Quick Answer
Parent coach Kim Muench joins Hopestream to talk about what parents can actually do when an adult child is stuck at home, not launching, and struggling with mental health or substance use. Kim describes the three things parents truly have control over and shares her four C’s — clarity, calm, confidence, and consistency — for showing up in the relationship. She also breaks down the difference between helping and enabling, and explains why creating a gap in what you provide is often the most important step you can take.
Key Takeaways
- Parents of stuck young adults have control over three things: how they show up in the relationship, what they are willing to provide, and how they respond to their child’s words and actions.
- Fear-based parenting can feel like control to a young person and breeds disconnection — which means parents lose influence, not just control.
- The four C’s Kim teaches — clarity, calm, confidence, and consistency — are the core of how parents can show up more effectively in the relationship.
- Enabling is doing something repeatedly for someone that they can and should be doing for themselves, and it tends to flow one way and build resentment.
- Creating a gap by gradually pulling back what you provide — emotionally and financially — gives a young person the opportunity to step in and take responsibility.
In this article
Episode Resources
- Real Life Parent Guide — Kim Muench’s coaching
- Becoming Me While Raising You by Kim Muench (Amazon)
- Lost in Place by Kim Muench (releasing November 24)
- The Stream — free two-week trial for moms
- Worried Sick free e-book by Brenda Zane
Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.
About the guest: Kim Muench
Jai Institute for Parenting certified parent coach, founder of Real Life Parent Guide, and author
Kim Muench is a Jai Institute for Parenting certified parent coach and the founder of Real Life Parent Guide. She has nearly four decades of parenting experience across five children and has spent years coaching families through stuck seasons involving mental health challenges, substance use concerns, strained communication, and the line between helping and enabling. She is the author of ‘Becoming Me While Raising You’ and the forthcoming ‘Lost in Place: How to Support, Motivate, and Launch an Adult Child.’
How Kim Muench became a parent coach
Kim’s path to parent coaching started when her oldest son, in his early 20s, developed a dependency on alcohol — very likely, she said, as a result of anxiety, depression, and diagnosed OCD. The family moved through detox, an IOP program, and eventually residential treatment. Along the way, Kim went back to college and finished a psychology degree, originally intending to become a licensed chemical dependency counselor working with teenagers. But somewhere in that process, she realized she wanted to work with the parents instead.
She became a Jai Institute for Parenting certified parent coach in 2016 and started out working proactively with parents of teens. What she found was that parents will readily invest in tutoring, therapy, or special coaching for their kids — but rarely invest in their own parenting. When her first book came out in 2021, parents of 18- to 30-year-olds started coming to her in droves, and that became the niche she works in today.
What ‘lost in place’ means
Kim’s new book is titled Lost in Place, and the phrase itself came from a friend and coach of young people who shared it with her. When she heard it, she said, it immediately clicked. ‘Failure to launch’ — a term she hears constantly — feels to her like a final, negative verdict. ‘Lost in place’ carries something different.
‘If you’re lost, you can be found. Failure to launch is, to me, a very negative and final term. Like, how do you come back from that?’ — Kim Muench
She uses delayed independence to describe what’s actually happening with many young adults — whether the cause is substance use, mental health struggles, or a creeping sense of hopelessness about the future. She also pointed to the amount and kind of information young people encounter online as a real contributor to their anxiety and their difficulty trusting the world.
The three things parents actually control
One of the most grounding parts of Kim’s work is helping parents get honest about what they can and cannot control. She is direct: parents of adult children cannot control whether their child goes to school, goes to work, or what they put in their body. What they do have control over, she says, comes down to three things.
First, how they show up in the relationship. Second, what they are willing to provide — because once a child is an adult, parents are not obligated to keep providing for them. Third, how they respond to their young adult’s words, shutdowns, explosive behavior, or choices. Kim works with parents to concentrate on these three areas rather than spinning their energy trying to control outcomes they cannot reach.
The four C’s: clarity, calm, confidence, and consistency
Under the umbrella of ‘how you show up in the relationship,’ Kim teaches what she calls the four C’s.
