From Structure to Support: Parenting Through the Launch Years

 Kim Meunich unpacks the ABC's of parenting adult children—faith, boundaries, healing, and hope. Real talk for real parents navigating grown-up relationships with grace. 

Want to be a guest on ABCs of Parenting Adult Children? Send James Moffitt a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/parentingadultchildren

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. 

Hello, James here !

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.068)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today we have Kim and I don't Kim I don't know how to say your last name.

Kim Muench (00:10.958)
It rhymes with pinch, it's minch.

James Moffitt (00:14.238)
Okay, so we have Kim here as our guest speaker. Kim, thank you for being here. How are you doing today?

Kim Muench (00:21.25)
I'm good, James. It's exciting to be here to chat with you today about adult children.

James Moffitt (00:25.83)
Absolutely. So go ahead and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Kim Muench (00:30.478)
Sure, my name is Kim Minch and I am a GI certified parenting coach. I have been coaching parents of adolescents since 2016. I have five adult children myself and actually it was my oldest son's walkthrough addiction and mental health issues when he was in his twenties or early twenties that kind of brought me to this work. Inadvertently, I have become the coach that I needed.

back in 2008 when, yeah, he was walking through some real challenges. Fortunately for me, he is almost 15 years sober at this point, but he still struggles quite a bit with his mental health. So he has diagnosed depression and OCD. And I have, over the course of working with parents since 2016, developed a niche that I work in now.

of coaching parents of emerging adults. So 18 to say 30 emerging adults being those that are still physically and financially dependent on their parents. So I coach their parents to help their young person move forward by making sure that they are setting healthy boundaries, communicating well, and not enabling unhealthy or dysfunctional relationships in at their home. So

Yes, my youngest is my only daughter. She's 19. And then again, I have four sons that are 22, 27, 31 and 37 years of age. At this point, I am married and have been for 33 years. So have quite a bit of personal background. And it was TikTok and Instagram over the last three and a half years that have brought me a worldwide audience. And again, niching in

really helping parents of young adults who are struggling to move forward in life.

James Moffitt (02:30.7)
Well, that is very interesting. And you certainly have a, I'm sure you have a very adventurous parent story if you raise five kids. My wife and I have been married for 34 years. We raised four kids. They're all grown and out of the house. we're empty nesters, except for as soon as my wife heard that term, she went out and got two dogs and two cats. So we're not really empty nesters.

Kim Muench (02:39.406)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:58.028)
Instead of a babysitter, we need a dog sitter. anyway, back in 2015, we had two teenagers still living at home and they were giving me a run for my money. And I was doing everything I could not to wind up in prison. And I told my wife, said, Hey, her name's Katie. So Katie, let's just start a, let's start a Facebook support group for parents and see if there's anybody else out there dealing with these sorts of issues.

Kim Muench (03:00.47)
Yeah, I'm right there with you.

James Moffitt (03:27.196)
And we started out with 10 members and today we're at like 1.3 thousand. And so there's, there are a lot of parents out there that are looking for advice, support, hope, redemption. We love our kids, right? And we want the best for them. We want them to have the best life possible. And we don't want to, well, you see all the gray hair I have, right? You know where that came from.

Kim Muench (03:56.012)
Me too. Me too.

James Moffitt (03:57.132)
So failure to launch in boundaries are two recurring themes in our podcast and as well as on our private podcast or private Facebook group, I should say. So in May of 2023, I thought, hey, let's, and I was kind of getting interested in podcasting and I started accumulating equipment and I'm an IT person by trade. So the technology was

Kim Muench (04:06.478)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (04:25.836)
pretty easy for me. I still have a learning curve when it comes to podcasting and audio and video and all that. So I wanted to provide parents with something they could listen to. Like when they're going out on walks, going to the gym, driving their kids to school or to athletic events or whatever. So I wanted to kind of supplement what they were getting on our Facebook support group.

I was on Spotify up until just recently and we had like almost 6,000 downloads. So I think it, you know, I don't have millions of hits or millions of downloads, but you know, I think it showed me that there's a lot of interest in it. It seemed like 80 % of those listens or downloads was off of Apple podcasts. So a lot of people use their iPhones and Apple podcasts to listen to their podcasts. So that's really wonderful.

