89: Failure to launch: What we can learn from struggling young adults about how to help our teens.

89:
We all love our kids and hope for the best, but we also worry about how well they'll navigate life once they're old enough to leave home. It's a fine balance between supporting them enough for them to feel loved, and letting them fail so that they learn the skills they need.

With the reported increase in kids who 'fail to launch' I thought it might be really helpful to talk with someone who spends his days helping  young adults who're struggling.

We talked about the vital importance of routine, helping them to feel positive about themselves - especially in the face of failure - what we can do to help them find their own purpose in life, and giving our kids healthy role models on which to build their own life.

KEN'S TIPS:

Start with the sleep/wake routine, helping them to create their own schedule.

Once they have a solid routine in place, introduce three extra things:

• Something creative
• Something reflective 
• Something physical

Types of anxiety:
Body-based
Mind-based
Totems: something that represents a challenge
Time-based 
Distance: Having to leave a safe space 

Depression: 
All the parts of the daily routine will help make a difference to their depression.

If you would like to ask Ken any questions, or learn more about mentoring:
Www.kenrabow.com

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:02

Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, a mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now as you all know, I'm constantly looking for answers to the problems faced by us parents, one of our listeners said that she was keen to hear more on dealing with teens who seemed to be failing to launch so this time, I thought it'd be great to have a conversation with someone who's dealing with this full time. Ken Rabow has been mentoring young adults for the last 23 years and deals with issues like anxiety, failure to launch school failures, you name it. Welcome to the podcast. Ken, thanks for being with us. Now, let's start with what's the difference between what you do which is a sort of mentoring coach and a therapist.

Ken Rabow: 0:48

Very, very big difference. We are action based. I train people to mentor with me. And the first thing I say is, we are neither judge, jury and executioner. We are not inquisitors. We are Colombo, we are the curious traveler in the world of our Gen Z mentees. I believe that within each person is the genius to find their greatness. Parents come to me, because they've tried everything they've tried to therapy. They've tried different drugs, they tried all sorts of things. And I'll explain later, there's very specific reasons why Gen Z cannot go out of their room or out of their house to go see a therapist twice a week, they'd rather eat ground glass than make a phone call. How do you get them across this, this the city, right? And they don't really want to talk about themselves. They want something that is based on what's important to them, and to be guided. And they just turned around from the data. That's what I

Rachel Richards: 1:49

do. Interesting. So can be because I've read some of the things you've written. And one of the things you talk about is how our teams will, they'll sort of be using their talents, and then they get to a point where it's not enough. And then they're starting to struggle. And then they'll work out new ways of doing things and and then they'll go back on the path of success. But there are a number of them will do that. But there are also quite a few teens who just find that they stumble at that and they don't know how to move forward. So what sort of advice would you give to a parent who's got a teen who's got so far, and then they're just not succeeding?

Unknown: 2:24

First of all, parents, you are not alone. There are so many parents who are feeling stuck and frustrated, because these are young adults who have grown up on the internet. And what they don't know is how to translate that world into this world. And often they don't have long talks, don't have texts, though, you know, do things like that they will be on a headset during a game, like a video game, but they aren't doing the face to face. So face to face is a lost part to them. There are many skills. Let's go back. Most of my mentees met young women and young men are what I call just in timers. There are people who pulled tests and exams out of their butt, like magic in the early years. And then they reach a certain point, grade 10 grade 11 grade 12 University where it doesn't work anymore. And they're no longer magic. If they say, Gee, I no longer magic, I should talk to some teachers and figure out how to do this. I never seen them. If they go, I'm no longer magic. I can't win. Hmm. If I choose to fail, and I do, then I've won. Parents are running around like crazy trying to fix them and help them. They're in power again. They don't do this consciously frisbee what some do, but almost no, 99% of them don't know they're doing this. But they want to do well. Right, isn't it? And so our job is to find out, how do we train them on the things they've literally untrained themselves to do? They don't know how to organize their time. They don't know how to sit down and look at all the pieces that are required. They can't even start with the instruction because the instruction doesn't make sense.

