Ready to Move Out: Preparing Your Child to be Independent

“10, 9, 8… check responsibility levels… 7, 6, 5… check independence levels… 4, 3, 2… Houston, we have a problem. Johnny’s 18 but not ready to launch. He’s not ready to live on his own. Abort launch!”

It is a commonly held believe that once children graduate high school, they move out of their parents’ home and start a life of their own. This is often referred to as a launch. Thus the failure to launch, like the popular movie of the same name, is when children are unprepared to leave and instead stay living with their parents as adults.

The failure to launch is familiar to 22 million American families who have adult children living at home (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/286762_parents28.html). There are many reason why this phenomena happens including economic hardship but sometimes the launch fails due to the lack of adult skills. So how do parents prepare their children for the ultimate launch date? Mainly, by teaching the essential life skills of adulthood. I liken it to reverse engineering.  If the end product of your parenting is responsible adulthood, what are the steps and stages needed to achieve it?

The following are some essential life skills necessary to a successful launch:

1. Relationship Skills: The parent-child relationship starts the child off with the ability to bond, relate, communicate and to love others. This relationship is so crucial to the child that it effects intellectual, physical, and social development. Spending time interacting and responding to your child produces this bond. Parents who have difficulty in this arena should seek coaching through books, audio books, and/or counselors. The pay-off of a bonded relationship is big because it helps create the ability to have meaningful connections.
2. Independence: Children naturally push to become independent. At two they want to do everything themselves. Some parents find it easier to tie the child’s shoe, for instance, or make their bed instead of teaching and allowing their child to learn. Teaching takes patience as parents have to wait for children’s awkward and sometimes unsuccessful attempts to do a task all by themselves. And yet encouraging independence at an early age means less work for the parent and almost guarantees that the child will be prepared for his/her launch
3. Financial Management: Learning how to make, save, and spend money is paramount in preparing for adulthood. There are several ways to accomplish this: Begin by giving children earning opportunities, setting up bank accounts, and expecting them to pay for their own extras. Children can earn an allowance by doing extra chores at home. Once they advance to adolescence, give them a monthly budgeted income to manage clothing, entertainment, gas, and even a cell phone bill (basically the money you spend on them already). If it is your expectation that they have a car at this age, they need to be included in providing for the insurance. As they earn through summer jobs or school year jobs, their money should be included in that budget.
4. Emotional Self-Regulation: Our ability to manage our emotions within our environment, our relationships and even inside our own heads is crucial to our success. Learning how to calm oneself, express emotions, and find solutions begins in childhood. In order to train your children successfully, you too must be able to emotionally self-regulate. Once you understand how to breathe, use self-talk and effectively problem solve, then you can teach your children these tools.
5. Time-Management: The ways in which people organize their time differ widely but some manner of organization is important. Some children like regimented schedules, clear cut time-lines, and doing things in a specific order. Some children are on their own time-lines and always dawdling. Either way, society expects us to be on-time. Thus, help your child develop an understanding of his/her daily schedule by reviewing it, printing it and then breaking down the details of each task. It might look like this: 7 A.M.: Get up (go to the bathroom, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, put on shoes, get backpack and lunch), 8:15: go to school (walk 5 blocks, stand in line, go in at the bell). Ask your child how much time it will take to do those little in-between tasks. How fast do they need to get dressed? Or eat? Or walk to school? As they get older, you might help them breakdown the timeline of their homework. Some children do this naturally and others struggle. This skill will serve them the rest of their lives.
6. Social Interaction: In order to get a job, one must demonstrate good social skills. These skills can be as complicated as developing good friendships or as simple as good manners and appropriate grooming. In my social skills group for elementary children, we teach such things as taking turns, waiting patiently, sharing, managing materials, participating, asking for help, working as a team, staying on task, saying please and thank you, encouraging others, communicating clearly, resolving conflicts, praising others, and following directions. These are the skills that make for a well-rounded adult too. Each stage of development should build toward the next stage. It’s difficult to learn manners at 20 if you didn’t learn them at 5 just like it’s difficult to manage money as an adult if you where never taught how as a child.

When the day comes for your children to launch, whether at 18 or 22, they will need adult skills to manage a well-balanced life. If you can encourage your children to enjoy learning by decreasing the conflict, increasing the self-praise, and celebrating the successes, then your children will be ready for the ultimate launch.