Clarity means getting very clear on what you will and will not support. Calm means practicing staying regulated even when your child is triggering you — because a calm parent has a better chance of helping a dysregulated young person return to a logical state than a parent who escalates with them. Kim described how she personally knows she’s being triggered by prickles up the back of her neck, and that physical cue is her signal to pause and consciously decide how she wants to show up.
‘Fear smells like control to their kids, and they will push back against being controlled. It also breeds disconnection, so parenting from fear breeds disconnection, and you have no influence in the situation.’ — Kim Muench
Confidence is the third C, and Kim noted that by the time most parents come to her, they have lost a great deal of it. Parenting from fear, she explained, doesn’t just feel bad — it actually drives disconnection, which removes any influence a parent might have had. The fourth C is consistency: following through on what you say, modeling the behavior you want to see, and not making commitments you won’t keep. She noted that when family contracts fall apart, the breakdown is often on the parent’s side — not as a reason to assign blame, but as a place to start getting honest.
Helping versus enabling — and how to tell the difference
Kim offered a clear way to think about the line between support and subsidy. Helping, she said, is occasional, done out of love, and in a family context tends to be reciprocated — you pick up your daughter’s dry cleaning, she unloads the dishwasher without being asked. Enabling is different: it’s when you repeatedly do something for someone that they can and should be doing for themselves, and it tends to flow only one direction and build resentment over time.
She encourages parents to look honestly at everything they are providing — emotionally, financially, physically — and ask which category each thing falls into. One story she shared landed hard: a mother whose adult son was living at home arranged for the family dog to stay at a neighbor’s house while the parents traveled, because she didn’t trust her son to wake up in time to care for it. Kim’s response was to ask whether the son loved the dog. He did. So why not let caring for the dog be his purpose and responsibility for that week?
‘You’re basically just telling him that you don’t believe he is capable.’ — Kim Muench
The gap Kim talks about creating — the space left when parents pull back what they’ve been providing — is not about punishment. It’s about leaving room for a young person to step in. Whether or not they do, and how quickly, tells you something important about what might need to happen next.
Connect with parents who get it
You don't have to navigate your young adult's addiction alone. Join The Stream, our private community where moms find understanding, practical strategies, and hope from others who truly get it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I actually do if my adult child refuses to do anything to move forward?
Kim says the most important shift is moving away from trying to find the right consequence and instead focusing on the three things you do control: how you show up in the relationship, what you are willing to provide, and how you respond to your child’s behavior. Natural consequences of their choices, she notes, are often the most powerful teacher — but only if parents aren’t cushioning them.
How do I know if I’m enabling my adult child or just helping them?
Kim draws the line this way: helping is occasional, done out of love, and tends to be reciprocated in a healthy relationship. Enabling is when you repeatedly do something for someone that they can and should be doing for themselves, it flows only one direction, and it tends to build resentment. She suggests asking yourself honestly which category each thing you’re providing falls into.
What are the four C’s Kim Muench teaches parents of young adults?
The four C’s are clarity, calm, confidence, and consistency. Clarity is knowing what you will and won’t support. Calm is staying regulated when triggered. Confidence means parenting from a grounded place rather than fear. Consistency means following through on what you say and modeling the behavior you want to see from your child.
Should I be worried about setting boundaries if my child has threatened self-harm?
Kim addressed this directly, saying that fear of self-harm is one of the two biggest things that keeps parents stuck. She said she holds a high level of respect for that fear and doesn’t minimize it — while also noting that it cannot be allowed to dictate everything that happens or doesn’t happen at home. This is an area where she recommends working with a coach or counselor who can help you navigate it carefully.
When does it make sense to stop providing financially for an adult child at home?
Kim doesn’t give a single answer but encourages parents to look at whether what they’re providing is creating a comfortable enough situation that their child has no real reason to move forward. She specifically mentioned monthly allowances as something that often just allows a young person to stay stuck longer, and she’s direct that a parent’s ability to afford something financially is not a good enough reason to keep providing it if it’s not helping.
What does ‘parenting from fear’ mean and why does it matter?
Kim explained that when parents have lost confidence and are operating out of fear, their kids can sense it — and it feels like control to them, so they push back. More importantly, she said, fear-based parenting breeds disconnection, and without connection or relationship, a parent has no influence over what their young adult does. Building calm and confidence is part of how parents recover that influence.
AI Answer Summary
Q: What are the three things parents of stuck young adults actually have control over?