Rachel Richards: 4:27

Well, I don't understand like why doesn't it make sense? Why is Why are kids really struggling with this? Teachers

Unknown: 4:33

are extraordinary individuals. But they've bought the Kool Aid there in the world of teacher done. And so sometimes, often, because I have to do this with my guys on line my mentees, we look at the instruction and it's not clear. Now if you spent your life doing teacher stuff, if you actually done your homework, you learned teacher stuff at different levels. And when you hit those higher levels and you have vague instructions, you know what to do? Or you know how to ask. Remember ground glass phone calls, same with emails, they're going to email the teacher. What if they yell at me? What if she says I'm stupid? What if she's names marks off, and I go, trust me, to me, let's go with to me. Trust me to me. If you email your teacher and say you don't understand and catchy help, they will love you. It really worked. And so all these pieces are going, they seem like Failure to Launch, but they are mired in what looks like concrete in front of them. What is actually bubblegum. All we need to do is pierce the target and what seemed to them impenetrable starts to have openings.

Rachel Richards: 5:48

So you talked about them being online. And I think we've I've got bonus daughter. So I've got one who's 29 and other 26 year old. And then I've got my 17 and 16 year olds. And so they actually they they span the millennials, and Gen Z. Yeah, they've got different relationships with different relationships with social media, but they've all grown up online. So what is it about this, particularly because we keep going, Oh, God, kids are all distracted. They're all you know, they're not actually concentrating. They're all online all the time. And, you know, how can we use this in a in a positive way? Is there something we can be doing that would be a better way of approaching it? Rather than say, I've got to keep my kid offline. I've got to intervene all the time.

Unknown: 6:36

Let me first address the ladder. For all the parents who hyper control their children. I need your children in university when no one's around, who are partying, smoking weed, playing video games, because they never learned any intrinsic motivation.

Rachel Richards: 6:55

Wow. Interesting.

Unknown: 6:58

To avoid that, you are going to become their mentor, you take off the parent hat, and you become a curious traveler in their worlds. You cannot comment. You cannot poop on anything. You say, show me what you're listening to? Who are your interests? Why do you like them? How do you deal with the people saying weird stuff? They're learning stranger danger, online. What they don't know is they don't have people like myself, for you parents to learn that. And then say, you've learned all these great things. Here's a thought on how you can start making phone calls, or I can make phone calls. So with Maeve, who was this lady who, like the first time I met, we had to do an email. And she burst into tears. One of her lines is I hate wet sleeves, because she's always crying. No, no, no more wet sleeves. And so I said, How about, I help you write the email. And we're always going to use a compliment sandwich. So I teach them how to do it. We practice it back and forth. And the only one you feel it's good. Well, we send it to the teacher. And it worked. And then we did the same thing with uncles, again, make phone calls. By the way for last session, which I think was Friday, she made four phone calls in a row. And I wrote down to share with you today what she said after she finished talking to people, not a stress at all. So that's now what she says when she's going to do it. Because what she used to say is I can't do this. What if they laugh? What are they that now she's just talking to people, not a stress. And it's cute. It's funny, but it's how we change the words in our mind. How

Rachel Richards: 8:49

to identify that there's a gap, you know, how do we identify that there's something that they're not able to do? Because quite often they'll just they just won't be performing well, and you'll think Well, I don't I just don't know what's wrong, like how, you know, it's

Unknown: 9:04

so true. And it's such an important place. And this is where parents get off. If you say any of these things, you always Why can't you or any of those things, you will never get an answer. And by the way, when I work as a mentor with my mentees, they don't know the answer. I have to guide them to it. So the way I suggest you do it the way that I do it is let's take Ryan we have a daily routine. So a daily routine is where I have my mentees choose what's important for them that they want to follow each day. I always say to my mentees could only do in your life what you can do in a day versus daily routine. So he fills us out every day. And then at the end, like I see him twice a week. He brings in what he's done and going. You got four and a half hour sleep parents, none of your children so they call them my guys, my mentees I will ever do anything until the master sleep wake routine. That's not their getting up late. It's when do they go to bed? Then we put it together. All my mentees say, I say what am I you sleep like I don't have a sleep routine. Trust me, Ryan, you have a sleep routine. You just don't know it. And so what we do for Ryan and this took some time, he's prep for sleep. He wants to be in bed at 1115 His prep is at 11 Prep is put his so he moved his charger from next to his bed. Cuz that's why he never got out of bed to the other side that can take time you can't you say? So I say to him this what you would say to your child, Brian, what do you think about taking your phone and moving the charger and putting it on the other side of the river? I don't know about that. Try it for one night and see how it works. We do it. It works. Now I need something for some of my guys. I might suggest that they do some music for the greater book. In his case, I'm a huge fan of Dale Carnegie. So we use How to Win Friends and Influence People the initials are HC WF VIP, I call it so it's hot with it. And then we put the time that we put the wig time which was 730 That was awesome. out of bed. 745. Then we do teeth Brush BFM W. brush, floss mouthwash. I'm fine, because most of my guys don't bro. Floss. Some of them don't brush if they just even brush and mouthwash. So what we do is ask questions. He wasn't doing this for three weeks. I said, Ryan, you're so good at helping your your girlfriend, because Maya was messing up and everything. And he had all the plants. He was using everything I taught him for her. And so I said, What's stopping you from filling it up? I don't know. Like just going on to the computer opening it up is exhausting. He said, Why don't we try printing. So we printed them. And for some reason for him because he's a kinesthetic learner, filling it out, started to make it work. So I have been filled out. And before he shows it to me, I take the written papers, and he falls it in there. The question was, what do you think is the problem? Let your child be the expert. But don't be an interrogator. Yes,

