Robert Trout (01:00.001)
Hello and welcome to the Parent Problems Today podcast. Today you’re joined by myself, Robert Trout and Mary Zahnbrecher from the Parent Trainers Team. And today’s episode is coming from a real life conversation from a parent who, when they sought to ask about the situation going on for their child, it was very apparent to me when I was on the call with them that there was more to it than they thought there was.
Robert Trout (01:29.665)
And so today’s episode we’re gonna call red flags for failure to launch and The reason is is because this family Mary that I was talking to they laid out a format of what they were dealing with with their son and in this situation they’re describing a 17 year old kid and the deeper they got into what was happening that they were seeking help for
Robert Trout (01:57.535)
the more for me it was just like red flag, red flag, red flag. And everything they thought they were dealing with wasn’t relevant at all. So as soon as I switched the conversation to the reality that this, in this case, 17 year old male was going through.
Robert Trout (02:20.277)
That reality painted a picture for what we in our industry will very often refer to as failure to launch, which by definition is the understanding of a young adult who finds himself with low capacity for kind of managing their own life. And that is a very, very simplistic definition of this. So for every parent listening,
Robert Trout (02:45.931)
Failure to launch, there are books and webcasts and all kinds of things that you can Google and find and look at this. So this is not a simple subject. However, when we try to simplify it to something like that, what we want to talk about today is the reality that failure to launch starts before they become an adult. This is something that should be acknowledged by every professional out there. Because it’s not like they magically become 18 or 19.
Robert Trout (03:14.675)
and then their life just doesn’t work anymore, is that the system or the container that they lived in up until that age had a certain set expectation for them and there was a sense of compensation maybe, or that the parents rescued them, or that the school enabled them, or all these things that when they’re young, which is really ironic, right? It’s like, well, they’re youthful, they’re young, they’re not supposed to have it all figured out. Then suddenly it’s like,
Robert Trout (03:43.669)
Happy birthday, you’re supposed to be an adult now and the world’s perception shifts the parents perception shifts and It’s often when those expectations shift that the whole system the teachers the parents the family friends the grandparents This is where they go. Uh-oh. Hold on. We missed something So Mary I’m gonna use that to kind of pass this over to you when we start working with
Robert Trout (04:12.417)
families, you know, the kids are 16, 17, 18. Let’s just use this episode to lay out the red flags that parents should be looking at and saying, maybe this isn’t what you think it is. Maybe it’s a bigger process that’s happening. So what are your thoughts as we kind of jump into that?
Mary (04:31.132)
Yeah, I mean, you know, it can be something as benign as your kid getting to college, right? Their first semester, second semester, whatever it is. And suddenly you’re realizing, you know, they’re calling less and they’re not going out with friends on the weekend. Right. So these little tiny markers that you just kind of brush off. it’s a hard semester, whatever, you know, is going on for them. You know, they’re they’re becoming closer with their friends. So they’re calling me less.
Mary (05:00.746)
to something as big as a kid who is literally incapacitating, incapacitated in the basement, right? Really just like immobile almost. And just this picture of someone who maybe doesn’t feel capable because of something as small as, yeah, I went to the same school for 13 years and I felt like…
Robert Trout (05:09.537)
Yes.
Mary (05:28.082)
I knew everyone and could reach out for the support I needed and everyone knew me and I knew what was expected of me to, you know, the kids who really aren’t maybe capable, right? There’s some big roadblock that we didn’t catch, you know, before 17, 18, before we’re asking them to step into this new role as young adults, as someone who maybe works or volunteers or
Mary (05:57.844)
you know, has to manage their time on their own, something like that, right? So I just think of this like really broad spread of like the really small red flags that, you know, are so tiny and they’re hidden amongst all the weeds, right? To, of course, the glaring ones, which we get a lot of calls for. And so I love that we’re talking about what are the things I should maybe be tracking and what are the ways really
Mary (06:27.638)
especially working with us, a parent trainers or a coach or therapist is what are the ways I’m in connection with my son or daughter or this child that I’m taking care of, right? That gives me the leverage I need to ask some of these questions from a place of curiosity rather than judgment, right? What are the ways that I can truly be connected to this person and trust that
Robert Trout (06:51.157)
Yes.
Mary (06:57.408)
say no, can answer honestly, right? That they can trust me with this hard information if they’re struggling.
Robert Trout (07:05.557)
Yes, absolutely. Now, I feel like I need to back up just a little bit for the parents that are listening because failure to launch is unfortunately a, I’m gonna say catchphrase for a lot of different scenarios. Okay, so I want, when we’re talking about red flags that we can watch for as indicators that a kid is going to struggle with this, they’re gonna enter into this kind of paradigm.
