Strategies to Help Your Teen Launch Into Adulthood

Rachel Denning (00:00)
if you don't deliberately fight against this, you can count on your kids failing to launch.

hey, warning voice, this is what we're seeing.

we have got to acknowledge this and do something about it

real happiness and fulfillment comes when we take on responsibility.

you're there to support, but not to do it for them.

Greg Denning (00:45)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your host, Greg and Rachel Denning.

Rachel Denning (00:50)
what we want to talk about this episode. First of all, identifying...

Okay, failure to launch it is a thing. Why is it happening? What are the symptoms? And what can we actually do to prevent it? Because there are very specific things you can do to prevent it. And if you don't do them, if you don't take that action, if you don't fight for that, then the default is failing to launch.

by the time I get to college, I'd already been on my own two or three years. And then I start seeing college kids act like complete imbeciles. And I'm like, what, what is wrong with these guys? And I was already thinking like an adult because I I had real consequences. to be responsible. You had to act like an adult.

And I had no safety net, right?

the problem is not getting better. If anything, it's getting worse and getting bigger, meaning more people are engaged. And so, the problem is psychologists are calling it the failure to launch epidemic.

if you're listening to this and you have small children, you're like, no, this isn't, I'm not, I don't, I don't have time to listen to this podcast. Don't do that. Please keep listening. If you think, if you think, that'll never happen to my kids. Don't think that ever again. And listen to this podcast.

if you don't deliberately fight against this, you can count on your kids failing to launch.

Yes. That's how bold I feel about this. statement, but I think it probably is an accurate statement. I feel very strongly about it.

Now I can back that up too because I've had my fingers on the pulse, so to speak, with youth for over two decades.

I've been working with youth and young adults and watching them grow up. And I'm right in this environment still.

I lead a, it's a class for youth and I'm doing it as long as I have kids that are teens, I'll keep doing this class.

every time we meet, we're talking about these actions and habits and attitudes that are critical for a happy and successful life. And how rare, interestingly and tragically, the good actions and habits and attitudes are.

Yesterday, I received a very long email request for help from a parent who desperately wants help for a teenage child who

has failed to launch and needed to get into one of these recovery programs,

for those of you are unaware, they easily charge 10 to $20,000 a month.

the success rate of them is not incredible because prevention works better. Yes. At some point, a person can get

I to say that it gets too late. hate That's where I was going, right? I don't want to say that, but it definitely gets much more difficult. Yes, extremely so.

So, I think we could say there does sometimes reach a point of no return where it is too late if nothing else for the physiological changes that can take place with drugs, but other things too. I think your brain can get into patterns of thinking and it creates ruts in your mind. The neurological pathways create ruts that are very, very, very hard to change.

after so many years. And we're not saying that, you know, oh, it's hopeless for your 18 year old, but if your 18 year old continues in paths that he's established until he's 28 and 38, then yes, there reaches this point of no return. And so we think that it's not that big of a deal. And that's something I want to emphasize. Like we, as parents, we can see our children starting on paths or doing things that we think, oh, that's not that big of a deal.

But if you look at the long-term consequences of those ongoing choices, you can realize that that is actually a big deal. And it's our job as parents to have that voice of warning, to say, this is where this could lead. And if you continue in these type of actions, behaviors, thought patterns, whatever, this is where it goes.

And that's kind of what this is today, us talking to you as parents of saying, hey, warning voice, this is what we're seeing.

You always talk about the train wreck. Like there's certain landmarks along this path that lead to certain outcomes. And here's what some of them are.

I have seen the train wreck so many times and I've seen the patterns and the symptoms that now I... go ahead. Can I interrupt really fast? Not only that, but you've had the people come to you before they got to the train wreck. And after. With the symptoms and you said, hey, this is where it's going. This is what needs to be done about it. And those who do something... Prevent it. Prevent it. But those who are like, I don't know.

or decide it's too hard or too much work or too expensive, they don't do anything and then later call or email with the train wreck and you're like, yeah, that's where it was going. I knew that.

it's a...

real tragedy but there are common denominators there's signs and symptoms and man we have got to acknowledge this and do something about it

you cannot not or if you take it lightly I promise your kids will fail the launch. Well and see to me that that's significant what you said right there that there are common denominators and we're talking about there are common denominators to depression.