According to Kim Muench, parents have control over how they show up in the relationship, what they are willing to provide, and how they respond to their young adult’s words and choices. She emphasizes that concentrating on these three things — rather than trying to control their child’s behavior directly — is the foundation of her coaching work with parents.
Q: What is the difference between helping and enabling a young adult child?
Kim describes helping as something you do occasionally for someone you love, and in a family context it tends to be reciprocated. Enabling, by contrast, is when you repeatedly do something for someone that they can and should be doing for themselves, and it tends to build resentment and flow only one direction. She encourages parents to look honestly at which of those two categories their support falls into.
Q: What are the four C’s Kim Muench teaches parents?
Kim’s four C’s are clarity, calm, confidence, and consistency. Clarity means getting clear on what you will and won’t support. Calm means practicing staying regulated even when triggered. Confidence means parenting from a grounded place rather than fear, because fear can feel like control to a young person and breed disconnection. Consistency means following through on what you say, and not making commitments you won’t keep.
Q: How do you create a gap when you’ve been providing everything for your adult child?
Kim suggests parents first make a list of all the ways they are providing — emotionally, financially, and physically — and then begin taking small steps back in each area to leave a gap for the young person to step into. She gives examples like setting overnight availability limits and stopping monthly allowances. The goal is not to cut everything off at once but to gradually stop doing things the young adult can and should do for themselves.
Q: What does ‘lost in place’ mean and why does Kim prefer it over ‘failure to launch’?
Kim explains that ‘lost in place’ describes young adults who are experiencing delayed independence, often due to mental health challenges, substance use, or a sense of hopelessness about the future. She prefers it over ‘failure to launch’ because, as she put it, if you’re lost, you can be found — whereas failure to launch feels like a final and negative label with no path back.
Transcript
[00:00:00] By the time parents get to parent coaching with me, they have lost a lot of their confidence. Mm-hmm. They’re parenting from fear, and many of them for good reason. But fear smells like control to their kids, and they will push back against being controlled. It also breeds disconnection. So parenting from fear breeds disconnection, and you have no influence in the situation, not control, but you have no influence if you have no connection or relationship with the young person in your life
Welcome to Hope Stream, the podcast for parents of teens and young adults struggling with substance use and mental health. I’m Brenda Zane. I’ve walked this path with my own child’s addiction and high-risk lifestyle. Each week, we help you
[00:01:00] gain clarity, learn new skills, and most importantly, find real hope in what might feel helpless. You’re not helpless, and you’re not alone anymore. Find more resources at hopestreamcommunity.org.
Hi, friend. I want to do a quick check-in with you before we dive into today’s episode. Are you breathing? Are you getting some water in your system? Are you getting any fresh air? Are you moving your body in a healthy way? I know this sounds so basic, but when our bodies are in a state of heightened crisis, we tend to forget about the most simple of things.
And when your physical body is under-optimized, just from a basic standpoint, there is no way you can expect yourself to deal with and cope with
[00:02:00] all that you have on your plate in an ideal way. So, while I tell you about my amazing guest today, I would love for you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
Maybe grab a glass of water. If you can, get your body outside while you’re listening to this. I’m guessing you may already know of Kim Mench because she’s not only a parent coach and author, but she has a gigantic following on Instagram and TikTok, where hundreds of thousands of parents follow her for practical, realistic, and seasoned coaching and encouragement, especially if you have a young adult child experiencing delayed independence Kim is a Jai Institute for Parenting certified parent coach and the founder of Real Life Parent Guide, where she helps parents of emerging
[00:03:00] adults, usually 18 to 30-ish, replace fear, conflict, and second-guessing with calm, confident, consistent leadership. Kim herself has nearly four decades of parenting five children and years of coaching families through stuck seasons, mental health challenges, substance use concerns, strained communication, and the exhausting blur, that I know you’re familiar with, between helping and enabling. If you already follow Kim, you know that she has a compassionate, no judgment approach and applies practical, relationship-first strategies that create real forward movement.
She’s the author of Becoming Me While Raising You: A Mother’s Journey to Herself, and her newest book will release at the end of November of 2026 and is titled Lost in Place: How to Support, Motivate, and Launch
[00:04:00] an Adult Child. It’s a roadmap for parents navigating the complicated in-between years when their adult child just isn’t launching as expected.
