"I DON'T THINK MY BIG KID IS GOING TO BE OK”—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 278
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.
Have you ever had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from, because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. I don't think my kid is going to be okay.
I hear this from moms so often. Sometimes it comes from a mom whose kid used to be engaged in school or connected with friends, involved in a lot of activities, but for some reason, that starts changing. Something feels different.
They start missing school assignments. Their grades start slipping. They stop spending time with the friends their mom knows.
Maybe they stay in their room all day with the door closed. They could start dressing differently, or they're barely eating, sleeping all afternoon, awake all night. Maybe all of a sudden, they start turning off their location when they're out.
The mom starts catching their kid in lies, or they notice a smell on their clothes that suggests they've been smoking or vaping. There may not be one dramatic event the mom can point to. It just feels like a collection of changes that seem to signal that something is wrong.
We can't help but wonder where this is all headed. We start to imagine our kid not graduating, making one dangerous choice after another, getting into real trouble. What is the future going to hold for this kid? I don't think my kid is going to be okay.
And I've heard these same concerns from moms of adult kids as well. Maybe their kid has already dropped out of college and moved back home. They're not working, but also not in school.
These moms can't help but see their kid at 30 and 35, still at home, up in their room, still without a plan. And then the mom envisions herself 15, 20 years later, still frustrated, still trying to get her kid to launch, still having no idea how to make that happen. We can't help but go to the worst case.
It's honestly what our minds do when we're scared. We take what's happening today and carry it all the way into the future. We can easily go from thinking she's struggling in school to she's going to throw her life away.
Or turning the reality that your kid has no direction right now into they'll never be able to build a life on their own. Sometimes a mom will tell me about her child has been diagnosed with anxiety, or depression, or some other mental health condition. Their kid has cycled through medications and treatments.
And sometimes there's a period of hope that maybe this one will stick. And then other times, they're just left feeling more disappointed. Other moms' kids are struggling with addiction, or they seem to be headed down that path.
And sometimes there's no diagnosis or one thing that's clearly wrong. There's just this sense that the kid they used to know is becoming harder and harder to reach. And when their mom asks, how are you feeling about things? What's going on? How can I help? The kid gets mad.
They might even say, why do you always do this? And the mom thinks, do what? Care about you? Notice that you're struggling? Try to help? She can't get close enough to understand what's really happening with her big kid, but she also can't get far enough away from it to stop worrying. So she feels anxious, sad, and alone, powerless. Different ages, different kids, different circumstances.
But underneath all of these situations is the same terrifying thought. I don't think my kid is going to be okay. And as painful as that thought is, there's often another thought right behind it.
And that's, how will I ever forgive myself if I let that happen? If they're not okay? Now, at first glance, this thought seems entirely focused on our kids. The worry that they're not going to be okay. And of course, we're worried about their future and their safety, their mental health.
We want them to be able to eventually support themselves. And we want them to have strong, supportive relationships. Ultimately, we just want to know that they're going to find their way.
But the truth is, so often when moms are thinking about the hard, stressful things going on with their kid, everything they're worried about, they're not just worried that their kid isn't going to make it. They're also thinking, what will it mean about me if they don't? If I can't help them be okay? One direction our minds go is that we look to the past, trying to figure out where we went wrong. Did I somehow let this happen or miss something along the way? Was there something I could have caught sooner to prevent all of this? Did I work too much? Did I rescue them too often? Did I fail to prepare them for the real world? Our minds essentially start conducting an investigation into our entire history as a mom, looking for that moment when we caused the future that we are now afraid of.
So we personalize, taking responsibility for our past choices and how they might have impacted our kids. But personalizing also makes us take responsibility for what happens next. We start believing that our kid's future somehow depends on whether we say the right thing right now.
So we look to boundaries, or we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have the right conversation to finally get through to them. Our kid's recovery, their motivation, their ability to be independent, to be sober and happy, all of it starts to feel like something we are responsible for creating. This is what personalizing looks like.
We take something that's happening in our kid's life, their struggle, their choices, their lack of motivation, even their mistakes, and we make it mean something about us. We take the past and the current struggles as proof that we must have done something wrong, or that we're still not getting it right. We put so much pressure on ourselves to change the trajectory of the future, we're ultimately afraid is inevitable.
And this is where you might be thinking, but isn't that the job? I mean, Jennifer, are you telling me I'm supposed to just let this go? Tell my kid, good luck. It's on you. Not my problem anymore.
I mean, isn't it my job as a mom to help and support my kid, to help them make better decisions, to teach them how to be successful in life, and to warn them of the dangers of the path that they're on? I mean, how can I stop trying? This is actually a conversation I feel like I have with moms every single day. They hear me say, you're putting too much pressure on yourself. Or maybe even they hear when I talk about personalizing, you're making it about you.
