Failure To Launch discussion with Dr Jack Stoltzfus

In this episode, Dr. Jack discusses the complexities of parenting adult children, particularly focusing on the challenges of 'failure to launch.' He emphasizes the shared responsibility between parents and young adults in the launching process, the cultural differences in perceptions of independence, and the importance of setting healthy boundaries. The conversation also touches on mental health issues, addiction, and the need for long-term planning for young adults. Dr. Jack provides insights into the myths surrounding parenting and the emotional challenges faced by parents, while also highlighting the joys of grandparenting.

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Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:03.31)
Hello and welcome to ABC's of Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today is Friday, January the 31st, 2025. And today we've got Dr. Jack is our special guest on our podcast and Dr. Jack, I would love for you to introduce yourself to the listening audience. Sure. Thanks, James. Thanks for having me. So I'm a

clinical psychologist, I'm America's launch coach. That's a trademark that I have of myself. So I've been in clinical work for 40 years, over 40 years. The last 10 or 15, I focused on parents of young adults because I began seeing more parents of young adults having struggles. A lot of it is around failure to launch type challenges. And I decided, well,

I did my dissertation work on adolescent emotional separation with parents. So that gave me some foundation for the book that I wrote and the work that I do. And then the fact that I'm a parent of three not so young adults anymore who are marketable jobs and married and I end up with 11 grandchildren too.

wow. Exhausting at times. I love them, but they're exhausting. I bet.

So in 2015, my wife and I had two, at that time we had two teenagers still living in a home and they were giving us a run for our money. And I was doing everything I could to stay out of prison. I didn't want any boyfriends. So I told my wife, said, you know, we had been on Facebook for a while and I said, let's start a parenting support group on Facebook and see if there's anybody else dealing with some of this stuff. And I started out with 10 members.

James Moffitt (02:05.396)
And now we're up to like 1.3 thousand. So we have, we have a lot of parents in our support group from all, primarily the United States, but we have people from Australia and other countries as well. And only about 25 or to 40 members are active at any given time. A lot of people just read the messages. Some people respond, some don't. But anyway, it's, it's been painfully obvious to me that

There's a lot of parents out there that are facing some of the same similar struggles. Sure. And we have, we have 15 or 20 different topics that are reoccurring in a lot of our podcasts, episodes like boundaries and things like that. Failure launches, one of them boomerang children, you know, kids that come back to come back to the house because the economy is so tough that they can't afford to stand on their own two feet.

any length of time so they wind up back at their parents house. So anyway, this podcast has been going on since May of 2023 and I've been very blessed to be introduced to quality guests such as yourself through PodMatch. Probably the first, I don't know, 15 podcast episodes that was kind of flying by the seat of my pants.

And I was able to get some podcast guests to help me out. And I really appreciated that. But now that I'm on Podmatch, I get a lot of real quality guests and I really appreciate that. and I looked at, I saw your profile and I thought, well, Jack, Dr. Jack would be a perfect person to be on the podcast episode and to share with moms and dads.

the issue of, you know, the failure to launch issue. And there's other things. I know I've got a whole list of questions here that I can ask. So like, I'm just gonna ask the first one, I guess. Is it harder for parents to launch adult children today? And if so, why? Well, I would say it is harder for the parents to launch and for the kids to launch themselves.

James Moffitt (04:30.767)
I mean, somebody asked me once, whose responsibility is it to launch? The parents or the kids? Well, I think it's a shared responsibility. And I think there are problems letting go from both sides. And I think what's contributed to that problem from the parent side is that over time and starting with my generation, I'm a boomer in the boomer generation, I think we shifted to having much more investment in the happiness and success of our kids.

And that led to more hanging on. And if they're unhappy or they're not succeeding, we're going to keep trying to have them find that happiness and that success. And that goes into the 20s. you'll hear the helicopter parent or the parent goes to the college with their son or daughter and argues about a grade or something like that. So it kind of comes from that desire to see these kids be happy and successful.

