Preparing Your Child to Leave Home (or What to Do If They Haven’t!) Christi Copeland, MA, LPC

Proverbs 22:6 – Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Ephesians 6:4b – instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Encourage independence in teens Provide safety net, but allow for failure and learning Parents’ Role As a child grows, they should start to be more independent and need you less – slowly letting them go as they become teens and grow toward adulthood

Helping Teens Find Independence Listen – spend time listening to your teen, providing them with a safe place to share and talk through their thoughts, worries, and dreams Safety net – be there to provide assistance, but also slowly remove that safety net as they grow and allow them to experience natural consequences. Natural consequences – examples: refuses to wear a coat, feels cold; refuses to eat what is prepared for dinner, feels hungry; stays up too late, feels tired and finds it hard to concentrate during school. Other examples? Helping Teens Find Independence

Worries or nervousness about various aspects of life, predominantly expressed by “What if” thoughts Many who experience tend to avoid areas of life which lead to anxious/worrisome thoughts and feelings Identify negative thoughts & replace with positive (Bible verse, song lyric, positive saying) Basics about anxiety

What is “failure to launch”? Possible causes: Anxiety? Depression? Millennials being “overly sensitive”? Dr. Lebowitz “Young adults who remain at home, highly reliant on parents and avoiding higher education and employment” (“Failure to Launch”: Shaping Intervention for Highly Dependent Adult Children) What is “failure to launch”? Millennial bubble wrap costume example

Stop accommodating – increase chores and responsibilities, decrease financial support, increase expectation of productivity. “If you aim for nothing, you will hit it” = raise the bar! Anxiety is a multi-person system – family is a system, one change affects all, but the only part of the system you can change is YOU! Tips for managing failure to launch From https://www.rtor.org/2016/03/03/failure-to-launch/ Jay Boll, Editor in Chief Tips for Managing FTL Stop accommodating. This is obvious. So obvious, in fact, that we think Trip’s parents are fools for hiring a surrogate girlfriend to lure him out of the house, when what they really need to do is stop feeding, taking care of, and cleaning up after him.  Which is a great segue to the second tip… Anxiety is a multi-person system. Parents and their adult children with FTL often feel trapped in a pattern of anxiety and accommodation that only leads to more anxiety and accommodation. Dr. Lebowitz calls this the “protection trap.”  The hopeful message in his approach is that strengthening or changing one part of the system can have an impact on the whole.

Tips for managing failure to launch (cont’d) Take small steps – depending on level of anxiety/depression could be doing own laundry or starting by picking dirty clothes up off the floor. Celebrate the small steps as they happen! Actions speak louder than words – follow with appropriate actions. Not doing adult child’s laundry = natural consequence. “Get a job by June of we’re kicking you out” – setting up for failure and backing parents into a corner. Tips for managing failure to launch (cont’d) Take small steps. Most parents would like to see their children gain the confidence and skills to move out of the house and establish themselves independently. But to the young person with severe anxiety such a monumental goal can seem completely unattainable. Parents can help by setting expectations for much smaller realistic goals. Can the young adult with FTL start doing her own laundry? Maybe the first step is to get her to pick the dirty clothes off the floor and put them in a laundry basket. Actions speak louder than words. This tip goes hand-in-hand with #5. Parents who tell their daughter with severe anxiety to get a job by June or move out of the house, are not just setting her up for failure. They are backing themselves into a corner when June comes around and she still isn’t working. Parents should set realistic expectations and be prepared to follow up with actions. Not washing a young adult’s dirty clothes unless she puts them in the laundry basket is a natural consequence that doesn’t put anyone at risk.

Tips for managing failure to launch (cont’d) Open up the system – get help! Friends, church, therapist, relatives – anyone who can help. Parents need support and reinforcement of the message that change is necessary. Communicate openly and honestly – this change can bring strong negative feelings, so explain the reasons for the changes, and use the “system” above to help. Encourage hope – hope for the future, change and growth CAN happen. Joshua 1:9, Jeremiah 29:11-13 Tips for managing failure to launch (cont’d)

Reference List Boll, Jay (2016). Failure to Launch: 9 Tips for Managing Anxiety in Dependent Adult Children. Retrieved from: https://www.rtor.org/2016/03/03/failure-to-launch/ Boll, Jay (2017). When Your Young Adult With “Failure to Launch” Won’t Get Help: Survival Tips for Parents Who Aren’t Done Parenting. Retrieved from: https://www.rtor.org/2017/10/24/failure-to-launch- part-4/ Lebrowitz, Eli R., PhD (2016). “Failure to Launch”: Shaping Intervention for Highly Dependent Adult Children. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895190/