I loved this conversation with Kim about what to do with the 20-something who’s living in your home and won’t seem to move out or do anything toward their mental or physical improvement. Kim shares the three things parents of adult children do have control over, and I started taking copious notes when she shared the four C’s of how we can and really need to show up for our kids.
There’s even a great dog-sitting story that illustrates how we can become over-functioning for our kids in a way that’s really not helping them grow. You are going to want to take notes. Listen in now to a very enlightening conversation with parent coach and author Kim Mench. Enjoy.
[00:05:00] Hey, Kim. Thank you for joining me on an episode of Hope Stream. I think we could talk for probably three or four days, but we will try to keep this to an hour or so. Thank you so much- Yeah … for joining me. I’m super excited to be here, Brenda, and to have the opportunity to talk with you about a tough topic, but something that we both have personal experience in.
So thank you for asking me to join you. Absolutely. Well, I know you’ve got a new book coming out that I wanna make sure we touch on called Lost in Place. I see it, I think, behind you there. I am so in awe of authors. I’ve tried several times to write a book. I just can’t figure it out. So my hat is off to you, ’cause you also have a book, Becoming Me While Raising You, right? Is that your other book? Correct. Yes, yes. Okay. In 2021, I self-published a parenting memoir of sorts of my experience in childhood, and then
[00:06:00] it kinda leads into the story of my son’s addiction and helping him get to long-term recovery. So Becoming Me While Raising You, I think was a very… To me, that encapsulates parenting, quite frankly.
I- I mean- Totally. Right? Right? So, so that, that is only on Amazon because it was self-published, but this one that is coming out in November, Lost in Place, is being traditionally published, so it’ll be available widely, and I get to read the Audible version. So that will come out after the hardcover, but not until January.
Oh, very cool. Well, congratulations. That is a huge- Thank you … huge accomplishment. Just have so much respect for that. Let’s start with sort of why and how you ended up becoming a parent coach. It is a, I find, a really unique journey. Not everybody is made for it. So tell me a little bit about what
[00:07:00] got you to what you do today, and then we’ll wander around a few other topics. Okay. So I’m gonna give you the high level of, uh, not all the gory details of my life, but I do need to go back somewhat to kind of frame this for you. I grew up in Wisconsin. I grew up in a middle-class home, married parents, lovely, quote-unquote normal, if we can say normal, right, childhood. And I went off to college, and my first semester of freshman year, I became pregnant with my oldest son, and his dad and I had kind of a tumultuous relationship.
We were together the first two years of his life, but then I really understood that it was not only emotionally but physically abusive and needed to pull myself out of it. We still had to co-parent, obviously, and we did that for the next 16, 17 years. But what I didn’t understand
[00:08:00] when I left the relationship was the abuse that I was receiving, which I never saw my son receive, was then turned towards him.
And my son was fiercely loyal to his father, and while visits back and forth, when he would come home, I knew that there was something off, or I knew that it always took a couple of days to readjust. I didn’t know exactly what that was, and I didn’t find out until many years later Regardless, I then married my husband of now 34 years, and together we have four children. So I have a total of five, now between 21 and 39 years of age. But what brought me to this is when my oldest son was 20, it became apparent that he had a dependency on alcohol, very likely as a result of anxiety and depression and
[00:09:00] diagnosed OCD. Mm-hmm. So through many precarious moments, I’m sure you could probably relate to some of them, we went from detox a couple of times to IOP to then inpatient treatment.
And along that journey, I became fascinated with wanting to learn more about and help parents with adolescent addiction. My intention at first, I went back to college, because I left college when I had him. Right. I went back to college, finished a psychology degree. My intention was to become a licensed chemical dependency counselor and work with teenagers.
This is why I had this experience. But along that route, I decided that helping teens who didn’t think they had a problem was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to help their parents. It was right about that time, 2015, 2016, where I heard about parent coaching, and I had
[00:10:00] never heard of anything like that. I had always loved being a parent, and the idea of maybe working with parents in that capacity with teenagers before they got to their 20-somethings, you know, and had these challenges was what I really wanted to do.
