Letting Go Without Losing Connection: The Transition to Adulthood

Keywords

parenting, adult children, transition to adulthood, parent-child dynamics, emotional intelligence, self-care, clarity, perspective, expectations, personal growth


Summary

In this episode of the ABCs of Parenting Adult Children podcast, host James Moffitt and guest Lindy Van Heerden discuss the complexities of parenting adult children, the transition to adulthood, and the importance of understanding both perspectives in parent-child dynamics. They explore the challenges faced by young adults in finding clarity in their lives and the role of parents in supporting them through this journey. The conversation emphasizes the need for open communication, emotional intelligence, and self-care for both parents and children as they navigate this evolving relationship.


Takeaways

Parenting adult children requires a shift in roles.
The transition to adulthood is challenging for both parents and children.
Understanding each other's perspectives is crucial for effective communication.
Clarity is often a myth; taking action leads to clarity.
Parents' fears can influence their children's decisions.
Self-care is essential for parents navigating this transition.
Mistakes are valuable learning experiences for both sides.
Emotional intelligence plays a key role in parent-child relationships.
Encouraging independence in children can be difficult for parents.
Open conversations can bridge the gap between generations.


Titles

Navigating the Challenges of Parenting Adult Children
Understanding the Transition to Adulthood


Sound bites

"Parenting doesn't end at 18."
"Life teaches some valuable lessons."
"Clarity keeps young adults stuck."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Parenting Adult Children
02:30 The Transition to Adulthood
05:32 Understanding Parent-Child Dynamics
08:36 The Importance of Perspective
11:47 Navigating Expectations and Reality
14:31 The Role of Clarity in Young Adults' Lives
17:36 Learning from Mistakes and Experiences
20:38 The Journey of Self-Discovery
23:21 Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations

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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Please share this podcast with your friends and family. Now for today's guest intervi

Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.25)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt. I'll be your host. Today we have Lindy Van Heerden from the Netherlands. Lindy, how are you?

Lindi (00:15.888)
Thank you, thank you for having me.

James Moffitt (00:16.952)
Good. Yeah. Do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Lindi (00:22.234)
So yeah, thanks James. My name is Lindy. I am currently living in the Netherlands. I originally moved from South Africa to Dubai where I lived for about four years. And then about six years ago, we relocated from Dubai to the Netherlands where we are currently living. I used to be a university lecturer in South Africa and then also online courses in Dubai and in the Netherlands. And currently I have my own business and I help

young adults and parents with their kids and helping them to see what it is that they want to do with their life. If you're in a space where you are not sure, you feel confused and overwhelmed, I've seen it with so many students that I've worked with and I kind of realized after I moved that the passion for me wasn't the actual topic, it was working with the students. hence why

Currently that's what I'm doing. I'm working with the young people directly because I feel like there's such a big gap with that young generation and transitioning from school to that adulthood. And it feels like there's less resources for them to figure out their life.

James Moffitt (01:33.774)
Right.

James Moffitt (01:38.318)
Right. Yes. my wife and I started this, oh, I guess you could say ministry, whatever. Back in 2015, I had two teenagers living at home. And I was desperately trying to stay out of prison because I don't look good in orange and I didn't want a boyfriend, right? So I told Katie, said, hey, let's start a Facebook support group for parents and see if anybody else is dealing with this kind of stuff. And we started out with 10 members and

think we're up to 1.3 thousand now. And so it's a private Facebook support group. People from the outside can see the group, but they can't see the members. They can't see any of the messages. And I was so glad that you joined and you introduced yourself. And I was like, hey, wow, I need to have this lady on our podcast episode. And you reached back out to me and now here we are. And so it's wonderful to have a fresh perspective.

Lindi (02:10.576)
Wow.

James Moffitt (02:37.378)
know, adult children are between the ages of 18 and 30 years old. And parenting doesn't end. I thought very, very wrongly. My perception was really whacked because I thought at 18, I could just wash my hands of it and go, go get work. I'm right. You know, send money. And it does not work that way. And, you know, the roles change.

When the child becomes 18 and older, and of course we all know that the frontal lobe is not fully developed until they're about, I don't know, 25, 26 years old. so parents, they change from being active in the adult child's day-to-day happenings, right? We don't have to tell them to eat, we don't have to them to brush their teeth, we don't have to tell them that they need to get sleep.

some of those things, we've kind of done a lot of the foundational work in helping them to become productive members of society, right? And however, our role as parents changes to that of a support person, a mentor, right? And I think that while adult children are struggling with the transition to adulthood,

Lindi (03:34.65)
Yeah.

Lindi (03:51.215)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (04:00.226)
I think parents are struggling in their transition to becoming a different type of person in that child's life as a role model, as a support person, as a mentor. And so anyway, as, as the Facebook support group on the podcast has evolved, we spend, we have found that we, we talk a lot about self care and talk a lot about emotional intelligence on both sides of the coin, parents as well as the children. Right.

Lindi (04:10.479)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (04:30.302)
And a lot of times we find out that that we need to

talk about self-care for the parents and emotional intelligence. And that all means that parents, they evolve from one role to the next, they also have to think about their emotions, why they're reacting the way they react, and all that, right? And so it's kind of a growing, growing, maturing process for the parent as well.

Lindi (04:58.671)
Yeah.

Lindi (05:05.71)
Definitely. I definitely agree. I think that's actually that's what's made that's what made me reach out to a different set of Facebook groups. Initially, the first part of my career was very focused on the student and the young adult themselves. I worked with the students in classes, saw them probably a lot more than a lot of their parents did during the day. And now

At the point in my career, I realized that there's no way to really help those kids without actually also one, understanding the perspective of the parent, but also seeing how you can better equip the parents to help the kids, the young adults. And even now me calling them kids, it's such an interesting phase of your life because technically you are not a kid, but

James Moffitt (05:45.795)
Right?

