PARENTING TEENS WHEN YOU LOSE LEVERAGE—THE BOUNDARIES THAT ACTUALLY WORK AS YOU NAVIGATE THE EMPTY NEST | EP. 273
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.
There comes a point when parenting teens and adult children, when you realize the tools that used to work, don't anymore. You can't ground them. You can't force them to get help or make them find a job. You can't even make them answer your texts. And when you lose the leverage to be able to get your kid to do even the simplest, most straightforward things, it's easy to feel completely powerless.
But what if boundaries are not actually about making your big kid change? What if instead, they're actually meant to help you stop losing yourself while you love them? In this episode, I'm talking about letting go of control without giving up on your child and how to reclaim the power you still have. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I was talking with a mom yesterday who wanted to sign up for my next group. And she was telling me that she loves this podcast and the work that I'm doing because it makes her feel less alone. So many women have said this to me.
But yesterday's conversation was just a reminder to me about how lonely this stage of motherhood can feel. And I don't even mean lonely in the sense that we don't have friends or people in our lives to talk to. It's more feeling alone in this experience of raising someone you care about more than life itself, and sometimes not being able to reach them.
Moms will also say to me, my friends don't understand, they don't have the same relationship with their kid as I do, or their kid isn't struggling in the way mine is. You feel alone in carrying the worries that feel impossible to explain to someone who isn't living them. We feel alone.
And we feel uncomfortable sharing these things. I mean, what does it say about my kid? Or about me as a parent that we're in this situation? I've worked with moms whose kids are vaping, drinking, cutting. Moms whose kids are failing classes in school but don't seem to care.
Moms who watch their kids struggle with anxiety, depression, ADHD, or other mental health struggles. But then on top of that, they watch their kids not take the steps they need to take to get better or manage themselves in a more healthy or productive way. I've worked with moms whose kids are in unhealthy relationships they desperately wish they would leave.
Moms whose adult children have moved back home with no clear plan for what's next. I've also worked with moms whose kids have completely pulled away. They barely return a call or a text, don't even engage their moms in any type of conversation.
Every single one of those moms, they love their kids. They're not in this place because they've been terrible parents. In fact, they've been doing their absolute best from day one.
Sometimes they'll share their kid has always been a challenge. Other times they say that everything was fine up until a certain point. Maybe they hit middle school or high school or some life event, and everything seemed to change.
They come to me exhausted, at their wits end, needing something to change. And often what they'll say to me is that they feel like they need to learn how to set better boundaries. Others will come to me and say, honestly, I wish I could care less.
I'm so tired of trying so hard and failing. All these moms want to do is help their kids be safe, happy, and productive, just moving forward in their lives. And if it's not too much to ask, they'd also like a relationship with their kid, some connection.
Every one of these moms love their kid, and they're not trying to control them. What they really want to do is help and protect their kid. But they reach a point where they start asking themselves, what do I do when I can't make them do anything? For all of us, there comes a point in parenting teens and adult kids where you realize the tools you used to have access to are gone.
Grounding them does nothing. And at some point, you can't even do that. How do you ground a 21-year-old? You also can't force them to go to therapy if they need help.
You can't make them end a toxic relationship. You can't make them apply for jobs or be polite to their boss at work. You can't make them answer your texts.
We can't make them want what we want for their lives. And when you realize you have so much less leverage than you used to, you're left feeling completely powerless, and honestly, desperately afraid for what this means for your child's future, and for your relationship with them. And here's what I think makes this so incredibly hard.
When our kids were little, our job was to protect them. We buggled their car seats and held their hands crossing the street. We chose who they spent time with and knew where they were at all times.
The way we expressed our love was truly to be responsible for everything about their lives. If something wasn't okay, we stepped in. We tried to fix it.
And most of the time, we could. But somewhere along the way, that changes. Our kids become old enough to make decisions that we, frankly, wouldn't make.
They can ignore our advice and absolutely reject our help. In fact, they make choices that we know could hurt them. Or they're making those choices and we can see they are already hurting them.
And there is very little, sometimes nothing, we can actually do to stop them. And let's just take a second to sit with the terror of that. You still love this child more than life itself, but your ability to help them be safe, happy, and successful, to get them to connect back with you, your ability to influence all of this has changed dramatically.
You care just as much, but you have absolutely no control. So what do we naturally do when we realize this? We try harder. We explain to them again what they need to do differently.
We remind them about that appointment or that thing that they should be doing. We ask if they've applied for jobs. Try to convince them about what we really think they should be doing.
And then when they're not doing those things, we just get stuck in our head worrying. We think about them all day long, because if we can't control what they're doing, our minds convince us that maybe we can control it by thinking about it enough. And we tell ourselves we need to figure out how to set boundaries.
But what we're really saying to ourselves is, I need something that will work. I need something that will finally help me get through to my kid. Something that will make them take this seriously.
In other words, we're looking for leverage. We're looking for the thing that will finally create change. And it makes complete sense, because for years, that's exactly how parenting worked.
You set a consequence, your kid didn't like the consequence, so their behavior changed. The consequence, or sometimes even the threat of the consequence, gave you leverage. But as our ability to set consequences with our teen or adult kids goes away, we get stuck.