Kim Muench (05:12.43)
Hmm.

Kim Muench (05:18.936)
Yeah, it is wonderful. And I want to, if you will allow, I'd love to go back to speak to your term of failure to launch, which is actually, I'm sure there's many resources for this, but it's a book that I recommend often by Dr. Mark McConville. Maybe you've heard of it. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well, and I think it's a wonderful book, but it is also a term that I think is kind of

James Moffitt (05:37.59)
No, I have it.

Kim Muench (05:47.872)
negative and sounds kind of final. So I'm actually in the process of co-writing a book at the moment with a gentleman who coined the phrase, lost in place. so we are, we are writing a book called Lost in Place, a guide forward for emerging adults and their parents, because I feel like if you are lost, you can be found. And that is my, that is my goal is to help, you know, parents and with in the case of my

co-writer, he works with emerging adults. It's his second career. His first career was an engineer with, and he figured out how to make Purell. He was part of the team that created Purell of all things. Yeah. So then he retired from that and he's been helping stuck emerging adults for the last several years. So we've gotten together and we're going to write this book hopefully by the end of this year. But the term, you know, lost in place really is when, you know,

James Moffitt (06:28.852)
wow.

Kim Muench (06:47.006)
young people get stuck and they're feeling hopeless and they're sleeping all day, gaming all night, smoking marijuana or drinking, coping in unhealthy ways. And their parents get as stuck as their young person does. When the young person is stuck, the parents are stuck. So my goal and what I do is really help the parents become unstuck so that they can affect change in their home.

James Moffitt (07:14.974)
I really like that. that's one of the, this is one of the things I love about this podcast is I get to talk to subject matter experts such as yourself that bring a host of reference material and knowledge that either I or my listening audience may not have. And I didn't, I didn't really know what else to call, you know, cause failure to launch is something I hear all the time. But I like the positive.

connotation of lost in place. Of course, I keep thinking lost in space, Will Robinson danger, danger Will Robinson. But maybe that might, some of that might relate to this too, right? Lost in place. But I like that. I'm going to change that topic in my repertoire, I guess you would say. Yeah, that's very good. I like that.

Kim Muench (07:49.518)
Yeah, that show that yeah.

Kim Muench (08:05.442)
Good. Yeah. Yeah. If you're lost, can be found. whether that's a parent who is struggling or a young person who is struggling, you know, this is what we believe. And so we're working on a guide to that end to help both groups of people.

James Moffitt (08:23.596)
And that's awesome. And I will be in contact via email. I'm sure between now and the time that your episode releases, I think it's gonna be in September sometime. And I want to create some video clips off in Riverside and advertise some of your resources on Instagram and...

Facebook or Facebook support group. post all of our videos to the Facebook support groups so that people can watch them. And we can talk more about that offline. So anyway, that's wonderful stuff. so go ahead and tell me about your, a little bit about your parenting journey. I mean, you already said you have five children and.

Kim Muench (09:02.616)
Yeah.

Kim Muench (09:15.02)
I do. I do. have five children and yes, it was my oldest. So I became a mother for the first time in when I was 18 years old and I read at the end of my freshman year in college and it was a significant change in my life. I grew up in a very upper middle class Midwest home. Parents were married and I got pregnant and that was a very jarring and disappointing, I guess I would say.

situation, I'm the oldest of three. And my father told me that I needed to, if I was going to keep my baby, that I needed to move out of the family home. So I became a single parent. Yeah, had to figure it out and ended up applying for welfare benefits. So I went from this kid who had a Catholic, private Catholic high school upbringing, you know,

James Moffitt (09:54.081)
Wow.

Kim Muench (10:09.506)
vacationed several times a year, fortunately, had a very nice upbringing and then kind of had to figure out, navigate the welfare system and becoming a single parent. And so that was a journey that, you know, I think in part, I do feel like it turned out for the best, but it could have gone probably any number of a ways, right? But it was really my first forte into becoming an adult and having to figure things out.

James Moffitt (10:31.094)
Sure.