And of course the kids feel that pressure then too. So they may hang on more from their side. And it's kind of a collusion between the two, I think at times. Right. So I think a lot of our parents have between the age of 12 and infinity, right? 12 to 40 and something like that. at what time, at what age do you think parents

should be starting to prepare their kids for the idea of leaving the nest. Well, I think you could go all the way back to birth and letting the letting go experience early and then the toddler allowing the toddler to move away. So throughout the parenting years, there's a lot of letting go. talk about parents need to hold on and then let go. They need to show the love and the hold of the young adult, but they need to let

keep letting go. So that involves the first going off to school, that involves getting that driver's license, which is a scary time of letting go and then going to school after that too. you know, it's, I think if you want to kind of narrow it down, I think this period of somewhere around 15 to 18 is where parents need to shift from being directing and controlling

James Moffitt (06:56.515)
to being more consultative and supportive of the young adult or teenagers identity development and their independence. it's parents don't make that shift and they keep squeezing and being more controlling. I think that's fraught with a lot of problems at that point in time. So, right. So parents need to shift or transition from the parent child relationship

to the mentor relationship, right? They're more of Yeah. And I know that's probably really difficult for moms because moms are typically the nurturing type. They're involved more in the, know, mom's love and dad's love or two different types of love. And maybe the father is more authoritative or more of a rule setter and the mom's more loving and more nurturing.

yeah. My, my, and a mentor that's described the traditional family. This was more years ago when the father was working, the mother was home that the mother, mothers teach kids about unconditional love and the fathers teach kids about conditional love that there's no free lunch out there. Right. Yeah. Nowadays, both parents, because they're working, need to teach both, both of those messages. There's no free lunch, but

We'll always love you no matter what. That's the foundation that they can move out on.

stepping out on your own and spreading your wings and becoming independent as a, let's say a teenager, moving into adulthood and, you know, they step out and, you know, if you get lucky and they do launch and they go out into the world and all of a sudden all this stuff slaps them in the face. They got to come up with all these deposits and pet deposits and all your utility deposits and rent deposit this and just all of this stuff hits them all at once and

James Moffitt (09:05.583)
It's really kind of scary because up until that point, the parents have provided everything for them financially. Right. And so, uh, yeah, it can be, it can be kind of a scary proposition for the kids. Oh yeah. And if, if they've been to college, they'll often end up with a 40,000 is the average over 40,000 a college debt. And they can't, you know, they can't move into, they can't buy a house that's out of reach, but the, the amount that it costs to rent an apartment.

means they can't save to buy a house either. Cause there's a couple of hours to rent an apartment. So they're really in a tough place. And I think it argues for some of the kids that stay at home and they get along with their parents and they save money to be able to move out, maybe get a house. definition of a successful launch doesn't have anything to do with the parent, whether the young adults living at home or not. Basically what it is is that the young adult has moved toward

uh, self-sufficiency and responsible independence while maintaining a caring connection with the parents. And that can be, that person can be at home and that person can be outside the home. I think it's a little bit of a counter, uh, maybe contrarian view of what failure to launch is. Cause in our country, if somebody's living at home at 22, 23, that's a, you know, that's a reason for some concern.

I just did a podcast, James, with a guy in India. And he was saying in India, it's quite the opposite. If you're 23 years old and you're not living at home, that's a problem. Cause 70, 80 % of the young adults who live at home in India, but we have a kind of culture with a bias that you need to be out. You need to be out on your own pretty quickly. And that's not happening nowadays as it did 20, 30 years ago.

Well, I guess I've never been really outside of the United States. I don't I'm not really that familiar with some of the different cultures, but I think in some cultures, parents and grandparents live together in the same house. And when parents are working, the grandparents are there to supervise and to help train the kids. And so I think that I think the our culture here in the US is we don't have that anymore.

James Moffitt (11:34.344)
I'm a boomer as well. so I don't know when that shift happened. I don't know if it was the Industrial Revolution or where, but at some point there was a shift and both parents had to start going to work and all of that. Sure. And I think we're kind of an independent culture as opposed to a community kind of culture where we all take care of each other. So here,

independence and your ability to be on your own is something that people should be striving for, at least in terms of, I think, a bias that exists here. Right. So some of these questions on your profile are very appropriate for some of the stories that I see on our private Facebook support group.

