PenPenWrites

I hear the complaints from friends with college-age kids and recent college grads in the house. They don't have the drive their father or mother had at their age, they aren't taking life seriously, they're lazy, willful, don't help around the house. Why it's just like having a teenager living in the house again. Only physically larger. And more worldly.

My children chose to go through this phase of "growing up" in apartments and group-of-friends houses far from the family manse. But as this wearisome economy rolls on and more and more of our children live at home–out of necessity–more of us are making our unhappy way through this stage. And it is a stage. So assures psychologist Carl Pickhardt in a newsletter he writes about the challenges of parenting young adults.

He call this stage trial independence (18 to 23-year olds). It's a time when, he writes, "the curve of parental impatience tends to rise." Parents are "really ready for their older son or daughter to get their life together, set an occupational or educational goal, show clear progress in that direction, and act responsibly grown up." When that doesn't happen–when there is what he calls "floundering and failing to make responsible headway," we may fear that our child will never grown into being a functioning adult.

Pickhardt suggests we relax and tell ourselves to be patient.  The parental job, he suggests, is to hold their emerging adult "to responsible account, affirm positive signs of growth being made, express respect for what the young person is learning from hard experience, and be patient as their son or daughter struggles to find an independent way."

So much easier said than done. If only we could tack those thoughts to our brains when we come upon our grown child sleeping through Monday morning and forgetting to check out that job lead.