And so I became a GI Institute for Parenting coach in 2016, and started by working with parents of teens proactively to hopefully negate the 20-something with OCD and substance dependence. Right. And what I found out is that parents of teens will invest heavily in their teen, whether they need extra tutoring, if they need therapy, if they need a, a special coach, they will all day long invest in their kids.
What they don’t do is invest in their parenting, and what they don’t understand is how instrumental it is in how you show up into, in the
[00:11:00] relationship, especially as they’re in their teens and get into their 20s for sure. So when, in 2021, when Becoming Me While Raising You came out, I started … Somebody said to me, “Kim, you’re so good on video.
Why don’t you try TikTok? Why don’t you get on there?” ‘Cause I was going nowhere on Facebook, which is where I thought my parents of my age were, were. So I started sharing my own journey with my son when the book came out, and what came to me, and what continues to this day to come to me in droves are parents of 18…
It was 18 to 25. Now, quite frankly, it’s, like, 18 to 30-year-olds. I have… The oldest parent I have coached is a woman in her late 70s who had a 44-year-old drug-dependent son living with her. So- Wow … I, the age has, you know, gotten older, but essentially that is the niche of parents that I work with now, are parents of 18 to 30
[00:12:00] who struggle with mental health, substance use, t- just delayed independence for a variety of reasons I like that term delayed independence, ’cause you hear failure to launch a lot, and I just hate that term ’cause I but- Right
but delayed independence fits really well because I think that’s truly what it is, is for whatever reason, whether it’s substances or whether it’s mental health, that they’re just not sc- scooching along as they should. So that’s really fascinating, and I think having a coach who’s been through it themselves is so vital, and so having you there with someone who you can look them in the face and say, “I get it.
I know. I know how hard it is,” ’cause it is so hard, is incredibly valuable. How is your son doing today? Like, what’s his journey looked like? You said
[00:13:00] he’s 30-something? He’s 39. Okay. It’s crazy to think that- What are we doing with a 39-year-old? … my son’s 39. That’s blowing my mind, but- But I’ve been saying that since he was bor- you know, like, uh- Yeah
when he graduated from high school and I was 36 and carrying my fifth child, I was like, “I can’t believe it.” Oh, my goodness. He went to, like I said, i- in his early 20s, he had several issues that, uh, he ended up in medical detox a couple of times, and then he did an IOP program as a next step. Quite frankly, I don’t have a lot of value in that programming.
I almost think that if it’s bad enough that we gotta get him, like, completely out of whatever life, get a reset, get some really significant tools. So he ended up going to residential treatment at the age of 21, and he went to sober living after that. He’s lived outside of the house since he was 18. He didn’t like the idea of paying us rent and didn’t like our
[00:14:00] rules, so he found a way to live on his own after the age of 18, and that didn’t change after he went to inpatient.
He did well, and has a partner, and until about a year ago, he Functioning, always financially independent. He still is at this point, and he’s also had significant challenges, mental health since 2020 that has led to some drug use at this point. At the current moment, he is digging himself out and slowly working on ridding himself of substances because they’re pretty significant what he’s taking.
And he’s, from where he was earlier this year until today, he’s in a much better place, and it’s actually been extremely eye-opening to me to have that many years of him, to my knowledge, to not
[00:15:00] be using anything and then have this kind of redevelop over the last couple of years, has been really eye-opening, and it’s been difficult for sure in moments.
However, it’s also helped me coach parents and know that the things that I am telling them, I walk my talk. And without having had this experience earlier this year with him, that would always be a question, right? “Well, what if it came back at you?” You keep telling parents that this is the way you need to handle these things, and I know for certain that I know what I will and won’t tolerate in my life.
And I think it’s important for parents to understand that it’s not about controlling the other person, right? It’s about you setting healthy boundaries for yourself and holding yourself to the boundaries that you set How do you explain
[00:16:00] boundaries to a parent? Because I think if I had to kind of boil it down to a couple of topics that we see all the time with our parents, boundaries clearly is one of them.
The, first, the idea of control and that we’re not in control, and then second, the idea of boundaries. How do you explain that to a parent? Like, do you have a magic explanation? Yeah, I think it’s a mindset shift. When someone is making unhealthy choices, let’s say, or not taking care of them or whatever, we want to set boundaries around their behavior.