Lindi (06:02.242)
a lot of your reactions will still be as a kid. A lot of adult children still depend on their parents as well. So they're still our kids as a parent, but we cannot treat them like kids. But they still kind of are kids because they still need us to take care of them. And it's this really difficult balance. And I think that's why I'm really excited for this conversation as well because

I feel like it's really important to give more information to the parents as well, which in turn will also lead to more self care and in return also help your kids.

James Moffitt (06:43.702)
Right. I've had several wonderful, knowledgeable guests on this podcast and which I'm very thankful for. One of the gentlemen that was on and has been on a couple of times, he's a child psychologist, guess, family counselor, therapist, blah, blah. This guy is like a plethora. He's just a fountain of information. And one of the things that I took away from one of our episodes was he was talking about the emptying out process.

So you have a parent and have a child that's in conflict, And they're either not communicating or they're yelling at each other or you know how that goes, know, something happens, something's said, and all of a sudden there's a conflict and everybody's saying a lot of words but nobody's listening, right? Because everybody's hell bent on getting their message across, right? And he was like, at some point the parent needs to take the higher road and be quiet and let the adult...

child empty themselves out. Here we go again.

James Moffitt (08:13.198)
you

Lovely.

James Moffitt (09:54.328)
Well, here we are again. It's still recording and I can edit this out.

Lindi (10:00.945)
I've never had this before, but my laptop shut down and said it had to restart for absolutely no reason. But obviously it waits for a podcast recording before it does that. Like I said, it's never done it before, but.

James Moffitt (10:08.876)
Right. Are you?

James Moffitt (10:13.581)
Yeah, yeah, of course.

James Moffitt (10:18.638)
Are you running Windows 10, Windows 11?

Lindi (10:22.609)
no, I'm on a Mac, yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (10:22.862)
There's a MacBook. You're on a MacBook, okay. Well, you know what they say, if you ever go to Mac, you never go back.

Lindi (10:30.969)
Yeah, definitely. have to say I've never been, I've had Windows before and like you say, once you go, you never go back. But I have to say, this has definitely convinced me I'm getting a new laptop. Whether it's the computer's fault or not, this has now convinced me I need one.

James Moffitt (10:48.642)
Well, if this happens again, maybe we need to do a Zoom session instead. It could be rubber side maybe having problems. Like I said, I've only been using this for December of last year. And I've had a couple of guests that have had some problems. it's hard to put your finger on the actual issue. Sometimes it's a lack of internet speed.

Lindi (10:50.733)
Okay. Yeah.

Lindi (11:02.833)
Okay.

Lindi (11:15.043)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (11:17.89)
You know, things like that and running running too many things in the background that sucks up all the resources and but she seemed to be pretty tech savvy. So I don't think that's issue with you. If this drop, do you have? Do you have do you have zoom?

Lindi (11:23.429)
Yeah.

Lindi (11:27.863)
Yeah, I don't know what's going on. Nothing else is open, so...

Yes, I do.

James Moffitt (11:36.686)
So if this drops again, I don't think I have an actual paid subscription anymore to Zoom because I switched over to Riverside for all of its wonderful editing.

Lindi (11:46.361)
Yeah, no, it's for I can send you a link if it happens again

James Moffitt (11:50.262)
Okay, all right. It's just going to record on your computer and not mine. So you'd have to send me the video so can add the intro and after and all that stuff.

Lindi (11:52.323)
Okay, that's fine. can...

Lindi (11:59.619)
Yeah, I can send all of that to you.

James Moffitt (12:02.166)
Okay, all right, so we're going to continue the conversation. Yeah, so the psychologist was talking about the importance of people, parents and children, to have a safe place and being able to empty themselves out. You know, in other words, we have all these feelings, we have all these things going on inside, all these emotions, and a lot of times we just press that stuff down and get so compressed that eventually it just bubbles up and explodes, right?

Lindi (12:03.823)
But you were talking about the psychologist.

James Moffitt (12:30.712)
So he was talking about the different stages of emptying yourself out or allowing your adult child to empty themselves out so that they can be validated, they can be heard, they can be seen, they can talk about their perspective. And then at some point, you'll be able to talk to them and go, okay, well, this is what I heard what you said. This is what I think you said. This is my perception from my end. Do I have it right? And then y'all can talk all of that out. And then eventually once they're emptied out,

then you can start talking about stuff, right? But if you just try to shut them down or if you go, well, that's normal. You don't have to worry about that. We don't even need to talk about that. And they're like, that's the worst thing you could do because to them, it's not normal to them. It's new, right? As adult, as adult parents, it may be old hat to us, you know, we may have experienced it a half a dozen times in our lifetime, but to the adult child, they have not, right? And so it's important that we, I just thought it was very unique and interesting how he

Lindi (13:20.975)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (13:28.568)
framed that and explained how that works. So anyway, said all that to say this, I love the wealth of knowledge that I get from talking to subject matter experts as yourself.