Rachel Richards: 12:31

so So you're letting them figure out what they think is the problem. And they know the one that they want to work on on that particular time, presumably, with guidance, and getting the guidance that you've what you've done, but by explaining that entire thing has made it really quite clear how you would go through that procedure. Because in my recent episode, I had only just really understood how critically important routine is. I just I just didn't grow up with routine. And I'm one of the listeners who said, Oh, you know, I can't get my kids to go to bed. And when I started looking, I thought going to bed is a really complicated procedure if you don't have a very, very set routine. And so the only way to make it really work long term is to have a routine where it didn't have to think because every time we have to think procrastination sets in, it becomes more complicated and difficult. That's a very interesting point you're making there.

Unknown: 13:25

And know that it takes three weeks for a routine to take hold. It's exciting. days for to get lost. So the biggest success that you parents have to learn is okay. Let's start again. No recrimination, no judgment. I like that. Ryan has started again 2030 times he's now just getting back to you college. Eventually University. We're starting to college because it's easier. He had failed completely empty, so smart. Because he didn't have it in. Let's start again. That's fine. How do we start again? How do we start again? Just stay it's this way. Oh, that's a brilliant way. We can start by doing we already called it but he's doing this interval runs. He had a cool name for it. I don't do that sign in other name. But that got his day started. For some it's journaling, whatever works, and sometimes everything falls, they'd have to do something new. So if they don't feel that their routine, that's fine. Let's start again. What they learned. Is it okay to mess up. There'll be no judgment. I like that. Let's start again. How do I start? How do I start? And eventually, as they're falling, they're starting. So it doesn't even look like anything's happening. So yeah, that was terrible. That was like five seconds. You know, but they're learning and eventually, they can do anything. Yes,

Rachel Richards: 14:52

that's fascinating. And we have to the other role we play is just how just inching them forward and just helping them like scaffolding it but it is all about them. It's all about their choices and their times. And that's fascinating. And you did mention that you can talk about helping our kids find their passions. And that's one of the other things that I learned when I was doing the FOMO episode, that there were there were two key things that stop really intense FOMO. And one of them is knowing that, you know, having something that we really liked doing ourselves, stops us being dragged into other people's spaces constantly thinking, I want to do that, because we sort of mimic people, and we want to be people who are higher up the ladder than us. But you know, it's finding like, where's my ladder? And what do I want to be doing? You know, what, how would you go about that with a teenager?

Unknown: 15:45

There's two parts, there's FOMO fear of missing out. And there's what I made up called FOMO. Fear of missing. And so what happens is, there's two components to going after your passions. The first is, but I could do this, but I could do that. But I could do this. And that's where a piercing the target comes in. I'll get back to that. The others perfectionism. They look online, and whatever they're going to do, they're going to learn guitar, there's a guy, he's playing it with his nose, and he's playing. You know, it's like, yeah, ever do that for your awesome parent who's super good at things and your child thinks I can't match them. And so FOMO and FOMO are the two challenges. Let's look at FOMO. I'm a huge fan in the daily routine, as they get better to add something creative, something reflective, something physical, I don't even care what they are. Like that. Three things change everything. We don't start with that. But when those daily routines doing well, that's what we start to act. Let's go to the creative. So finding new passions. Well, addictions are passions, Qian massive pot smoker, like he could smoke Snoop Dogg under the table. And it was a real issue. And it was starting to really affect him. He was starting to get more paranoid, he was starting to have some lung issues. And he was a jock. So I thought, well, you know, he used to do skating, ice hockey, would that be the place Now none of his friends are doing it. They're all younger. He feels like a loser because he's so much older than everyone else. But he's Qian, you're such a good writer. Like one of the talk stories, I get lost in them. And so we started writing a book about where he went wrong, how he failed school for getting involved with wheat, hardcore wheat, getting into start was, like, unbearable. And what he finally did was I said, Qian, give me what sentence about what you would tell someone about the book, someone's next to you, what would you say and you wrote this. This book is the only thing I've ever worked for in my life. Just getting him started with that first sentence piercing the target and realizing that the hotkey wasn't going to work. But noticing he was creative and saying, why don't you write a story? Why don't you tell the story? So many of your children are looking at RPG lit, look it up, are looking at all sorts of interesting graphic novels are fascinated with counterculture storytelling in all sorts of ways. So the word oddly enough, is something they're really good at. Not everyone. But this is just one example. Hockey was on the way even though we had it before. And then noticing I asked a question and Keon, jumped on it. needed help. And he's written the whole book.

