LETTING GO OF HOW YOUR TEEN REACHES THEIR POTENTIAL | EP. 179
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
What if the way you think about your teen success is actually making things harder? For you and your kid. In today's episode, I'm going to show you three things. First, why your instinct to protect and guide your child is both a beautiful thing, but also how it can get in your way.
Second, I'll talk about how your expectations might be creating unnecessary stress in your relationship with your kid. And third, I'll talk about the benefit of shifting into more trust and curiosity so that you can feel confident in how you support your teen, while also letting go of the fear that their mistakes, and yours, will define their future. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. So, another school year is upon us. Don't you feel like, as a mom, September is almost like another January, and that it can feel like a time for a fresh start? Getting back into a routine after a summer that's felt a bit more fluid and unstructured.
And even though the weather's still warm, you can almost sense the anticipation of cooler weather and the leaves turning. The older I get, the more I feel like the seasons pass by so quickly. And this year, for me, feels very different.
For the first time, both of my boys are in college. The house is quieter than I ever imagined it would be. In fact, this August, we also lost our puppy Cody.
And so, without his loving, ever-present, very quiet but big personality in the house, it's like every room feels extra empty. I have to be honest, I'm the kind of mom who invested a lot of emotional energy into wanting my boys be successful in high school. I wanted them to try their best and push themselves.
I wanted them to have friends and be involved. I definitely wanted them to feel successful in the college process. As moms, we spend 18 years getting our kids to this point where they're ready to launch, whether that means going on to college or whatever comes next for them.
And you'd think that once you get there, you could relax, pat yourself on the back for a job well done. But the truth is, I've realized it doesn't actually work that way for many of us. Look, you don't stop wanting your kids to be happy and successful just because they're older.
If anything, the stakes feel higher with every passing year. Plus, you don't see them or connect with them every day once they leave, or honestly, even when they're still living at home with you. And no matter how much you see or talk to your kid, they don't always welcome your input or your advice.
So as time goes on, it can feel like there's really very little you can do to help guide and support them. The second episode I ever did on this podcast was called Letting Go of How Your Kid Reaches Their Potential. At that point in my life, both of my boys were still in high school.
My oldest was a junior, and we were about to go into the college process, and I was stressed out of my mind. I had so many hopes for my son, and to be honest, I had so many opinions about what he should be doing and how he should be approaching school in his life. And it was at that time when I began to notice how my boys were starting to have their own opinions and in many ways pushing against my way of doing things.
Needless to say, this brought up a lot of pressure and frustration for me, because it's like here I am trying to support you and help you be the best you can be, and you act like I'm being difficult or controlling. I mean, dear son, do you really think I'm doing this because it's fun for me? On the one hand, it can feel like some of the things we need our kids to do are really important. I remember for me, I felt a lot of pressure to make sure my boys were on top of their schoolwork.
They were both taking classes that were hard, and in my opinion, they couldn't get away with blowing them off and just assuming that they'd do well on tests. Staying on top of them at that time felt really important to me. But at the same time, there were so many other ways I also wanted my boys to engage with life that it felt like I was constantly harping on something.
When you get to this place where you notice that you're constantly nagging and not getting anywhere, you start to realize something isn't working. You hear advice, or maybe someone even tells you that you need to pick your battles. But how our minds can often interpret this is that we feel like we have to let things go.
And that doesn't feel great, if we're honest. If anything, we can feel like in the back of our minds that we're actually not doing enough to push and support our kids. So the concept of letting things go feels counterproductive and potentially even dangerous, almost like giving up on our kids.
As I now navigate motherhood with a freshman and junior in college, I find that my core desire for my boys to reach their potential is just as strong as it was back when I recorded that early episode. I haven't let go of that one bit. And so once again, I see even in my own life how long this stage of parenting is, how long you feel this push and pull of holding on, still wanting the best for your kid and wanting to support them in that, but also wondering if you should be letting go and what that's supposed to look like.
And this goes beyond expectations and preferences in terms of how our kids should live our lives. Truly, it's a basic human instinct to keep our kids safe and help them learn how to be productive, independent members of society. This pull we feel to guide and protect and nudge them to live their best life is literally wired into our brains.
Just consider how long it is before a human child can truly be independent. For as long as the human species has existed, our ability to survive has depended on a mother's instinct to keep our kids close, to watch out for danger, and to teach them how to survive. And this basic maternal instinct hasn't gone away just because the threats have changed from wild animals to online predators.
