ANXIETY OF RAISING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS—WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING BUT WATCH? | EP. 265
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.
Do you ever have those moments when your big kid does something that affects your mood for the entire day? Maybe they've told you something that worries you, or they made a choice that you don't agree with, or they refuse to do something you know is important for them, or maybe they seem unhappy and you don't know what to do about that. If you're the mom of a teen or adult kid, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Our kids are out there living their lives, and we're lying awake at night, worrying about their future, and wondering whether they're going to be okay.
In today's episode, I'm talking about the anxiety of raising teens and young adults, and why it consumes so much of our mental energy as moms. I'll talk about what may actually be fueling it, and most importantly, how to learn to let it go. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. I was at a celebration of life for my godmother last weekend, and I ended up reconnecting with her sons. And the oldest is the exact same age as me.
It's been a really long time since we've connected, and as he and I were catching up on each other's lives, we laughed about how we'd basically been keeping up on each other through our moms, which meant he had heard about some of the struggles we'd faced with our boys over the years. His kids are younger than mine. His oldest is just going into high school this fall, so he joked that he's been using my experience as kind of a barometer for what's ahead for him.
Or maybe said another way, he's been using my experience as something to prepare himself for. And then he asked, any words of advice? I laughed because honestly, I'm not even sure he knows I have this coaching business. But as I tell you all the time, my role as a coach is never to give you advice.
It's truly to empower you to be the best version of yourself so that you can navigate what is undoubtedly one of the craziest rides of a lifetime, raising and launching our kids. So what kind of advice are you really supposed to give someone who's just embarking on that journey? I remember when my boys were much younger, having older moms say to me, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. And at the time, I was totally annoyed when they would say that because honestly, I thought little kids were totally overwhelming.
It was exhausting physically. And you still go through so much of the worry about whether or not you're a good mom when your kids are little. But none of that really prepares you for what lies ahead when your kids get older and start to want to become their own people.
I often think about what we want for our kids in very simple terms. And I truly believe this is universal for those of us who actually love and care about our kids. The way I think about it is that we just want our kids to be safe, happy, and successful.
And I'll add, we also want them to be connected to us. We want to have a relationship with them. It sounds so obvious.
I mean, how could our kids really argue that any of these things aren't in their best interest? They're all so straightforward. And yet, as our kids grow up, suddenly their sense of what's safe is completely different than ours. Their ability to manage their emotions and be happy in their lives can seem totally unpredictable.
We don't really even know what makes them happy anymore. And honestly, sometimes I think they don't even know what makes them happy. Or maybe even worse, what makes them happy are all the things we think are unsafe or not in the interest of them being successful.
And then when it comes to their success, most of us don't care about our kids becoming lawyers or doctors. We just want to know that somewhere along the way that they're going to be independent, that they're not going to be living at home on our couch when they're 40 years old. And as much as we love our kids, we don't really envision being their caretaker for the rest of their lives.
But often the way they engage in their lives right now gives us a hint that maybe they're not taking steps to move in that direction. I've done this episode on the anxiety of raising teens a number of times over the years, and I wanted to come back to it now to expand on it to include young adults. Because as my boys have gotten older, and also as I've coached so many women with older kids, I see how pervasive this anxiety is and how it absolutely does not stop when our kids turn 18.
So let's talk about what's actually causing us so much anxiety. When our kids reach high school, the list of new challenges we face is long. Cell phones and what's happening on them that we can't see.
Bullying that follows them home now because it lives online. Now vaping is pervasive. Honestly, at this point, it feels like everybody is doing it, or at least that's what our kids tell us.
Of course, there's still alcohol and drugs. Learning to drive. Safe sex.
Social drama and romantic relationships that consume our kids in ways that can catch us completely off guard. On top of all of this, we worry about whether they're happy as they face all of this. Whether they're motivated as they pursue their goals.
We worry about whether the choices they're making right now are going to impact their future. And then as our kids get older and move beyond high school, the list of things we worry about doesn't necessarily get smaller. It just changes.
Now we're worried about them living alone in a city we've never visited. Are they safe with the person they're dating? Someone maybe we haven't met before and have no real concept of whether or not they're a good person? Are they okay mentally and emotionally in a world where we no longer have any visibility into their daily life? When they were home, even when they didn't tell you everything, you could see them. You could maybe sense if something was off.