Lindi (13:44.889)
Yeah, well, I have to say I'm in the same position as you, although I can share some of my knowledge today. Every single conversation with a parent, with a kid, with a podcast host like yourself, I tend to learn something new, even if it's just a new perspective or a new opinion. And I feel it's really important to hear all of those things because if you can't, if you're not open to hearing all of the different perspectives,

you aren't able to really resolve anything because in the end you're just really listening to whatever it is that you are thinking or feeling. So I love that you are also saying that parents and kids need their own safe space where they can get rid of all of that kind of bubbling up feelings, whether valid or not that does not matter. What matters is you need an outlet.

for all of that kind of feelings. And I think what I've discovered now as well is sometimes in our own position, we don't realize that two things can be true at the same time. So I can be really frustrated with you not doing something with your life as a parent, and you as a child can be really frustrated with your parents meddling the whole time.

both of those things can be true at the exact same time. And sometimes we don't have capacity for that because we are so engulfed in our own feelings, in our own emotions. And sometimes the fear is also that we have for the future. And as parents, we a lot of the times feel a fear of our kids failing and we try to push harder and we want them to...

either do less of the bad things or more of the good things, and we push them to make decisions or to take control of their life because it kind of gives us a sense of control, but it also dampens our fears a little bit because we are, as parents, are also reacting because of our experiences. And those things,

James Moffitt (15:44.29)
Right.

James Moffitt (16:06.093)
Right.

Lindi (16:07.385)
a lot of the times are not being seen by the kids. So although I work primarily with the young adult in this situation, it's important for me to also be talking to the parents because I cannot tell the young adult to take control of your life and they keep saying, well, my parents keep meddling. To give that person true advice, a true plan of action,

James Moffitt (16:30.552)
Right.

Lindi (16:35.013)
they still need to go back to the drawing board and say, why are my parents feeling the way that they are? Because a lot of young adults are saying in the situation, well, my parents are just irrational. They just don't want, they don't want what's good for me. And in my life, I've never met a parent that does not want the best for their kid. The way that they communicate it might come from a place of fear, like I mentioned. I'm afraid you are going to make the wrong decision.

James Moffitt (16:55.512)
Right.

Lindi (17:04.473)
I'm afraid you are going to take the wrong path and maybe make a mistake that I did when I was your age. So I'm, as a parent, I'm acting on my experiences and my set of beliefs. And for me to truly help that young adult, I need to be able to understand that perspectives as well.

James Moffitt (17:25.102)
Yeah, one of the things that we've discussed in the past is that, I can talk from personal experience, with my dad, he was in the army for 26 years. was a drill instructor, he retired, blah, blah. Adopted me and my sister from an orphanage in Germany, brought us back to Quinlan, Texas, where we got raised in the 70s. I was a child of the 60s and 70s, graduated high school in 1980.

My dad had a job and his side gig, if you want to call it, was he was the TV man for Quinlan, Texas and Terrell and Greenville, all the little towns. And he had a portable building out in the backyard with all his TV stuff and all his testing equipment and vacuum tubes and all that ancient technology, right? And he wanted me to give that to me. He wanted me to inherit that business when I became 18.

20 years old, whatever. I was like, no, I don't want anything to do with that. And now as an adult, I look back at that and I go, I must have crushed him, right? And so one of the things that we've recognized or highlighted from a parent's perspective is that, yes, we want our children to have the best and we want them to have a better life than we had. And we don't want them to make the mistakes that we made.

Lindi (18:34.96)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (18:50.252)
and we want to be able to impart that wisdom to them so that they won't make those mistakes because with mistakes come consequences, right? And sometimes those consequences can be hard, they can be painful. We don't want our children to experience that. And sometimes parents have, we have an image in our minds of who we want our children to be, right?

Lindi (19:01.233)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (19:16.386)
We want them to be the doctor. want them to be an attorney. We want them to be a dentist, a TV man, astronaut, whatever it is that we projected in our heads that we want our child. In parents, a large part, our role is to guide them onto a path. It may not be the right path. It may not be the path that they're going to stay on forever.

But we have to help them launch into adulthood and start making some decisions on their own to be the person that they want to be. Right. And I think that's where parents fail a lot is that is that when they they're trying to transition into adulthood, the parents idea of who we think that they should become may be completely different from what the kids, the adult child's perception. No, dad, I don't want to be a

Lindi (20:11.248)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (20:14.38)
I don't want to be a TV man. want to, I want to be a podcast host. want to, I want to be, you know, I want to be a, a creator and influencer. want to have millions of users on YouTube and in tick-tock. I don't want to make millions of dollars, you know, and when the parent hears that they're like, Hmm, okay. No, it's not going to work that way. You know, then we, you know, cause my parents crushed several of my ideas. I wanted to be a, I wanted to be a, a,

Lindi (20:35.632)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (20:42.414)
athletic trainer for the Dallas Cowboys. And you know what my parents told me? Oh, that's wonderful. You want to do that, but that ain't going to happen. And one of the reasons it wasn't going to happen because they didn't have the money to send me to college to learn all of those skills that I needed, you know, to pursue that career path, right? And of course, the way that they squashed it was totally inappropriate, you know, and our parents do the best they can with what they have, right?

Lindi (20:55.43)
Yeah.

Lindi (21:01.541)
Yeah.

Lindi (21:11.473)
100 percent.

James Moffitt (21:12.074)
And yeah, and luckily today there are, you know, Facebook support groups, there's family therapists, there are, there's a plethora of resources, maybe not a lot of resources, but there are a lot more resources today for families than there was back in the 60s and 70s. I can guarantee you that, you know. And so anyway, I'm going to quit rattling here. I'm going to ask one other couple.

Lindi (21:33.264)
Yeah.

Lindi (21:38.457)
No, well, was two things, sorry, there was two things that you were saying that I kind of want to respond with as well. So I saw a video not too long ago and it is exactly in line with what you are saying because they are our kids, whether it is from adoption or IVF or from birth. We have this idea in our head that we created this kid. This is my kid. And

James Moffitt (21:44.589)
Okay.

