaves.

Families should also decide that some moments are too important to sacrifice to politics. Weddings, funerals, mission farewells, baby blessings, and holy days should not become side stages for ideological combat. Your grand theory of the republic can survive one meal without an opening statement.

If you are raising children in a politically mixed home, this matters even more. They need to see adults disagree without becoming cruel. They need to learn that conviction and self-control can live in the same person. They need to watch parents choose love over audience capture.

This is one reason article topics like real Christian hope versus flimsy optimism matter more than they first appear to. Hope keeps families from acting like every election is the final judgment. That does not make politics unimportant. It just puts politics back in its place.

Raising kids with different political views Mormon parents did not expect

Many parents think the hardest part will be teaching their children what to believe. Often the harder part is learning how to love them once they believe something else.

If you want children who can think, they may eventually think in ways that unsettle you. That is not always rebellion. Sometimes it is adulthood doing what adulthood does.

The better parenting goal is not ideological cloning. It is moral and spiritual formation sturdy enough to outlast slogans.

Teach children how to weigh arguments. Teach them how to spot manipulation. Teach them that every party rewards tribal loyalty and selective blindness. Teach them to care about people more than abstractions and to remember that policy questions involve real neighbors, real families, real tradeoffs, and real consequences.

Most of all, teach them that no vote settles the lordship of Jesus Christ.

If your family can hold onto that, you have a chance. Not a chance at total agreement. A chance at something better: trust, respect, honesty, and enough spiritual maturity to keep politics from devouring the relationships God actually gave you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can faithful Latter-day Saints belong to different political parties?

Yes. The Church does not require loyalty to a party, and faithful members can arrive at different political conclusions while still taking the gospel seriously. Principles are shared. Policy judgments often are not.

How should I handle political disagreements with family members?

Put the relationship ahead of the argument. Listen long enough to understand the real concern, avoid contempt, and step out of the conversation when it turns into scorekeeping instead of understanding.

What does the Church’s political neutrality mean?

It means the Church does not endorse parties, candidates, or platforms. It may speak on moral issues, but members should not treat their own political preferences as if they came stamped with official Church approval.

How do I raise children when my spouse and I have different political views?

Model respectful disagreement and focus on shared gospel principles like honesty, compassion, agency, and responsibility. Children do not need identical talking points from both parents. They need to see that serious disagreement does not require relational destruction.

Why do younger Mormons often seem more politically progressive?

Younger members are growing up in a different media environment, with different peer networks and different social concerns. Some are more progressive on certain issues, more conservative on others, and many are suspicious of party loyalty in general. That does not automatically mean they are abandoning faith.

If politics keeps making your family smaller, harsher, and less charitable, then politics is already taking up space that belongs to the gospel.

Why Young Adults Are Leaving the LDS Church

Young adults are leaving religion for more than one reason. LDS families need honesty, steadiness, and stronger relationships, not panic.

For a lot of parents, the hardest church conversation now goes something like this: “I don’t think I believe this anymore.”

No one is ready for that sentence, even when they have been half-expecting it for years. It lands like grief because it is grief. Not the grief of a funeral, but the grief of a future you thought you understood suddenly going off-script.

The decline in religious participation among young adults is not imaginary, and it is not just happening in somebody else’s denomination. Latter-day Saint families are feeling it too. Some young adults are drifting quietly. Some are leaving with a list of reasons. Some still believe in God but no longer trust organized religion. Some are not angry at all. They are just done.

If families want to respond wisely, they need to stop reaching for cheap explanations. This is bigger than laziness, bad friends, weak testimony, or one rough Sunday School lesson. Something deeper is going on.

Why are young people leaving the LDS Church?

Usually for more than one reason.

That is one of the first facts parents need to accept. Young adults rarely leave because of a single podcast episode or one awkward bishop interview. More often, several things pile up at once: hard church history, social issues, spiritual disappointment, political alienation, burnout, loneliness, or the feeling that nobody had room for an honest question.

For some, the breaking point is intellectual. They learn about polygamy, race, translation questions, or old institutional failures and feel blindsided. The deeper wound is not always the history itself. It is the sense that they were handed a cleaner version and then told the fuller version was somehow their fault for noticing.

For others, the breaking point is relational. LGBTQ+ questions hit home. Church culture feels narrow. A ward feels socially cold. They do not fit the mold, and after a while they get tired of pretending they do.

For others, the problem is spiritual exhaustion. The checklist version of religion stopped feeling alive, and nobody around them seemed able to say that out loud.

We have written before about performative Christianity and what it does to people. Young adults can smell performance faster than older generations often realize. If faith looks like image management instead of conversion, many of them will walk.

“For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

That verse cuts straight through a lot of modern church anxiety. God is not fooled by polish, and neither are many young adults.

Reasons Mormon youth become inactive

Inactivity usually starts before someone stops attending.

It starts when church begins to feel emotionally unsafe, intellectually thin, socially hollow, or spiritually distant. A young person can still be sitting in the pew while already pulling back inside.

Research keeps pointing in roughly the same direction. Young adults are more likely to stay when they have real relationships, room for honest questions, and a faith that can survive complexity. They are more likely to leave when concerns are mocked, pressure replaces persuasion, or belonging depends on performing the right version of Mormon life.

