Diane Dempster
So, what is a young adult? What I think we're really talking about is kids who are mostly over 18. Yeah. Whether they're ready for college or in college or post-college—I mean, we have, or not going to college, or going to college, or all the things, right? We have parents in our community that have kids that are in their 30s that they're struggling with. We have parents who have kids who are like 18 or 19 that are ready to go off to college and/or off on their own. And they're struggling with kind of, how do I support them long distance?

The way that I bottom-line it, Elaine, is like: they're either adults legally, or they're not living with us, right? And so both of those scenarios create enough of a difference in your parenting that it warrants kind of paying attention differently. And that's why we do this event every year, and we do a lot of work both in our small groups and in our community generally to support those of you who are struggling with your young adults. And even if you're not a parent of a young adult, listen in, because if you've got a complex kid, at some point they will be a complex young adult. It's young adult. You might have some of these same struggles that we're talking about today.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. So if you haven't already, we really encourage you to register for the Back on Track Summit to get your ticket. It's free. There's a VIP pass where you can get all the recordings to listen at your own—whatever works for you. We really encourage you to tune in for that on July 17th live, or get the recordings package. It's, it's amazing. And just as a heads up, some of the guests are gonna be Jessica McCabe from How to ADHD and Sasha Hamdani. And I mean, it's just a great lineup of guests. I'm very excited.

Awesome. And so let's, let's talk about—so what we decided we wanted to talk about today was really kind of teeing up what are the issues, and how do we set realistic expectations when we're parenting emerging adults? Because, as Diane said, it's a little different. Right?

Diane Dempster
Well, and I think that that's the piece of it—it's about setting realistic expectations, but it's about where do I even focus? Right? So you were telling a story, and I have a similar story, where the parent is like, "I wanna focus on this. I wanna help them get a job. I wanna help them figure out what school they're gonna go to. I wanna help them. I wanna help them this," right? So we come in with an idea of what the focus should be, but their priorities and their focus and their agenda might be completely different than ours is. And that's an important step to take into consideration because they are adults.

They do have their own priorities. They have their own areas of focus. And it's important to, again—it's like we wanna take that into consideration and treat them with respect and collaboration, rather than, you know, if you have a 5-year-old, you can say, "This is what we're going to do," in a very different way than you can with a 25-year-old.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. Well, you can, but you're not gonna get quite the same results.
No, you're not. Well, so let's look at what we're really talking about.
There are a lot of things that came up in just that little bit that you were saying. Yeah. Right? Whose agenda is it is always a huge topic when it comes to young adults. And then there's this issue of, "Well, but if they don't seem to have their agenda, then I must push mine, because something's gotta happen. Something's gotta change." So we get lost in whose agenda it is. And then I think as parents, sometimes when we get worried, we revert back to director mode.

Diane Dempster
Well, and I think that as you're saying that, I'm even thinking about the fact that it's this sort of: Do they have an agenda? Are they not yet at a place where they feel safe having an agenda? I mean, we talk a lot about this age group getting stuck, right? And so they say—well, again, half of your parents are going,
"My kid's agenda is to play video games 24 hours a day." Right? So yes, that might be what they're spending their time on, but that may not actually be their agenda. They may be in avoidance mode, or they may not know how to do the thing that they really want to do, or they may be afraid to hope or dream. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons these kids get stuck—is the word I'm gonna use—
that they're over here avoiding, they're over here frustrated, they're over here pushing back: "No, no, no," right? And so part of this is really creating a space so that we can hear our kid's agenda and be cautious not to— the minute they say, "This is what I want"—pounce and say, "Oh great, you wanna get a job? Here's this. Make that happen. She needs to do... and you can do it this week, and I'll help you, and let's make it happen." Right? It's this sort of—you're helping them to identify what their agenda is, and then you're gonna figure out what your role is in terms of supporting them and stepping into that agenda, if that makes sense.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It does. So, can we go back a little bit? Before we start solving the problem, I wanna break down what you—'cause there was a lot in what you just said. There are a lot of reasons that our young adults get stuck. And what I've seen—and you and I both lead groups for parents of young adults or grandparents of young adults—right? And what I've seen, the issue that comes up there a lot, is when parents begin to see that, because the relationship gets so frayed, that it's really hard to know what their agenda would be. And so a lot of our young adults, if they haven't gone on a smooth trajectory that gets better and better, they can kind of—for lack of a better word—flame out or, you know, fall out, fall back, whatever you wanna call it, for a lot of reasons.

