Send 20somethings packing since its time to grow up

Strong Moms send their twentysomething's packing
by Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach

Here's a surprising trend during these challenging economic times. A number of strong women have actively guided their young adult children out of the door of their home to build a life of their own. And the most surprising part is the ages of these moms. I've noticed that younger moms, (under the age of 45), have found the strength to do what older moms (the baby boomer generation), struggle with- because the younger moms are far more likely to have packed up their twentysomething young adult children and pushed them out into the adult world.

I've noticed that women who had children earlier in life are much more likely to cut the financial apron strings and let their young adult aged children figure out life for themselves. Sort of like they got the role of being a mommy out of the way early in life and are now more than ready to explore their own identity as a woman in new careers or relationships.

Perhaps these younger moms remembered how tough and scary it was as a young person building a career or home life, so since they made it they expect their sons and daughters to grow up faster and find their way without depending on Mom for everything. I believe that breaking the dependency on parents is a good thing. Especially since I've seen dozens of parents these last few years who had to put their dreams on hold because of a young adult child who refused to grow up. Many women are ready to grow into the next stage of life with excitement. The problem is their twentysomething who refuses to let go of the apron strings and financial security of their parents. Frequently the one they lean on most is their mom, which forces that woman to delay her dreams of building another stage of life after raising her children. And sometimes these dreams have already been on hold for twenty or more years.

"Check out time is 21!"

There comes a time when you gotta give something up to grow up to the next chapter of life, or you end up silently watching others move forward while wishing for the strength to change. The longer you financially support your grown up kids; the longer they may just sit back and take advantage of your kindness to manipulate you for cash. Better to risk bold action to directly deal with facing some tough things with your grown kids now than to avoid the conflict and end up escaping the difficulties of the situation by vegging out on the couch with "Desperate Housewives".

You won't lose the love of your adult kids if you confront them about their need to grow up, but you can delay their success in life by trying too hard to rescue them from the real world. At two that's good parenting... at twenty-two, it's time to set and enforce boundaries.

I vividly remember a Time magazine cover article that showed a well dressed guy in his older twenties sitting in a sandbox. Educated, good self esteem, ability to talk about big dreams but no follow through to actually do anything positive with their lives. Many young adults from this generation are just flat out afraid to grow up and move out to find their place in the 'real world'.

The article went on to talk about how millions of young people drift through their twenties by financially leaning on their parents. This 'boomerang dependency' creates huge financial and marital pressures on many women who just can't seem to let go of their primary identity being the mother/child relationship. And when this happens, many twentysomethings take advantage of their older mother's kind heart and manipulate the situation to prevent having to grow up and build a life of their own. It's almost like everyone else around this codependent mom can see the enabling behavior, except the mom who is just too weak or afraid to let go.

Why don't younger Moms struggle with Launching their off-spring?

After seeing thousands of people walk through the 'launch' process of guiding their young adults out of the nest over the last twenty five years it has became apparent to me that women who went into motherhood quickly in their twenties had to put many of their personal dreams on hold. These women were more ready to move forward as their kids grew up and began to leave the proverbial 'nest'. They didn't define their entire identity by their role as a mother. No sitting and crying in the floor of their kids old bedrooms for this bunch. Nope, they were too busy getting ready for the next chapter of life to sit in the floor looking at old yearbooks.

These women are ready to explore other areas of their identity, either by going back to school, switching careers, or taking on an 'extreme makeover' of who they are as a woman in some area of life. They find a career coach when the nest empties out and build a better future for themselves. And it's almost impossible to move forward with the next chapter of life if you have a 25 year old digging through your purse asking for gasoline money.

Noticing this trend of late bloomer young adults avoiding growing up and finding their place in the real world led to several years of research on this subject, which is the basis of an upcoming book I'll release later this year, ("FastTrack - moving from college stress to career success"). After interviewing countless parents of 'twenty-somethings' and over 100 young adults it helped me to clearly see this trend and then develop 4 tracks that these adult kids follow to then guide them toward the 'fast track' of early career success, which includes moving out on their own to build a strong life, instead of staying stuck at home with mom for another few decades.

Sadly, the research for the book also showed that too many women in their mid 50's to 60's had almost given up their entire identity as a woman to stay stuck in the 'mommy' role with their college aged kids.