Rachel Richards: 18:53

Interesting, that little nudge or big nudge, and repeating it and making it making

Unknown: 19:00

a gentle push it?

Rachel Richards: 19:03

Yes, yes, yes. Kathy's

Unknown: 19:06

you know, otherwise, you'd have a Chinese finger puzzle, and you're both just pulling and nothing's happening. You have to let go. You have to let them guide us. But we guide them.

Rachel Richards: 19:17

Yeah. It's interesting, because I've got insight into quite a few millennial young adults. And what's interesting is, for example, one who I know from talking to my daughter, my bonus daughter, he's quite angry, and he's angry because he feels like he should have done better and he is better. But he hasn't really achieved what he wants to achieve, but hasn't really been trying because he doesn't know how and and she says she thinks his parents have been just too they just made him feel like such a prince. That it's not helped him and I don't know whether what do you think is that something We because we parents, we, we want the best for our kids. We want to make things, we want to make it good for our kids. So what are the things that we do and say that end up with kids further down the line that sort of, we're struggling with the

Unknown: 20:13

things. I was a middle school teacher for seven years, I saw so many parents come to save their children, from the dreaded music teacher making them perform. And, you know, I would say, you know, you tell Timmy, I won't happen, come up and do anything until he's ready. And then I started using these skills that's actually started this whole program was these millennials in 2001. And on who are so afraid of being humiliated in public, I let them be the teacher for one day, they could sing, they could play an instrument, or they could do a musical book report. And then we'd have these ones where the parents would save them. And I would say, in this case, he was I was doing music theater for kids, bringing different cultures together, worked in a special needs people in through music theater. And Timmy was afraid to like he was on singing the national anthem, this was in Canada. And he just couldn't do it. When we finished. Not only did he do it, and he said, he wants you to be in the shows after that. And he's like, he's the most gregarious person now in public. Parents have to understand that we don't need to push them out of the nest. They don't have to fail. But we don't have to over save them. So many parents are afraid to let them go on their own on a bus. How does that translate to being safe in the world? These are the things that I see way too much over fear from parents. And then the opposite. Like I'm kicking them out. And he knows they've done this or that. Sometimes it works. Most times it doesn't. With millennials, not so much with Gen Z's almost never, as you said with your daughter's friend, the best. defense is a good offense. So if you're angry everything, no one's going to realize how angry you are with yourself. What

Rachel Richards: 22:11

are the different kinds of depression that you see? And how can we spot when it's a serious problem?

Unknown: 22:18

It's a wonderful question. And it's something I deal with a lot. So many people come to me with anxiety, millennials, depression was six out of 10 anxiety was three out of 10, four to 10. With Gen Z's depressions five, or six out of 10. Anxiety is 9.5 out of 10. It's huge. And when I teach people that join me as mentors or teach my parents partners, I explained this five clients of anxiety, we'll get back to depression a sec, I call it back man takes time dancing, body based anxiety, where they're all in their head because they're on screens and not in their bodies, creating anxiety. mind, mind behind it is a magnetic mine. Mine based anxiety means they're that voice in their head. So I always say to my mentees, if that voice in your head was your parent, they would have been arrested years ago for child abuse. And that was supposed to be your best friend. What do you mean my restaurant and it's like my enemy. It's supposed to be helping you. It's supposed to be the one that we know the cliff says Ryan, you can pull yourself up and now just saying, Ryan, you're embarrassing. It's just drop. It's just not worth it. We change that. That's mine. Batman takes the next one is weird. totems. It's a thing that represents a challenge. It could be the paper, it could be the exam, it could be a certain place in the city where things got scary. And that thing creates anxiety. Time, time represents father. So it represents the law represents going out into the world. So time is another anxiety about not feeling safe out there. That man takes time dancing, and then distance. This was a long this took me almost five years to figure out. Some people outside the room outside their house, past a certain street have massive anxiety. And people think oh, it's every time he goes to school. No, it's when he gets or she gets to this point when she has stops here when she's past her room. All of these combined to make 20 Different kinds of anxieties that I've noticed that I have to untie the Gordian knots. Let me get back to depression. Depression lands in in two different arenas. The first is what I call situational based depression. If you failed at school, if you're no longer magic, if you thought everything was good, and then it all comes crumbling down. You're going to be depressed. And unfortunately, there are a lot of professionals that are med happy. I believe they all have the the best interests of our mentees of your children.