Kim Muench (10:39.438)
And I did remain with my oldest son's dad for the first couple of years, but it wasn't a healthy relationship. so fortunately I did move on from that. However, I still had to co-parent with him, of course, until my son became an adult. And I then went on to marry my now husband. We've been married, it'll be 33 years in May and had four kids with him. But my oldest son, you know, went through two...

very, went between two very different households while he was growing up. And I think quite frankly, part of the reason he probably started drinking and had some mental health issues was because he never felt fully accepted maybe in either place. And I have a very good relationship with my son. We did even while he was a teenager, there were of course bumps like everybody else experiences, but.

We really had an open relationship, but again, I think because he was going between two very different situations, he never really felt fully accepted or understood in either place. walking with him through his addiction to alcohol when he was in his early 20s is really what opened my eyes, not only as a parent, I knew I wanted to parent him.

James Moffitt (11:55.488)
Yeah!

Kim Muench (12:05.442)
differently than I had been. And I also knew I had four kids behind him that I was going to have to bring through their adolescence. And I wanted to learn a more conscious way of parenting. think when I went through my major challenge at 18 and pregnant, my parents handled it a certain way. And I remembered clearly how they had handled it. And I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to

James Moffitt (12:34.326)
Sure.

Kim Muench (12:34.828)
be more emotionally supportive of my son, but I also didn't want to enable him. And I think part of why my parents made decisions that they did when I was young was because they didn't want to enable an unhealthy situation in me. But I think I, hopefully, part of my feeling is that we look at our parents and the upbringing that they gave us and the support and encouragement and that kind of thing.

James Moffitt (12:40.172)
Thank

Kim Muench (13:03.826)
and really think about how we might do things differently or in some cases in a more healthy way. And I hope that actually my kids will do the same, will look at their own upbringing, know, when and if they become parents and really decide, you know, to become even more conscious with how they interact with their children if they have them.

James Moffitt (13:10.22)
Absolutely.

James Moffitt (13:27.968)
Right? Yeah, parents, we don't get manuals, right? You have a bouncing baby boy or girl and they give you a bag of diapers and pat you on the head and send you on the way and say, luck, right? And so, think we're hardwired to parent our children the way we were parented. And I had a horrible childhood personally.

Kim Muench (13:53.432)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (13:57.356)
Me and my sister were adopted in Germany. I'm very thankful that the military family that adopted us brought us back to America and gave us a chance at a better life, right? And they certainly gave us a chance, a better chance with regards to physical needs and, know, roof over our head, food, new school clothes every year, all those educational things that we needed and all that.

One of the things that they were lacking in was showing or demonstrating love to their children. You know, and my dad was a drill instructor and my mother was Austrian. And so they were both raised in a very authoritative, authoritarian families and backgrounds. And my dad struggled with alcohol a little bit. And I remember my mom and dad fighting over that.

Kim Muench (14:32.366)
you

James Moffitt (14:53.586)
Anyway, so once I got married, this is my second marriage. First marriage, I have a 38 year old son that came from that. And unfortunately, his mother and him are both gone now. But he was a, he was certainly a bright spot in that relationship, even though the relationship was a little bit, we should have never gotten married. We were way too young, you know, we thought we were in love, but we weren't.

It was other things, hormones going on, yada, yada, yada. So when I started having other children and I started maturing, between 20 and 26, I'd say I was a dumpster fire. I was overcoming a lot of garbage in my life, overcoming a lot of childhood trauma. And at the same time, was overcoming

the childhood trauma, I was also learning how to be a husband, a good husband, and I was learning how to be a good father. So I listened to James Dobson a lot, way back when. He was a Christian psychologist, parenting expert of that time. So I learned a lot of parenting skills through him. And I knew that it was going to be a struggle.

Kim Muench (16:05.272)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (16:20.278)
when it comes to demonstrating love to my kids, right? Because I never had that personally. And so I didn't know how to, I struggled with learning. That's a very difficult thing to just pick up and learn, right? If you didn't have that as a child, then you're like, how do I do this? And so I just did the best I could with what I had. Were we perfect parents? No. Did I make mistakes?

Kim Muench (16:35.64)
Sure.