Lindi (22:09.017)
The truth is, with the video that I saw not too long ago, yes, we might have created this kid in whatever form or they are your kid, but our role as the parent is not to be creating the kid. Our role as the parent is to be the shepherd. The shepherd's job is to guide the sheep where it needs to be going, where the safer space are, where the best food are.

The shepherd's job is not to be creating the sheep. And I think because we had the role in the beginning of either birthing that child, taking care of it, absolute infancy, we forget that at a certain point our job is only to guide. It is not to kind of push them in becoming a doctor or becoming what we think they should be.

James Moffitt (23:07.384)
Right.

Lindi (23:07.929)
And then the second thing that I wanted to, to kind of also respond to was perspective, I believe is the most incredible tool that is completely undervalued from both sides. I think from the young adults side perspective of knowing a little bit more about their parents and where they are coming from, I think that is so important because sometimes

the young adults can react really heavily. Obviously we know they haven't fully developed, so they are reacting from their perspective. My parents don't know anything, they're old school, they're just boring. But perspective from that young adult's viewpoint is to get perspective for their parents. And in your case it was when you were that young boy,

you might have dealt differently with that situation when you had the perspective of my dad had to offer a lot of things to get to that point and he actually just wants to give to me the best that he has and I'm not saying that you should accept that but that perspective would have brought on a different conversation of jeez thank you dad I really appreciate everything that you did everything that you sacrificed

in your young life to be able to achieve all of that. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the way for me to go, but I still really value everything that you did to get to this point. So that conversation changes it completely. The parent actually feels valued and feels seen for the things that they have done or achieved to get to that point. And then the same with perspective on the other side. We as parents,

James Moffitt (24:43.651)
Right.

Lindi (25:06.801)
can already see the mistakes that our kids are going to make. So we try to avoid those things. We've helped them to learn how to walk and we had to stop them from running off of cliffs. Our job was to see the dangers and to prevent them from doing that. But now we need to now know that our perspective of growing up maybe without cell phones or without social media

James Moffitt (25:22.648)
Right.

Lindi (25:34.167)
is completely different to the world that they are growing up in. And we might not see, we might look at a career as an influencer and think, well, that's stupid. You're not going to make a success out of that. But that young kid sees, young adult sees all of his friends or people on the internet making really good money while doing that. So their perspective is I can have what you are having.

James Moffitt (25:37.964)
Right?

Lindi (26:02.711)
and work less time. I can have what that guy is having and do it on my own terms. And that's a good thing and a bad thing because I know social media is kind of a double-edged sword because it can show you the good but it can also show you only the highlight reels and leave out the parts that's not realistic and that people don't see. They don't see necessarily all the struggles that the influences

James Moffitt (26:26.156)
The struggles. Right.

Lindi (26:32.581)
had to go through to actually get to that point of success. So I think there's a big conversation in perspective and helping both sides to understand each other's perspective better because that's where the learning will happen on both sides.

James Moffitt (26:50.1)
One of the things that I tried to do with my kids as they were growing up, so I tried to learn how to be honest and transparent with them. I had to, within reason, I had to go, hey, you know, look, so you did this, you made a mistake. There may or may not be consequences. But this is what dad did when he was 16 or 17, you know, and share some of the stupid mistakes I made.

be transparent with them and go, hey, we're all in the same boat together. We're swimming down the same river and we're just trying to survive here. Right? I'm trying to not run off a cliff. We're not trying to get eaten by sharks or mountain lions on the shore or whatever it might be. so I thought it was very important that I be as transparent as possible with my kids and let them know that, dad's not perfect. You know, again, dad.

Lindi (27:29.179)
Yeah.

Lindi (27:36.08)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (27:47.244)
has made some stupid mistakes in his lifetime and that dad's just trying to help me not make those mistakes, right? And at some point as your role of a parent turns into that of a support person and a mentor, parents have just let go. They have to let go and realize life teaches some valuable lessons, right? And as a young person, I learned that, you know, myself and I thought my parents were out of touch. They were stupid, had no clue what was going on in the real world.

I think I was like 26 or 27 years old and I put a quarter in a payphone in Houston, Texas and called my parents and said, you know, I had to eat a lot of apple pie. And I was like, hey, this is, they called me Jimmy at that time. said, this is Jimmy and I'm doing okay, struggling some, but I just wanted to call and tell you that you're not as stupid as I thought you were.

Lindi (28:28.283)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (28:41.89)
I have no clue how that conversation went because I don't remember it anymore. But I know I did make that phone call and recognize that, you know, my parents weren't, you know, their perception was probably from, from how they were raised by their parents and the world they grew up in. And I get that, but I still feel like no matter, no matter how good or bad a parent might be.

Lindi (28:52.016)
Yeah.

Lindi (28:58.693)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (29:07.052)
They still want their kids to be successful. They want their kids to be healthy. They want them to be healthy mentally, emotionally, physically, you know, and they just want to, they just want them to launch into adulthood and become, you know, productive members of society and not criminals, know, and not drug users and, you know, going making some horrible, horrible, horrible decisions that could possibly be made, right? And,

Lindi (29:09.169)
100 percent.

Lindi (29:23.258)
Yeah.

