Parenting Your Emerging Adult

by Varda Konstam

  Being right is vastly overrated. How often does it really lead to happiness? How often does it move relationships forward? How often does it create harmony and cooperation in families? How often does it help solve difficult interpersonal problems?

  Parents often get so caught up in “winning” the small battles—washing laundry, dating, music volume, curfews—that they lose sight of the bigger picture. We are supposed to be raising emerging adults who are capable of independent thought and of running their own lives. Is that end served by parents winning every battle and always being right?

  It turns out there can be great joy in “losing” some of the battles, both small and large. When a parent finds an emerging adult persuading him or her of the child’s position, convincing the parent to look at the issue in a new way, influencing the parent to change habits and perceptions, this is a cause for celebration, not mourning. It means that the emerging adult is finding his or her own voice in the world and learning to get his or her needs met in a mature way.

  The End Goal

  The end goal of conflicts with your emerging adult is not for one person to emerge victorious but to find a balance that works for both of you. By balance I don’t mean a compromise where both sides make sullen concessions; I mean a win/win situation where both of you are happier and more satisfied than you were before. This is an achievable goal in most cases. If being right remains of paramount importance, the win/win solution will skitter away from you, always out of reach. Convincing the other of your position is not the critical issue. What is critical is structuring an atmosphere where you and your emerging adult are heard, understood and respected. If you are successful in doing this, the intensity and frequency of conflict between you and your emerging adult will subside over time. And you will both grow immensely in the process.

  Conflict can be very useful and productive. A difference is declared. Without some degree of conflict, most people don’t change or grow. Conflict helps point out problems that need to be addressed and gives individuals opportunities to learn new skills. Conflict helps people to see others’ points of view and eases them out of their comfort zones. Conflict makes life more interesting.

  The goal is not to eradicate conflict but rather to create a process whereby conflict is resolved in a way that leaves both you and your emerging adult feeling respected and able to grow, both within the relationship and outside of it. The way that parents navigate conflict goes a long way toward determining whether it will be an empowering experience or a squelching one.

  Differences between you and your emerging adult will continue to exist. Working those differences through and generating solutions that are mutually beneficial are the keys to the process. Conflict helps your emerging adult differentiate from you. And, interestingly enough, the more differentiated she or he becomes, the less inclined your emerging adult will be to “pick fights” with you. In a healthy relationship, honest differences can be declared and less defensive postures can be assumed. This allows both you and your emerging adult to move forward and build a mature, rewarding relationship together.

  Do One Thing Differently

  Before we move on I would like to leave you with an important idea based on the work of Bill O’Hanlon, a wonderful therapist and author of the book Do One Thing Different: Ten Simple Ways to Change Your Life.11 It’s the simple notion of doing a single thing differently. Any change you make that is motivated by love and respect can bring about wonderful and unexpected results. It starts by acknowledging that there is a problem and that the solutions that you have tried before are not working. What can you do differently?

  Try to do one thing that changes your conflict style:

  •Offer praise where you normally offer criticism.

  •Try humor if you usually play the heavy.

  •If your habit is to yell, count to ten before you say anything.

  •If you typically raise your voice, lower it.

  •If you find yourself arguing at night when you’re tired and at your worst, have discussions at a different time of day.

  •If arguments tend to go on and on, use a timer. Give yourself ten minutes and then stop.

  •If the language you use tends to trigger a negative response (e.g., for my son, anything that suggests incompetence), choose new words.

  •Count your positive versus negative remarks. Stick to the Magic Ratio of 5:1.

  Improvise. Change your habitual patterns. Move your relationship with your emerging adult forward.

  Chapter 10

  WORKING WITH THE GRAIN

  Parents frequently become stuck on issues related to control. They don’t know when to assume control and when to give it up. Often, parents become caught up in trying to change their emerging adult children in ways that go counter to their natural grain. Happiness, in turn, is in short supply.

  Think about your own life. How many sleepless nights have you spent trying to “fix” something in your emerging adult’s life, only to realize, with the perspective of time and reflection, that it was not something you needed to worry about, that it was a problem that solved itself or that your emerging adult needed to solve it on his or her own? Emerging adults often become the unwanted recipients of their parents’ need to assert control in their own lives.

  Sonja Lyubormirsky, in a book titled The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, makes a bold statement: Up to 40 percent of happiness is within our control.1 She further claims that happiness is determined by intentional, deliberate activity. Resilient and happy individuals know how to work the 40 percent, let the rest of it go and live their lives accordingly. They seek experiences that afford them opportunities to change the things that they can and let go of the things they cannot change, not unlike the serenity prayer with which you are probably familiar.

