Advice for your young adult sons or daughters

For those of you who have (or have had) a young adult son or daughter, pick one piece of advice that you believe that they would benefit from by knowing. It can cover any aspect of the adult life upon which they about to embark.

Needless to say there are countless bits of our wisdom that we could pass along, but limit your response to one thing.

I'll start off by offering my advice to my own offspring:

When I look upon the mistakes that I made as an adult, it seems that when I made decisions or choices where I let my emotions rule, and not my intellect, I got burned. Decisions of the heart may have made me feel good at the time, but the results were not good in the long run. It's the same as letting your wants get in the way of your needs. Learn to identify the difference between decisions of the heart and the mind and go with the mind. Odds are better that you will be doing the right thing in the end.

Learn from the mistakes your father and I made...
Mom is always right.
(mother of 3 adult children)
-AD

Father of 17 year old girl.

When she was 13-14, boy crazy already, made sure that her mother and I both had "the talk" with her.

When she was 15, I told her, "love like there is no tomorrow, but be prepared for heart ache, and don't let one heart ache stop you from loving again"

She'll be 18 soon, I'm telling her, try everything that you want to try, go places you want to go, live your life for yourself. Treat others well and most importantly be happy.

I have two girls 21 and 23 still live at home.

I sound like a broken record telling them.

Always carry 20 dollars in cash on you and stop using their debit card to pay for stuff.I am not a bank!

Originally posted by GoneGrey

When I look upon the mistakes that I made as an adult, it seems that when I made decisions or choices where I let my emotions rule, and not my intellect, I got burned. Decisions of the heart may have made me feel good at the time, but the results were not good in the long run. It's the same as letting your wants get in the way of your needs. Learn to identify the difference between decisions of the heart and the mind and go with the mind. Odds are better that you will be doing the right thing in the end.

Probably the best advice I've gotten in a while.
Makes the most sense, too.

I think the majority of problems with people stem from them getting what they want and not what they need.

Great post! (I am 28 years young)