Lindi (29:31.297)
Yeah, well, like I mentioned earlier, I have yet to meet a parent that does not truly want the best for their kid. They all do. It's a lot of the times the problem lies with identifying what that best is and what my version of best is and what your version of best is and how do we think we're going to get there. But most parents want most. Every parent that I've spoken to

truly wants the best for their kid. And we need to recognize that they are working from their own set of beliefs and a lot of experience that came with that. To go back to what you mentioned about phoning your parents, eating some humble pie, I had the same experience somewhere between 18 and 25. My parents got really smart really quickly because I realized that I was

very brutal on them as well. And I remember being in an apartment at university and somewhere I woke up and I was like, I don't have any food in the house. There's no food in the fridge. And I've got this major bag of laundry. And I phoned my mom. was like, I realized that there's not just food in the kitchen. Clothes aren't just magically washed.

and I had a very involved mom. I knew she did those things and I knew my dad helped out with food, et cetera, and I knew they were both working. It wasn't that privileged of everything is being done. I had to help with those things, but still there was someone initiating all of those tasks. There was someone saying, we need to go to the shops, we need to wash the clothes. And when you left your own devices, you very quickly realized that

James Moffitt (31:05.144)
Right.

Lindi (31:30.031)
that role that they were playing, when you remove that, it plays a major part in everything and things don't just magically get done. Someone has to initiate it and do it.

James Moffitt (31:43.34)
Yeah, and it's all part of becoming an adult, know, learning how to budget money and learning how to pay your bills and learning how to, you know, have healthy relationships with your boss and your teachers and just, you know, just maintaining, you know, status quo and keeping your head above the water and not drowning in it. Right. And it's a

Lindi (31:49.136)
Yeah.

Lindi (32:05.594)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (32:09.39)
It's a miracle of God that I'm sitting here. I'm 63 years old, I'll be 64. And I can tell you with all honesty that when I was between 18 and 26, I either should be dead or in prison, you know, because I had it pretty rough. anyway, I'm very thankful, very, very thoughtful about where I've come from. And that's one of the reasons for this podcast. So one of the reasons for my parenting

you know, support group on Facebook because I know the complexities. I know how difficult it is. I know how difficult it is from the perspective of a teenager and a young adult. And I know how I have that perspective of being a parent of a teenager and young adult. And so, so I want this podcast and that support group to provide parents with the tools that they need to be successful. Right.

Lindi (33:06.288)
Yeah.

And yeah, I still, I've got two younger kids, so no teenagers yet, but I have the experience of working with a lot of the young adults at the stage where they maybe already decided to go study something. And you could see them a lot of the times coming into class and you know there was friction. And sometimes you also ended up, sorry.

Sometimes you also ended up playing the role of psychologist in the classroom after classes, because then you can see that there's issues going on there. And I think it's important. I wish, I wish at that stage a few years back that I would be able to facilitate a conversation between those young adults and those parents and be able to sit down and be a bit of mediator. Because from my perspective, I can see that those are kids that

They want to succeed, they want to achieve great things, and they desperately do not want to disappoint their parents. But from their perspective, you see them coming into classes, and they had a big fight with their parents, and their parents forced them to study in this specific direction, or take over the family business in one of my students' case. His dad was a lot more in marketing and business side, so he wanted his son to study a

business degree and he absolutely hated every minute of it. And you could clearly see that that was not the right direction for him. And I wish that I could sit down with both of them and hear the parents perspective because I could see that he was a really good kid, but I also knew that the side that I was getting, the side that I was being communicated,

James Moffitt (34:39.33)
Right?

James Moffitt (35:00.933)
you

Lindi (35:02.853)
was obviously perspective of the child. And I wish I could know that perspective of the parent because I think it would have been very similar to the story you told previously where his dad worked really hard building this massive business and he really wanted a knowledgeable son who's worthy of taking over this business. And to some point kind of had to prove that he's willing to study the business degree and do what's needed to be able to take over this business.

James Moffitt (35:23.576)
Right.

Lindi (35:33.357)
and now the son isn't kind of, he's not studying hard enough, he doesn't even want to study. So from the dad's perspective, I'm sure that the son looked like an ungrateful little wimp that doesn't want to do anything and he's not appreciative of anything that I kind of provide for him. And to that degree, I wish that there was a more open conversation.

James Moffitt (35:47.274)
Right.

Lindi (36:00.783)
so that I could hear the parents' perspective. And I think that's where you starting this channel and giving a lot of parents that insight, I think is absolutely so necessary because also the young adults are more online than some of the older parents, less inclined to join some of the workshops and all of those online learning opportunities. So...

I feel like we have a lot of opportunity to educate both sides and hopefully these type of conversations will also help to educate the young adults so that there's better relationships both sides.

James Moffitt (36:44.686)
Yeah, they're certainly, you know.

Relationships are complicated any way you look at it, right? We are complicated people. Relationships are complicated. They take a lot of nurturing. They take a lot of care, you know, a lot of work and...

I think it's important that parents get the self-care that they need, right? And right along with the adult children. And we're finding out that, and my wife's a special ed teacher. She'd been an educator for 25, 30 years. And she keeps coming back, coming home and telling me about the horrendous and horrible, wacky behaviors of the kids. Now, special ed children are, they have special needs, right?

And so they're a little more verbose, right? And they act out a little more. And so their issues and problems seem to bubble up maybe more than your average bear, right? And she talks to me about those things. And then she has parent-teacher conferences. In the course, the parents are coming in and going,

just not a good teacher. You're not, you're not my little Johnny special and he's perfect and you're just not giving him what he needs. And so then my wife is exposed to how the parents are acting and talking and then it's a mirror image of why that child is acting out in class, right? And she sees the, you know, the parent-child dynamics and the home dynamic that that child's being raised in. She's like, there's no wonder they're acting like

James Moffitt (38:29.196)
this. There's no, you know, because the parents are whack jobs. You know, they're just, they need help. You know, lot of those parents just need family counseling or, you know, and they're, and they're so oblivious to it. They're like, they, you know, in their minds are like, they know what they're doing. You know, this is where little Johnny needs to go. And this is how he needs to act. And if he's not going to act that way and do what he's supposed to do, then I'm just going to punish him or I'm going to yell at the teacher and the principal at school. And, know,

Lindi (38:42.982)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (38:58.498)
That's not reality.

