When Your Adult Child Strays: Trading Heartache for Hope

by Jim Burns

Publisher:

Zondervan

, 2026

Overview

No matter what comes between you and your adult child, you can still foster a strong relationship.

Parents are often stunned when their children reach adulthood and disregard the values, practices, and faith commitments they were raised with. Whether these differences are over church, politics, sexuality and gender, addiction, or another issue, parents struggle to know what went wrong.

But there’s good news: In the midst of uncertainty, you can trade heartache for hope.

In When Your Adult Child Strays, author, speaker, and podcaster Jim Burns gives practical advice on key areas of conflict and offers guidance on how to foster a strong relationship with your adult child. As a trusted expert on family, parenting, and marriage, Jim will help you:

• Rebuild trust with an adult child who has rejected your traditions
• Lower your emotional reactivity in heated conversations
• Learn how to validate your adult child’s feelings without trying to be right
• Move from advice giver to mentor
• Understand the differences between Nomads, Prodigals, and Exiles
• Avoid being defined by your adult child’s choices

 

Maintaining a healthy relationship with your adult child is hard. But with God’s help, hope and healing are within reach.

Product Details

• Title: When Your Adult Child Strays: Trading Heartache for Hope
• Author: Jim Burns
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Print Publication Date: 2026
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Pages: 192
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9780310370499, 9780310370475, 0310370477, 9780310370529, 0310370523, 0310370493
• Resource ID: LLS:9780310370499
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2026-01-09T07:38:13Z

About Jim Burns

Jim Burns is president of HomeWord and executive director of the HomeWord Center for Youth and Family at Azusa Pacific University. He is also the host of the national radio broadcast HomeWord with Jim Burns. Jim's passion and purpose for this broadcast is to build God-honoring families through communicating practical truths that will enable adults and young people alike to live out their Christian faith. In addition to the radio program, Jim speaks to thousands around the world each year through seminars and conferences. He is an award-winning author, whose books include Creating an Intimate Marriage, The Purity Code, Confident Parenting, Faith Conversations for Families, and Teenology. He has been featured through numerous media outlets including CNN, ABC, Focus on the Family, and Library Journal. Jim and his wife, Cathy, have three grown daughters and live in Southern California. Visit www.homeword.com for more information.