There are common denominators to suicide. There's common denominators to failure to launch, meaning you go out to college or leave on a mission or move out and can't hack it.

so there are common denominators. There are signs and symptoms before those things happen that if you learn to be aware of them, to see them,

you can understand where they lead and you can do something as intervention. You can intervene to help prevent.

Let's dive in. First of all, we've already touched on a few of what these, well, okay, not necessarily the symptoms, but what some of the outcomes are, what failure to launch looks like.

And that includes everything from, I think suicide is the extreme,

There's of course the inability to take on responsibility,

you get parents trying to do everything for the kid, which is both a cause and an effect of this problem. So parents who step in and do too much,

create the child who is incapable of doing it. But then on the other side, it's the kid doesn't want to do it or won't do it or is incapable or doesn't care. And so what does a parent do trying to be a good parent? Step in and do it for them.

every parent has been guilty of that at some point. It's a fine line knowing the difference of being supportive and being... Enabling.

Which is leading to a major entitlement problem that's also part of this failure to launch

literature shows that in order to have

real happiness and fulfillment, actually need more responsibility. they want the results without the responsibility. they want the rights without the responsibility. Which is also very interesting because when we're talking about some of the causes,

we now want to get into some of these symptoms of why our youth are not able to do these things and take on these challenges.

Part of the reason is because we have fewer responsibilities nowadays. And when I'm talking about that, I'm talking about like real hard, challenging, must do responsibilities.

what the psychological research is showing that our real happiness and fulfillment comes when we take on responsibility.

start with like having something noble to work for.

It ties into one of the reasons that youth are not thriving is because they lack purpose and meaning in their life. Especially when that is connected to this idea that responsibility, and I would say challenge and obstacles, because I think challenge and obstacles are actually a part of responsibility. Without having those things,

in your life, you actually lack a lot of meaning and purpose.

And that seems kind of counterintuitive and that seems almost undesirable because like you're saying, who wants to do hard things? Who wants to purposefully take on challenges and obstacles? And yet that is exactly how we grow and develop as human beings.

there's actually a lot of interesting literature about the meaning and fulfillment and purpose and happiness that people felt during periods of wartime. And you would think that that's ironic because they're in a war. Why would they feel any of that? And the reality is they felt it because they had this sense of connection.

They had this sense of community. They had this sense of purpose because they were united together against a well, quote unquote, common enemy that gave them something to focus their time, energy, and attention on. That's where a sense of meaning and purpose comes from.

one of the reasons they are facing the challenges they are is because of this lack

of deep significance, meaning, and purpose in their life that sometimes can be created by challenging times,

That's the irony. The more you take on and the more you do,

actually the more capable you become and the less you're overwhelmed, the less you stress, the less anxiety you have and we think that it's actually the opposite. And so one of the contributing factors to failure to launch is a society, an environment in which our youth aren't required to do hard things, aren't required to face challenges, aren't required to fail and so they...

spend a lot of time avoiding these things or never coming face to face with them and as a result they have more anxiety, they have more depression, they have more overwhelm,

the way you help them to overcome their fear is by helping them to willingly and voluntarily face that fear. when they do that, choose the challenge. Yeah, choose the challenge. And when they do that, that's how they overcome it. And they don't overcome it because they're now no longer afraid of it. They overcome it because they now cultivate courage. because courage,

isn't a lack of fear, but it's just the ability to face the fear despite being afraid.

Unless we willingly engage and face the things that cause us to be anxious or stressed or overwhelmed, then we don't develop the capability

deal with them and not having the capability to deal with these types of things is what causes failure to launch. And many of us avoid those things.

We get in, I guess we could call it a perpetual avoidance pattern where we were constantly avoiding anything that's uncomfortable or annoying or inconvenient or I just don't want to go there like having a tough conversation or fixing a problem or apologizing or

whatever it could be, right? You're in this avoidance patterns and we do it ourselves and then we allow our kids to do it because in the moment we want to avoid the conflict. We want to avoid the reaction. So ironically, the parent wants to avoid the discomfort of having a reaction from the kid. And so we give up what we want most pretty tough kids that can handle things for what we want in the moment, which like, I don't want to deal with this. exactly.

