Failure to launch: the most valuable gift you can give your teen

We’ve all had our own pain points or lousy experiences—

with our parents, and those don’t magically disappear when we become parents ourselves. Cue parenthood. 

A million thoughts crowd our minds as parents. We want the best for our teen. Like any mammal (picture a black bear guarding her cubs), we have a protective instinct. We want to keep our children from experiencing the bad in the world; we don’t want them to hurt like we did that one time...

So we will do anything to protect our teen from what we’ve experienced or even just the bad of the world. We want them to be happy and healthy more than anything in the world. So we read all the books. We monitor their device. We are maybe even guilty of finishing their homework because they were too tired. We didn’t want them to experience the bad emotions of getting a bad grade or the consequences of sending a bad message to a classmate. We want to protect them. (Picure that momma black bear starting to growl). And of course, we want to make sure we are protecting them from a place of love not fear. But more often than not, we get driven by our fears.

But, as parents, we have to remember the main goal of parenting. We don’t raise our kids to live with us forever. I mean, you can, but...that’s not our goal. Our main goal is to launch our kids into the real world knowing how to navigate the real uncertainties and difficulties the world is going to throw at them.

One of the most beneficial gifts you can give your teen is the tool of self-management. It isn’t perfection; it isn’t only good feelings; it isn’t doing all their homework for them; it isn’t an easy life. 

Self-management is the ability for your teen to understand what they need and don’t need in each situation—this can apply to sleep, school performance, relationships. The list is endless. 

At this point, you may be wondering what builds self-management. How can you give your teen this coveted tool? Well, the way they build self management is by being exposed to all of those things we want to protect them from. While our kids need to be protected up until a certain age, once they become a teen, it is time to sit back on our black bear haunches and let them explore and mess up and get back up. Our teens need to fail, they need to experience negative emotions so that they can learn about themselves. While it is our job to ensure they don’t put themselves in life-threatening situations, they deserve to be able to explore the other aspects of life freely. They need to learn how hard it is to do their homework at the last minute. They need to know the consequences of sending a bad text. They need to know how shitty they will feel if they stay up all night.

Picture your teenager as a rocket ship. For them to get into space, they need to reach escape velocity. This is the speed a rocket needs to reach before it is able to break free from the gravitational pull of the earth. I compare this speed to an accumulation of the little things we teach our teens as they grow older. Each little thing they learn increases their speed—not necessarily the speed at which they become independent, but their aptitude to manage themselves and operate as an individual. 

There are risks involved when we launch our teen into the real world, but remember, we want to operate from a place of love not fear. One of the small variables that contribute to your teen’s launch velocity is coping with discomfort. Being an adult is all about navigating discomfort and a lot of uncertainty so we would’t want them to enter into the world without having an understanding or the tools to cope with these feelings. So rather than sheltering them from discomfort  when they are living at home with you (an action we do out of fear), we can expose them to uncomfortable situations and help them reflect on their actions and emotions (an action we do out of love).

At escape velocity, they will be able to live in the world as a functioning adult. But even when reaching escape velocity, it won’t look perfect. For example, consider that doing laundry is another small variable that contributes to your teen functioning as an individual in the world. If we don’t teach our teen how to do laundry, they will go out into the world, but they will cower in fear whenever they run out of clothes. They will float around in space without any rigidity or rules in that one aspect of their life. So maybe they will make up their own, like whenever they run out of clothes they will buy more. A great solution, but not quite sustainable. Whereas, if we control our teens too much and tell them they must only use one brand of detergent, they will float around in space too rigid and unable to explore other detergents that may work better for them. Rigidity doesn’t allow for self exploration while chaos can make a teen feel lost or incapable. 

When we allow our teens to fail while still living at home with us, we allow them to learn how to do better next time. We allow them to learn what does and doesn’t work for them. When we try to protect our teens and set all of their boundaries for them (like bedtimes or controlling device use), we actually do them a disservice. Maybe they work best at nighttime? Maybe they are still learning how much time on their device makes them feel sluggish and icky? If we set all of these boundaries for them, they miss out on the ability to learn how to self-manage. Picture that 19 year old at college throwing the laundry machine manual to the side and buying more underwear at Target to go another week without doing the wash. It goes beyond laundry though. It goes into knowing when they need to eat or drink or when they need rest. Self-management is about tuning into ourselves.

We aren’t saying that we should just let our teens roam around our houses like escaped circus monkeys. We can set some (not all) boundaries for our teens while also encouraging them to self-reflect. This way they will also learn how to self manage, and remember? Self-management is key to giving them enough velocity to hit their escape velocity and exit into the world as a functioning adult.

Setting boundaries together can look like urging them to think about how much phone use allows them to work optimally and still feel good. It also looks like asking if they feel good after staying up all night?

When your teen has self-management in their tool kit, they will be able to navigate situations, even the ones you weren’t able to teach them about. We can’t teach every scenario to our teens, but we can give them tools to know themselves and discover what they need in this world to thrive. And that is better than perfection and protection. 

So next time you’re about to yell at your teen for being on their device at dinner and control their screen time, I challenge you to open up a conversation with them about how their phone use makes them feel and consider if you’ve set the expectations ahead of time. Get them to notice when they are feeling good and bad. Get them to set their own boundaries, because as soon as your teen can self-manage they have been gifted the most powerful tool.

If you want to learn strategies and tools that will help your teen with self-management, we offer a resource group for parents as well as group therapy for your teen. When you have the tools to help your teen self-manage and your teen is given a space to practice understanding themselves, you are creating a healthy environment for you and your teen. There is no better gift you could give your child than the gift of understanding themselves.

Are you ready to give your teen this gift? Check out our groups here.