Now you get a 10-second phone call and a, I'm fine, mom. And then you have to decide whether or not you believe them. And beyond safety, success can also feel murkier.
You might not have access to their grades in college. And if they're not in school, how do you measure their success? Do they have a job? Is it the right job? Are they at risk of losing that job? Now, some of our older kids do still tell us what's going on in their lives. We might have more details.
But having a kid who shares more doesn't necessarily make the anxiety go away. Sometimes it just means you have more information to be anxious about. Now you think you know exactly what's happening, and you still can't fix it.
You know about that job stress or the difficulty in that relationship. And all that knowing doesn't give you any more power to change it than the mom whose kid tells her nothing. You can be anxious because you don't know anything.
And you can be anxious because you think you know everything. Different circumstances, but same feeling. What I've come to realize over the years is that motherhood creates in us this constant state of vigilance.
In fact, I think one of the things that surprised me most about having older kids is that while I'm physically doing less for them, I spend an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy thinking about them. When our kids are little, our vigilance makes a lot of sense. We're essentially responsible for everything.
We need to know where they are, what they're doing, who they're with. We're responsible for whether or not they've eaten or slept, whether they're safe. Our attention is constantly focused on our kids.
It's focused outward because so much actually depends on us getting it right. But what I didn't appreciate at the time when my boys were little is that while our responsibilities change as our kids get older, that internal state of vigilance doesn't automatically go away. I often think about it like a radar system that's constantly running in the background of our minds.
Even when we're not consciously thinking about our kids, there's a part of us that's always paying attention, gathering information, trying to assess whether everything's okay. Maybe your daughter seems quieter than usual, or your son hasn't responded to a text. Maybe your kid mentions something in passing about a friendship, or a job, or a class they're struggling with.
It can be the smallest thing, and immediately some part of your brain starts processing it. You begin trying to determine whether this is just a momentary blip or whether it's evidence of something bigger. And again, when our kids are young, we usually have a lot of information to work with.
We see them every day, and we essentially know and are in charge of their routines. We determine their friendships. They're still telling us most of what happens in their head and in their lives.
And let's face it, their worlds are smaller when they're kids, and we're in control of what that world looks like. But as they get older, we lose that ability to curate our kid's world. And at the same time, the amount of information we have shrinks.
We see less and know less. They spend so much more time navigating the world without us. And of course, that's developmentally appropriate, and it's exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
But it creates a very different experience for us as parents. Now we're trying to make sense of much bigger challenges with much less information. When a teen comes home and barely speaks to you, you don't know whether they've had a bad day, whether they're worried about something, whether they're angry about something, maybe they're struggling, or are they just tired.
When your kid's away at college or living on their own, the information gap gets even bigger. You might only talk to them once or twice a week, maybe even less than that. You might only get a quick text every once in a while.
And even when your kid tells you, everything's fine, mom, you have absolutely no idea whether everything is actually fine. The challenge is that our brains don't like uncertainty. When information is missing, we essentially try to fill in the blanks.
And unfortunately, most of us don't fill in those blanks with neutral, boring, or even positive possibilities. We tend to fill in those blanks with fear. And honestly, I think we have to acknowledge the world we're parenting in.
Every day we're exposed to stories about things going wrong. We hear about teens struggling with anxiety and depression. We hear about addiction and dangerous relationships.
We worry about our kids being lonely and harming themselves. Tragic things happen. These stories are everywhere.
We don't have to even go looking for them anymore. And some of us have direct experience with these challenges already. You may already fear that your child is struggling in big ways or that they have in the past.
So those worst case scenarios don't really seem that far off or inconceivable. We tell ourselves we shouldn't catastrophize, but when you really think about it, it makes perfect sense that our brains do this. Our minds are simply trying to protect someone we care about more than anything else in the world.
I mean, let's face it. We love our kids and now have very little control over their choices and their experiences. But our lack of control doesn't translate into not caring anymore.
In fact, we care just as much, and yet we can no longer guarantee or even at times influence our kids' safety, happiness, or success, or the quality of the relationship we have with them. My friend, of course we're anxious. And I think this is where anxiety gets really complicated for us because it's not just that we feel anxious.
