One of the hardest times for me was after my three kids graduated high school and went on to adulting, now spread across three cities. Miles and miles from home.

Maybe it’s because I was divorced and didn’t have my kids full time, but empty-nester life didn’t appeal to me. I had enough so-called free time. I didn’t need more.

Plus, there was little in life that brought me more joy than taking them to school or picking them up. The stops at coffee shops on the way to school. The car ride conversations.

And then after school, doing homework or projects with them. Cooking them some international cuisine. Movie nights. On weekends, going to farmer’s markets. Festivals.

Every time I saw their faces, I was filled with joy.

But it wasn’t just how they made me feel. I also took teaching them seriously.

I was intentional about the information I imparted. And about how I needed to conduct myself to encourage them to emulate behavior I wanted them to practice. Kindness. Love. Generosity. Empathy.

I was far from perfect, but they forced me to be a better person.

When they left home for the next phase of life, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself anymore. Nor was I sure how to parent, knowing they had to make their own life decisions now.

How was I to turn from making many decisions for them to allowing them the space as adults to make their own decisions?. Bad ones and good ones. How would I let them succeed or fail?

It sounds easy on paper, but it’s not.

For a while, I would parent them by telling them my opinion on what they were or weren’t doing. Good and bad. I was parenting as if they were still teenagers.

From “I think that’s a bad idea” and “Don’t do that”“ to “Great decision!” and “I approve.”

The problem is, that type of empty-nester style of parenting isn’t effective.

Few of us adults like to be told what to do. It’s one thing to prohibit a 14-year-old from something, but telling a 20-year-old “No” doesn’t land the same way. All it does is create distance.

Then I learned a new way from watching my 80-year-old uncle speak to my kids.

He doesn’t lecture them. He doesn’t tell them what’s right or wrong. He doesn’t even voice much direct disagreement. Or disapprove of things.

Instead, he asks lots of questions.

“How will that make so- and- so feel?” “Would you be OK if that hurt so and so’s feelings?”

“Have you thought about how that will affect you in the long term?” “Why do you think this?” or “What do you think of that?”

A lot of “What if this?” and “What if that?”

What I noticed is this type of parenting of adults encourages those adult children to consider the consequences of their decisions and actions without directly telling them what to do. It gives them space and grace to weigh the pros and cons of their decision-making.

It allows young adults to take ownership in their own pathway.

Gen X’ers like me learned the hard way that the most valuable math we can learn is how to calculate the future cost of current decisions.

That’s why parenting adults should shift to that paradigm and not the do’s and don’ts of life.

It doesn’t mean immediate results or that every one of their decisions will be sound.

But it hopefully means they’ll think harder about whether they turn right or left. Whether they choose a particular course of action.

That’s the best we can do.

This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.