  When uncertain times descend, people become particularly vulnerable to seeking control in all the wrong places. They feel increased anxiety about what they can’t control and even more urgently try to control what is within their purview or what they imagine is within their purview, like their emerging adults’ lives. How to make the most of the 40 percent that is within your control in your relationship with your emerging adult, and to feel at peace with the rest that isn’t, will be the focus of this chapter. A byproduct of facing this challenge is that you will probably feel more in control and in charge of your own life.

  The Resiliency Lesson

  When thinking about the 60 percent that is not within your control, consider: the greater the number of children parents have, the more they subscribe to the notion that children are adaptive and that they will not “break.”2 With experience, parents learn to believe in their children’s resilience and in their own. Parents of multiple children are more likely to believe that they have little influence over how their children turn out. It seems that the nature versus nurture debate tilts heavily toward the former the more experienced people become as parents.3 They take less credit for their children’s successes and less blame for their sons’ and daughters’ failures. Experience teaches many parents that their worst fears are usually not realized. In the process, they become more humble about their ability to control and affect their children’s destiny.

  Your contribution to your emerging adult’s development, while very important, is only one of many factors that shape his or her life. Parents of a first child tend to overestimate their contributions. They shift this attitude over time and, by the sixth child, they tend to believe that “the kid is going to turn out pretty much the way the kid is going to turn out.”4 While environment certainly informs who people are, this attitude allows for the possibility of being more relaxed, supportive and self-forgiving in terms of your parenting. It allows for the natural grain of your child to unfold.

  Do you need to have six children to learn this lesson? No. It is true that experience teaches us better than anything else, but you are reading this book because you are open to learning about new ways to paren
t emerging adults. I hope our discussions have helped and will continue to help you to “let go” of some of the control you imagine you need to be exerting. Instead of trying to fix the 60 percent that you can’t regulate, try to focus on the 40 percent that is within your control.

  Ultimately, the only thing you can control is yourself. None of us can ever really change another human being, at least not directly. Yes, parents can set limits with young children and help them to blossom in healthy ways. But even with small children, parents can’t force them to be what they are not. With adult children, all parents can do is change their own words, attitudes and behaviors and invite their sons and daughters to change along with them. Sometimes they accept that invitation; sometimes they don’t. If things aren’t going the way parents want, they can change their expectations. But the other person always has a choice as to whether he or she is going to accommodate to those new expectations. You cannot change others by force; wise individuals learn along the way to be as comfortable when change doesn’t happen as when it does.

  As you think of present situations with your emerging adult where you may be feeling stuck and frustrated, ask yourself: Are you trying to control the 60 percent that is not within your “jurisdiction”? The remainder of this chapter focuses on measures you can take to improve your relationship within the 40 percent that you can control—the piece that has to do with you.

  Optimistic Reminders

  Let’s quickly review the tips, strategies and reassurances I offered earlier. Your sleepless nights regarding your emerging adult, although understandable, are not necessarily warranted when a long view is taken. Most of your worst fears about your son’s or daughter’s future will not happen. Few emerging adults, for example, fail to launch. Research shows that today’s emerging adults are delaying but not foregoing careers, marriage and children. It just seems that they’re taking five to ten years longer, on average, to shift toward independence as compared to their parents. However, the choice to follow one’s path, a path that might be non-traditional, is an option for an increasing number of emerging adults. Encountering stigma and rejection along the way is no longer a given. Emerging adults are more open and receptive to alternative lifestyles. Remember, though, that in many countries people are living ten years longer on average, too. Given the complexity of the world, perhaps it makes sense that these additional ten years be “invested” in the preparatory phase of life, rather than in the retirement years.

  By approximately age thirty, most emerging adults do settle into careers and commit to long-term relationships. By age thirty-five most emerging adults have their first children.5 Their aspirations, in fact, closely resemble those of their parents; emerging adults just want to do it in their own time, in their own way. Eventually, nearly all of them secure stable employment, nearly all become financially independent and few live with their parents!6

  Most relationships between emerging adults and their parents improve over time.7 Tensions ease and communication gets better. While you may currently see your emerging adult as defensive, self-absorbed and irresponsible, your son or daughter will grow up and become a more mature and centered individual. Making mistakes along the way is part of that process. Growth occurs through discomfort, missteps and setbacks. Try to let those mistakes happen. If the consequences of mistakes are dire, step in and do what you can do to help, but then return to your position of giving up control, standing by, letting it be and letting go. Don’t blame yourself; actively resist the temptation to view your emerging adult’s mistakes as your failings.

  Hold on to these encouraging findings, particularly in moments of despair. Your relationship with your emerging adult will get better. Waiting may be the only solution. The moment parents truly give up on the idea that they are going to force change on their emerging adults and accept that change will happen on its own schedule, something often shifts almost immediately in the relationship. And parents start to see change happening in the present.