“You need to get a better sleep schedule. You need to stop using weed.” But the more we try and set boundaries around that, the more pushback and the more frustrated we tend to get. So I ask parents to think about boundaries in terms of, where do you need to set some personal boundaries and hold yourself to them? Because that’s really the only way that one can have and hold healthy boundaries.
[00:17:00] So for example, parents might be covering everything under the sun for their son or daughter who’s living at home, which allows them to maybe get their act together enough a couple times a week to DoorDash so that they can buy the weed for themselves.
This is wrong. I talk to parents about, like, we have to look at all of the ways that you’re providing, emotionally, financially, physically, and we have to start taking some steps back in order to leave a gap so that they have the opportunity to step into that gap. We can’t predict if they will or they won’t, but bottom line, there’s…
They may not be happy in their life, but they’re comfortable enough that they’re continuing down this path. So you really need to look at, what is my part in this? Where do I need to set some boundaries and hold myself to them? Like, “I won’t pay for that third
[00:18:00] DUI attorney. I’m no longer willing,” and then hold yourself to them. I wanna say here, there’s two things that I think keep parents really stuck with their lost in place young person, and we can talk about what I mean by lost in place in a minute. However Two things. One, fear of self-harm. So they fear if they set too many expectations, if they push too hard, their son or daughter will attempt.
And especially if there has been previous attempts, they’re extremely scared of that. And I wanna have an extremely level of healthy respect for that and not minimize that, while also not allowing that to dictate everything that happens at home and everything that doesn’t take place because of that parent’s fear. The second thing is parents, they have a very difficult time tolerating their
[00:19:00] own emotions, their own fear, their own anger, sadness, frustration, whatever. So they will fix it. They will rescue. They will make things better because they can’t tolerate their emotions I 100% agree with you. We see the exact same thing, and it’s hard to get to that place where you can tolerate seeing your child really struggle, have to face those consequences. And I think you need somebody like a coach, like a community to do it with, because it’s so unnatural, right, as a parent to say, “Well, wait a minute.
Aren’t I supposed to keep them safe? Aren’t I supposed to help them out of this?” And it’s just very counterintuitive to what we think that we’re supposed to be doing as
[00:20:00] parents. The boundaries and being able to live with the consequence of that boundary, I think, is so hard. How do you help parents through that?
Like, how do you help them… It’s hard enough to figure out what is the appropriate boundary. What are your thoughts on how to get a parent to be able to sort of swallow what’s gonna happen when they hold that boundary?
Hey, can I tell you about something that might be perfect for where you are right now? If you have ever felt like there’s just nothing left to try or like you just don’t have the energy to keep going one more day, I want you to know that there is a place specifically for that. It’s called The Stream Community.
It’s a private online community for moms who are walking the same path you are with a child who’s facing substance use and mental health challenges. Inside, you’ll find other moms who don’t need the backstory
[00:21:00] explained. They just get it. You’ll also start learning practical skills that can shift the dynamic between you and your child because I know you really want to see change.
You can try The Stream free for two weeks, and if you sign up now, you could be on a live support chat or a coaching call within 24 hours. You do not have to do this alone anymore, my friend. Head to hopestreamcommunity.org/try. We’ll get you set up on your free two-week trial, and I’ll see you there. Okay, let’s get back to the show
Well, okay, I gotta go back just for a second and just say that’s a lot of what I deal with with parents coming in is, “What’s the consequence? What consequence can I give?” Because we are all taught to parent where, like, your actions have consequences, which yes,
[00:22:00] they do, and if you have a 25-year-old that’s home with mental health and/or substance use issues, you can’t ground them. You can’t take their phone away. But parents are looking for this ultimate consequence, but it won’t be that they will ask their child to leave. That will not be the consequence. I mean, they’re very clear with me. “I will not make my child homeless,” blah, blah, blah. I get it. Okay, so ultimately we know that that would be the highest potential consequence for a young person who is not becoming independent or who is waylaid with these challenges and choices that they’re making and whatnot.
So I will say, I think this is another mindset shift, too, is parents, there’s no discipline measure that you can put into place. What we have to focus on are the three things that you have control over, again, being how
[00:23:00] you show up in the relationship, what you’re willing to provide, and how you’re responding to their choices and their words and their actions.