Large structural issues matter. But so do ordinary home patterns. If a family teaches that doubt is dangerous, appearances matter more than honesty, and questions should be suppressed until they go away, then inactivity should not come as a shocking plot twist later.

That is one reason this topic connects with the larger question of family intentionality. Families already know that drift shapes children. It shapes faith too. If the home never becomes a place for real spiritual wrestling, the internet will gladly host the conversation instead.

There is also a plain social fact here. Younger generations have more access to information, more exposure to competing moral visions, and less instinctive loyalty to institutions. Parents may not like that reality, but pretending it is temporary will not help.

How to talk to kids about church doubts

Calm down first.

That may sound rude, but it is practical. A panicked parent cannot hear clearly, and a frightened child or young adult can tell within seconds whether a conversation is safe. If the first response to doubt is alarm, tears, lectures, or instant apologetics, the message comes through loud and clear: your honesty is a threat to this family.

Do better than that.

Ask what they mean. Ask what they have been reading, feeling, or carrying. Ask when this started. Ask what hurts. Ask what no longer makes sense. Then actually listen long enough to hear the whole answer.

This does not mean parents need to agree with every criticism or instantly abandon conviction. It means the relationship matters more than winning the opening exchange.

A few family habits help here:

  • Let difficult questions be spoken without punishment
  • Admit that Church history and doctrine include real complexity
  • Model your own faith as lived trust, not forced certainty
  • Teach children how to evaluate sources instead of just fearing them
  • Keep Christ more central than institutional image

That last point matters a lot. If a young adult feels they are being asked to defend every historical loose end before they are allowed to keep loving Jesus, many will decide the whole project is impossible.

Families should also remember that faith development is not always linear. A sincere question is not the same thing as rebellion. A season of distance is not the same thing as final ruin. In our article on Christian hope, the point was that real hope survives hard truth. Parents need that kind of hope here too, not the flimsy version that only works when children follow the script.

What to do when your child stops going to church

Love them in a way that does not feel strategic.

Many parents say they are trying to keep the relationship strong, but their child can still feel like a project under observation. Every dinner invitation comes with a hidden agenda. Every kind text feels like the setup for another testimony. That kind of love feels supervised.

Do not make your child guess whether they still belong in the family if they no longer belong at church the way you hoped.

What helps more?

  • Say clearly that your love is not on the ballot
  • Stop using guilt as a missionary method
  • Do not compare them to siblings who stayed
  • Make room for grief without making them manage your emotions
  • Keep inviting them into family life that is warm and ordinary

Parents are allowed to ache. Of course they are. For Latter-day Saints especially, faith is tied to temple hopes, eternal family hopes, and a whole way of seeing the future. When an adult child steps away, it can feel like the collapse of a sacred picture.

But parents need places to carry that grief that are not their child’s shoulders. Trusted friends, wise clergy, support groups, and good therapists exist for a reason.

One more thing: do not assume leaving means all desire for God is gone. Some young adults are leaving church culture, not rejecting every spiritual instinct. Some are trying to recover honesty. Some are trying to breathe. Some may come back later. Some may not. Love is still the right response either way.

How to help a child who lost faith Mormon families once assumed would stay

Start by dropping the fantasy that perfect parenting could have prevented every possible faith crisis.

Parents matter a lot. They are not sovereign. Agency is real. Personality is real. experience is real. Timing is real. Other people influence your children, and so does the wider world. The burden many LDS parents carry here can become crushing because they assume every adult child’s faith outcome is a final grade on their parenting.

That is too heavy, and it is not true.

What parents can do is build a better climate. They can make the home honest. They can talk about hard things before the internet does. They can refuse shame. They can make church about Christ more than culture. They can show children that discipleship is not the same thing as performing a flawless Mormon life.

That may not keep every young adult in the Church. It will still matter.

And if your son or daughter has already stepped away, remember this: no one is beyond God’s reach, and no family relationship is improved by panic. Elder Holland’s words still apply to strugglers, wanderers, and worried parents alike. Keep trying. Keep loving. Keep the door open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are so many young adults leaving the LDS Church?

Usually for several reasons at once. Common factors include hard questions about Church history, LGBTQ+ and social concerns, spiritual disappointment, judgmental church culture, and the feeling that honest doubts were not safe to express.

How should I respond when my adult child tells me they no longer believe?

Respond with love, steadiness, and curiosity. Ask what they are experiencing before trying to correct anything. Your relationship needs to feel safe before any deeper conversation will matter.

What can parents do to help youth develop stronger faith?

Normalize honest questions, talk about difficult topics before a crisis, and build a home where Christ matters more than appearance. Strong faith usually grows in places where truth and love can exist together.

Is it possible for someone who leaves the Church to return later?

Yes. Some do return, sometimes after years away. Others do not. Faith paths are rarely neat, which is one reason families should stay relationally open and spiritually hopeful.

How do I deal with my own grief as a parent?

Acknowledge it without shame. Find wise support from people who can help you carry it without turning your child into the manager of your pain. Grief is real, but it should not become the only voice in the relationship.

Families cannot force faith to stay. They can still make home the kind of place where truth can be spoken, love can remain, and the door to God is never slammed shut.