Everyone wants a good relationship with their grown children; but it's a sign of weakness to stay stuck in the past while letting twentysomethings manipulate a situation to avoid having to take on adult responsibility. It's like many of these adult kids are living like they are already retired, while their exhausted mom or dad works continually and may not ever get to retire because of their adult children refusing to grow up. It's a sign of greater love to say, 'it's time to grow up son' than it is to let them stay stuck in their twenties while more independent young people pass them by.

39 key factors that show maturity and independent living skills

There are career coaches to guide, there are books to give insights and TV talkshows with experts on every day to tell you the importance of being strong enough to let go of your children to allow them to become confident young adults. If you get stuck or know someone in your circle who is stuck with an adult child here's a suggestion. Send me an email through our website and I'll gladly send you the 39 key factors that indicate the maturity levels necessary for young adults to launch out to build a life of their own.

I want to see your adult kids be successful, that's why I wrote a book about it, but not at the expense of watching you lose too many years of life and miss out on the joys that come after the kids are launched out into the world. If your adult kids launched well, fantastic! Help others do the same and if yours haven't gotten to the launch pad yet, don't panic. Just take bold action now so that you can watch them move forward, which frees you to do the same. Success for both generations is a better trade than suffering in silence while a 25 year old son is playing X-box in his bedroom. A way better trade.


Reprint Permission- If this article helped you, you are invited to share it with your own list at work or church, forward it to friends and family or post it on your own site or blog. Just leave it intact and do not alter it in any way. Any links must remain in the article. Please include the following paragraph in your reprint. -

"Reprinted with permission from the LifeWorks Group weekly eNews, (Copyright, 2004-2009), To receive this valuable weekly resource subscribe at www.LifeWorksGroup.org or call 407-647-7005.

About the author-
Dwight Bain is a Nationally Certified Counselor, Certified Life Coach and Certified Family Law Mediator in practice over 25 years with a primary focus on solving crisis events and managing major change. He is an author and member of the National Speakers Association who partners with media, major corporations and non-profit organizations to make a positive difference.

Access more counseling and coaching resources designed to save you time by solving stressful situations by visiting their counseling blog with over 150 complimentary articles and special reports at www.LifeWorksGroup.org

Launching the Late Bloomer into the Real World

Parenting Launch Sequence
Successfully letting go of young adults

By Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach

Parents are told to give their children "roots and wings" from the time they are born until it is time to leave the nest, some twenty years later. I believe that the first part comes easier than the second, which may not come at all for some older adolescents these days. Let me explain a few factors to help you understand why some kids never seem to launch into early success as young adults.

Giving a child 'roots' is about shared traditions, values, personal accountability to a moral standard of behavior, such as the 10 commandments or the golden rule as well as providing a safe and loving home environment. I believe most parents do their best to care and provide for their kids. I also believe that most parents try to build these core values into the heart of their kids which will always show up through their behavior and choices later on in life. When a child clearly understands what they believe they are stronger and more focused to go through the teen years without getting hung up on the distractions and temptations that cause so many of their peers to stumble and fall.

Frankly, I don't think most parents really struggle with knowing what they should be doing, because they know what they want their children to learn and if you ask them, they usually have a pretty clear vision of how they want their children to behave. It’s been my experience that most parents do their best to give their kids the strength of being deeply rooted into a personal belief system of some kind, especially in understanding right from wrong and how to respond to the world around them in a reasonable and responsible way.

If they aren't directly building these values into the lives of their kids, they are likely supplementing those values through regularly attending a house of faith or some other form of ethical values education (for instance, consider the great programs available through faith based groups like the YMCA), or even through targeted exposure to positive messages through the entertainment and media they let their kids experience. Giving kids traditional family values will root them into knowing what they believe, but it won't always protect them when they are challenged by their peers as to why they believe it.

► Common fights about the ‘flight plan’

So, how do you take a child that you have loved, cared for, taken care of and protected for their entire lifetime the right amount of space to 'fly' forward on their own wings? Let me warn you ahead of time, it's often hard to find the right level of balance on this subject and kids and parents often experience their greatest conflict during the teen years trying to figure out just the right level of responsibility and independence for each stage of life!

Yet as hard as it may be for parents to even consider letting go of the children that they have invested so much time and energy into, it is essential for the child’s healthy development and inner strength as a person who will one day have to move out and move on as a young adult to tackle issues directly throughout their life without the security of knowing that mom and dad’s watchful care is always going to be near.