So concentrating on those three things, we also know that the natural consequences of the choices they’re making are the best opportunity for them to learn the life lesson. And unfortunately, sometimes they have to experience the natural consequences more than one time in order for that to sink in. We all know people who have made the same mistake over and over again and just don’t learn, which is challenging in and of itself.
I think the biggest challenge comes in with, say, substance use. And I tell parents, there are times when you absolutely know that you need to step in. You’re not going to allow your under-the-influence son or daughter get into the car and drive away. You’re gonna do what you can
[00:24:00] to stand in the way of that. If they get in the car, then you call 911, ’cause it’s not only your child’s life, you’re talking about people on the road. I mean, and I have been- Yeah … in situations where, as a parent, you absolutely have to step in in that kind of a situation. But there’s a lot of gray area. Yeah. And so s- I’m not sure I’m answering…
I don’t wanna not answer your question, but I did wanna say, parents are looking for this ultimate way to find the right consequence to change the behavior, when that, it’s not gonna work. It’s, there is no consequence, especially if you are absolutely adamant that you’re gonna continue to live with them.
Right. Yeah, I agree. I think they’re, everybody’s sort of like scanning, scanning, waiting for some person to give them the one thing that’s going to work. And we always say it’s like a quilt, that you’re just
[00:25:00] quilting together and stitching together these different tools and strategies and boundaries that will all kind of work together to move that person toward whatever the result is that you’re looking for. Independence and health probably being the two most desired things that we want for our kids, right? And I think one of the things besides boundaries that gets confusing, and I would love to get your thoughts on, are that teeter-totter of support versus subsidy. Like, how do I know when and how much to support, and what does that look like, versus when am I subsidizing their substance use or their lack of motivation to go out and get a job or do whatever it is?
Like, how do you think about that? I think it can be extremely helpful to have a third party involved that, ’cause I think
[00:26:00] parents ruminate, obviously, about these things, and they’re wondering all the time, and it can be helpful whether it’s a counselor or a pastor or somebody that you trust that has some experience that is not emotionally attached to the situation to listen, to understand what it is you are doing, what it is you are providing, and help decipher what is helping, what is enabling.
Helping is something that we do for people that we love. It’s occasional, and typically in the context of a family relationship, it’s reciprocated, right? Sometimes I help my daughter by picking up her dry cleaning because she’s at work and can’t get to it, and then sometimes she helps me by unloading the dishwasher without even being told.
That’s helping. Enabling, on the other hand, or subsidizing, right, enabling is when we do something for someone they can and should be doing for themselves. It’s repeated over and over. It tends to
[00:27:00] build resentment, and it tends to be one-way Yeah. So I will ask parents, in these two terms that I’ve just shared with you, which of these things feels like you’re helping, and which of these things feels like you’re enabling the situation?
Yeah. And that’s difficult to look at because we don’t want to be, feel like we’re adding to the problem, and it is hard to know, especially when you have… This is what I hear at least a lot from parents is, “Well, there’s a lot of mental health involved there, so I don’t want to do something that’s gonna make that worse,” right?
And so I think it can get tricky, and you’re right about having a neutral third party who doesn’t have that umbilical relationship to that kiddo who’s, they can just tug on your heartstrings, right? Because you care about them and you love them. So having somebody who can look at it from a bit of an more objective standpoint
[00:28:00] to say, “What direction is this moving things in?” And I love that about the reciprocal, because if you think about, huh, is this just a one-way street that’s always going toward my kid? That’s a great question. Yes. And parents tend to, at some point, get resentful about that. Oh, yes. And they also get worried, depending on how long this has been going on, but they get worried about, “My job as a parent is to create someone who’s independent and self-sufficient.
If, God forbid, something happens to me, and I’m realizing now that my now 28-year-old, 29-year-old, 30-year-old is not that.” And they’re starting to panic a little bit because, not that they’re gonna pass away tomorrow, but their mortality tends to, the older you get, the more you realize, and they want to set their son or daughter up for success, meaning that they’re functioning in the world. So when you have someone outside of your immediate
[00:29:00] emotional attachment looking at y- these things, talking with you about them, it can help you. Obviously, part of what we do, what I do as a coach is help them create a plan where they’re taking small steps out of what they’re providing emotionally and financially in the situation to create that gap that we talked about.