Robert Trout (07:36.383)
I feel like we also need to outline that what we’re really talking about here are the mental or behavioral health, neurological development health processes that really do lead to an overwhelm.
Robert Trout (07:50.273)
where these kids shut down. And I say kids, because they’re 18, 19, 20, heck, sometimes 25. And that’s where the parents are like, well, they’re supposed to have like their life. It’s supposed to turn over to be their situation, but they feel unprepared for it. And very often, like the family I was talking to, they were describing anxiety where the kid didn’t want to go to school. He’s 17, he’s supposed to like finish high school, et cetera.
Robert Trout (08:20.267)
like okay hold on let’s back up a little bit is it that he doesn’t want to finish school or the idea of finishing school is really terrifying to him
Robert Trout (08:31.093)
because after he’s done, his life has to change. And when we really dug into it, that’s what stood out. The red flag was not that he didn’t wanna go finish school. It’s that the idea of finishing this aspect of his life would create so much transition that he’s just shutting down now preemptively because he…
Robert Trout (08:56.237)
wants a sense of control in his life and he feels completely unprepared for what’s going to come next because that’s outside of his like I’m gonna say parameters to really assess like what are my options am I gonna like it am I gonna be good at it
Robert Trout (09:13.997)
And he turns out has always had some anxiety about being compared with other kids and being smart enough or maybe I’ll fail at my dream. So there is anxiety driving that situation. But in other situations, red flags play out differently.
Robert Trout (09:31.769)
So Mary, I feel like what I wanna do is just kinda outline some of the things that we see in our younger kids, so 16 to 18, that parents can look at and say, okay, this might not be as simple as I wanna kinda make it, okay? The first one to me is that anxiety, they’re like, oh, well, they’re starting to back out of high school, they don’t wanna go to school, don’t, et cetera.
Mary (09:46.656)
Yeah.
Robert Trout (09:57.109)
and that is a major red flag. Now a secondary one to that outside of that scenario that immediately comes up for me with further to launch this red flags is where you start to see the design their interactions with you to lower your expectations of them.
Mary (10:17.078)
Mary (10:17.931)
Yeah.
Robert Trout (10:18.433)
Okay,
Robert Trout (10:19.553)
so that’s a red flag. So if you have a 17 year old that they’re quitting volleyball After they’ve done it for six years. They worked so hard at it and now it just doesn’t matter to them anymore
Robert Trout (10:33.749)
That is a red flag for failure to launch. That is one of those moments for the parent to go, they’re starting to lower the expectations that we see of them that we’re so proud of them that they’ve done this. And we’ve spoken to them over and over and over again. But there’s a key to working with that when it’s a failure to launch kid, because it’s the, OK, you don’t want to do it. But is it that you don’t want to do it at all? Or you don’t want to do it the way that we have outlined that it has?
Robert Trout (11:03.683)
Very often the countermeasure to those type of things is to give more control to that 17 year old to say how would you like to do volleyball?
Robert Trout (11:14.283)
How would you like to do track or football or outside of sports, like anything? How would you like to do the drama, theater club or debate team or what, like what do you want to change to have a say in how your life runs itself?
Robert Trout (11:34.081)
Because that serves multiple purposes, but includes the purpose of giving that kid the separation they need to feel like, oh, I can make this work for me versus I need to make this work for them. There’s a real parallel there for failure to launch. What other red flags can you think of for the younger kids, the 16, 17, 18-year-olds?
Mary (11:58.162)
Yeah, kind
Mary (11:59.493)
of in that same vein of lowering expectations, right? I think about kids who will not take on household tasks, right? Who will not contribute to the greater like family system running day to day, right? Or yeah, just kind of acting as if they’re helpless in those ways. I mean, and that has again, ranged drastically with some of my clients from
Mary (12:25.994)
you know, not getting out of bed, bring me some water, please, right? Texting mom, can you bring my food here? Can you bring me water here? So, you know, just saying like, well, you do the laundry anyway, so why don’t you just do mine? Right? And so yeah, this desire to not manage or inability to manage kind of the different facets of daily living.
Robert Trout (12:50.047)
Yes. Spending off of that one, I’ll head kind of towards the…
Robert Trout (12:58.399)
the language shifts that some parents miss where they’ve had a car, for example. The car is the family car, but they use it. And you start to see the kid start to be willing to give that up, because you’re maybe using it as a consequence. And it’s like, OK, well, if you don’t go to school, then you don’t get the car. And they go, I don’t care. Doesn’t matter.