  Get into Their Mindset

  Making an effort to understand the mindset of your emerging adult is an extremely useful exercise and can help you greatly with separating the 40 percent from the 60 percent. Your son or daughter’s life agenda is not the same as yours. While that may be problematic for you, it is not, in all likelihood, something you can control or change. The needs of your emerging adult are bound to be at odds with yours from time to time. You can’t command those needs to be different. Your emerging adult ought not to be making the same kinds of choices that you are making. Choices that feel “reasonable” and comfortable to you might be inappropriate to a person in a more experimental phase of life.

  The launching process will more than likely take on a trajectory different from what you initially envisioned. In an article she co-authored with Joshua Hicks titled “Whatever Happened to ‘What Might Have Been’?”, Laura King proposes that one measure of adulthood is the ability to maturely confront lost goals, lost possible selves.8 The exploration of “what might have been,” the authors suggest, has direct benefits for well-being.

  As a parent of an emerging adult, you need to disengage from old goals that have been lost. Before you can disengage, you must fully acknowledge these goals (stated and unstated) and incorporate the sense of loss into your own life story. Recognizing the value of a life that includes painful experiences involves acceptance of all the messiness and contradictions. Happiness is not about a perfect life with your emerging adult. It is not without its problems. Struggling with past mistakes can make one feel all the richer for it.

  Pain and struggle can be vehicles for growth. In a sense, those who struggle more are given a greater gift than those whose lives are relatively unchallenging. When mature older people look back on their lives, they recognize the emotional seasoning hardships provided and the unexpected opportunities that arose as a result. Hardships and struggles give life its rich flavors and open new doors.

  You can help your emerging adult (and yourself) construct stories that propel both of you forward while providing the opportunity and space to explore what might have been. All the while, you can help in moving your emerging adult and yourself toward a story that acknowledges strength in adversity. Then your emerging adult can develop a sense of self that is complex and enriched by all experiences, including the experience of loss. Regret about what might have been is part of the narrative. The goal for you and your emerging adult is to be touched by regret but not defined by it.9

  Different Mindsets

  Journalist Cynthia Broderick insightfully reminds of the life concerns that are on the minds of many emerging adults, including:

  •See the world.

  •Live in a cool place.

  •Take risks with your job.

  •Do volunteer work.

  •Use this decade to go to extremes.10

  Most emerging adults want to live life to the fullest and grab the moment. They also want to avoid making some of the same decisions their parents made. They have watched their parents pledge their loyalty, time and life-blood to careers that in their view may have offered their mothers and fathers too little in return. They have seen their parents pursuing material goals on the empty promise that they would bring them inner joy. They have seen their parents’ generation make choices that have led to staggering increases in divorce, depression and disillusionment while fulfillment, free time and family togetherness have been compromised. They don’t want to make the same mistakes. They want to get it right. To do so, they need time to experiment and to make their own choices that will be clarifying.

  This generation of emerging adults is savvy and worldly in many ways. As John Zogby points out in The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, “…they bite every metaphorical coin they are handed to see if the metal is real or false…Growing up online, they have learned something about the ease with which everything can be counterfeited, including emotion.”11 They value authenticity and flexibility. Many emerg
ing adults still define themselves by what they do. However, for some, their day jobs do not define them. As Zogby notes, they run marathons, play in alternative rock bands, sculpt, kickbox, create websites and blog in their non-work hours. They get body piercings and tattoos even if they work in offices. They have online personas that may be wildly at odds with their work personalities.

  An article by Anna Bahney in the New York Times further captures the mindset of many emerging adults. A married twenty-eight-year-old concluded that two weeks of vacation was not enough time to lead a balanced life that included the valuing of friendships and family. He decided to quit his job and travel so that he could connect with important people in his life. His wife supported this decision. He made a calculated decision that his skills were in demand and that he would be marketable to another company when he returned from his trip:

  To be unemployed for six weeks is a healthy thing to help you say ‘I am not defined by what I do’…It helps to understand who I am, who my wife is, and that our identity is more important than anything we do.12

  Parents of emerging adults may not be comfortable risking a good job for a reason as “flimsy” as a desire for adventure and friendship. Your emerging adult’s mindset may well be different from yours. Can you respect that and still offer your support? That support is still critical. Although they are resilient, the unstable terrain emerging adults are navigating calls for your advocacy and encouragement, not your disapproval and judgment. “When employers come and go, when resumes are patchwork quilts and the workforce largely nomadic, people have to look elsewhere to find out who they really are,” says Zogby.13