It's that anxiety feels justified. When we talk about anxiety in general, we often talk about it like it's a problem we should solve. We tell ourselves we need to stop worrying and let it go.
But when it comes to our kids, I don't think most of us actually want to let it go. At least not completely. Because the anxiety is attached to something that feels really important.
If my child is struggling, I want to care. If they're hurting, I want to be there for them. I don't want to just leave them to figure it out on their own.
If something's wrong, I don't want to be the mom who missed it because she was too detached. So even though anxiety feels terrible, there's often a part of us that believes it's serving an important purpose. I've noticed this in myself over the years.
There have been so many times when I wasn't just worried about one of my boys. It was like my brain was actively working on the worry. Constantly thinking about it, turning it over in my mind, trying to figure out what to do with it.
And what I've come to realize is that all of that mental activity creates the illusion that what we're doing is useful. Worry actually feels productive. Not enjoyable, obviously, but productive.
Because when we're worried about our kids, just sitting there doing nothing with it can feel impossible. Our brains want to do something. They want a job.
They want something to do with all that nervous energy, so they start searching for answers. What should I say? What should I do? What am I missing? Or how do I fix this? The problem is that many of the situations we face with older kids, quite often there isn't an immediate solution available to us. And that's something I realize nobody prepares us for.
When our kids are little, most problems have a direct line to action. If they're hungry, you feed them. If they're struggling in school, you talk to the teacher.
If they're scared, you comfort them. Our effort often produced a result we could see. In other words, we felt like we had control over the solution.
Fixing it actually worked. And not only did it solve the problem, but it solved our anxiety. But as our kids get older, we start facing challenges where the path forward is so much less clear.
Sometimes our child is unhappy, and we don't know why. Sometimes they're making choices we wouldn't make, and we can't get them to see why that's a problem. They could be in a relationship we don't like for them, and yet they're still determined to stay in this relationship.
Sometimes they're struggling, and they don't want our help. And sometimes we think they're struggling, and they don't. They don't see how their choices are leading them down a bad or unproductive path.
We never stop wanting our kids to be safe, happy, and successful. And yet, the older they get, the less influence we have over those outcomes. It's not just that we're worried.
It's that we care so much about something we can no longer control. And at times, this can feel unbearable. The anxiety feels like it has nowhere to go.
No resolution. For so long, loving our kids has been tied to doing something for them. Protecting them.
Helping them. Solving problems for them. Guiding them.
Then one day, you wake up and you realize that some of the most important lessons they need to learn are lessons you can't learn for them. You can't experience heartbreak for them or make them resilient. You can't take that test for them or go on the job interview for them.
You can't make them happy or confident or motivated. Those are things they have to build through their own experiences. And watching that process unfold can be incredibly uncomfortable for us, especially when the path they're taking isn't the path we would choose for them.
I honestly think this is one of the hardest parts of motherhood. And look, when we're anxious about our kids, our attention naturally goes to them. It goes outward.
We become completely focused on what they are doing, wondering why they're doing it, thinking about what they should be doing differently, and how can we get them to see that. Our brains become consumed with trying to understand and manage what's happening in our big kid's life. But what I've noticed both in my own experience and in coaching so many women is that we rarely turn that same curiosity toward ourselves.
When we're worried about our kids, we spend very little time asking ourselves why this particular situation is affecting us the way it is. Think about it for a minute. Two moms can be facing very similar circumstances and have completely different emotional experiences.
And to be honest, we may not even realize this because we so often don't talk about the challenges we're facing as moms of big kids. But just think about it. Let's say your big kid is struggling in school.
What we make that mean in our minds is going to determine how we feel about it and how we respond to it. So for example, if you think your kid is struggling because they're lazy and they're not applying themselves, you're going to feel anxious and then feel compelled to get them to be more motivated. Or you could interpret the situation as the teacher is not supporting your kid enough, and so you feel anxious in a way that's directed towards the teachers and getting them to give your kid more help.
Maybe you could worry that your kid is never going to be successful because they're not taking school seriously, so your mind goes to their future and the college they're not going to get into and the job that they're not going to keep because they don't know how to apply themselves. All of these situations and interpretations create anxiety for us, and yet the difference isn't necessarily what's happening with the child. It's truly in how each mom interprets what's happening, what she's making it mean, or what story her brain is telling her about the future.