Robert Trout (13:25.089)
I mean, I was never gonna get the car back anyway. I was never gonna get the phone back anyway. I like just a nonchalance to any consequence. And that speaks in failure to launch terms, at least from my experience, I’ve seen it over and over again, where the kid is willing to give up whatever might.
Robert Trout (13:48.405)
facilitate them getting out of the house. Getting away from the parents and the family. They start to be willing to give that up and the parents are like, they just don’t care about the consequences. And I go, no, they do care but this helps them isolate.
Mary (13:50.824)
Exactly. That’s exactly what I was gonna
Mary (14:06.996)
Yeah, the greatest reward for anxiety is just avoiding, right? And so, yeah, the car and the phone are two really great symbols, right, for connection, connection outside of the home and belonging outside of the home. Yeah.
Robert Trout (14:25.008)
Yes. Yeah. So we see a lot of these behavior shifts that parents like, if you look for it, you can see it, but parents very often miscategorize them. Especially that one. I hear it all the time. It’s like, just don’t care. And I go, I think they do care, but they also have it. And it might be subconscious, right? And I need every parent to hear this. We’re talking about mental health here.
Robert Trout (14:49.375)
very often the kids not thinking, I want to get stuck in the basement. That is not what’s happening here. This very much is a, well, if I don’t have the car, then I don’t have to go hang out with all my friends that are getting ready for college and talking about it endlessly and whatever. And that’s a relief on some levels. So it’s easier to accept the consequence of not having the accessibility to those people that are creating some level of stress. And it’s not usually on purpose.
Mary (15:13.28)
Right.
Robert Trout (15:19.349)
part of this is that these kids, these 16 year olds, 17 year olds, they don’t understand the feelings that are happening based on the triggers and responses and reactions around all their friends and peers at school, teachers, expectations of college applications and taking the SATs and all this stuff that there’s basically 16 to 18 you really get shoved into, right?
Robert Trout (15:45.541)
and very often they do not have the language to say whoa hold on I may not want to go to college ever or just right after high school I might need a break or I might want to work or even more so and this is something that does play into this that I think parents need to understand is that a lot of kids today
Robert Trout (16:10.113)
see the cultural shift where college is a debt hole for most of them. And so they are being driven socially, and we see this on social media all the time, they’re being driven socially to be more of an entrepreneur rather than a college student.
Robert Trout (16:29.855)
we see that independence shift and this creates two things. One, anxiety, because I have to have some idea. I need a million dollars by the time I’m 19, 20, know, whatever. So some expectation distortions definitely happen for these kids, which creates anxiety, right?
Mary (16:36.342)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Trout (16:51.125)
But the second aspect to that drive that we’re seeing socially is the conflict between that kid and their dreams and what they think they’d be really good at and what the parents think will set them up for success later versus now. So we’re seeing significant family conflict which can be a red flag to pay attention to in the sense of if you as the parents do have a measure of control,
Robert Trout (17:21.493)
through whatever means, money, facilitation, whatever, where you say, like, we will not support anything but this, you will see that shutdown. You just killed this kid’s momentum out. What do got for that? see you got something there.
Mary (17:36.426)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mary (17:38.767)
So what actually has been coming up for me and the families I’m working with lately, more than not, is this really kind of hopeless self-talk with 16 to 20-ish year olds, right? Some of them already being the failure to launch kids that I’m working with, but I’m never going to make enough money to fill in the blank.
Mary (18:04.544)
buy a house, do this, do that, right? So why even try? And again, like we’re talking about very fine lines here when it comes to, this a red flag or is this my child expressing a sense of like, my goodness, what do I do in this moment, right? And so we’re looking at, yeah, these kids who not only have so many options these days that they’re seeing people, different people being successful with, right?
Mary (18:32.98)
they are also classifying themselves as if I don’t go through college in the right major, then I’m spending all this money or performing all of these daily tasks that will not set me up. And so, yeah, a lot of what we’re talking about is this anxiety and this fear of if I don’t make the right decision.
Mary (19:01.994)
than the rest of time, right? This will be true. Yeah, and so that’s been coming up a lot. And it’s very much in the coaching sense, right? It’s, how do you sit with curiosity with your son or daughter and really talk to them about, yeah, I could see how it feels this way. What are you actually interested in? Well, let’s talk about what…
Mary (19:29.882)
I will support you through regardless of, right? And just some of those deeper conversations can really parse apart that really thin line of, is this a major red flag or is this a kid who’s really thinking thoughtfully about his future, her future?
Robert Trout (19:44.895)
Yeah, absolutely.