We hear a lot of, or I read a lot of messages where parents are struggling with trying to provide a roof over the heads and provide, know, they're either haven't, either they failed to launch or they're not ready to launch because of emotional or maturity levels or issues like that, or they've launched and they failed and came back. And so the parents are trying to provide them with a safe haven to get their act together, right?

and like you said, save for a down payment on a house or their college education or whatever it might be. And then you have some 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds that are taking advantage of that safe haven, yet they're being belligerent or they have destructive behavior patterns. They're disrespectful to the parents. They're yelling at their parents, cursing at their parents.

And parents are at their wits end because they're like, well, we want to help our kids. But we're, we're instead of helping our kids, we're enabling them. We're enabling that bad behavior. And so, you know, one of your questions is, is, is when should a parent evict? And I hear those stories all the time where parents don't want to evict their kids, whether they have been in jail and came home or they're involved in addictions or

James Moffitt (13:57.235)
Cause they're, they're afraid to evict because they don't want to see their kids living on the side of the road or in a tent city somewhere. Yeah. Well, I wrote a pretty popular blog and I said, never evict your young adult. So, and what I, the conclusion that I came to and why I kind of put that title on it is that I tell parents you, you're not evicting the young adult. If the young adult can say in two ways,

that they don't want to live there. They can say, Hey, I want to move out, help me move out. I want to get out of here. The other way they can say that they want to leave is that they'll abide by the rules of the family. know, can, lands the rules. So they're choosing to live someplace else by their actions, either by the words or their actions. So the parents not kicking them out. It's a little bit hard for parents to get their heads around that, but that's really the case. Does he say, look, you're not following a rule. So you're saying yes.

need to live someplace else. Now what I do that's a little different is I don't say, okay, you know, don't let the door hit you in the butt going out. I say, hey, we'll help you move out. We'll work with you to move out. You know, we'll get you some furniture. maybe put some money down to help you move out. So that's what helps maintain that positive connection with them because it's saying, okay, you're ready to move out. We see that. We understand that.

You want to live by your own rules or be on your own and we'll help you do that. So I think parents get out of that. I feel terrible. I'm evicting my, my young adult. So, well, I think that, that parents have to set healthy boundaries. Yeah. Not, not only for, you know, for the, for the young adults to understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in the family unit. Right. And there has to be mutual respect.

and parents also need to have those boundaries for their peace of mind and for their sanity, you know, and, to not getting, not be engaged in bickering back and forth and arguments and, you know, stuff like that. So that's, that's good stuff. Yeah. And I make a distinction between what I think are family rules that are somewhat negotiable.

James Moffitt (16:23.109)
how late you stay up, how much you play video games, whether you pick your dishes and take them back, bust them back from your room, things like that. And then deal breaker rules, which have to do with no violence, no threats of violence, no damage to property, no stealing, drug usage. Those are deal breakers. If you do those, you're telling me you don't want to live here because

And to let people live, let your kids live there, you're not doing them any favor because the society won't let them do those things. So you're saying, hey, you got to learn to live by these rules because this is what you're going to be facing out there if you when you leave. So. Right. Yeah, we can't we can't can't enable bad behavior, that's for sure. Great. All right. So.

My young adult is depressed or anxious. What do I do? Okay. Uh, I would say most of the parents who are concerned about their young adults, uh, the young adult son or daughter are, uh, seeing a young adult son or daughter who is experiencing some level of depression or anxiety right now. Um, Gen Z's 60, 70 % up in that range.

have anxiety and depression. a very high percentage. also, the highest Gen Z's are the highest group on loneliness over 70%, you know, report loneliness, which is strange when they're the most wired generation, but there's some missing or human contact or whatever. So, you know, parents, I think need to be able to be supportive of their young adults and

If there's, if there's depression or anxiety, you know, get some help for them, but don't, I don't let them off the hook for being responsible around the house. You can pick up your dishes. You could do things like that. Even you're depressed or, anxious. So I, and one of things that I said is, is it anxiety, depression, or is it failure to launch? And my answer is yes, it's both because they're not moving forward and they see their peers are.