Kim Muench (16:48.014)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (16:49.804)
Did I revert back to my childhood at times when I reacted to my children? Absolutely. I had to say I'm sorry a lot. And I tried to be transparent with them. I talked about being in a dumpster fire between the ages of 20 and 26. And so I shared some of those stories with them and said, hey, I'm not a perfect parent. I'm not a perfect father. These are some of the mistakes I've made.

Kim Muench (16:55.8)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Muench (17:04.462)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (17:18.892)
You know, and these are mistakes that I want you to learn from. I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. You know, of course, you know, I thought my parents were out of touch, you know, that they weren't in touch with reality. You know, was, you know, I graduated high school in the 80s, 1980, and they were from the 50s and 60s, you know, and like, you know, what do you know? This is, this is 1980, you know, and I think, I think all children think that, right.

Like, okay, mom, okay, dad, yeah, sure, right. Sure, you know, and so we all struggle with that transition. We all struggle with trying to relate to our children and trying to relate to them in a healthy manner and a, know, we try to establish guardrails or boundaries that will keep them out of trouble. And you try to establish trust and respect both ways.

Kim Muench (17:49.58)
Yeah, I'm sure my kids feel that way.

James Moffitt (18:17.318)
the parent, you know, from the parent to the child and from the child to the parent so that when they get older, if you have a good enough relationship with them, hopefully they will come to you and ask questions and share their life with you and say, hey, this is what happened at school or this is what happened at work or at college and I don't want you to fix the problem but you know, do you think I should have done and this is what I did do and so I think every parent wants to have a

healthy relationship with their children so they can be in a place where they can be a support system and a mentor to 18 through 26. Because before that, there was a parent-child relationship and you're actively involved in their everyday activities and you can establish rules and ground rules and boundaries and guardrails and discipline and all of that stuff, right?

Kim Muench (19:15.95)
Yeah, for sure. And I think that we don't talk enough about the transition in parenting that takes place, say, post high school. And this chapter of parenting, this emerging adult chapter, can really influence the type of relationship we have with adult children.

James Moffitt (19:28.106)
Right.

Kim Muench (19:41.142)
And I don't think parents are anticipating that. I think it's very physically demanding when you have young children, but as they grow older and certainly through their teen and 20 somethings, is mentally really exhausting at times for parents. they're so afraid that their kids are not keeping up with the other.

James Moffitt (20:00.117)
Amen.

Kim Muench (20:06.342)
you know, other their friends kids. And now we have all this information coming at us with, you know, social media and Facebook and have for the last decade. So people can always compare whether or not, you know, my son or daughter did go to college and yours didn't, or mine has achieved this thing. And I think this has had a lot of influence on parents. You referred to something earlier and it's something that is set off and that is

We kids don't come with manuals. And I truly believe though that we are the manual on which our grandchildren will be raised. And when you think about it like that, it puts into perspective, not that we need to be perfect parents, because we never, that is not possible to meet every child's physical and emotional need all the time. But to keep very present in your mind that how your children grow up will affect

James Moffitt (20:53.867)
Right.

Kim Muench (21:03.872)
their parenting. And so thinking about the legacy of your grandchildren and how you how you want your children to parent their children and we go on right we even though we may not physically be here we're part of a family legacy and to really be thinking about that at times especially when

They're really, your young people in your life are really challenged by their mental health or maybe substance use and just some unhealthy habits that they've gotten into. And it's easy for us as parents to get frustrated or to feel disappointed. And I learned while my son was going through his act of addiction that I truly did not know why he was in the world. I truly, like I knew.

There was a point at which I knew I had no control because every time I tried to control him or the situation, things seemed to get worse. So what I realized is I don't know why my son Nick is here in the world. All I can do is love him where he's at and not enable his self-destructive behavior. So for example, he ended up in jail a couple different times and not bailing him out of jail. And to this day,

He credits in part the way I parented him during that very dark chapter in his life to the reason that he is sober today. know, parents, you have to do some very difficult things at times with the intention and the hope that it will help the emerging adult or adult child in your life to turn themselves around, to choose themselves and to choose a healthier way of life.