Our brains are still looking at the world for danger, still looking for ways to prepare our kids to be independent. And because we as humans can imagine not just the present, but also hundreds and thousands of possible futures, we don't just react to what is happening. We try to anticipate what could happen, and then we try to prevent the worst outcomes before they can happen.
Look, this maternal instinct is a gift that's helped protect our kids for a really long time, but it also doesn't automatically shut off when our kids turn 18, or whatever age it is that they decide they're ready for us to get off their backs. So that means that even when our kids are older and trying very hard to be independent, there's a part of us that still feels that same urgency to protect our kids as we felt when they were little. So they're growing up, wanting independence.
We still want to support and protect them. And meanwhile, the world they're living in is only getting bigger, and in many ways riskier. And I'm not even talking just about physical risks or real dangers our kids face as they get older.
I'm also talking about the emotional danger they start to face. Feeling left out by friends, heartbreak, insecurity, disappointment, failure. As much as we want to, we can't protect our kids against these emotional risks.
In truth, depending on how talkative your kids are, you might not even know what they're facing. And even when they tell you the details about what they're thinking and feeling, you still only know a fraction of what's really going on for them. And let's face it, they might not always know what's going on for them.
So much about what we feel in our lives can be driven by subconscious and automatic ways of thinking that we're not even entirely aware of. That's true both for us and for our kids. So whether we really know what's going on with our kids or not, our minds are really good at handing us a long list of what-ifs.
What if they're not safe? What if they miss an opportunity? What if they fail this class or realize too late that they should have tried harder? My friend, I know from personal experience how powerful these what-ifs can be. And they make you feel this automatic urge to step in, to remind your kid, to say it one more time, to try to have just one more conversation. For some reason, whenever I think about this, I think about those old cartoons where there's a water dam that starts leaking and the cartoon character, was it Bugs Bunny? They try to plug the holes in the dam with first their fingers, then their toes.
And honestly, this is what it feels like as moms. We're constantly trying to shore up the dam to keep it from leaking. And our real fear is honestly that the dam will burst if we don't.
This maternal instinct to protect our kids is beautiful. But it's also exhausting. I often talk about the motivational triad in terms of how it motivates us to stay safe, comfortable, and keep things easy.
But Abraham Maslow, who was a psychologist in the 1950s, looked at human motivation in a different way. He wanted to understand what motivates people, not just to survive, but to grow and thrive. He developed a model of human needs into a pyramid, starting with the most basic needs at the bottom.
So that includes things like food, water, shelter, and sleep. Then once you have those needs covered, the next level of human need is safety, including physical safety, but also health and having resources so that you know you can avoid hunger and danger in the future. The next level up in the pyramid is our social need for belonging and love.
We want to feel connected, really to be a part of a tribe. We don't want to feel rejected or alienated. So consider that this need for human connection is really a core human need, and also why things like being left out can feel so painful.
This need for connection includes a need for friendship and intimacy, but as moms, it also includes a need for connection with our kids. So this is a core motivator in our life, this need to belong. So once we've taken care of our basic needs, as well as our need for safety and belonging, the next level up in the pyramid is the need for self-esteem and accomplishment.
We want to feel confident and respected. We want to feel like what we're doing matters and is successful. And then at the top of the pyramid, after we've achieved every other tier, this is where we get to the motivation to self-actualize.
Really, this is about reaching your full potential. Now think about each of these layers of the pyramid. We want all of them for our kids, not just their basic safety, but also friendships and a sense of belonging.
We want them to feel confident and successful. We want them to be everything we know in our hearts they have the possibility to be. And again, on the one hand, I think it's actually a beautiful thing.
As moms, we're often the one person in our kids' life who believes in their potential and wants more than anything for them to be successful in life. Sometimes it feels like we want it more than our own kids want it for themselves. But actually, what might even be more true is that we get to this place where our picture of what success looks like at each level of this pyramid might not exactly match what our kids think success should look like.
I mean, we can get tripped up at the very bottom of the pyramid as we struggle with our kids' food choices or getting enough sleep, challenges over what they wear. I remember it used to drive me up the wall because one of my boys was always dehydrated. Like, did you know that there's a particular way you smell when you're dehydrated? Or maybe I'm just blessed with this extra sensitive sense of smell.
But I kid you not the number of times I begged this kid to drink water. Safety is a whole other challenge for us moms, especially as our kids start to drive, or if they're spending time online or in person with people that we don't know. And these are just the core, bottom levels of this pyramid of human needs.