James Moffitt (18:44.391)
That's a source of depression or anxiety. So, and then the anxiety makes it worse for them to move forward, go out and get a job or, or go to school or whatever. So they're, kind of stuck in some ways.

And so there shouldn't be any shame on the part of the parent to recognize that maybe that maybe they need to find a family counselor or a therapist or somebody to go to. Right. sure. And I'm in some way, good therapists working with a young adult can be kind of a midwife to that transition process. Maybe they're struggling to talk openly with their parents, but they can work with that therapist. He can help them with some career decisions, job.

job possibilities and things like that. So they can kind of midwife them out of the family and into independence. What I say to therapists, you can't just address it as a depression or anxiety issue. You have to look at the development. It's a developmental lag there, because they're not moving forward in their identity formation independence. And that's contributing to depression and anxiety.

So just to say you're depressed, we'll put you on meds is not going to solve the problem in my opinion. Right. I got you. And I think there's, I think there seems to be a tendency to prescribe lots of different types of medications. Not, not to say that medications are not important or not needed, but it's almost like you, you know, I'm not talking about

psychotherapy or family therapy or anything like that, you just go to your primary care physician. And if you're not careful, you get into this endless loop of them prescribing you a medication for every symptom that you have instead of, instead of getting to the root of the problem, know, you already, you already answered, can an adult child be launched and still live at home? That's, that's true. That was a good, description.

James Moffitt (20:53.427)
I'm afraid my young adult can't make it on their own. There's a fear of it's almost like the parent is the one that's that's creating an environment that keeps the child from launching. Yeah. A lot of a lot of the concern that I hear from from parents is fear based, know, that they're going to fail or it won't work. You know, I'm scared to

to let them go because they're going to fail. I mean, it has to start earlier in the parenting process of allowing kids to experience consequences. If you soften their landing, and when they've done something wrong or you intervene and they don't experience consequences, then later on now you have a real reason to be concerned because they haven't learned to live with dealing with consequences and overcoming failure.

or mistakes. So it's a real problem. I, you know, I try to get parents to, um, build a closer relationship with their young adult, but to understand that they need to, to support the young adults movement forward. That's the normal process moving toward having their own identity and their, and their independence. And to be supportive of that is an important shift for a parent in the teen

and young adult years, they need to kind of move in that direction.

James Moffitt (22:25.937)
So let's talk a little bit about young adults that wind up back at home because of drug addiction or alcoholism or running into problem with law enforcement because they're making poor life choices or they get caught breaking the law and they wind up in jail or what have you. And the parents want to be supportive.

of them and provide them with a safe haven and a structured environment so they can kind of get on the right path. and a lot of times the young adult doesn't take advantage of that or, or on the flip side of that, they do take advantage of it and don't do what they need to do. Yeah. I've got a, one of my earliest, parenting, coaching situations involved.

18, 19 year old, very bright guy, broke into a computer system because he was very bright in that area. So he had a, enough for his arrest in I think two or three counties, brought drugs into the home. Parents told him again and again, you can't bring drugs into the home. Finally, they said, okay, that's it, dad.

Packed back, said pack your bags and took him and dropped him at a youth shelter and said, we can't have you living at home. can't support you bring drugs into the, into the home and jeopardizing us. And it's not working for you. And I can imagine that, you know, the dad having tears as he's driving his son off to the shelter. But sometimes you get to that point where I can't do anymore and you're on your own. Now, if you want to.

ignore our rules and continue to try to take advantage of living here with the things that we offer. You can't live here anymore and you're going to have to experience what it's like out there on your own. So that's a tough, it's very tough for parents. Oh, absolutely. And I remember looking back when I was in my twenties, I was a dumpster fire and I had to learn some tough lessons, know, and parents tried to prevent