James Moffitt (22:54.57)
Yeah, parenting can be exhausting. And, you know, when I think about it, you you're you and or your spouse, you're probably working, you know, you're paying the mortgage, car payments, insurance, putting food on the table, trying to provide the needs of your children. You get really consumed by that. And and so we have to we have to be very intentional with

how we raise our children. We have to, especially fathers, you know, had a father on yesterday and we were talking about what it means to be a good father, a good dad. And part of that is being emotionally engaged with the children, being present in their lives and showing interest in what's going on in their lives, right? And so, yeah, that's...

It's real good stuff. transitioning, you one of the things we talked about yesterday is that parents and adult children are both transitioning. You know, it's not a static position that we're in. It's very dynamic, it's very fluid. And we have to be cognizant of that. And we have to have, what do they call it, emotional maturity, emotional intelligence. You know, we need to be

Kim Muench (24:20.29)
Yeah, yes.

James Moffitt (24:23.776)
We need to be self-aware and understand where we are as people, as men, as women, as moms, as dads, as parents, right? And so we have to be very intentional that, you know, like self-care is one of the, you know, recurring themes. And I encourage, and several of my guests have encouraged, you know, moms and dads both to...

to take time out of their busy schedules to figure out what self-care means. Does it mean walking apart? Does it mean sitting in the car listening to a podcast? What does that mean? In other words, you need a break from the battle. You need a break from the day-to-day grind, work, and all of that.

Kim Muench (25:12.834)
Yeah, absolutely for sure. And I always tell moms that they are the emotional barometers in the family. that dads aren't dads. think dads unfortunately minimize or don't understand the impact of their emotional response to a situation. But mothers, feel like just in my own parenting journey and in those that I'm coaching,

James Moffitt (25:15.852)
Kim Muench (25:41.996)
when moms are not taking good care of themselves, when they're not investing in themselves, when they're running themselves ragged, when they're putting themselves last, it is during that time when things tend to get even worse. When I work with mothers and they're setting personal boundaries for themselves and they are investing in themselves, whether that is a walk or that is a therapist for themselves or whatever it is that they get that support.

also have a wonderful twice a week parent support group that really meets and helps parents of emerging adults. Parents feel alone when they're struggling with this 20 something or sometimes even 30 something, they're not moving forward in their lives. So, parent support is definitely important whether they're two or 12 or 22 years old because...

James Moffitt (26:29.384)
Ahem.

Kim Muench (26:39.702)
again, when mothers are not taking care of themselves. when they, let me go back and say, when they are taking good care of themselves, it ripples out to everybody else in the family. At least I've seen that.

James Moffitt (26:54.496)
Right. And one of the things I like to tell people is that self-care is not selfish. Right? Because I think sometimes, especially the mothers, I think sometimes...

Kim Muench (27:05.827)
No.

James Moffitt (27:14.272)
You know, they want to provide the best care that they can for their kids. And they're in the midst of the battle and you know, they start thinking about self care or they'll listen to a podcast like this. we're saying, Hey mom, you need to take a break. need to take, you need to take care of yourself. You need to take care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, right. And do, do those things that you, you can do to get re-centered and be the best person, the best mom, the best mother, the best best.

whatever, right? Homemaker, whatever you want to call it. Moms wear multiple hats in the family, which we all know. You know, and unfortunately...

Kim Muench (27:45.383)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (27:54.72)
moms probably carry a majority of the burden for raising the kids.

Kim Muench (28:03.342)
Well, maybe emotionally. mean, yes, they definitely do their share, like physically, you know, for sure as well. But I feel like moms really carry a lot of the emotional burden as to how well their kids are doing as a reflection of how well they're parenting.

James Moffitt (28:23.926)
Right, right, that's for sure. So.

Talk about parenting through adolescent addiction.

Kim Muench (28:38.581)
Yeah, think that, you know, again, having had that experience with my son.

One of the things that I know I was in was denial for a while. wanted to believe that, I mean, he had some depression and anxiety kind of when he was in his pre-teen and early teen years and took him to a therapist, did some family counseling, did what we thought was the best and the right thing to do at the time, which is often what we do as parents.

James Moffitt (29:14.038)
Right.

