5 Top Parenting Tips for Letting Go with Dr. Jack Stoltzfus

The Launch Code: Loving and Letting Go of Our Adult Children is my book on this subject, due out at the end of the summer. In it, I describe several practices that constitute the code or key to the successful launch of a young adult. In short, it means letting go in love.”  The starting point and first practice are demonstrating and communicating unconditional love.

This secures the relationship, so no matter what, the young adult believes they are loved.  Beyond this, the second practice involves building a closer relationship with the young adult. This highlights the principle that you can’t let go until you hold on. This closer relationship is not one of controlling and directing but of supporting and encouraging a separate identity and fostering independence. The third and fourth practices of apology and forgiveness deal with the effect of these binding emotions on restraining or damaging the launch process. The last two represent the platform for the young adult to move forward. Practice six involves showing a backbone that requires the young adult to step up and take responsibility. Finally, the last practice is letting go and dealing with feelings of loss and grief. Following this code of practice, parents are more likely to launch young adults successfully while maintaining a caring bond with them. Incidentally, my definition of a successful launch is not just the ability of the young person to be independent but to sustain the relationship with parents 

Parents are the guiltiest segment of our society. This comes about because, today, parents invest so heavily in the success and happiness of their kids. If the young adult is not happy or successful, parents can believe it is their fault and actually up their efforts to control or direct the young adult.  This strategy is counter to the normal process of letting go. Sometimes, parents are bound not by guilt but by anger and resentment, especially if their child has been difficult, destructive, or abusive. Both guilt and resentment keep parents and young adults bound emotionally and unable to separate. Apology is the antidote to guilt, and forgiveness is the antidote to resentment. In some cases, with pronounced guilt over past parenting, parents may need to forgive themselves or risk atoning by giving in to unrealistic demands by their kids.

1. Invest in the relationship with parents and express love and appreciation to ensure the security that comes from this.
2. As parents shift their relationship from command and control to a more coaching and consultative role, young adults need to take advantage of the advice and guidance parents offer while retaining the right to make their own decisions.
3. Young adults must see that their parents are imperfect, have made and continue to make mistakes, and be willing to forgive.
4. Young adults must own and work on important life-stage tasks of identity, independence, and intimacy while keeping parents informed of their progress. It’s important that they step up and take responsibility for their lives and reduce dependency on parents.
5. Just like parents, adult children need to let go. This can be bittersweet and uncomfortable if there has been a closeness with parents, but it is necessary. Letting go should not be at the expense of the bond with parents.

Young adulthood is a difficult and critical period in family life. It requires parents and young adults to reform their relationship from parent-child to adult to adult. Some parents struggle with making this shift, which requires them to move from being directive and controlling to being consultative and consulting. For parents, it starts with acknowledging they can’t control their young adult and are not responsible for their decisions and actions or their success and happiness.

For the young adult, it requires courage, risk-taking, and experimentation as related to newfound freedom, trying different identities, and engaging with others, including finding an intimate partner. Today’s world is different from that of the nineteen seventies and eighties, with multiple communication vehicles and resources. But the digital world does not spell more success and happiness.  Recent studies have indicated that the loneliest segment of our society is that of young adults. They also have the highest rates of depression, anxiety, drug addiction, and death by overdose. All the more reason for parents to show love and respect and a desire to be in their adult children’s lives but in a supportive and encouraging way.

Showing and expressing unconditional love may be the one thing that causes a young person to think twice about self-harm, suicide, or experimenting with dangerous gloves. Without the message of unconditional love and knowing that they matter no matter what, it’s hard to embrace these messages oneself.

This is parents' biggest struggle, but it doesn’t just start in the late teens and young adult period. Early on, parents need to master the rhythm of holding on and letting go. Holding on involves messages of love and value.  Letting go involves messages of freeing the child over time to stand on their own and not sweeping in to take over or relieve the child of consequences. At the toddler stage the parents have to risk letting go, knowing the toddler may fall as they try to walk.

At the same time, the parent must intercede when the child toddles toward the street or reaches for a hot stove. This dynamic of support, encouragement, setting limits, and requiring responsibility continue through childhood and adulthood. During the late teens and young adult years, the challenge remains the same: balancing love and backbone, and parents may have to stay on or restrict access to resources if the young adult is not responsible. 

I am amazed at the favorable response from parents at my workshops when they participate in exercises to increase their listening skills. We all assume that we know how to listen, but parents often think their role is to advise and guide them alone and miss the opportunity to deepen their relationship with young adults through listening and seeking understanding. It’s a fundamental skill in relationship building, and as parents, we don’t do enough of this. Because of the speed of change in society today, parents are often a step behind their kids and need to listen and try to understand the new world in which they live.

It’s not unusual for me to contact one of my adult children to help me with some digital or computer challenge. In past generations, parents knew more than their kids, and often, kids sought advice or understanding from parents. Now, parents need to learn from their kids and often can’t give advice in areas with which they have no experience or knowledge.  Parents need to have the courage to ask how they can be better parents at the young adult stage and be prepared to adopt one or more of these suggestions.  Who better to ask how to be a better parent than our kids?

When my daughter was getting married, she asked what the most important quality of a successful marriage is; my response was honesty.  Feelings toward a spouse and family members can wax and wane, but honesty has to be the cornerstone. Parents have an opportunity to model honesty in what they say and do and the extent to which they keep their promises. Parents can also invite transparency from their kids by being open and transparent themselves.  Brené Brown proposes that vulnerability is the key to intimacy. Parents who are vulnerable, open to discussing their failures and challenges as young adults, and willing to admit mistakes as parents invite this type of response from young adults.  Relationships are inherently reciprocal, and when we as parents are loving, open, and transparent, we are likely to experience these traits in our kids. 

In my forthcoming book, I liken the letting go process in the young adult stage of family life to parents teaching a child how to ride a bicycle. Here is this excerpt.

Teaching our children how to ride a bicycle may contain some lessons for how we should help our adult children transition into adulthood. Do you remember how you taught your child how to ride? Typically, the parent helps the child onto the bike and steadies the bike. Next, the parent tells the child to begin to pedal as soon as the parent pushes the bike forward. The parent reassures the child that they will stay next to the child in case of trouble. Finally, the parent gives the child a push, yells “pedal, “and runs alongside for twenty or thirty feet as the child begins to ride independently. Learning to ride a bicycle can be a metaphor for launching the young adult. Launching our child into adulthood is another letting-go experience. 

• We ready them for the journey by reassuring them that they can do this on their own.
• We provide encouragement and guidance to our young adults. 
• We stand behind them and help them begin pedaling.
• We tell them we will run with them on their journey.
• We partner with them to provide the initial push (backbone) and challenge them to pedal on.

At the risk of stretching this metaphor too far, we recognize that some stalled young adults have their feet on the ground and resist getting up on the bike to pedal. Some impaired young adults may try to pedal, but they wobble and fall and must ask us to help them return to the bike. Some derailed adults have ignored our guidance, peddled off the pavement, crashed, and need help healing before returning to the bike. And, finally, some estranged young adults, sadly, have ridden off, never to be seen or heard from again.