Lindi (38:59.681)
No, it's not. And I quite like that story as well. And she's also able to see both sides. And I also think that that's a bit of the inconvenient truth there, because a lot of the times we try and bring up our kids in a way that they are independent and they strong willed because they need to be to survive in a tough world out there. But we don't want them to be strong and independent with us. We struggle.

James Moffitt (39:21.08)
Sure, sure.

James Moffitt (39:26.51)
Right.

Lindi (39:27.757)
with them saying no. We want them to listen to our advice, but when they're in the workplace and they're being taken advantage of or giving too much workload, we want them to be able to stand up and say, I think this is an unfair situation. How can we deal with this? But when we're in that situation as a parent, it's really hard to deal with because now we have to deal with a mini mirror vision, a version of ourselves.

James Moffitt (39:57.592)
Right.

Lindi (39:58.297)
And they don't have all the regulation tools that we have as adults. And that becomes for a very interesting dynamic because we really want those things for them. We want them to be independent. We want them to be able to survive, but we have to survive them first. We have to be able to take all of that hits as parents before they go out in the world and have to do that for themselves.

James Moffitt (40:09.592)
Sure.

Lindi (40:28.069)
They first have to technically practice on us before they can practice and do it in real life.

James Moffitt (40:35.694)
How many times have parents heard this? I can't wait until you grow up and have a family of your own and you have a child just like you. I cannot wait. I'm waiting for the day for you to come back and tell me, you told me so, didn't you? Because little Sally or little Johnny is a chip off the old block, right? And you're looking at this kid going, my God. It's like looking at a mirror, you know? And then parents are like slapped in the face going,

Lindi (40:55.053)
Mmm.

Lindi (41:01.745)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (41:05.678)
I wonder where that characteristic or trait came from.

Lindi (41:09.647)
Yeah, but also it's a when you look at them reacting like that a lot of the times with someone else, we would be proud. But when they react with us, they're like, don't you dare talk back to me. Like you're not, no, you're not supposed to have that attitude with me. But I like that you're standing up for yourself with someone else in a situation that you don't agree with, but don't disagree with me. And that's, that's really tough.

James Moffitt (41:25.868)
Right. Right.

James Moffitt (41:37.485)
Right.

Lindi (41:39.259)
that's tough for both sides. And I think especially for parents, I think the kids don't always, the young adults don't realize that they're doing that. But for adults, I think that's sometimes extra triggering because a lot of the parents were scolded for some of that behavior that they are actively trying to instill in their kids as, I don't want to say an act of rebellion.

But let's say for instance, you as an adult were told to sit quiet in the corner. Kids are to be seen and not heard. Now you have kids and you want to actively encourage them to have a voice. That is definitely something that I've experienced in the Netherlands. And now we get to the point where you like the different perspectives of the different cultures. So from South Africa, we grew up a little bit more with that mindset.

James Moffitt (42:19.522)
Right, exactly.

James Moffitt (42:34.542)
Right?

Lindi (42:38.977)
I remember my grandparents saying, you are to be seen and not heard. The Netherlands has, they have the highest ranking for happiest kids in the world. And that's not for a few years running. And family dynamics here, I think in a lot of countries in South Africa as well, and the way that I grew up with, initially you would see the dynamic and you would actually think the kids are rude.

the kids very much get a voice in the family as part of the family. So we as a family will decide where are we going on holiday? What are we eating for dinner? And it's not that if the kids say chicken nuggets every single night, we're going to say yes, but everyone gets an opinion and then we'll say, well, chicken nuggets is a snack food. We are going to have that on Friday night.

as a treat for the whole family. I hear you, I like that, but let's maybe make a healthy chicken dinner tonight. So I hear the chicken, so we kind of connect on that. so the perspective here in the Netherlands is that kids very much get a voice. They get an opinion in how things are run in the whole dynamic. And to me, I've now seen that with my younger kids.

it's really difficult because I get triggered by the things I was scolded for. for instance, I'm actively trying to encourage my kids to be able to debate, to be able to say if they don't agree with something, because once they go out into the world, I want them to be able to see right from wrong and be able to say, I do not agree with that.

James Moffitt (44:29.208)
Right. Right.

Lindi (44:32.143)
I'm not just going to be a bystander and see you doing that. If I do not like what you're doing, I'm going to actively speak up. But now it becomes triggering because I say something and she's like, I don't agree with that.

And I immediately kind of shut down because my parents would have scolded me for that type of behavior. So internally, I need to now learn how to regulate myself to not be mad at that behavior in my child, to actively...

James Moffitt (44:56.056)
Right.

Lindi (45:09.813)
see the behavior not as bad, but to see the behavior as different. And that sometimes is a very hard thing to do between the generations and how we sometimes decide to change parenting styles or things that were done to us while we were growing up or just doing things differently in general.

James Moffitt (45:35.106)
Yeah, it's a huge learning process for both sides of the relationship. And how do parents normally parent? We parent the way we were parented. It's just hard baked into our psychology, right? My dad was very heavy handed with me and my sister, physically and verbally. And I recognized when I became a parent,

I recognize the fact that I didn't want to raise my kids the way I was raised because I didn't like it. I had all this emotional baggage and trauma and all of that inside me that I had to work through. My doctor said I'd be fine. He just didn't say well, no, I'm just kidding.

Lindi (46:04.869)
Yeah.