Kim Muench (29:16.666)
what I didn't realize, although there were some signs of it and looking back was the unhealthy coping skills that he was developing. He, you know, was stealing liquor from the cabinet at, you know, in the, in the nighttime hours, what after I had gone to bed. so it was, you know, it was in hindsight.

James Moffitt (29:35.756)
Uh-uh.

Kim Muench (29:40.578)
there were definitely signs and I think as a parent, I didn't quite know how to deal with it. So I ignored it or I minimized things literally until my son called me and said, mom, I don't remember the last three days of my life. I hadn't, you know, I've been on a blackout, due to an alcohol binge. This isn't the first time and I need help. And, that was a point at which I could no longer deny what the.

you know, what the situation was. And then it was trying to figure out, okay, now what do I do as a parent? And it was a series of, you know, months where he would do better for a little bit and then he'd fall off the wagon. And that was always, you never want it. I got to a place where I didn't want the phone to ring. And I know many parents can probably identify with that because you just didn't know what was gonna come at you from the other end if it was.

James Moffitt (30:21.853)
Okay.

Kim Muench (30:36.622)
a police officer, if it was your kid in an accident or whatever, whatever horrible thing could happen. So it definitely was, I would encourage parents who have that instinct that there's something not right to not to deny, to ask questions, to...

James Moffitt (30:43.092)
All right.

Kim Muench (31:02.028)
you know, to educate themselves on adolescent addiction. And, you know, cause I think knowledge can be really empowering. And when you don't know, it's important, you know, when you don't know, you tend to parent from fear. And of course it's a fearful situation when your young person is, you know, drinking or taking drugs or, you know, they're, they're coping with unhealthy, you know, things, but.

James Moffitt (31:06.38)
Bye.

Kim Muench (31:29.388)
When you educate yourself, you're at least feeling a little bit more empowered about what's going on, about what behavior is normal during adolescence and what is something that's a red flag and something to really be concerned about.

James Moffitt (31:44.992)
Right, that's good stuff. So, let's talk about the shift in parenting that needs to take place in their 20s.

Kim Muench (31:53.782)
Yeah. So I think this actually occurs progressively before then, but definitely if you haven't done this before then it really needs to be one of parenting with rather than over them, talking with them rather than talking at them. It seems to me that when we come from a place of wanting to try and control the older they get, the more pushback

that they're gonna give us, right? So I talk about something called collaborative problem solving, which isn't a new name. It's something that's been happening in the workplace for a long time. But it's something that I encourage parents of emerging adults and adult children to do. And that is many parents, excuse me, I need to take a water.

James Moffitt (32:38.156)
James Moffitt (32:45.601)
That's fun.

Kim Muench (32:47.31)
Many parents, excuse me, I'm about to lose my voice. Many parents, no, I lost my train of

Kim Muench (33:01.806)
Let me think for a

James Moffitt (33:02.442)
about the shift in parenting that needs to take place when they're in their 20s and how you need to start before that.

Kim Muench (33:06.998)
Right, right, okay. Yes. So many parents realize that if you have a 25 year old who's living at home with you because he can't afford his place yet or whatever, they're living back at home. And there are problems that are taking place in the relationship. Parents realize that there's no consequence that they can give to a 25 year old who maybe doesn't come home at night.

You know, they, they realize that the days of being able to control or set set boundaries or give consequences don't really exist. So this collaborative problem solving is, is a way for them to invite that adult or emerging adult into the solution to the problem. So it's what I talk with parents about is like, you've got to sit down and work out together.

James Moffitt (33:42.74)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (33:52.992)
Cut there off.

Kim Muench (34:05.632)
Instead of the parent always feeling like they have to come up with a solution or they have to fix it and the young person not wanting to participate, right? They have to have some buy-in into solving the problem together so that they're a willing spirit and not just being told what to do.

James Moffitt (34:17.046)
Right.

James Moffitt (34:29.388)
Very good, that's wonderful. All right, so I'm gonna give you three to five minutes to provide the listening audience with a little elevator speech, a little speech. What would you tell moms that are out there, even dads, that are struggling with transitioning, the kids transitioning from the teenage years into becoming an adult?