Very often what happens is they're having a hard time getting back on the horse again. That they've had something that's happened—maybe they didn't make it through the first try at college, maybe they lost a job. I was talking to one parent this week whose kid's really having a hard time going back to apply for another job,
and it finally became clear: well, they got fired from the last job,
and he feels really bad about it, so he's afraid to try.

Diane Dempster
Well, yeah. No, like, I'm aware of a client who had a kid in the same situation, and it took him a good six months. And I don't wanna scare you by the timeline here, but what happens is, as parents, we're like, "Okay, wait, you lost a job. T me to get another one. L t's get back on the horse." And we have to recognize that there's a process there. There's a hit our self-esteem takes. And remember, these are kids who've had a lot of chances before they're 18 to screw up and underperform, or be perceived as underperforming, or have failures, or get in trouble. These are often kids who've been stumbling all along. And so to expect them to have a major hit—I mean, transparently, I didn't get fired from a job until I was well in my forties, and it took me quite a bit to recover from that. Because as humans, we have challenges with fear of failure and all of this stuff that's part of normal human nature.

And we're in there without the emotional attachment—or our emotional attachment is, "I gotta get this kid to get a job so that I'm not financing them for the rest of their life." And so our emotions are competing with what's going on with them emotionally. Our priorities are different. And I think that's the piece I wanna take us back to:
part of the problem is that we do have different priorities. And there's some work there that we'll talk about after the break.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, we're not at the break yet. Are we at the break? Yeah? No? No? Good. OK. Because there's a lot of reasons kids get stuck, and what we're speaking to right now is a variety of different self-esteem hits—struggles with failure, not having quite the resiliency they need, being afraid that they can't, or afraid they won't be able to figure it out. So there's all kinds of ways that that shows up. That developmental delay, so that the executive function skills required to do whatever is needed
may feel daunting, or overwhelming, or too much.

Diane Dempster
Yeah, I'm raising my hand. Just as a reminder: one of the things we teach in our programming is that these kids are developmentally three to five years behind their peers; the research shows they're about 30 percent behind. For a 25-year-old, that gap becomes more like seven years rather than three to five. So, if your 25-year-old is acting more like a 17- or 18-year-old, they could still be on track relative to where they were at 15, 17, or 19, even though they're not in the same space as their chronological peers. I think parents wonder, "Do they ever catch up?" Elaine, what's your answer to that?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We get that question a lot: yes and no. There are ways and tools to help them "catch up," but ultimately, as adults living with neurodiversity and executive-function challenges, I may never fully "catch up." I've learned to manage, accommodate, and outsource the areas where I struggle—working memory, for example. That's just how my brain is wired; it's not about catching up on those functions but about learning to manage them. I can't do that until I accept it as my reality and understand what it takes to manage it.

Diane Dempster
We've identified some reasons they're stuck: developmental delays, and the reality that these are independent adults with priorities and agendas different from ours.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I have another one. Sometimes, kids get stuck in power struggles when parents hold the reins too tightly and struggle to let go. I don't mean a specific age—whether 19, 24, or 28—our young adults can react against that control, even against their own best interests. We often talk about holding a vision for our kids—helping them see what they're capable of—but if children feel we don't see them as capable and treat them as incapable, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Why bother even trying?"