And they think that what that means is that I'm saying stop, just let it go. And actually, what I want you to hear right now is that that is not what I'm saying. In fact, in my own life as a mom, I will never stop trying with my boys.
And I do feel responsible to support them and guide them. Is it personal? Yes, absolutely it is. I mean, if they are headed down a bad path, I would absolutely not just stand by and say, I hope you learn from your mistakes, son.
No, I also feel deeply responsible for my boys. And for 21 years, that has absolutely been my job. And I think it always will be.
But what I've come to realize is that the goal of the job may never change. But if we don't change the way we approach that goal, we end up stuck in a lot of frustration and anxiety, not to mention straining the relationship we have with our kids. Here's the thing, for our kids' entire lives up to this point, we took responsibility for their safety, their happiness, and success in ways that looked like actively directing them.
We each have a view of what these things should look like. And if you really think about it, even this looks different for each of us moms. Some of us were comfortable with our kids playing outside unsupervised when they were younger.
And some of us would never do that. Some of us care about having our kids do chores at home because we feel like that will teach them to be responsible. And others of us take a different approach to teaching our kids how to be responsible.
The point is, each of us in our own way have had a view of what safety, happiness, and success should look like for our kids. And for most of their lives, we've organized their lives around those values and priorities. And if they were doing something that made us think they were off track, whether that was doing something dangerous, or not being on top of what we thought they should be on top of, or even if they seemed sad, we did what we needed to do to fix it.
Or we did whatever we could to get them back on track. And my friend, do you remember those days when we could actually do that? The simplicity of it? I still remember those moments with my boys when they would be upset and I could just ask what was wrong and they would tell me. And they might have tears in their beautiful blue eyes and somehow I could get them to laugh.
I could give them a hug and somehow magically erase whatever was wrong. My friend, is there a little part of you that misses the ease and simplicity of those moments? I mean, what power, what a gift to be able to take away someone else's pain and also to tell them, honey, this is what you need to do. And even if they didn't always like it, you pretty much got your way when they were little.
And that was then. Now, I think you know, you don't have that power anymore. Realistically, you know you can't fix things as easily as you did when your kids were little, but your brain hasn't necessarily caught up with that reality.
And I'm not at all calling you out. It's been true of me too. For decades, we've been operating under the assumption that if my kid is struggling or headed down the wrong path, that I need to do something.
It is a practiced response. But now that our kids are older, they're not so interested in our help. They don't even want to talk about what's wrong at times.
And they're definitely not always interested in our advice. But also, we're not wrong. We have lived a lot longer than they have.
And our advice is often very good advice. In fact, sometimes it's mind-boggling how ready our kids are to discount our advice. And even though they might not tell us what's really going on, we can see it.
In fact, sometimes it feels like we can see what's going on more clearly than they do. We can see that they're doing the bare minimum. And it seems so clear to us that if they don't try harder, they're going to be disappointed in their results later.
We can see that the relationship they're in is unhealthy. Maybe they've even told us about a few of the red flags. And yet somehow, they're still in that relationship.
Don't they know they can do better? We can see that the drinking or the vaping is becoming a problem. They're becoming more lazy. We worry about them driving and making bad choices before they get behind the wheel.
We can see so many areas of their life where they're making choices that are going to have consequences. We can see it so clearly. But we can't always stop it.
And that is such an incredibly painful place to be as a mom. Because of course, you still love your kid. You still want them to be safe and happy and successful.
And you still feel responsible to help make all of that happen. And again, I don't think any of that is actually ever going to change. The problem is, we don't have the power to make those things happen in the way that we used to.
When our kids were little, we could put them in the corner. We could send them to their room. We could take away that toy or even the phone.
We had leverage. We had ways we could get them to do what we really thought was in their interest to do. But now, you can't make your kid go to class or force your adult son to apply for a job.
You can't make your daughter leave a relationship she's not ready to leave. And you can't make your kid engage in therapy. You can certainly offer support and encourage them.
And you absolutely can still give advice, even unsolicited advice. And you can definitely set limits around what you'll support. But you can't reach inside of them and create their happiness or their willingness to do what you think they should do.
So we know we still have a role as a mom. And we definitely don't want to just shrug our shoulders and say, well, it's their life. So we're left trying to figure out, what exactly is my job right now? Where do I draw the line? It feels like we're in this murky, metal ground that's honestly really uncomfortable.
I mean, at what point do you decide, no, I definitely need to step in here? And at what point are you supposed to just step back and let your kid face natural consequences? And what if you're not willing to accept those natural consequences? The hard part is that there is rarely one obvious answer. But still, our minds search for the right one. We believe there must be some exact combination of support and boundaries that will get through to our kids.
And if we could just find it, maybe we can still make this all turn out okay. The problem is, our measure of success is our view of whether or not our kid is actually okay. And what that often means is that we need our kid to change, to match our view of what okay looks like.
