A roundup of common reasons adult children avoid phone calls collected by YourTango touches the same pattern from the other side. Over time, most adult children will decline that job. The lecture, the worry spiral, and the week of guilt are the three most reliable ways to teach an adult child that honesty is expensive. Concern that stays proportional to what it heard is one of the things adult children actually want from their parents. Adult children do this too, often unfairly, to parents who might in fact receive the honest version better than expected.