Lindi (46:19.301)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (46:22.958)
I never actually saw a psychologist or therapist and you know looking backwards you know at my life I recognized the fallacy of not you know going to a professional and working through those things and somehow somehow here I am right in all my glory here I am but anyway yeah this is great conversation great great points of view and talking about culture

Lindi (46:35.537)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (46:53.462)
I have to say, Lindy, I haven't even hit any of your questions yet. We're at 46 minutes. And so I'm going to hit at least one of them, but I think I want to have you back on the podcast so we can dig a little deeper into some of the stuff that you've developed. So let's hit question. Question number one is why waiting for clarity keeps young adults stuck?

Lindi (47:09.681)
Brilliant, we'll do that.

James Moffitt (47:18.104)
Word, action, comma, not perfect answers.

Why waiting for clarity keeps young adults stuck?

Lindi (47:26.981)
think this is very much for the parents of the young adults. And I've spoken to a lot of parents that feel frustrated. They are irritated. Some adult kids, kind of on the older side of it, their parents are probably struggling even more. Once your kids are in their 18 to 20, maybe 21, you kind of expect them to be confused, to expect them to...

don't, to not have clarity of what they want to do or at least a certain degree of it. But for some parents where the kids are a little bit older, let's say 30, you expect them to kind of have their life together. And then this big search, so no matter what the age, but we expect them to

try different things to try and find something to get the clarity. We want them to, they need to have the clarity before they start moving. And I always describe this as this is very much like a GPS. You don't have to know the exact route that you are going to take to get to your destination. And you don't even need an exact destination to go to.

You need a direction.

because the destination is probably going to change, but you need to have an idea of where you are going. But a lot of people, they want to know exactly where they are going. They want to know how they are going to get there. An example of this would be, I want my child to, for instance, know that he wants to go study to become a doctor. Okay, what do you need to do to become a doctor?

Lindi (49:23.035)
You need to study at a university. You need to get this type of grades when you're in high school. You need to, there's certain requirements. Then you get into university, whether it's a four year degree and then there's additional years, whether it is practical. Every country obviously is different, but I know in South Africa, for instance, you have in total, I think it's seven years and then you have two or three years practice, et cetera.

But there's a very direct route from A to B. I want to get there. But that's what we expect of young adults to get the clarity. Once I have that plan, I have the clarity. Unfortunately, for the majority of the young adults, that's not how it works. And even for us, for you, James, I don't know exactly how you got into this role, but I absolutely love it.

James Moffitt (49:56.408)
Right.

Lindi (50:22.201)
I love the purpose of what you're doing. But if someone asked you 40 years ago if this is what you were going to do, the answer would probably be very different.

James Moffitt (50:34.047)
What? Are you kidding me? No. That's what I would have said.

Lindi (50:38.967)
Exactly and if someone asked you to write out a map, to draw the map of how it's going to be, it wouldn't have looked anything like this. For a lot of young adults they think they want to become an influencer. Okay I need to get the camera, I need to go on the holidays, I need to film all of that, I need to get sponsors and that's how I'm going to get there. But for a lot of the influencers they have none of that. They have their phone, they make a few videos, they do a few lives,

And people see them and they like what they do and then they build on that and they're like, maybe I can be an influencer. That sounds cool. Let's do this. But the majority of people don't set out on one exact plan. They don't have the clarity and then move in that direction. So I feel like that's a big myth. People thinking that I need to have the clarity. I need to know what I need to do to get there. And the majority of us, the majority of the population needs to do

one thing that they find interesting, is valuable to society, that's valuable to them, that adds to their life meaning or purpose or something that excites them and then move from there. It might be...

So it might be something as small, it might not even be to go study or to find a job. If those type of questions of what do you want to do for money or what do you want to do, that's big. So I get so, sorry, yeah, that's exactly what I want to absolutely go mad when I hear that.

James Moffitt (52:15.534)
Like what are you passionate about? What are you passionate about? What are you passionate about? Tell me what's your passion?

Lindi (52:25.251)
And I use some of those posts, but that's because it's been used so many times and I actually want to play on that trigger because so many people, absolutely hate that phrase. What are you passionate about? What do you love to do? Like not everyone is going to build a business, be an Instagram influencer on the thing that they are, that that's their passion. But they might do something else that's really valuable to society.

But you won't know what that is until you take that first step. And that first step will be completely different for everyone. And people don't like this answer because it's different for everyone. You're going to have to sit in your room and say, playing video games is not valuable to me. It's not valuable to society in this case. What can I do that I'm passionate about? Okay, I'm passionate about animals. Go volunteer. Once you volunteer for three, four days,

James Moffitt (53:01.742)
Sure.

Lindi (53:23.171)
You meet someone at the volunteer house or volunteer institution. And from there, they give you a job opportunity. From there, it leads to something else. But if I say, what's your purpose? I don't want you to be thinking like Ed Sheeran. And his purpose was to be singing. So he decided to go sing on everywhere in London and then just followed that passion.

James Moffitt (53:28.526)
Right?

Lindi (53:52.741)
That's not the reality for everyone. The reality for the majority of us is I'm gonna do one thing that I really love. This ignites me. I'm excited about doing this, whether it's volunteering, working, whatever. And then I'm gonna find out that this isn't for me, okay? Then I learn something about myself. It might not be the right thing that I want to do, but in that case, I know I need to cancel this, pivot, and do something else.

James Moffitt (53:55.682)
Right.