James Moffitt (24:50.749)
prepare you for the world and they give you guidance and they say, don't do this, don't do that. This is the reason why I'm saying don't do this because this is what's going to happen. These are the consequences. You know, I remember my mom and dad used to tell me one of the biggest things they told me was think before you act, you know, and, and I didn't really understand that. I didn't understand that until I got out.

you know, into the world and, I was having to make decisions on my own and, having to suffer the consequences of those decisions. Right. Yeah. And I kind of encourage parents when, the kids leave, um, I would really make that a one way ticket. So if they get into trouble, okay, you're going to have to figure it out out there, but we're not going to take you back just because you got busted for drugs and you ended up in jail for a while.

All right, figure it out, use the resources out there. But I would not be opening the door to a young adult in that type of situation. I would say our door to our hearts are always open to you. We love you, we're always there, we're emotional support and love. But that doesn't mean the door to our house is always open to you. Right. So what are basic truths about parents and their adult children?

You know, what I try to do in my approach to parents and young adults is to set up a situation where we take a longer view of the relationship between the parent and young adult. And I go out five years and I do an interview with the young adult. Where does he or she want to live? What do they want to be doing? they going to live it alone? What skills do they have?

What support do they need from their parents? And then I have the parents respond to that with what they'll do to support that five-year plan, what they won't do, and if they're living at home, what the expectations are at home. And that's worked pretty well because it takes people away from the day-to-day, well, you're playing those video games all the time. What are you doing? You're not getting a job. Now we look at five years and it's the young adults plan. It's not the parents plan telling the young.

James Moffitt (27:16.339)
young adult what to do. Now it's the young adults plan. And one of the things I say to the young adult and the parents that I think is, puts them on the same page is, the parents love their kids and the kids love their parents. Parents and kids want the kids to be successful and the kids want to be successful. And they want the transition process to go smoothly of moving forward in toward independence.

And I've never had the young adult or the parent not agree on those assumptions. So that pulls them together, gets us on the same page. And now parents are working in collaboration or partnering with the young adult on their five-year plan. And that's really been working pretty well for me, James, to take that kind of approach. And that's what I describe in my book, the parent launch code, how to do that, how parents can...

move toward more of a longer range plan and move alongside the young adult in a supportive kind of partnering way. I got you. And do you think that maybe parents get a little bit wrapped up in the emotional side of things and it kind of hinders them from doing that? absolutely. I always say

Parents are the guiltiest segment of the population. I mean, unless you're a perfect parent, you can always look back and say, I wish I had done this or maybe I should have been there at this time or another. I always have this kind of image of a conference for perfect parents and you walk up and open the door, but nobody's on stage to the speaker. And you look around and there's one person sitting in this big auditorium for the perfect parent conference. And that person's probably in denial, I'd say.

But anyway, you have to deal with that guilt. And one of the practices that I encourage parents to do is to accept responsibility for something they did or didn't do that may be contributing or may have contributed to some of the problems that they now face with the young adult and apologize to the young adult for that. Write it out and give them this letter of apology. I'm really sorry. Sometimes it's about the divorce.

James Moffitt (29:41.203)
Even if they're not responsible, you know, or don't feel it was their fault, they're still guilty about it because they feel like it's probably had a negative impact on their kids. But you just say you're sorry. And what that does is it relieves that guilt from the parent that often causes them to compromise their ability to be stand firm with their kids because they feel bad. Well, I wasn't a good parent, so I'll let them do these things. So it relieves the guilt.