And we struggle here as moms even in these bottom layers to guide and support our kids. Because they don't seem to want to take our advice. But that also doesn't stop us from fighting the good fight, trying to help our kids achieve all the other layers too.
Do they have good friends? Are they doing their homework and trying their best? Are they figuring out what matters to them in life and taking steps to go after it? We want all of this for our kids. But I also have to imagine that they want this too. I mean, no matter how short-sighted or even stupid some of our kids' choices might be, I can't imagine that what they really want is to hurt themselves or put themselves in danger.
I don't think they want to be left out, without friends, not feeling connected. I have to imagine that they want to feel good about themselves and know that they're moving forward in life. The problem is, sometimes as parents, we can really wonder.
If your kid's getting low grades and doesn't study, it's hard to convince yourself that they care. In all of these big and small ways, our kids take risks or just make choices that we don't understand. And look, I'll be the first to say that I don't think the answer is to step back and just let them make all the bad choices without ever getting involved or drawing a line.
But at the same time, there is something really powerful about allowing our kids to face the natural consequences of their choices. Because that's often where they learn the most powerful lessons. The real challenge for us is, how do you decide? Where's that line between stepping in to protect your kid and stepping back so that they learn? Because it's not always obvious.
Sometimes the consequences feel too big to risk. But on the other hand, sometimes we jump in because it's uncomfortable for us to see them struggle. But my friend, these are two very different things.
To really navigate this question of where to step in and where to let go, I think we need to be really honest with ourselves. Because the truth is, we don't just want our kids to be safe, happy, and successful. We have very specific ideas about what that should look like.
Really very specific ideas about how each layer of the Maslow Pyramid should look, how each of these needs should be met, how many hours they should sleep, how they should spend their free time, what being safe looks like, what kinds of friendships are good for them, or what reaching their potential should involve. In my work with clients, what we'll often do is we'll spend time talking about expectations, really about what they think should be happening. And we compare that to what is happening.
And then we take a deep look at what it means for us that our kids aren't meeting those expectations. And I have to say that sometimes it's really surprising what comes out of those conversations. I'll give you a funny example from my own life, actually what happened just recently when I was on vacation with my boys.
So these guys are 18 and 20 years old, both on their way to college this year. And I was really looking forward to spending time with them before the school year started. And I went into this trip wanting to just be in the moment with my boys.
This time is so fleeting, it feels precious. And so I did a whole podcast episode talking about how I didn't want to miss it. I really thought I was walking to this trip with no agenda.
Plus the boys were involved in picking this trip. We hadn't twisted anyone's arm to come. And because we were going back to a spot we'd been before, I felt like I knew what to expect.
In my mind, I had a pretty clear picture of how I thought it would go. But then we get there and things didn't go as planned. Here's the thing, both of my boys have been busy all summer.
And I was kind of thinking that this was our chance to all unplug and stop working and just be together. But my youngest had other plans. He actually brought his work with him and even had a few calls scheduled and deadlines he had to meet during the vacation.
On the one hand, you kind of say to yourself, wow, this kid is really motivated and committed to his work. But would you believe I didn't feel great about it? There were days when we waited around for him to finish his work. But then by the time we got going, it was already mid-afternoon.
Meanwhile, my older son was up for hanging out. But because we were all kind of waiting around for my younger son, he ended up also staying in his room and working. So I found myself feeling torn, like we're all supposed to be together having fun and it wasn't turning out the way I hoped.
On top of that, I felt responsible to make the fun happen, obviously for me, but also for my boys. I wanted to know that they were maximizing their fun and relaxation on vacation. And here's the part that's so fascinating.
My youngest was doing exactly what I want him to do in so many ways. He's been pushing himself and being responsible, thinking ahead about what he wants and how to get there. But because him doing those things on vacation didn't match my picture in my head of what our vacation should look like, I was honestly frustrated.
It was like I couldn't fully relax unless he was relaxing too. And here's the takeaway, my friend. It's not actually what our kids are doing or not doing that's the problem.
More often than not, it's the expectations we have of how things are supposed to look. Look, I know there are times when our kids' behavior just isn't acceptable. If your teen is doing drugs or skipping school or stealing, for example, that's not just a matter of expectations.
These are problems where you're going to want to set boundaries and consequences. So I'm not saying that our kids' behavior is never actually a problem. But a lot of the time, the tension we feel between stepping in and letting go actually comes in the smaller everyday clashes between our expectations and their choices.
Like when their room looks like a disaster, even though we've asked them over and over to clean it. Or when they spend hours gaming or scrolling on TikTok when you know for sure there are more productive ways they could be using their time. It's those moments when they roll their eyes or blow off your advice.