And this is the part we tend to miss. Because when we're anxious, it feels so obvious that the anxiety is being caused by whatever our child is doing. Of course I'm anxious.
Look at what's happening. Any mother would be worried. And to be clear, I'm not saying that your concerns aren't valid.
We can be dealing with things that are objectively difficult, but it is still worth considering that there may be more to understand about your anxiety than simply what's happening with your big kid. For example, when your child is struggling, what are you most afraid of? What future are you imagining? What does their struggle mean to you? Or even what does it have to do with you? Does it mean they'll never figure it out and it's going to land on you? Does it mean you've somehow failed them? Or maybe it means they'll never be happy in your mind. Maybe even worse, does it mean you're going to lose your relationship with them? Most of us never slow down long enough to ask these questions.
We stay focused on the circumstances themselves because it feels like solving that would not only fix the problem, but it would fix our anxiety. And look, if there's a way you can fix it, by all means do it. But I think many of us get to this place where those solutions are no longer available to us.
And then what? What are you supposed to do with your anxiety? Well, the truth is our minds keep working on it, trying to find solutions. Our brains become convinced that if we can just figure out the right thing to do, we'll finally be able to relax. But often the opposite happens.
The anxiety just takes up more space. We become more focused on what's wrong than what's right. And maybe even worse, we start looking at our child through the lens of fear rather than trust.
And because anxiety rarely brings out the best in us, we can become more controlling, more reactive. We might ask more questions than our kids actually want to answer. We offer advice that wasn't asked for.
We push and we nag. We show up in ways that are not only not effective, but just not who we really want to be. But at the same time, what is the alternative? And I think this is where so many of us get stuck.
We think the only two options are to keep worrying or to stop caring, to stay vigilant and anxious, or somehow convince ourselves to let it go. And both of those options feel terrible. But what if those aren't the only choices? What if the answer isn't in finding a solution out there with your child? What if it's actually finding the solution within yourself? What if your anxiety isn't actually telling you something about your child? What if it's telling you something about you, about what you're afraid of, the responsibility you're caring, or the expectations you have for yourself as a mom? Or maybe about the future you're trying so desperately to prevent? Those are the questions that fascinate me.
Because while we may not always be able to change what's happening in our big kid's life, we can absolutely learn to understand what's happening in our own minds. And the more I've done this work, both for myself and with the women I coach, the more convinced I've become that this is truly where our power lives. Not in controlling our kids or eliminating uncertainty, but in understanding ourselves well enough that we can show up as the moms we truly want to be, even when life with our kids doesn't look the way we hoped it would.
This, my friend, is the work we do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. Most of us were never taught what to do when we care deeply about something we can no longer control. So if you're ready to understand your anxiety instead of simply carrying the weight of it, I'd love to help. I now offer Mom 2.0 both in one-on-one and in a group setting.
You can learn more through the link in the show notes. As I was thinking about my conversation with my godmother's son, I kept coming back to this question. What advice would I give someone just entering this stage of parenting? The truth is, the most important thing to understand isn't how to handle social media, or vaping, or dating, or any of the other challenges that inevitably will come our way as parents.
I think the most valuable thing to understand is that the hardest part of raising older kids isn't what's happening in their lives. It's learning how to live with the uncertainty of not knowing exactly how those lives are going to unfold. We spend years believing that if we work hard enough, love them enough, teach them enough, and protect them enough, we'll be able to create the outcomes we want for them.
Then one day we realize they are creating those outcomes for themselves, sometimes beautifully, and sometimes they're making a big mess of it. But more often, they're somewhere in between. And while they're figuring out who they are, we're being asked to grow too.
We're being asked to love without controlling, to care without carrying the weight of every outcome. And somehow in the midst of all of that, we have to figure out how to be calm and stay connected while allowing our kids to have experiences we would never choose for them. I don't think that there's a finish line for that work.
My boys are now 19 and 21, and I am still learning how to navigate it. But I do know this. If you've been feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or exhausted by raising your big kid, there is nothing wrong with you.
In fact, the anxiety makes perfect sense. You love your child. But maybe the question that you need to focus on isn't whether they'll be okay, but whether you can be okay while they figure it out.
Until next time, my friend.
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.