Because how are you supposed to get through to them without leverage? Or worse, the only leverage we feel that we have seems so drastic. Do we really kick them out or cut them off? And look, at some point, some moms I've worked with have had to make those choices. But until you get to that point, you find yourself desperately looking for that thing that will get through to them without having to go there, to that drastic consequence.
We tell ourselves we just need to be firmer with them, or to stop enabling them. Maybe if I could just stay calm enough when I talk to them, that maybe they'll listen. And honestly, some of those things could be true.
It might be true that you need to set boundaries where you hold the line in a way you haven't before. And maybe you do need to find a way to stop being so angry so that every conversation doesn't escalate because you're adding fuel to the fire. I think our instincts are actually right when it comes to thinking there must be some way that I can have influence here.
But I need you to really hear this. No matter what boundaries you set, no matter how well or even how poorly you approach the situation you're facing with your big kid, you cannot make them change. You can't make them care.
You can't make them more motivated or value what you think that they should value. You can't make them stop vaping or start studying or eat dinner with you or get a job. Contrary to what we've been led to believe by years of raising our kids when we got our way, you get to a point where your boundaries do not have the power to enforce what you want, to get your kid to change in the way that you really think that they should.
And I know that that might feel really discouraging to hear. But when you really understand what I mean by this, it's actually incredibly freeing. Because once you stop expecting your boundaries to control another human being, you can finally begin using them to stop losing yourself.
Think about what happens when you try to get through to your big kid and it doesn't work. The reality is we often become consumed by it. Your mood can feel tethered to whether or not they do the thing you want them to do.
Moms have told me countless stories of the fury they have as they see their kids going to be late to work or school again, or that they're not up when they're supposed to be up. You watch them scrolling on their phone all day instead of applying for those jobs or doing their summer work, and they're definitely not doing that chore you asked them to do last week. You find yourself constantly checking on them in hopes that maybe they'll do the right thing.
You wait up, hoping they're going to come home sober. You check their location to see if they were really being honest with you about where they went. You wait with bated breath when they come home from work to see if they got fired.
You feel like you spend your life waiting for those small moments of relief, when they're actually doing the right thing. Thank God they're in class. They got home safely.
They opened up for once, even if it was just a five-minute conversation, it felt like something. Our entire emotional world can feel like it revolves around our kids' choices and their moods. Without even realizing it, we slowly stop living our own lives because we're so busy trying to manage theirs.
And this, my friend, is where we lose ourselves. And the problem isn't actually that we care too much. It's that on this journey of motherhood, we came to believe that loving our kids meant caring responsibility for their choices.
But let's be honest. How are we supposed to let go of that? As I said, we've spent our entire lives believing that this is what love looks like. From the moment our kids were born, our job was to carry responsibility.
And in fact, that responsibility was critical to their survival. When they were babies, if we didn't feed them, they wouldn't eat. If we didn't buckle them into the car seat, they weren't going to be safe.
If we didn't remind them to brush their teeth or do their homework or pack their lunch, those things simply didn't happen. For so many years, being a good mom has meant staying vigilant, thinking ahead, taking care of every possible need your kid could have. So of course your brain learned that your job was to carry your child's life on your shoulders.
And for a really long time, it was exactly what your child needed. And I think all of us get this intellectually. In fact, I would say that by and large, most moms I work with want to let go.
They want to get to a point with their kid where they can trust that their kid will thrive independent of them. But if we're being really honest here, it's one thing to let go of your kid when they're thriving, when they're actually generally responsible and making good decisions. It's still not always comfortable to let go, but it's easier to see the possibility that maybe it's time, that maybe they need to learn how to be a bit more independent.
But what do you do when your kid doesn't look okay? When they're making choices that genuinely scare you, or they just seem stuck, struggling with depression or anxiety or lack of forward momentum, failing classes, vaping, drinking, sleeping all day, making bad decisions, and on top of all of that, shutting you out so that you don't even know the extent of what's going on with them. Every instinct and you can feel like it's screaming, I can't let go. They need me.
Honestly, the thought in our minds is, if I let this go, everything is going to go seriously wrong. We're not talking about letting your 14-year-old forget their cleats for soccer practice so they learn a lesson. We're not reminding your kid to do their homework in middle school.
Even though it's not easy to let go in those moments, those are natural consequences we're often prepared to let our kids face. They feel manageable. But when you're watching someone you love make choices that seem like they could genuinely alter the course of their life, it's a different thing entirely.
These aren't little parenting moments. These are the moments that keep you wide awake at night with your heart in your throat, praying that you make it to the next day or the next conversation, desperately trying to figure out how to help and point them in the right direction. And when the stakes feel this high, of course, it's hard to let go.
In fact, what we really want to do is hold on a little tighter. Sometimes that looks like more oversight or reminding, but more often, what we really hold on to is the worry, the thinking about it over and over from every different angle. And the worry truly feels productive.
In fact, it can feel irresponsible to not try to think of something, to figure out something to do. Because if you stop carrying this, if you think you truly do let it go, then something terrible could happen. And my friend, I know a big part of this fear comes from love.
