#227 3 Ways Well-Meaning Parents Hurt Independence (without realizing it) Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins  00:00

You’re trying to help your child make rounded, informed decisions about their future. And if you’re honest, it’s not always clear what your role is supposed to be. Am I right? I’ve been there before. Should you step in and guide them more? Should you back off and give them space? Should you trust their school or others to handle it? See, I see three patterns of what parents do at this stage as we’re supporting our 15 to 25 year olds. And what comes next? Some parents do way too much, and that’s kind of obvious, right? The helicopter parents, however, some step back far too much, way too far, and some well, they’re offering support, but they do it in ways that actually slow things down, even when they’re trying to help. It comes from a good place, and it might, on the surface, looks okay, and all of this, my friends, it leads to the same place your child isn’t building real ownership, real agency over their direction. Hi. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and this is College and Career Clarity, where we help families with 15 to 25 year olds prepare to get those kiddos launched into adulthood with clarity and confidence. Okay, so what are we going to talk about this week? Well, there’s a real problem, and it gets a little tricky, because there’s no clear playbook for this stage of parenting, these young people, right? You know, when we were getting ready to have them, or maybe you’re the partner of the mom who was getting ready to have them, there was literally a book to call, called What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and there’s absolutely no version of this for this phase of life. And if you like me, I have three kids. I even have twins. I often thought I’m raising them at the same time, and they could not be more different. So as parents, you just try to figure it out as you go. But what happens when there’s no playbook is we, as the adults, tend to lean into our own wiring. Some of us like control. Some like to avoid conflict at all costs, and some get in this overthinking phase, and they get stuck, just like they see their kids get stuck sometimes and others you want to take get traction that you and you want to fix things so quickly that you move too fast. And when any of those happen, you end up reacting, adjusting, and then just dealing with that situation that’s right in front of you. Last week, we talked about how to focus on the right finish line. If you want to go back and listen to this one, I want you to think about this day, just like when we were teaching our kids how to drive. And if you have a 15 or 16 year old, maybe you’re not quite there yet, but for sure, you can picture it. Some parents grab that wheel too much. Or, you know, the the driver’s ed guy, he’s got that extra brake on the other side, slam it on the brake. Others are correcting constantly. They’re they’re letting their kid do it, but they’re correcting them constantly. Neither of these actually allows the kid to learn others step back too far, like you have literally got down to the car and said, I emotionally can’t handle being your passenger, so you hand it off to somebody else to teach them. And I want to tell you that while either of those feels maybe safe or good at the moment, neither actually works. What I see are three patterns that show up with this stage of like career development, getting ready to figure out what comes after graduation, whether that’s high school graduation, college graduation. There are three patterns that emerge, all with these teens and young adult kids that we have, number one, doing too much over directing, taking over too quickly. Maybe you didn’t start by trying control it, but you step in too fast when they’re in the messy middle, stepping back too far. You avoid conversations because, well, that’s going to lead to tension. And we know how teens are, or you step back and you just hope it’s all going to work itself out in time others the third, the third type, is outsourcing ownership, handing it off to others, assuming somebody else will guide it, or somebody is better prepared to do it than you, and ultimately, what they all do is they reduce ownership and agency for your kid, they need to learn ownership and agency, because over time, you need them to develop the ability to be an adult and make informed, grounded decisions. See, this isn’t just about helping, it’s about how to actually support them so they are building because over time, your child is learning. Do I make the decisions, or do other people make them for me, and if I have to make the decisions, how in the world do I actually make good ones? This is real training ground for what comes after they’re out of your household. Because you know, and I know they’ve got decades of making grounded, informed decisions in front of them. I was just talking to my own daughter today about she’s trying to decide, does she buy a new car? Does she keep driving the car that she’s in? She’s 24 I was asking questions, and she finally did ask me for my opinion, and I gave it to her, but I didn’t give her just my opinion. I said, Well, I probably would do this, but here’s what you need to be thinking about, right? So these kids got to figure out, am I reacting under pressure? Am I following just what’s in front of me? Am I making informed, grounded decisions? Because here’s the difference, there’s a difference between confidence and second guessing, and we want all of these kids to confidently know what they should do next. We are not trying to raise kids who wait to be told or actually need our constant input. I was doing that with this. Do I buy a new car conversation today, I was giving no input. I was listening, I was asking questions, and I gave no input until I was asked to give input because I want to raise a daughter all all of my kids who can make decisions, understand how they’re making them, and trust themselves in the process, instead of treating me or others as their backstop, right, as their guide. So this is where the parents get stuck, because stepping in is going to create too much dependence. Stepping back completely doesn’t teach them anything either. And so when you do bring in support, which honestly, I’m a huge fan of, I have, I have hired plenty of coaches over the years, and they’re a great support. It should never replace ownership. Good support systems help build it. The goal is to teach them how to do this. Well, okay, so let’s break down what this really looks like, what not to do, what not to outsource, and what actually can work to get the type of young adult that you want to be able to do life well. So bucket one, taking over. This looks like making decision. These are symptoms that you would be doing this, making decisions for them, pushing a path based on your own agenda. That’s a hard one, because from the womb, we have these ideas of what their life might look like, and sometimes they start to deviate. I’ve been there too stepping in to rescue them too quickly when they’re in the messy metal or over directing, because we do it for short term relief, but the long term is it creates the dependence on things other than themselves. You might get faster decisions, you might have less conflict, but they don’t own it, and you don’t see agency begin to develop. Now let’s talk about outsourcing. So this actually looks like support, but a lot of parents get the support, but then they totally step out of the process. This is a family journey to launch these kiddos. I see this show up all the time, particularly in areas like college decisions, career decisions, a