"I am going to show you that I'm not capable," or "I'm not even going to try," or "Forget you; I'm going to do it on my own." There are many ways kids react when they feel we don't believe in them. I think that happens frequently with parents of young adults: a power struggle ensues because parents—out of fear and concern—unintentionally communicate a lack of belief. But if the young person experiences it as, "You don't believe in me; you don't think I can do it; you're undermining me," we end up with a different kind of stuckness: pushback.

Diane Dempster
What you're describing is a reactive pattern we fall into. Reaction doesn't always mean aggression; it can be blame, avoidance, or shutting down. Whether we're reacting out of fear—worried they'll live in our basement forever—or they're reacting because they feel pressured, it creates conflict on top of all the other reasons they might be stuck.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
We've been talking about young adults and the obstacles that keep them—and us—in a holding pattern. There are too many challenges to list, but these emotional dynamics—feeling deflated, dismissed, or undermined—drive the difficulties in supporting them. It becomes a hot mess ensues.

Diane Dempster
Right. Well, I think the place I want to go is solutions. One really helpful framework for me and the parents I work with is that when our kids become adults—or when they move out—those are two big milestones. It's an opportunity to redefine our relationship. If we explicitly say that… it's hard, because we've been parenting all along. I was talking to a parent of an 18-year-old the other day, and they're really struggling. It's not her job in the same way to support him as it was when he was 5, 6, 7. So we need to figure out how to take on a different role.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Nothing magical happens when they turn 18. It's not a magic wand. Yet society tells us everything's different now—and it is, legally, at least in the United States and many other countries. But psychologically… I remember one of my kids thought that by turning 18 she had to know how to do her taxes. That assumption wasn't communicated by me; she made it herself. There really is something about understanding that their mindset shifts when they cross that boundary.

Diane Dempster
Right. Some kids are happy to have your help until they're 20 or 22, and others—like you might have a 16-year-old—are like, "Stay outta my life, Mom and Dad. I've got this." The point is we get to redefine our role. Even with my 40-year-old, sometimes I catch myself slipping back into parenting habits from when he lived with me. It's hard to rewire. So the framework I want to introduce is changing the role—to articulate it clearly when it's not the traditional parent-child relationship. You may now be the landlord, the roommate, the bank, the employer—whatever role you adopt. This framework is helpful for a couple of reasons: one, it separates us from the automatic "I'm the parent, I have the authority" stance; two, it may legitimize expectations differently. I think about when my kid moved out and had roommates. They held a weekly meeting to discuss living together—dishes in the sink, toilets not flushing—issues they addressed as equals, not as "Clean your room because I'm the parent."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, I think that's key, and it applies whether they live with us or not. Our role shifts—and we need to pay attention to how we communicate and set expectations now that they're moving into a different role. On another podcast, we've talked about Designing Conversations. As kids become young adults, there's an opportunity to co-design what we'll continue to do or support—and what we won't. For example, when they start driving, you might say, "We'll pay for the car and insurance; you pay for gas and be home by 10 p.m." We're used to those agreements as young adults emerge, but there's sometimes an initial sense that "I'm an adult—no agreements needed." Then we realize we're still in relationship.

Diane Dempster
It's OK to have a collaborative agreement. We can link to that episode—number 44—where we discuss how to set an agreement. It's a process: What should our family agreement be around keeping the house neat? How do we keep each other updated when we'll be out of town or running late? Having these agreements pushes us to collaborate differently and breaks old patterns. It shows our teens they no longer answer to us as bosses like when they were 15.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Here's a question for parents: Do you see that you're not their boss anymore—even if they live in your house and you pay their rent or tuition? If you want them to take agency over their own lives, and you haven't been collaborative so far, now is the time. In young-adult parent groups—mine and yours—this comes up all the time. To redefine our role, we must lean into the relationship. You began by saying it's about creating new relationships: redefining how we'll relate to our kids as young adults, assuming they have their own agency and ways of doing things. We may not agree with every decision, but can we align on how we communicate and support them in whatever they do?