Lindi (54:22.917)
But following those things, actually getting your hands dirty and doing those things, that's the only thing that's going to get you to clarity. So I would also like to use myself and I'm sure you have stories like this as well, but clarity for me, I am very clear on my purpose. I'm very clear on I need to be helping young adults. I remember my dad being

He's an amazing drummer. I remember playing outside and we had friends over and I heard drums playing and one kid was saying, that's my dad. And we went running into the house to go see the dads play on the drum set. And I remember walking in there and I saw, no, it's not his dad, it was my dad. And that was one of the first times I actually saw my dad playing drums. And after that,

I learned the story of how my dad played drums and that's all he wanted to do. That's the only thing that mattered to him. Then his grades in school started to slip and my grandmother tied the whole drum set to the roof in our garage, in their garage, and told him that he would be able to get the drum set back once his grades are better.

sensible thing for a mother to do, I understand what happened there, but to a certain degree that had a massive impact on my dad. And for the rest of his life, I could see, and the only way I could see that trend was from the end of his life, looking back. And as I was writing his eulogy for his funeral, I remember thinking about that story.

James Moffitt (55:50.67)
Sure.

James Moffitt (56:08.162)
Right.

Lindi (56:16.515)
I remember thinking and seeing all the pieces of my dad's kind of fitting together and how that small moment in his life made such an impact that it taught him that first the responsibilities, first you do this and then you do the fun bit. And that's something and every situation is different but in his life that became the thing that he almost resented.

James Moffitt (56:36.312)
Right.

Lindi (56:44.495)
He resented the passion within himself. So he tried to fit the mold. He tried to do the right thing. And all of that made him so miserable that he kept kind of going off on all the paths, ended up being divorced three times and kind of having a bit of turmoil relationship with past exes.

James Moffitt (57:03.766)
Well...

Lindi (57:11.861)
and but the one thing that you remember of my dad when you see all of the videos of him is him with a kitai in his hand him playing drums and that was the one thing that really lit him up and to this day i wish that i could see more of that in him i wish i could see him more

Lindi (57:35.739)
doing those things. obviously hindsight is 20-20 vision. And I can never tell what his life would have turned out if he had followed those passions more. But I think he might have at least been a little bit happier in not pushing all of those small parts down, in not kind of labeling those good passionate parts.

James Moffitt (57:55.907)
Right?

Lindi (58:06.039)
that as the bad part, as the first you do this and then you do that. And I'm taking a very long road to get to that space where I for whoever is thinking I want to help my kid get clarity so that they can know what it is, if they follow those small inclinations, the things that really light them up right now.

James Moffitt (58:12.334)
Right.

Lindi (58:35.481)
and that adds value to their life or someone else's life, follow those things because those small things will lead to bigger things and bigger things, even if some of those small things tell them what they're not supposed to be doing.

James Moffitt (58:52.642)
Good stuff.

James Moffitt (58:56.67)
I think at this point I'm going to do the outro. We have a lot more to talk about. I don't think we really have time. We're at 59 minutes already. I definitely want to have you back on the podcast. Hopefully you'll join Pod Match and we can use the Pod Match structure to schedule episodes and stuff like that.

Lindi (59:04.719)
Yeah.

Lindi (59:12.859)
Brilliant.

Lindi (59:19.568)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (59:21.016)
So thank you so much for being on the podcast episode, Lindy. I appreciate everything that you're doing. Tell the listening audience about if you have a website or whatever you would like to share.

Lindi (59:34.396)
Well, thank you so much. First of all, thank you, James, for having me on the podcast. I would love to talk to you more in future as well. think we've only scratched the surface on this and there's so many big topics, especially like AI and how that's going to change jobs in future and the impact that that would also have on parents and the different perspectives of how life and work will look like. But if anyone...

in the audience who's listening wants to reach out to me. I will also have James maybe add some of my contact details, just my email address, which is lindyfaniardin.com. For those of you that don't know how to spell it, we'll have it in my name. It's just my name and my surname. At the moment, I have an online course, which is completely free. It is one of...

the biggest tasks that I have ever kind of conquered to be recording nine hours of online material. It can probably be upwards of 2000 euros, but it's completely for free because I know the absolute value that these young adults need to get to that point where they have that clarity and where they feel excited about their lives.

because if there's one kid that finds passion for their life and not finding the passion, I would love to be an assistant of that. And then in conjunction with that, if you don't want to do the free course and you want some personal assistance, I do one-on-one coaching and then in group sessions as well, which is a lot more than coaching. I don't coach.

It's more of a very active accelerator where you have a lot of work that needs to be done because to really love that life of feeling happy and fulfilled with the choices that you are making, it takes some exploration. And like we spoke about, James, it takes a lot of internal questions about how did I get here? Why did I get here? And kind of the road that our parents took to also get to that.

Lindi (01:01:58.033)
point. So thank you, James.

James Moffitt (01:02:00.142)
Very good. Yeah. So the listening audience, I'm going to say thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to the audio version of this podcast on Captivate.fm, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Public Radio. I upload the video version of this episode to rumble.com, R-U-M-B-L-E.com. And I have a website called parentingadultchildren.org.

common spelling parentingadultchildren.org. You go there, you'll see my contact information. You can leave me a voicemail, can leave me an email and I'll respond to you. And I always tell people I double dog dare you to do it. I haven't had anybody use that yet. I'm paying for that information to be there. So, so please, I'll probably fall out of my chair if somebody were to send me an email or send me a voicemail. But I look forward to hearing from any of you.

You can look at the blog and you can see I put in I put Two months worth of episode information in there is what's coming up? Already told you about the contact information. There's a lot of blog posts. I talk about all my guests and put their information there and so Having said all of that, I want to wish everybody goodbye

and you have a wonderful day.

James Moffitt (01:03:51.618)
Yay, you're back.

Lindi (01:03:52.416)
Well, at least this time it waited for our whole conversation to be finished before it kicked me out.

James Moffitt (01:03:56.236)
Yes, yes. Alright, so I'm going click on stop and just hang loose.