Of the parent. And at the same time, it reduces a level of resentment that their kids might have for something that's happened in the past. But that's really been, been helpful to parents to just feel like I can let go of that, that guilt. And now they're able to do more of the tough love, be able to love, be loving, but stand firm at the same time. Right. what myths do parents believe that cause them

Undue suffering. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think there are several myths. First one is a belief that they can control their young adult. Well, you really can. mean, once they're 18, even at 16, they can be emancipated minor, but 18, they can walk out. They don't have to listen to you at all. The second is that as a parent, you're not responsible for their behavior. You know, at some point you have to say,

they were responsible for their behavior, their own behavior. And thirdly, you can't fix them. You're not responsible for fixing them. And I add a fourth one is you can't excuse their behavior or your behavior based upon past actions. So you don't give them a pass because, they had a hard time in elementary school, or they're a bully. So we have to coddle them and not.

not challenging to take a stand up. So, and the same thing, I think with the parents, they can't excuse their behavior based upon the fact, well, they didn't do certain things or they failed to do certain things in their past. So, those things I think trip up parents all the time. And I start out with making it clear about those things are going to undermine your effectiveness as a parent. Right. So,

James Moffitt (32:06.781)
So tell me what it's like to be the parent of adult children and have what, 11 grandkids? It's not easy.

James Moffitt (32:20.312)
Yeah. I mean, it's so my, my impression is each generation starting with us on boomer have invested more in the happiness and success of their kids to this extent. Now we're the gen X and I've got a gen X and a couple of millennials are now investing heavily in their kids. So they are going to activities. We can go to an activity every night practically. And my grandkids are 14 down to one and a half.

And there is something going on constantly and they've got them in all these activities and they want them to be successful. there's a lot of expectation there and in some ways pressure on the kids to be able to accomplish certain things. And it's a little bit of a strain for us sometimes. if we do something with one set of parents and we have to do something with the other set of parents.

Like we're going to babysit for a weekend for one. Well, we got to babysit for a weekend for the others. And our kids, um, our kids, don't think I've ever had, when maybe one time I've had a babysitter other than my wife and I, know, we're, we're, convenient. We're here. Right. And I moved to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and we had no parents around us. So we just had to figure it out and not go out a lot of times, eventually get a babysitter. So.

But not my kids. We're the babysitter, you know, or they don't go out.

Well, that's a good thing though, in some ways. yeah. For sure. Yeah. I mean, we say, well, we got a babysitter. Yeah. But it's also, we get to see the kids, the grandkids and that's. absolutely. Yeah. It's fun too. So the nice thing about being a grandparent is you can spoil the kids rotten. And then at the end of the night, you can pat them on the head and hand them back to the parents and go, okay, now you need to go home. absolutely. Absolutely. The best thing a grandparent might for.

James Moffitt (34:25.265)
Yeah. I haven't experienced that yet, but maybe one day I will. Dr. Jack, I appreciate you being on the podcast episode with us this afternoon, this evening. And I appreciate everything that you have said. And I think a lot of the conversation is going to go a long way with providing our listening audience, some hope and some direction. Can I put a blood? Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So

this is the parents launch code loving and letting go of our kids. So I really put the two together. It's you need to let them go with love. And I think this is a lot of the guidelines about how to, how to, how to be successful at that process of launching, launching your kids. So where can you buy that on, Amazon or it's on Amazon. Yeah. And then my website is parents, letting go.com. So people can, I encourage them to.

Any of your listening audience to sign up at parentslettinggo.com, they'll get these blogs from me because I'm typically answering questions in the blogs that parents are raising. Gotcha. And so there's a lot of good information on there as well. I got you. All right. is now running a sale right now. Now I'm going to really make a pitch. You're fine.

It's today only, it's the last day of the 99 cent digital download digital version of this book. Oh, wow. I don't, you know, this may be published later and, but, and it's 2.99 for the digital version once the sale ends. So that's not too bad at a price either. So. Well, I think it's well worth the money, obviously.

And I appreciate I mean, obviously you have a lot of schooling and a lot of experience and you bring a lot to the table and I appreciate that and I Really appreciate you being on the yeah, absolutely So to the listening audience, I'm gonna say thank you for the privilege of your time You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, which is a video version Amazon music I heart radio Apple podcast and public radio

James Moffitt (36:41.746)
If you're on Spotify, if you go to the about section of the podcast, you'll see my website. You can go to the website, you can leave reviews, you can communicate via voicemail or email, and you can see the schedule of release dates for all the different podcast episodes. So having said that, thank you for listening and have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.