Thirty years ago children left their parent's home earlier than they do at this time. Currently, 35% of "children" still live at home with their parents. (Maryland Addiction Recovery Center.) This unnecessary enabling of dependency for millennials can negatively impact their ability to provide self care in difficult situations.
There is a difference between enabling and empowering; It is important for the parents of adults to recognize this difference. Enabling involves doing for others what they can do for themselves...encouraging adults to remain childlike. Empowering, on the other hand, involves helping others to recognize what they can do for themselves which encourages the development of emotional and behavioral strength.
Empowering can be very difficult. Watching "children" suffer is hard when we know that if we just stepped in, we may temporarily reduce pain. Know, however, that if we don't take the training wheels off of bicycles, we are inviting adults to ride tricycles down the freeways of life.
We recognize that 30% of college freshmen drop out of school after their first year. (Jeffery Bernstein PhD). It appears that a sense of independence can feel scary when students have been inappropriately rescued during earlier years.
There are at least 6 ways that we can stop rescuing adult "children;"
1. Let adult children know that you have made a past mistakes in your parenting role and that it is your intention to correct that error.
2. When your adult child has a problem, ask what will be done about it rather than offering answers.
3. Do not offer advice when it has not been requested.
4. Stay calm in the face of crisis so that your son or daughter has the space to express, understand and adjust feelings related to the situation.
5. When occasionally helping to solve a problem for your adult child, make sure that the child carries part of the burden. There are things you can do together rather than your spending hours working on the situation by yourself while your child sits back and watches.
6. Praise you son or daughter for working hard to make things right.
"Eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
Hans Hofmann