The goal is for them to know what they believe, and when tested, to pass the test and live out those beliefs in spite of the pressures around them.

► Dangerous truth- over-protective parents slow strength building

Here's why this is such a problem for some loving parents. If you never let a child test their wings by moving a little further away from mom or dad's care, then sometimes they end up developing the symptoms of fear, extreme shyness or a social phobia and end up being afraid of moving forward in life. Not all kids will develop psychological or emotional fears because of overprotective parents, but it can be one of several factors that slows down their personal development and inner strength to move forward toward the next stage of life. Yes, we love our kids, but remember, part of that love is to equip them and prepare them to one day leave the nest to literally launch forward, just like a space shuttle launch sequence at Kennedy Space Center.

Think about all of the years of planning to create a successful launch into space. Literally everything that takes place for the years leading up to a rocket launch date is done to safely and strategically accomplish the goal of getting into space safely. That’s the driving force of NASA engineers- to get that big bird off the ground at Cape Canaveral and into orbit toward the stars.

There is an incredible line of dialogue in the movie, “Astronaut Farmer” (staring Billy Bob Thornton), where the father-in-law tells his wanna-be astronaut son-in-law, “I really respect you son. Most dad’s can’t get their families to share a meal at the table together and you- you’ve got your whole family dreaming together!” The film tells the story of a dad who reflects the power of never giving up on his life-long dream of orbiting the earth, and more importantly shows the courage, patience and teamwork of a whole family coming together to make an impossible dream become an incredible reality.

Space flight can be a lot like parenting- we spend years getting them ready to have a successful launch because one day we know that we will have to do a launch sequence to countdown the days as they head out to another stage of life. This is the way that God designed it- kids are supposed to move out and move on to build lives of their own. If overprotective parents stall that process, it scrubs the launch and leaves the child stranded on the launch pad, while their peers are blasting off toward early success in life. No one wins and it often sets the child up for tremendous problems that could have been solved if the parents had taken a different and more directive approach.

► Blast off- or blow up?

When kids are well equipped to launch into early success during their young adult years they soar and it’s a joy to watch. If you have ever seen a launch up close from Cape Canaveral you know what I mean- words can hardly describe the power and the sheer excitement of knowing that not even gravity can stop that rocket from what it was designed to do- blast off toward the stars! However, when what I’ve been referring to as the parenting ‘launch sequence’ is interrupted by well meaning, (or sometimes fearful) parents they often blow up, because the kids crash in some way. Sadly, these days it seems there are more crashes than successful launches.

So what to do? Here are some parenting tips to coach you to build strong kids now, so they can one day go out and build successful lives as adults. That’s a parent’s job, to give them the roots of belief and then equip them with the wings of healthy resources to fly.

When this process happens, a child grows through each stage of life with a better experience and then grows stronger from the momentum of moving forward in a powerful way because they were set up to win by parents who weren’t afraid to point them toward the stars and launch into the life that God designed for them to live. Millions of other parents have successfully launched their child from birth toward adulthood and you can too.

Know that you are not alone in this process and that it’s not too late to dream about what your son or daughter could be when they launch into a successful life of their own.


Reprint Permission- If this article helped you, you are invited to share it with your own list at work or church, forward it to friends and family or post it on your own site or blog. Just leave it intact and do not alter it in any way. Please include the following paragraph in your reprint.

"Reprinted with permission from the LifeWorks Group weekly eNews, (Copyright, 2004-2008), To receive this valuable weekly resource visit www.LifeWorksGroup.org )

About the Author
Dwight Bain is dedicated to helping people achieve greater results. He is a Nationally Certified Counselor, Certified Life Coach and Certified Family Law Mediator in practice since 1984 with a primary focus on solving crisis events and managing major change. A critical Incident Stress Management expert with the Orange County Sheriffs Office and corporate trainer for over 1,500 business groups on the topic of making strategic change to overcome major stress- both personally & professionally; Dwight is a member of the National Speakers Association who partners with the media, major corporations and non-profit organizations to make a positive difference in our culture. Access more counseling and coaching resources designed to save you time by solving stressful situations by visiting his counseling blog with over 150 complimentary articles and special reports at www.LifeWorksGroup.org