In the book I have written, The Launch Code: Loving and Letting Go of Our Adult Children, I describe three truths that form the foundation of the work I do with parents and young adults to ensure a positive transition to adulthood.
Love Goes Both Ways
First, parents love their kids, and kids love their parents. This belief is true even during very contentious relations between the two parties. When I ran a drug and alcohol treatment program for late adolescents/young adults, I asked them to imagine they would never see their parents again and to write a goodbye letter. Since these young adults were often angry and contentious in their relationships with their parents, I imagined this letter would be an opportunity to tell their parents off and vent feelings of anger, resentment, and hurt. To my surprise, each of these delinquent drug-abusing young people wrote how they were sorry for their behavior and the trouble they caused and expressed their love for their parents. It’s clear and supported by the writings of Daniel Siegel that we are wired for relationships so that even under the worst of circumstances, we long to express and experience love between parents and kids. When the relationship is broken and love is not expressed, both parties suffer.
Everyone Desires Success
A second truth is that parents and young adults want the young adult to be happy, successful, self-sufficient, and independent. This may sound obvious as a desired outcome, but the process of working toward this and the vision of what a successful, independent young adult might look like is not always the same in the eyes of the parents and the kids. It’s a case of the devil in the details, and the route that the young adult chooses might be radically different from what the parent envisioned. That said, it’s an important reminder to both parties that the end state, albeit defined somewhat differently by each party, is the same.
This is critical to my approach to getting parents and their young adults on the same page. Since we are talking about young adults, they need to express their vision of the future and the steps they want to take to achieve this, and parents need to express a desire to help them with this process. Incidentally, I have not had any young adults say they just wanted to live with Mommy and Daddy in five years or buy a van and head for Big Sur (a sixties fantasy), or that they thought they would be happy living in a box under a bridge. Most young adults today strive for conventional goals – a good job and career, marriage and family, and house. Unfortunately, the economic reality of owning a home is out of reach for many young adults; thus, achieving these goals takes much longer.
Striving for a Smooth Transition
A third truth is that both parents and young adults want the process of separation and transitioning into adulthood to go smoothly. Our kids want to continue to have a good relationship through the process of achieving adulthood. Neither party wants to sever ties with the other and leave with hatred or resentment. Failure to launch scenarios include the parents who kick their kids out of the house (see my video on this subject) or the kids who slam the front door as they leave and threaten to never talk to the parents again.
There is a growing trend for young adults to cut off ties with parents. One in four young adults living outside the home go silent for an average of four months, and one in ten never reconnect. This trend goes deeper than simply a letting go problem and may have roots in longstanding practices and resentments between parents and kids. Estrangement from the kids we love is painful and, in some cases, can be worse than death. Someone you love is not deceased but chooses to never talk to you again. My mission is to find ways to prevent failure to launch and estrangement and to ensure that parents and kids at this transition stage stay loving and connected even though conflict regarding the future may exist. A young person who moves out and becomes financially independent but refuses to connect to their parent represents a failed launch. Sometimes, this cutoff is unavoidable and necessary, as in the case of an abusive parent or young adult, but this is still a failure to launch, and both parties will suffer.
“Go Long”
One final thought that relates to the partnering that I try to foster with parents and young adults is the need to “go long.” Don’t get overly committed to a view of your young adult or the situation as never changing. It may feel that way, but in my experience, most young adults, barring serious mental illness or untreated addiction, will right themselves at some future point. This may come after several starts and stops, mistakes and failures, and much experimentation, but it will happen. The most important virtue that parents can practice beyond continuing to reinforce unconditional love for their young adult child is patience. It takes hope, optimism, and a lot of patience to stick with our teenage kids as they struggle to emerge as responsibly independent young adults. But we must never give up.
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