When you see your kid acting like they don't care and every responsibility is a burden, it's hard not to question whether or not they're ever going to figure out how to be responsible and productive adults. So this is where our minds go. We think, if they can't even keep their room clean, how are they ever going to live life on their own? Or they're wasting so much time, what if they never learn how to focus or be productive? Honestly, it feels like if you don't stay on top of them, they're going to fail and it'll be your fault.
You can also go to thinking, they don't appreciate everything I do for them. You feel overlooked and taken advantage of when your kid doesn't help with simple chores you ask them to do. Then you go to the future, thinking if they keep blowing off responsibilities now, what's going to happen when real life gets harder? How are they going to manage college? Who's going to hire them? We also compare our kids to other kids, thinking, other kids their age seem so much more motivated.
What's wrong with my kid? Just consider how much pressure we put on ourselves to get our kids to meet our expectations of what them reaching their potential should look like. Whether it's the way they clean their room or their grades, or whether they're relaxing on vacation in the right way. But as I've said, the answer isn't just to give up and it's definitely not to stop caring.
In fact, if there's one thing that I recommend you let go, it's not your standards or your expectations, definitely not your kid. Instead, what I recommend you learn to let go is the story you have in your head about what it means that your kid isn't doing what you think they should be doing. The story goes something like, if they don't change now, they'll never succeed.
Or I'm failing as a parent. Or this must mean something's wrong with them or me. When we hold on to these stories, every messy room or late assignment or eye roll feels like one more piece of evidence stacked against your kid's potential.
But when you let go of these stories, you free yourself up from the anxiety and shame of feeling certain that something's gone wrong. What if whatever's happening right now is supposed to be happening? Or what if there's some lesson in this for your kid? Or something they have to figure out on their own? I mean, how do you know something's supposed to be happening? Well, because it is. Whatever the truth is right now, this is your child navigating their own pyramid of needs in the best way that they know how.
And part of their journey of learning to be independent means they have to figure out how to meet those needs on their own. But at the same time, we do have years of experience and we want the best for them. So what would it look like for you to be willing to guide them and set boundaries and allow natural consequences, knowing that this is how they're going to learn and that it almost definitely won't look exactly like you think it should look.
Maybe that's exactly as it should be. My friend, navigating this push and pull of where to step in and what to let go is exactly what we do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. Together, we untangle the difference between what's actually happening with your kid and what your mind is making it mean. And from that place of self-awareness and clarity, it becomes so much easier to know when and how to step in, where to set boundaries, and when to step back and let your kid face natural consequences.
This gives you the power to guide and support without the weight of the belief that every mistake or missed expectation is a sign that something's gone wrong. Imagine how you would feel if you knew exactly what to do and you had your back about that. I invite you to reach out to set up a call with me to learn more.
My friend, I'm never going to let go of my desire to help my boys reach their full potential. I believe in them so much and I want the world for them. But what I've learned through many of my own mistakes, but also through this work and working with hundreds of women, is that how our kids reach their potential will almost definitely look different from what we expect.
Our beautiful minds paint a picture for us of what success should look like. But this is not the only path to success. In fact, learning how to reach your potential is never a straight path.
The most successful people in life learn to expect failure and disappointment. It's part of living a big life. So I wonder if sometimes our fear of our kids' failure is actually shielding them from the very thing that will help motivate them to be successful.
Can you, my friend, learn how to trust in your own capacity to handle whatever comes? Because no matter what happens in life, the worst thing that can happen is that you experience an emotion. So as you step into this new school year, I want to leave you with this. Your child's journey is theirs.
You can guide them and love them and even set boundaries. But you cannot make them reach their potential in the way you think is the right way. Maybe that's not a problem.
Maybe that's actually the point. Your greatest gift to your kid isn't making sure everything goes perfectly for them. It's showing them what it looks like to keep going when things don't go as they expect.
It's believing in them and helping them learn to trust themselves in the face of their messy life as they figure it out one step at a time. You are already doing this, my friend. I just wonder if you're giving yourself enough credit.
Because when you really step into this self-trust, you discover that the strength you need to launch your kid has been in you all along. As you go into this new school year and watch your kid navigate reaching their potential, sometimes in ways that you don't want, ask yourself this, what would it look like for me to meet the situation with trust and curiosity instead of fear and control? Because when you do that, you're not just helping your kid reach their potential, you're stepping into yours too. Until next time.
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes. You have more power than you think, my friend.