It comes from the deepest part of you that has spent your child's entire life trying to keep them safe. But I also want to invite you to consider that in these moments, what we're truly believing isn't simply my child's at risk or in danger or struggling. It's also, if I stop carrying this, no one will.
And here's the thing. If you truly believe that you are the last bastion of hope, that your worrying and your vigilance and your caring responsibility for your child's life is the one thing standing between your child and disaster, I totally understand how letting go feels reckless, like giving up and abandoning your child when they need you the most. So here's the million-dollar question.
What are we supposed to do? Because the answer isn't simply let it go, but it often also is not doing what you've been doing if it isn't working. And this is, again, why we circle back to boundaries. And as we think about how to approach boundaries here, I think it's really important to understand what boundaries are actually for.
Because if the goal of your boundary is to make your kid stop doing something or start doing something, to stop vaping or to get a job or to go to therapy, become motivated, what you're really doing is asking a boundary to do something it simply can't do. Because a boundary actually can never make another person choose differently. In fact, boundaries aren't a tool to get someone else to change, contrary to popular belief.
Boundaries are actually about you. They're about deciding what you are going to do. Think about it this way.
When we define a boundary as something that's supposed to change another person, our piece immediately becomes dependent on whether that person actually changes. If they stop vaping, we feel relieved. We feel like the boundary worked.
If they get a job, we can relax. If they start going to therapy, we'll feel like they're getting help. They're on the road to recovery.
If they answer our texts in that moment or come home sober or get a reasonably good grade on a test, then we feel like, oh, we're on the right track. My boundaries are working. But what happens when they don't? We don't just feel disappointed.
We start questioning ourselves. We tell ourselves maybe the boundary wasn't harsh enough or that we should have followed through more consistently. Again, I have to have harsher consequences.
And notice where the focus stays. It's still on getting your child to change. And that's exactly why we end up feeling so powerless, because we've tied our emotional well-being to something we don't actually control.
When you set boundaries, the driving question isn't actually how do I get my child to do what I think they should do, which is where we typically start, but rather, given that I can't make them do this, who do I want to be? What am I willing to continue doing? And what am I no longer willing to do? How do I want to show up in this relationship, regardless of whether my child changes? And at first, hearing this could almost feel like a letdown, because if boundaries aren't going to change my kid, then what's the point? But here's what's so powerful to see. Boundaries don't necessarily change your big kid. They change you.
They move you from a place of feeling like you're at the mercy of your kid's choices to remembering that you still have choices of your own. So many of us moms have handed our emotional well-being over to our kids. We tell ourselves we'll feel peaceful when they get a job.
We'll relax when they start making better decisions. We'll finally enjoy our lives again when they stop struggling. In other words, we put our own lives on hold while we wait for theirs to get better.
And that's an incredibly painful place to live, because now our peace depends on someone else's choices. The truth is, your child may continue to struggle for a while. They may continue making choices that you don't want them to make, and they could totally ignore your advice for their foreseeable future, and they may continue to reject your help.
None of us gets to control those choices. But you do get to decide whether you're going to lose yourself while they're figuring out their own lives. Here's what's so interesting.
We spend so much of this stage of parenting believing that we've lost all of our leverage, that we used to have influence, and now we don't. But I don't actually think that's true. I think we've just been looking for leverage in the wrong place.
Because for years, our leverage came from consequences. It came from the fact that our kids were little enough that we could require them to do things. We could take away privileges and decide who they spent time with and where they went.
So naturally, when those tools disappear, it feels like we've lost our power. But what if your greatest influence was never the consequence? What if it's actually the parent your child experiences? Someone who can stay calm. Someone who can be clear about where she stands without needing to wing the argument.
Maybe most importantly, someone who can love her child without believing it's her job to carry the weight of every decision they make. Because here's what I've seen over and over again in my coaching. The moms who feel the most empowered aren't actually the ones whose kids are making all the right choices all the time.
In truth, they're the moms who have learned to stop measuring their own peace and well-being by their child's behavior. Who do you want to be while your big kid is figuring out their life? My friend, the answer to this question changes everything. And it's exactly why I created Mom 2.0. My coaching program isn't about teaching you how to fix your child.
It's truly about helping you become the version of yourself who can navigate the stage of motherhood with confidence, clarity, and peace, even when your child is making choices you don't want them to make or struggling in ways you can't fix. My friend, you don't need to let go of your child. But you can let go of the anxiety, guilt, resentment, and exhaustion of feeling like it's all on your shoulders.
The goal isn't to care less about your child. It's to stop losing yourself while you love them. My friend, if today's episode felt like I was describing your life, I'd love to invite you to book a free call with me.
We'll talk about what's happening with your big kid, what you want to create instead, and whether Mom 2.0 is the right next step for you. You don't have to figure out the stage of motherhood alone. You can learn more through the link in the show notes.
Maybe the real invitation here is to realize that your greatest influence isn't in your ability to control your child, but truly in deciding who you want to be while you love them. And that, my friend, is leverage that no one can take away from you. Because no matter what your child chooses next, you still get to choose who you are going to be.
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.