That's where it starts. That's exactly where it starts.

that starts when the children are young. And so we give in to our kids because we want to avoid conflict. But what that ends up doing is leading to children that don't know how to deal with conflict because that's where it starts. If parents aren't willing to engage in conflict when necessary with their own children, then the children never learn the skills for dealing with conflict because they've never seen it happen. Mom and dad always avoid it.

Now, I do want to throw in here, if you do this very

effectively, adroitly, with diplomacy, it doesn't have to be a source of conflict. I don't want to share the message that in parenting, the only way to get your kids to do hard things is to be combative. Like, I'm going to make them, there's going to be a fight, I'm up for the fight, let's go kid. It's not like that. if you do it well and you're a leader and you're modeling and you have a good relationship,

and you've developed your own levels of diplomacy and interaction and connection, you can gently lead your kids and persuade them right into doing very, very hard things.

ultimately we have to do hard things, hard meaningful things ourselves, and we have to get our kids to opt in to doing hard things.

just if for nothing else for the character development that comes with it. But ideally they're working towards some noble aim or objective. So they're doing the hard things because it has meaning and purpose and fulfillment. And so they want to pursue it and they want to finish it because it fills their soul and strengthens their mind and character.

And so then the question is like, well, where do you start? Like, do I have to send my kids out into the cold to hike 10 miles, you know? And I don't think that that's necessarily what we're talking about that can or may be included. But in a lot of ways, this doing hard things is gonna look different for everyone because everyone has a different hard thing.

the way to know what they are is to look at the things you've been avoiding.

Or your child's been avoiding. Or that your child has been avoiding. Very often the things that we are avoiding doing and yet we kind of have this deep inner knowing that we need to do them, those are the very hard things we need to do.

If you can do physically hard things, you might have a son or daughter that, man, they just do crazy hard workouts and jump in ice cold lakes and streams. They can do hard things physically, but then they won't have a conversation. they won't interact socially or they won't, whatever it is that they need to do. Like their next step is essentially the thing they're avoiding.

That to me is a sign and a signal and a clue of the path you have to walk. Because ultimately the obstacle is the way.

There's a great book by Ryan Holiday and he talks about that. The thing that's standing in your way, the thing that you're avoiding, the thing that makes you uncomfortable is very often the exact thing you need to grow. And until you face that thing and push through it, you actually...

limit your growth. You actually remain undeveloped. You actually are unable to launch and this is true for grown-ups and for our children. You're unable to move forward and to level up until you face that thing that's standing right there that you've been avoiding.

what is the next thing that will challenge me enough that will help me be more adult? More... That will help me have...

more responsibility. In an ideal situation, again, this is a goal or a dream, something big. You guys have heard my dumb goals, right? It's an acronym I came up with years ago. It's demanding, unrealistic, meaningful, and bold. The ideal way to do this is to chase dumb goals. They're so big, they're so meaningful, they're so intimidating, they require tons of work and effort and a lot of arenas to accomplish them. That's the best thing to be working for because

It's exciting, it's fulfilling, it's adventurous, it makes your life a better story. Because the worst thing you do is live a lame life and it is a boring story. This makes you feel so empty and dull and blah and it makes life pointless.

we can create our own significance, meaning and purpose by something like a dumb goal. It's something that's so huge that it requires all of us, meaning you have to go all in in order to actually accomplish it. Like it's so big that it...

it forces you to become a different person in order to achieve it. That's another reason why youth are failing to launch is because they lack one, a lot of adults, we're seeing this in a lot of adults as well, they're lacking these dumb goals in their life that are so moving, so motivating, so gigantic that they have to give their whole heart, soul and mind to achieving them and without that,

Essentially, I think, and this is kind of a blanket statement, but I think it's true, you don't have enough meaning in your life to do the hard work necessary. To bring about the growth and development to get real results. Exactly.

So I think we could say one of the biggest problems we're observing is in a generation, young adults and adults, who...

I mean, if we're really honest with ourselves, what they're doing is seeking entertainment and comfort. mean, adults all the time, like, if you break it down to the essentials, you kind of zoom out and take a look, like, what are you doing? You're like, well, all you're doing is paying the bills. Like, you're working and living to pay the bills. the bills, the bills are, what are the bills for? Yeah, Your comfort and entertainment. Yes. Like, what are you working on? What are you going? Everybody's chasing.