Robert Trout (19:49.449)
This conversation can get tricky beyond this point because the scenario is what the parents need to really dissect and assess. So I want parents who are listening to this to understand that when we talk about red flags to watch for, that doesn’t mean react when you see them. It means be aware and build a plan and intervention strategy to try to help this, you know, 17 year old over the hump where they develop the ability.
Robert Trout (20:18.867)
to design their life and very often this is the switch where parents need to step in and say okay my job is different now I am not dad to protect I am dad to mentor and train I am not mom to protect I am mom to mentor and train we’re looking for this scenario of saying okay your role has shifted they don’t need you to protect them anymore they need you to let them go try
Robert Trout (20:48.833)
fail, learn in that safety to then overcome and move through. But so much of failure to launch at 16, 17, 18 when it comes to strategy is really going to come to languaging, the language you use, and then setting up an intervention where they get more and more control while accepting the outcome.
Mary (21:14.058)
Yes.
Robert Trout (21:14.593)
You have to give that to them for them to learn, fail, succeed, and then move. Learn, fail, succeed, move, step by step so that they haven’t relied upon you. They have not relied upon their school. They have not relied upon your family system. They have figured out how to move through that.
Robert Trout (21:40.141)
And really what that brings up for me, and maybe this is my final thought for this, is anything outside of that can be a red flag. Okay? If you are successfully moving into a mentorship role,
Mary (21:51.36)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Trout (21:57.183)
You have relationship with them. You’re having conversation with them. And then you’re finding that there is a roadblock. Something keeps getting in their way for one of the goals or challenges that you’re trying to move them towards. That, whatever the roadblock is, is what we would say, there’s your red flag. And now it’s the, okay, we’re aware of it, but that’s not an excuse. And you can’t let it become an excuse.
Robert Trout (22:25.523)
And then it has to turn into the, okay, how do we build around it? Over top of it? Like, how do we get over the roadblock through the roadblock? And that’s a metaphor, but that’s how you design intervention is you have to identify what’s creating the reaction or result and then move over it. So no matter what that roadblock is, that’s your red flag and the work begins.
Robert Trout (22:53.169)
once you’ve identified what that is, but you yourself as a parent must not be in the protector role. That will not be helpful. You need to move into that mentorship role. That would be my point.
Mary (23:07.818)
Yeah,
Mary (23:09.298)
yeah, and my thought with that, you know, is it is looking bigger picture is you have, like you said, you as a parent have to be comfortable letting go of the outcome and being able to find support, whether that’s through us, right? A program like us, the trainings, the coaching, having that support to know that you can watch your child.
Mary (23:35.326)
Succeed and fail and fumble and look silly and make little mistakes out in the social world, right or at a job that you can hold that for them and not need to jump in and do something different because what we’re really Asking parents to do is almost in this day and age is almost like manufacture what our parents kind of had at their fingertips, right which was like
Mary (24:03.213)
get out into the world and come back when the streetlights come on kind of that metaphor, right? Where, you know, we were contributing, we were getting out of the house, we were learning about ourselves in these situations that were novel, right? And that is difficult for parents to watch their kid and trust that their kid is capable. And of course, it’s the chicken and the egg, right? Because you don’t know if they’re capable unless you let them try.
Mary (24:32.2)
And so I think, yeah, my biggest call to parents, invitation to parents would be start now wherever you can, handing it over, just hand over simple tasks or hand over responsibility, hand over, you know, daily life and let your child know I’m here for support and mentorship and help if you need it.
Mary (25:00.704)
but I trust that you’re capable, right? And that’s when we can truly start to build trust that our child is capable for ourselves or start to see, this may be something else that we actually need to attend to in order for my child to be successful as an adult.
Robert Trout (25:22.271)
Absolutely, yes. All right, if you’re a parent and you have a 16, 17, 18 year old, or let’s be honest, you’re already well into it. You have a 25 year old who just will not leave home and does not have seemingly the capacity to do so. If you’re in failure to launch, it doesn’t change a lot of the strategies that you need to start using to get them out of it.
Robert Trout (25:50.057)
The danger of failure to launch, and again, this is a summary, so please don’t take this as like the gospel. This is just a simple summary. The danger of failure to launch is developing a routine of helplessness. Because once they’re in that routine, getting them out becomes an epic struggle for families, for parents, for family systems. It’s really devastating. And…
Robert Trout (26:19.645)
It takes a strategy. It really does. And skill, which is where we come in, right? So if you’re listening to this and you need help, reach out to us at parenttrainers.com. Do some coaching. Definitely do a training. Every single parent needs it. And find other families through our network and through our process to really start building your strategy so that you’re not reacting to what’s happening.
Robert Trout (26:48.873)
So come find us at parentrainers.com and we look forward to meeting you there.