For example, okay might mean there's evidence that they're taking school seriously, or that they have a job and they're actually getting there on time. Maybe it looks like them finally getting out of bed before noon. Maybe okay means they have a plan, that they seem to have some degree of motivation, some sense of direction.
And look, I want all of those things for my kids too. But also, if we're really honest with ourselves, we have a very specific view of what okay should look like. And when we turn that preferred outcome into the only acceptable outcome, then every day our kid isn't moving toward that version of okay feels like evidence that something is going terribly wrong.
And also evidence that we're failing at our job. We find ourselves constantly watching our kids for signs. And I've had this conversation come up with so many clients.
Times when they'll come to a call and they'll tell me they slept until two today, again, where they still haven't applied for that job. They're not going to class. And I've told them so many times and they're still not listening.
They're not doing what we want. And we don't think, my kid made a choice today that I don't agree with or understand. Instead, we think, this is getting worse.
And then we go right back to trying to find the next thing that will change the trajectory of their bad choices. And again, let me say this clearly. Maybe there is something you need to do.
But I want to invite you to notice that there's a difference between asking, what is the next best step for me to take? Versus, what can I do that will make my kid become okay? Because those are two very different questions. The first acknowledges that we do have a role. The second assumes that we control the result.
The very hard truth is we can do our absolute best as moms and our kid still may not change. We can absolutely set boundaries, but our kid could just get angry or ignore the boundary altogether. We can stop paying for things and our kid could still not suddenly become more responsible because of it.
We can also have the most loving, honest conversation and they could still walk away saying that we don't understand them. And this, my friend, is where we need to be really clear with ourselves. Because if the only way you can know you're doing a good job as a mom is by waiting for your kid to change, you are going to stay stuck, feeling terrible, powerless, and anxious, frustrated.
And look, you're going to feel okay in those moments when they do go to class, but then angry when they don't. You're going to feel hopeful when they finally apply for that job, but then panicked when they sleep late and risk losing it. When you need your big kid to be okay so that you can trust that you're doing all that you can as a mom, then your confidence is going to rise and fall with every decision your big kid makes.
And my friend, that is exhausting. But there is another way to think about your job. Instead of asking, how do I make sure my kid is okay? You can start asking, who do I want to be as their mom while they figure out their life? And that question gives you your power back.
The truth is you're never going to stop trying your best and caring for your kid and their well-being. Finding your way in this stage of motherhood doesn't mean you have to become indifferent or tell your kid good luck with your life, I'm out. But you can start to be very clear with yourself about where your power begins and where it ends.
The work is learning how to trust yourself to make the next best decision around how to support and guide your big kid, and then to have your back about it. Imagine being the mom who thinks, I don't know exactly how my kid's story is going to unfold, but I do know how I want to show up through this part of it. Finding that sense of confidence and peace in knowing your role and how you want to support your child in this messy stage of motherhood is the work we do in Mom 2.0. We take real situations happening in your family, the parenting decisions you're trying to get right, conversations that keep going wrong, and we work through them.
You'll start to see why your kid's behavior has so much power over how you feel, and you'll find the confidence to make decisions and set boundaries without spending three days second-guessing yourself. This work does not require your kid to change before you can feel confident in yourself as a mom. In fact, imagine your relationship with your child changing simply because you aren't walking into every conversation walking on eggshells.
Imagine being able to just listen without feeling that terrible pressure to solve it right away, or imagine having the confidence to say what you need to say without it turning into a battle. Most importantly, imagine not feeling so alone inside of all of this. You can love your kid and take their struggles seriously, but not have your life consumed by anxiety, fear, and frustration.
And if this sounds like exactly what you need, I invite you to set up a call with me to learn more. You can find a link with more information in the show notes. My friend, I know how painful it is to think, I don't think my kid is going to be okay.
But it's interesting to just question what we mean by okay. Does okay mean they'll never struggle or make a mistake or a dangerous choice? Does it mean they'll never fail or get disappointed? Does being okay mean they find their place in the world on your timeline? The painful truth is that being okay actually doesn't mean that our kids are going to avoid the pain of life. In fact, what I've seen time and time again with my own boys and through so many examples shared by moms that I work with is that our kids are going to learn through their struggles.
We can tell them again and again and they still might not learn the lesson until they experience the pain of not listening. Our kids' lives are very likely to include chapters we would never have chosen for them. And maybe your job isn't to stand between your child and every hard part of being human.
Instead, maybe your job is simply to love them through it without deciding that their struggle means their life is ruined or that you failed. So the next time your mind tells you, I don't think my kid is going to be okay, just take a breath before you race into that terrible future. Because you do not know the ending of the story.
You only know that this is where you are today. And today you can love your child and you can decide what support you're going to give them and what you won't. My friend, your power is in deciding how you want to show up to the messy parts of your big kid's life.
But the journey is theirs. And isn't that actually what we've wanted for them all along? 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.