I'm paying for this comfortable house and this comfortable car and all this comfortable entertainment. And then if we look at our youth and they have all of those things provided, they don't even have to work for that. That's where I was going to go next. So why in the world do they need to go out there and work hard and face challenges and overcome obstacles when they have nothing bigger than that goal to work for and that one's already being provided for them?

In most cases. I've got to say this one boldly because I see it a lot

I see parents wearing themselves out.

so that the kids can do what they want to do.

Not always, but very often we see those kids really struggle and fail to launch because they don't have to do the work. They've had everything provided for them by very kind, loving, generous parents and they lack that hunger. Right, and one of the things that you say a lot that you learn from first-hand experience in your own teenage years when you were struggling to eat and had to work to pay the bills as a high schooler is that

where there's pain, there's power. And the reality is as difficult as it can be to see our children in pain or to see them struggle, that is the very thing they need in order to become the person they need to be who can launch successfully in life. They have to have some of that pain and struggle. Now again, this is not misinterpreted here. This isn't the pain of

of you not being a loving, supporting parent. It's the pain of them having to figure it out, having to figure things out and struggle through it. And like you're there to support, but not to do it for them.

Parents will spend tens of thousands of dollars per month when their kid is in serious trouble to try to save them. And yet they'll spend very little, if nothing, on their kid beforehand.

to try to prevent the problems from happening. In fact, they'll actually spend money on things that contribute to the problem. They'll buy them the video games, they'll pay for the internet, they'll buy them the phones,

So, we're very intentional on taking the time and spending the money on things that provide a larger perspective for our children.

to them understand their place better in the world because when you understand your place in the world then you realize that your hard things are actually easier compared to someone else's really hard things.

I just wanted to kind of close off with some of the actual, what we call now, habits of a successful life that are necessary for our kids to learn because one of the things that gets us all the time is parents will spend all this time, money, energy, effort on helping their kids to...

quote, get an education and graduate.

focusing on the academic side of learning, which includes math and science and reading and writing and all those things, while completely neglecting the more important habits for a successful life. The habits that lead to the ability to deal with stress and to deal with anxiety and to...

handle overwhelm and to manage your thoughts and emotions and to manage your time and to be productive and to have goals. All of those things are critical foundational pieces of living a productive, happy, meaningful life and yet they're completely absent from most educational programs and also from most homes. Most families are not teaching these things and so essentially those are the missing pieces that are not

being taught to our youth which are leading to them failing to launch.

We read these amazing books together. And so a couple times a week they have exposure to some of the best thinkers and leaders.

in the world and then we have discussions around them. get to hear their peers talk about them and they get to practice them and apply them. And you guys, every week I get these emails and messages from parents or youth about, I took your challenge and I did this thing and I'm just watching them grow and develop and transform their lives. And it's like you're watching the growth happen right in front of your eyes and the strength and the capacity and the capability and the grit.

and the character, I get to watch it, it's amazing.

And like you said, we created this because we looked around and we saw that it wasn't being taught in other arenas, educational arenas, and so we're like, we've gotta teach these things to our kids because these are things we learned along our own journey. And so yeah, this idea of being intentional when we didn't see what we needed.

for our kids to learn these important lessons, went out and created it. And so that's why we have this class that you do. the habits that we teach, that you're teaching them regularly, are the key ingredients, well, some of them, to helping our children to actually launch. And so I want to just cover a few of those.

One is a lack of connection.

And

it's interesting in this age of connection, right? And in the fact that we are our our kids and we have so many quote friends online and so many followers. It's actually a superficial connection and it's a substitute and more and more people are admitting and they're doing all these studies and research and stuff and people are people are admitting they're like, actually, I don't I don't have any really close friends anymore. I don't I don't have intimate conversations and real connections with friends. And so although we are

more connected.

The real connection, the interpersonal connection that matters is actually declining rapidly. So one of those things that happens socially and psychologically is a lack of connection. The second one is lack of meaning. And we've talked a lot about that today already. So if your life lacks a sense of real meaning and purpose, and it has to mean something, it has to be substantial. If it's empty or kind of pseudo meaningful, if it's a poor substitute of the real thing, it doesn't count.

there's a real lack of

meaningful responsibilities, meaningful work. There's a lack of things that actually matter.

