Parenting is hard, but it is also the greatest thing we will ever do. This parent guide is going to walk you through the hardest stage of parenting. No, it isn’t the infant, toddler, or preschool stages. The hardest stage of parenting is launching your teen/young adult kids.
Yes, I need a parent guide for it. Since it is hard to find, let us share our knowledge and walk each other through the hardest stage of parenting. The launching stage.
Each stage of parenting comes with its challenges. And I’ve parented every stage many times, but nothing compared to trying to launch my pre-adult children. Actually, at the time of this writing the oldest is still living at home, but he is at home with a plan to launch, so that’s ok.
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I recently read a book on raising teens. It was called Feeding the Mouth that Bites You by Kenneth Wilgus. For the most part, I thought the books was good. There was a lot that I didn’t agree with, but there was enough good things that I pulled from it. Due to our family dynamics, the recommendations on how to execute his ideas wouldn’t work for us. But the ideas themselves were good enough to consider.
And that’s what this parent guide is for. I will share with you how we execute the ideas, but how you do it may look differently. Take the ideas in this parent guide and make them work for you.
If you’re standing at the edge of the parenting cliff, watching your pre-adult stretch his wings getting ready to launch, then this parent guide is for you.
Parent Guide: Why Launching Your Kids is the Hardest Stage
I am currently parenting almost every age group. We are no longer in the infant and toddler stage, but we aren’t that far from it. So I can honestly say, from the middle of parenting all stages and with lots of experience behind me, that the pre-adult stage of parenting is the hardest.
After much analysis of my own thoughts, I’ve reached the conclusion that this is why it is so hard. The decisions that they are making have greater consequences. The ripple effect will have an impact on their lives for years to come.
In the toddler phase, the consequences for the decisions they made were very short term. Unless you had a daredevil child, then broken bones last a little longer. But for the most part, their decisions won’t affect them for the rest of their lives. Which is how it should be, they are toddlers after all.
I understand that most of learning is from experience, and in that experience it is from failing and trying again. So failure is not a bad thing. It is just when that failure could have been preventable or didn’t need to happen that causes parents to face palm, and wonder if they heard anything you said while growing up.
That’s why we need a parent guide, so we can all face palm together.
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The Parent Guide to Relationships with Pre-Adult Children
Parenting is the only job you will ever do where success is measured by how well you work yourself out of the job. We will never stop being parents, but our role of raising our kids will come to an end. And it is a necessary ending. The relationship will need to shift.
It is hard seeing kids end the relationship with their parents abruptly because they don’t know how to make the shift from a relationship with parents as a child to relationship with parents as an adult.
Parents, it is hard to see you cling so tenaciously to the parent-child relationship, that your kids feel like the only option they have is to end it abruptly.
Yes, it is hard for the parents too, but we are supposed to be the mature ones. So it is necessary for us to help make this transition.
Our goals as parents is to raise successful adults. Sometimes that means watching them make dumb decisions.
The Parent Guide to Watching Dumb Decisions
Our kids are going to make decisions that will cause us to scratch our heads in wonder or to face palm in total exasperation. Hopefully, they won’t be too dumb. Yes, there are levels of dumb—little dumb, medium dumb, or totally stupid.
But now is the time for them to make all the dumb decisions because we can still be a little bit of a safety net. Not in the sense that we will fix all their problems, they still have to figure that out, but maybe we can mitigate ruining their lives a little bit. But this would depend on the level of dumb that has been ascended too.
When you see your kids make dumb decisions, you need to understand you can’t fix. Yes, you can give them advice, they are still living in your home, so they are required to listen to your advice. But you can’t go in and talk to their boss, or mend a friendship. That is something that only they can do.
I get it. It is hard to watch. I tell my kids all the time that their actions reflect back on us as parents, so make me look good (ok, it’s a joke, but we need some levity). Am I the only that still questions the parenting style of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip?
It is normal. We seeing something dumb, and we wonder what the parents did to make their kids this way. Ultimately, your kids need to take responsibility for themselves. And we can disavow them that would work too (yes, more levity).
The Parent Guide to Conversations
You will never talk so much or repeat yourself so much as you do in this stage. But it is a good thing. This is how you help make that shift from parent-child relationship to parent-adult children relationship. Talk a lot. Don’t let them shut the conversation down. Talk about everything—work relationships, romantic relationships, politics, worldview—go deep.
At some point they will navigate all these things, so start the conversation now. They’ve never done this before, so give them the tool they need. I know most of these things need to come through experience, but it helps if your kids at least have an idea of what to do.
Not every conversation has to be deep. The other night a child went up to the child’s room after dinner to introvert. You know, get away from everyone to re-energize. I saw the child chilling on the bed, so I went over as a joke, and sat there with the child. We just started talking, nothing deep, then the child started telling me about work stuff. And things that were happening there. I made myself available, and the child took the initiative to talk to me.
It doesn’t always work this way, but I think we need to find opportunities, make ourselves available, start silly conversations, have deep conversations, and just find time to talk to each other. Yes, it can be frustrating, but remember you are the mature one.
The Parent Guide to Responsibility
The only way our kids are going to launch well is by giving them responsibility. Because that is adult life. You don’t want to dump everything on the as soon as you launch them. Give them incremental responsibility.
Here are somethings that we’ve given responsibility to our kids over time. Chores around the house. Cooking dinner once a week. Completing schoolwork—like dual enrollment. Looking for and applying to jobs. Creating a teenagers resume for themselves. Now we may encourage them in a direction, but ultimately it is on them to apply for a job. Because car insurance is so expensive, they can’t get a driver’s license if they can’t pay insurance. And that is another responsibility they have, paying their own bills—insurance, phone, haircuts, food, clothes, and any extras they want.
This is what works for us. You may find that this is great idea, but the execution of the idea looks different for you. The important thing is to give our kids responsibility so that they can own it which teaches them self-discipline, and they discover they can do it, which builds their confidence.
When they get success on their own it increases their confidence. It is important for pre-adults to know that they can do this on their own.
The Parent Guide to Kids Living at Home
Your kids may be adults, but if they are living at home then they still need to follow the rules. Now the rules shouldn’t be the same at your 11-year-old, but you can still give them a curfew, chore, and certain expectations for behavior. These are all reasonable because they still get the privilege of living at home.
I get it housing is expensive, so if they want to work and save money, they may need a buffer of living at home for a while.
Here’s our parent guide and what we do. This may or may not work for you in execution, but it gives you an idea. Since they work, they also contribute to the grocery bill because that is expensive too. They need to let us know where they are at. Not to helicopter parent them but for safety, so we know when to expect them home. They have a curfew because there are other kids in the home, and we have to work in the morning.
They live here rent free, so they still do household chores and cook dinner. They are part of the household, so they need to contribute.
At this point, we haven’t approached rent yet because attending college gets them out of paying rent. But it will be approached soon. I do want them to be able to build a nest egg or save to buy a home, so if they come up with an actionable plan to do this, then rent will be reduced.
The one thing they can’t do is live at home and be lazy. There needs to be an achievable, time constrained plan.
Conclusion: Parent Guide to Embrace the Launch
Parenting through the launch is hard, no doubt about it. But it’s also transformative. As your kids step into their adult lives, you get to walk beside them in a brand-new way—still full of love, but with open hands. Give yourself grace, and know this: you’re not alone, and you’re doing a beautiful job navigating the mess and magic of this season.
This stage feels hard because it is hard. Going from child to adult is one of the biggest milestones we will encounter. Remember, you are the mature one, and you need to set your kids up for success.
This parent guide is all about handling the launch into adulthood. What advice would you give other moms?
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