lot of the big decisions. Who does it get outsourced to? You rely on schools, high school, college. You rely on counselors, Career Centers. You hire an independent counselor, a coach, a mentor, okay, sometimes even you outsource it to a career assessment on its own, if you’ve been listening for a while, and you know me well, you know, I do believe in assessments, but I’m really picky about which one. Questions and only when they’re used in the right way. If you want to understand at a deeper level the role I think they actually play in the process that we’re talking about today. Go grab my video, flourish, coaching, co.com, forward slash video, and I walk you through it right then you’re going to hear what I believe about assessments in the role they play and when they can add value and when they can under mine your attraction. See, with all of the above assessments, schools, coaches, they’re the expert. So often parents believe they’ll get this figure out. Or maybe because teens can be difficult. Young adults can be difficult. It’s a natural, normal development stage. You begin to believe that they’re going to listen to someone else better than they’re going to listen to you and listen that pushback from your child, like I said, is completely normal, but that doesn’t mean that you should abdicate and melt into the background your voice, my friend, it still matters more than you think, because here’s the deal, when parents completely step out, when you get out of that car and you let somebody else come in, into that that passenger seat you’ve handed off for guidance, not support. There’s a difference, but you as a parent, particularly if things don’t go well, if they begin to flounder, you my friend, are going to carry the outcome. I see it all the time. It reminds me of our launch client, Christy Miller. She was feeling completely overwhelmed in her junior year because his natural wiring and his personality is pretty darn laid back. He had no direction, and honestly, he wasn’t feeling very motivated to get some but this was not Christie’s first rodeo. She has an older daughter, so she understood very rightly so that there were looming deadlines in front of them that were just months away. Now it was normal that her son didn’t understand this. This was not his fault. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he was sure frustrating the heck out of his mom. We’ve all been there before, right? Once they joined us in launch Career Clarity and they had a process, a framework. Things began to shift pretty fast, and as Christie said, by the time they got to senior year, it was a lot less stressful, and he still had his same laid back personality intact. This wasn’t about making him into somebody different, but he now had clarity and direction, which created agency. So they’ve got to do it. Her son, Carson had to do it at the end of the day, because if they don’t, they’re going to be still coming home to you living in your house. You’re going to be their financial backstop backstop, and you’re still going to be the one helping them figure out what comes next. So don’t step out of the process fully, because sometimes, ultimately that’s just going to lead to frustration, confusion and maybe even a little bit resentment on both of your parts, right? So here’s the balance. Support is not the problem. The problem is, when support replaces ownership, there should be people in the car, the right people, and when there is your child, should still be the one driving, okay, this type of support builds ownership and agency, and when they get that, when it clicks, things get exciting. So let’s reframe this in how to do this. Because sometimes people say to me, like, okay, that makes sense to me, but what do I do? What are the tactical, real things that I do? They need a structure, but you do not have to be the one to create this, to reinvent it. What can it look like in real time? They don’t have a network yet, it is completely fine for you to begin making introductions for networking, possible jobs, informational interviews, people that work in industries that your kid might be looking at. You should be making the introductions, helping them access the right support, investing time and resource of Austin, financially and places where it matters, you also need to create a rhythm in your home. Is creating a culture where talking about future planning, which, by the way, I don’t like to call it college planning, because some of these kids, you might want them to go to college, but they’re only college curious, so we’re just going to call it future planning. It reduces the level of anxiety with it like we’re just talking about the future. Make that normal, curate conversations. That’s why, in my newsletter. Every week I give a family conversation cue to set you up to be able to have the deeper conversations without directing them. And when it’s time to make decisions, talk through it together and don’t miss this one. Have expectations. This matters. You are already, as a parent, making a significant investment in your child’s future, time, energy, money. It is okay to say this matters. I’m giving you some mandate, some deadlines. We’re going to engage in this with some intention. It’s just how you handle driving. You didn’t hand them off the the keys and say, go figure it out. You didn’t do it for them. They’ve got to pass that driver’s test. But you stayed involved until they could safely do it on their own, until they were ready. So don’t do it for them. Don’t abdicate, because this, my friends, is where ownership is built. So what can you do? They draft the email. You review it, they send it. You make the introduction. They follow up. You might have to remind them to go check their email on a regular basis, because life does not take place on Snapchat and the professional world, right? You sit with them while they take the next step that feels scary for them in the moment. Don’t leave them alone, and sometimes you need to let them just sit in a little bit of discomfort, because that we know as adults is where growth actually happens. So if you’re thinking, Yeah, but I don’t even know what to have them do next, that’s exactly why I built launch Career Clarity. You do not have to guess your way through this. When ownership is built early, what we see in launch Career Clarity is you will start to see clearer direction, better decisions, more confidence and more traction. And something else happens. They’ll start doing it on their own. You won’t have to nag them to do it. They begin to act more independently, like the adult that you’re hoping to launch, and you won’t have to prompt them as much. That is the goal when it’s not built? The symptoms you’re going to see of that is hesitation, second guessing, dependence and delay. You don’t have to have all the answers, but your role, it still matters more than you think. And if you want a clear framework for how to support them without taking over and without stepping back. We walk you through that right inside launch Career Clarity. Just go to flourish, coachingco.com, forward slash course to learn how we do this. Learn about our career confidence framework. And if you’re listening to this in real time, in May, there is no better time than summer, those lazy days of summer, we can rejuvenate and gain traction, real traction, by the time Labor Day hits, you’re not just helping your child make decisions. You are helping them learn to make them for the rest of their life. Okay, if this resonates, this is something that you’ve been talking about with other parents. Share this episode with them. They need to know how to appropriately support too. Okay, see you next week, my friends.