#63: Why Your Adult Child Stays Stuck | The Single Most Important Factor

If your adult child is uninterested in trying anything, won't apply for jobs, avoids challenges, and is perfectly content having you  do everything for them, this episode explains why and what you can do to help. And is it ever easy!

Discover the one psychological factor that determines whether young adults move forward or stay stuck, plus the specific things parents need to STOP doing and START doing to help their adults build confidence.

It’s short but impactful! 

Thank you for listening. 

Please remember to hit the subscribe. 

💻 Have you enrolled in Shari's Parenting course yet?  "The Journey to Independence: A Step-by-Step Roadmap to Guiding and Launching Your Adult Child.” 

For more information and where to sign up, visit: https://parentingfx.com/parentingcourse

Do you want to know if your adult child is struggling with Failure to Launch? Grab the FREE Failure to Launch Checklist here:  

🗣️One-on-One Consultations are available. Click here!

Email me if you have any questions at: Shari@ParentingFX.com

🎙️Remember to hit the SUBSCRIBE button so you never miss an episode. 

Shari can be found on Instagram & TikTok Search @sharijonaslifefx

YouTube has all of the interviews available to watch! CLICK HERE...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

As someone who grew up witnessing firsthand, a close family member struggle as a young adult, feeling lost, disconnected, without purpose, and battling substance abuse, I understand how frustrating and helpless this can feel for the family going through it. Because it does affect the whole family. I'm on a mission now to show parents how to reconnect with their adult children and teach them the life skills, responsibilities, and mindset they need to find purpose, become confident, capable, and independent so they can thrive in the world. I'm Sherry Jonas, and this is Launch. Today I want to talk about something many parents haven't heard about, but it may be the single most important factor in whether a young adult moves forward or stays stuck. Almost every parent has shared with me that their adult child struggles with low self-confidence and they want to help. But confidence is not the starting point, it's the outcome. What actually comes first is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a psychological concept developed by Albert Bandura, and it explains a lot about why so many young adults are struggling right now. Self-efficacy means believing you can handle challenges, solve problems, and figure things out on your own. Bandura found that the strongest way to develop it is through what he called mastery, taking action, following through, and experiencing the outcome. Each experience becomes evidence. And over time, that evidence builds into conviction that I can do hard things, I can figure this out. Just like lifting weights builds muscle, it's the doing that builds self-efficacy. I hope that makes sense. When self-efficacy is low, parents think that their adult child is lazy or lacks motivation. But what's really happening is avoidance, avoidance of responsibility, of decision making, of discomfort, and of course avoidance of failure, which is why they won't even try. So you can stop thinking it's because they don't care or they're lazy. That's just a mask they put on. The truth is that they don't believe they can succeed, and they won't until they've actually done it. So here's where parents often get stuck. When they come to the rescue, when they fix or they step in too quickly and handle it, they're unintentionally removing the very experience that would have built self-efficacy. The message your adult receives is you can't handle this without me. And over time, your adult starts to believe that. This is how once capable kids quietly lose confidence in themselves. They've stopped trusting in their ability to succeed. I know you're not doing this on purpose. You're just trying to help. You're trying to reduce their stress, eliminate their feelings of inadequacy, of frustration. You're just trying to keep the peace. But that doesn't help. What will is to create opportunities. Give them small tasks that they can do and build from there the list of groceries, the prepping of dinner, the entire meal. Here's how you'll help them build self-efficacy. Encourage them to do things that stretch them slightly beyond their current abilities. When they succeed through their own effort, it builds real confidence. Resist the urge to rescue them from every difficulty. Ask them questions to help them problem solve rather than immediately providing the solutions. Celebrate their efforts, and of course, model self-efficacy by telling them how you work through a challenge. The goal isn't protecting your adult from failure, but helping them build self-efficacy. Here's something different to end this mini episode. I'm often suggesting what you can do, and I just gave you a few nuggets. But this time, I'm going to suggest that you stop doing something. If you can do this, you're on the right track. Stop doing things for them that they can do for themselves. This is the single biggest mistake well-meaning parents make, and it directly undermines their adults' self-efficacy. Every time you step in to do something that they can do for themselves, every time you solve a problem they could handle given enough time, all you're saying is, I can do this better, or I don't think you can do this at all. And that's a very unmotivating feeling. I mean, it could happen anywhere and anytime. Calling to make their doctor's appointments, filling out forms for them, waking them up for work, doing their chores. I know what you're thinking. It's just faster. You'll do it better, and you hate watching them struggle. But here's what's actually happening. They never get to experience the mastery, the feeling, and the belief that builds self-efficacy. Worse, they start to internalize that they need you to function, which creates a dependency that gets harder to break the longer it continues. The fix is uncomfortable, but simple. Let them struggle a bit. You might need to show them, then leave them, let them make a mistake here and there, let them figure it out. Your job is to be a consultant who they come to for advice, not the project manager running their life. When they say to you, I don't know how to do this, resist the urge to do it. Instead say, What have you tried so far? Or yeah, that's pretty tricky. Where do you think you can find that information out? When they haven't done something they were planning on doing, you don't have to ask them why. They didn't because they thought they couldn't do it well. So ask if you can sit with them as they do it. You can show them or you can even participate. The message you want them to internalize is this is hard and you can handle it. Not this is hard, so I'll handle it for you. That shift alone will do more for their self-efficacy and their confidence than anything else you can ever do. I'm Sherry Jonas, and this is Launch. If you enjoyed this little rant, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And a quick heads up: I have a very special guest for the next episode. It was truly an honor to speak with her, and I'm sure you'll love listening to our conversation. Remember to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss it. As always, thank you for listening.