In many people's lives we live these very affluent comfortable lives and there's this lack of meaningful work

So then the other two things are, and they kind of come from the first two. Well, the first two cause the second two. It's what's called a free-floating anxiety. So it's where you're worried, you're tense, you're unsettled.

Maybe you have anxiety attacks or panic attacks. You have this feeling and sense of anxiety and this is happening more and more with our youth,

in our day and age, we don't have anything specific. There's not a lion about to eat us. There's not a threat of...

x, y, z. And we feel like we have a lot of threats and

We come up with a lot of mental, imaginative things to worry and stress about, little of it ever actually happens. And that is what our children are dealing with. These have all these imagined worries and stresses, but nothing that's really concrete and directly in front of them.

Because

This is what happens either consciously or unconsciously. create vehicles to try to satisfy what's happening. So if we fill off, try to satisfy something that's happening. So if I have no meaning in my life, I create this vehicle and I try to do things that give me a sense of importance, like

judging, criticizing, worrying about what the neighbor's doing. know worrying about your grades, worrying about your appearance,

your life lacks so much meaning That you try to feel significant or important or powerful by nitpicking at little things That are honestly in in the other day just completely unimportant

So essentially we have this sense of anxiety that's occurring.

and we're trying to attach it to something because it's free floating. It's not directly attached to a real danger and it's just existing on its own and so we have to try to attach it to something.

So the fourth one is it's a free-floating sense of frustration. Same kind of idea, kind of cause. But think about it, think about somebody who's in this failure to launch.

They're lacking real connection. They're lacking real meaning and something, you know, a quest, a noble aim. They have a lot of free-floating anxiety and a lot of free-floating frustration and just kind of, it just overall irritability and irks them, And so it essentially makes them more susceptible to going along with whatever the crowd is doing.

this is part of the contributing factor to

failure to launch.

rule number one you as a parent have got to model this absolutely

You've got to lead out and you have to be healthy yourself mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially. You've got to be in a good place. we were talking about the habits of a successful life, of course doing hard things is on that list, but then it's these healthy habits, mental habits, emotional habits, spiritual habits.

Physical habits even something as simple as having the habit of exercising right? are the habits getting ready for the day. I'm still going away. How many adults don't get ready? They might go weeks without getting unless they have to leave the house for something But yeah, right as they don't have the habit of getting ready. They don't have the habit of Reading from something or listening to something inspirational educational every day. They don't have the habit of developing their

They don't have the habit of managing their emotions and recovering from negative emotions and intentionally cultivating positive emotions. All of these things are actually habits that don't just happen by default. They're not accidental. You're not just blessed and born with them. You have to develop them as skills. And so that, I think, is the basis.

of the solution to this problem,

If you want to go into these more.

then just look through your past podcast episodes because you have a podcast about mental habits and emotional habits and exercise and all of these different things. So that is essentially what we teach and now this podcast here is understanding why that really matters for our youth in helping them launch into adulthood.

I just have to emphasize as much as I can if there was some special way for me to kind of reach through the microphone here and put a hand on your shoulder and just say look this matters so much. Please do not discount this dismiss it think it won't affect you or your family like assume

that it's the default and it will happen unless you deliberately fight it off. Like lean in all the way and do whatever you have to do for yourself first to get yourself in a great place. And then for your children as a whole, but and your family, but I'd say each of your children individually.

again never underestimate how much power and influence you have and how important this work is to make sure that you're you're doing everything in your power to have a great relationship with your kids and to prepare them to launch into adult life

successfully and not just survive you guys thrive the the goal isn't just so that you're when they become young adults they can go out and they can get a job and keep it and go to school and maybe go on a mission or do those things and that's it it's well that's the initial goal well

that's a stepping stone on the path. Right, but see it on the path. So I want my children to become really phenomenal human beings and deeply successful and happy, not just like, whew, my kid got a job and made it to college. We're good. But since we're talking about failure to launch.

If they, of course if they can't handle that part, they're not on the path. Right, exactly. I guess what I'm saying is like, yeah, that's great. They should be able to do that because that's part of being on the path. Right. So that's all I'm emphasizing. There's so much to this and it's so significant and awesome. So lean in people and if you have questions and situations like, circumstances like, hey, well how do we do this and how do do that? Shoot them over, ask us. We'll answer them. I love thinking about this.

OK. You guys are awesome. Love you. Reach upward Let's raise amazing kids that help make this world a better place.