Helping Your Adult Child Grow Up

Source: Wokandapix, Pixabay, Public Domain

Despite spending years and a fortune at college, more than half of people 18 to 29 are living with their parents. That’s the highest percentage since the Great Depression.

Of course, that can frustrate both the young adults and their parents. Despite major efforts, the parents may even feel guilt, that it’s at least partly their fault. Ironically, good parents may be more likely to feel that way.

Here are thoughts on what a parent might do to help their adult child launch their adult life.

What does your child need? Is it emotional support? Some young adults are doing a good job trying to launch their adult life but simply having difficulty in an era when finding a job, let alone a well-paying, interesting one is far from easy. Such kids may just need a sounding board or to know that you believe in them and love them no matter what.

Other kids need concrete help: Perhaps job leads from your friends and relatives, a hand to hold while reviewing career websites or creating a compelling profile on dating sites, or, as has been common for millennia, introductions to a potential romantic partner.

Some adult children, even if already 30, need structure. That can be as minimal as inviting your child to keep of their daily to-dos or of their networking contacts or suggesting that they have a daily work routine: e.g., job-search from 9 to 10, take a break, and so on, and a check-in with you at the end of each day.

If your child would benefit from monitoring, rather than you doing it, might you hire someone, perhaps one of your friends or their adult kid to keep your child on track, say for a couple hours each day? At $15 an hour, that $150 a week for a couple of weeks might be worth it.

Do they need a discussion, not a lecture, on the extent to which being self-supporting is central to a life well-led? Or even that eternal question: What is the meaning of life?

A few need tougher love, even a nuclear option: “I’ve tried to remain a reasonably involved and caring parent even though you’re 25. But I worry that I’ve done no good, and maybe even enabled your inaction. So, for your benefit and mine, I’m giving you a 30-day warning: Unless you make significant progress (e.g., get job interviews, pass each day’s drug test, whatever), painful though it will be, I’ll be requiring to you pay $750 a month for your room and board and if you don’t, I will ask you to leave. What do you think?”

Again, one size does not fit all, but might any of the aforementioned help your adult child to launch and for you to thereby feel proud and relieved, and free up time so you can do more of what you want to do?

I expand on this on YouTube.