Kim Muench (34:56.78)
Yeah, I think what's required is something that I call the four C's and operating from the four C's. One is clarity. When parents, especially if you're a married couple, you know, when they're not on the same page or their words and their actions aren't in alignment, if there is an unhealthy dynamic going on, it's going to continue longer if mom and dad are not

James Moffitt (35:21.984)
Yeah!

Kim Muench (35:25.336)
parenting from the same page, right? So clarity, where do you stand as a parent? Where at times might you be going against your personal values because the emerging adult or adult child is maybe making lifestyle choices that are not in alignment with the beliefs you tried to raise them with. So parents really getting clear on where they stand in certain aspects of their adult children's lives.

Um, coming from a place of calm, which can be incredibly difficult when your kid is triggering you, right? Nobody triggers us like our kids. So when that is taking place, I talk with parents about, um, what does that feel like in your body when you're being triggered? Because that is your personal cue to, um, to know I, you know,

James Moffitt (36:01.206)
Right.

Kim Muench (36:19.244)
My heart is racing and that's what happens when I start to get triggered by my son or my daughter. So I have a choice right now. I can either go down the same path that I have done and yell and lecture and everything shuts down and there's a disconnect in the relationship. Or this racing heart tells me I need to take a few breaths. I might need to leave the room for a minute. I need to gather my thoughts so that I don't say something that is not gonna be received well and make the relationship worse.

So coming intentionally from a place of calm. The third C is confidence. It's very, I feel one of the biggest challenges that we have with parents right now is they feel a lack of confidence.

Okay. And that lack of confidence means that they're trying to come from a place of control instead of confidence. And the confidence is so important, especially with a young person who is struggling, maybe with their own self image or self esteem. tend to focus on what their kid is not doing and what's not working.

James Moffitt (37:32.79)
Right.

Kim Muench (37:32.854)
And when they, will tell them, I need you to start really observing when they're, when your kids are doing well, when things are going well, so that you start to focus more on how they are adulting well. And that encourages that encouragement that, that you saying you're capable, I believe in you, I've seen you do this and this and this is the kind of thing that they need to help them move forward as opposed to hearing,

James Moffitt (37:35.895)
Okay

Kim Muench (38:01.304)
You're not doing this. If you just did this like your brother did, that kind of thing is not helpful. parents coming from a place of confidence. And the fourth C is consistency, a consistent message. It's very important. And sometimes things, you didn't get to where you are with your emerging adult or adult child at this point. You didn't get here overnight. So when you start to show up differently,

James Moffitt (38:26.816)
Right.

Kim Muench (38:29.346)
When you start to parent with them rather than over them, it is gonna take some time for those changes to take place. So being consistent in your words and your actions and realizing that it's going to take some time for changes to occur.

James Moffitt (38:47.532)
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that with us. So Kim, thank you for being on the podcast episode today. I've really enjoyed listening to what you have to say and I really feel like you're going to bring a lot of value and hope to parents that are listening to this podcast episode.

Kim Muench (38:51.372)
Yeah.

Kim Muench (39:06.722)
Thank you so much. appreciate your having me on and being able to have the opportunity to share a little bit about what I do.

James Moffitt (39:13.834)
Yeah, and it's a listening audience. I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to this audio version of the podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Public Radio, Amazon Music. You can watch the, and also activate.fm. I have a website, parentingadultchildren.org. That's parentingadultchildren.org. And on there you can get my contact information. You can leave me an email. You can leave me a voicemail. I'll respond.

So you also will show an upcoming show schedule where I put like the next eight episodes that are coming in the current month or the month after that.

James Moffitt (40:01.004)
There's also a review tab at the top of the website. If you'll click on review and leave a review on whatever episode you're listening to, if you like it or whatever, just leave a little review. If you're on Apple podcasts on your iPhone or your iPad or whatever, can do that straight from Apple podcasts. You can listen to the episode and click leave a review. Leave us five stars. Now leave as many stars as you can and leave a review and let us know how you liked it and how it resonated with you.

I release a new episode every Friday morning at 8 a.m. Again, thank you for being here. having said that, I'm going to say goodbye.