Rachel Richards: 25:04

When you say made happy, do you mean they medicate too quickly?

Unknown: 25:08

Medication way too easily. And so I always say, find a specialist in meds if you need to go that way. We'll talk about the second cap in a moment. You should be seeing like, in my case in North America, I want a psychiatrist and I want to look up the ratings and I want Oh, Dr. Smith, you know, help my Timmy. Why is it always Timmy portrunny helped me to me who was having all these issues, and no, no men work. This one made him paranoid, and this one made him sleep. And finally he figured out the perfect one. That's who I want you guys to go to in that second camp. But the first camp is, if they're not harming themselves, or harming them, others are talking about it. And if they are talking about those things, did they make a plan, that's where you have to take care of right away. If they're not doing those things, what we want to do is all the things about the daily routine, I cannot tell them things like all the parts of the daily routine, when they start to see that they're successful. And that could take three weeks, it could take six weeks, and they start to see week after week that they're filling it out and you go, this is awesome. I did an entire day. I love when they had their first like, I own this, you know, daily routine moment. The Depression tends to abate greatly.

Rachel Richards: 26:27

Oh, yeah, that's fascinating. It makes so much sense. When I was looking into routine, there was so much evidence about it's important for good mental health. One

Unknown: 26:35

of the things I suggest to your listeners is, show your child, something you're going to take on that you find challenging. And don't talk about how it's impossible in the fears, but let them know what was hard. And how suddenly kick your butt. But you're gonna go back to you gotta try it again. Let them see your your struggle.

Rachel Richards: 26:59

And when kids are struggling, look, it's inevitable that we parents are going to feel awful about our own failings. And I'm always saying to my listeners, that the fact we're taking the time to listen and try to help our kids and to learn makes us a good parent. What are your thoughts?

Unknown: 27:15

You know, so many times the parents who come to me to mentor their children, at some point they go, I am a bad parent? And what I say to them, and you is you're not a bad parent, a bad parent is the one who gives up.

Rachel Richards: 27:29

Yes, I love that. So what one tip can you give our listeners, apart from the vital role of routine,

Unknown: 27:35

being their parent being there, and knowing that they have you there can make a huge difference. The way one parent treats the other parent is the greatest gift you can give your daughter or son, the more they see you being kind to each other, the more they see you working things out. Those things will change, transform your children, like nothing else. And I have to say, I mean, think about what I do, I strongly believe parents were never meant to be everything to their children. That's not the history. The history is at age 1213 1415. They went to be an indentured servant, or they became an apprentice, or they join the military. They were then brought to a mentor to do the next part of it. And so I would say seek out mentors, it could be a traditional mentor like me, it could be in martial art, or in music, or in painting, or anything you can think of, and make sure that that person is a mentor, not a screaming coach. They're all well and good. Yeah,

Rachel Richards: 28:47

that's such a wonderful message we parents can do so much to reach out and support each other. And I don't know talking to other parents about ways in which we can do that. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Ken. It's been really interesting with some great tips. If our listeners want to find you, where should they go, the best place

Unknown: 29:03

to come to is my name Ken rainbow ke N R A B as in Bob O W Ken rainbow.com. And there you'll find a whole myriad of things you're going to find for those who want mentors for their children, we work online all over the world. We also have a place where if you want to learn how to train, how to be a mentor, and work with us anywhere in the world, we have a training course it's tough. The best of the best are the ones that work with me, but they do that. And finally, we have a parent mentor workshop, which is a course you can take to build on what you're hearing on these wonderful broadcasts with Rachel and the work that I do. So all of that can be found on Ken rainbow.com. And you can reach me through there to talk if you have any questions.

Rachel Richards: 29:48

Thanks very much for that. If you found this discussion helpful, please like and share it with at least one person and send any feedback to teenagers on tangled@gmail.com or you can leave a review on the podcast platform them on my website which is www.teenagersuntangled.com That's it for now. Bye bye. Your description of FOMO you know that fear of messing up really resonated with me. How can we help our teams with it?