Diane Dempster
Well, it's really funny. Over the weekend, my family was together, and we were talking about my parents and something I was reflecting on: one of the hardest times in my life growing up—now I'm 60, so that's a lot of years behind me—was the six weeks between college and my first job, when I moved back home and lived with my parents. I'd finished college and didn't yet have a job. I was looking for a job, I was living with my parents, and it was painful. My parents weren't the "under our roof" type—"these are our rules"—but they were more conservative about how things should be run. They weren't that strict, but it was still this sense of "I'm supposed to be an adult, I want to be independent."

I was living with my parents, trying to exist—I'd been living on my own for the past four years in college. This was hard for them, too—that's the piece I want to pull out: it's hard for them. If we can acknowledge that and put ourselves in their shoes, not just see the obvious, but look at what else might be going on underneath, our job is to help them unearth their agenda, not push ours. You always say it: wanting for them instead of from them.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Exactly. I was in a group this week with parents and grandparents of young adults. One parent was talking about their son who stepped out of college—his first round didn't go well. He's getting ready to go back and is nervous; he's been living at home, and the parents want him to get a job so he'll have money when he returns. But he's resisting. Yesterday they realized they only wanted him to get a job because they wanted him to have structure this summer and be doing something. When they saw it wasn't actually about the job, they could ask, "What are you going to do this summer? How do you want to use your time?" He's nervous about going back to school. Shifting from "get a job" to "let's figure out how to support you in getting ready to go back" opened up possibilities. They shifted perspective and saw different ways to support him—it wasn't just "he has to get a job because that's what we think he should do."

Diane Dempster
That's what people do when they're 21: they get a job. I'm sure I even did this to my kids: "Either be in school or have a job." The invitation is, why? Why is that important? I want them to feel productive. There are so many ways to be productive: volunteering, creating online content, writing a book—any number of things. Ultimately, we want them to discover their own thing, because that's sustainable, not just do what we think they should.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And remember, productivity is a value some of us hold: that we should be busy and doing. Sometimes our kids share that. My kid often says, "You guys make life too hard. What if you could make it easier?" He doesn't want to work nonstop. I can learn from that. He values work–life balance, or life–work balance, differently. That's reasonable, and I respect it. This generation often says, "I work so I can live," instead of "My work is my life." It's changing, and our job is to see what matters to them and support them on their journey, rather than impose our journey.

Diane Dempster
I'm thinking about "journey" again—it goes back to wanting them to get a job. But they may need to get unstuck so they can start dreaming, planning, taking action, finding the right job, staying there and making it sustainable. How do we wrap this up, Elaine?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
There's a lot here, and I know some of you are thinking, What do we do? We talk about this a lot with parents in our community, because it's about relationship and conversation. Check out podcast episode 44 on setting agreements. My invitation is: be an invitation to your kids. Invite them to step into their own lives, don't direct or expect them, but offer them a safe place. If we can invite and support them rather than demand, we help them find their path.

Diane Dempster
We want to set realistic expectations, and remember these kids are 30% behind their peers. They may not look the same at 25 or 30 as peers who finished college or are out working. You need to stretch them to the next level of independence and manage your frustration that they're not where you wish, so you can problem solve and partner with them.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
That's exactly what we discussed in our group yesterday: this is your space to do your work, to take your emotionality out of it so that when you're with him, you're present to his needs and not bringing your worry and anxiety. I'd say, do your work—wherever that is. As parents, we've got to bring our energy out of it so we can meet them where they are now.

Diane Dempster
Awesome. As we close, reflect for yourself: What's your nugget or insight? What will you do differently based on today's conversation?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And as always, friends, thank you for doing this work for yourself by tuning in and for your kids by thinking consciously about your parenting. It makes a huge difference. Take care, everybody.