And it’s in that gap, and whether or not their young person steps in and takes over eventually, it may not be as fast as you want, but eventually steps in or doesn’t, and the gap becomes larger and larger, then the core issue is maybe more significant than you originally thought, and something like treatment may be the next logical step that needs to take place. If nothing else, I mean, hopefully it lays
[00:30:00] the groundwork for a healthier future But it, parents, part of them are like, “Well, we can’t make someone go to treatment.” There’s a certain level at which I agree with that, and minimum, it would disrupt their use for, say, 30 days, and you might have a chance at that point to get better understanding and have them better understand the issue that has been going on for them.
Yeah. Yeah, I hear that a lot, too. “Well, I can’t force them to do anything.” And of course, we don’t wanna think of it as forcing. I think more about influence, positively influencing somebody to want to make a change in their life. I don’t think that the kids who are living in mom’s basement at 25, 29, whatever it is, are super happy about that. Like, I don’t think they’re like, “I’m on top of the world ’cause I’m living in my mom’s
[00:31:00] basement.” So finding ways to motivate them to want something different is super important, so… ‘Cause I hear a lot of the same of the language of, “I won’t make them homeless, I won’t kick them out,” this and that, and, “I can’t make them do anything,” and I get that.
And we need to find ways because that’s not the life I think that most people want, so finding ways to help them see what could be possible. Do you see the same? Yes, and I also think that the substance use is, if it’s substance use, is a way to cope. It’s not dealing with the issue. It’s, it’s their way of escaping or numbing.
They’re not dealing with whatever the core issue is, and mental health as well, especially if they’re isolating in their room. They’re just not participating in finding some
[00:32:00] peace for themselves. And I also wanna say that why can’t somebody else have a rock bottom? Why can’t a parent have… Like, you can’t ask them to…
They have to hit their rock bottom. Well, what if they’re not finding their rock bottom? Are we not allowed to have a rock bottom? And so I will say to parents, “What has to happen for you to decide…” Because I, I do feel that parents can have an influence into their son or daughter going to treatment. I do believe that we can have…
The way we bring ourselves to that conversation and the way we don’t give up on that conversation, if it continues to nee- Maybe they need to have the conversation several times before this young person understands, “Mom and Dad are not going to… If I get angry, if I blow up, if I blame them, if I point fingers, if I shut down, they’ll go away and we won’t have this conversation again.” No.
[00:33:00] Parents, we need to continue to calmly bring the conver- “I love you, and… I love you, and I’m concerned. I love you, and this is what I’m seeing. I love you, and this is not sustainable for me to live this way.” I love the concept of us recognizing when we need to make a change, when we are hitting our point of like something has to change.
And because if we lose ourselves, and I would imagine you probably talk to your clients and your parents about caring for themselves and that term self-care. And when… I just wanna go back to, I love the idea where you talked about creating that gap, and I’m wondering what some of the things are that you work with your clients on to start creating that gap. So let’s say there’s no gap right now. Everything is being done, everything’s being provided for. What are some of the things that a parent could start to
[00:34:00] implement that start to create that gap that doesn’t feel like, “Oh, I’m just kicking them out of the house,” right? Like, where, what are the pre-steps to that, that you talk about with parents?
Okay, so after they’ve put a list together of all the ways, they, first of all, there are emotional ways that they’re supporting as well, and that typically looks like avoiding difficult conversations. That looks like, I had a client who her son would become increasingly anxious in the middle of the night, and he would text his mom, who would then go to his room and try to calm him down. And by the time she came into coaching with me, she was so mentally and physically exhausted from being up every night, like, as if he were a baby or a- Yeah … small child. She was over-functioning emotionally in that situation. And I understand she was hurting because he was hurting. This happens. It wasn’t helpful to her, and so the boundary we worked on there, which it took him a while
[00:35:00] to adjust to this, was, “I’m not available between 11:00 at night and 6:00 in the morning. If you have an issue or whatnot and it’s immediate, call 911. Otherwise, you’re gonna need to learn, I need to preserve my health and wellbeing and sleep between this time and this time.” That’s an emotional, personal boundary that this mother, believe me, it took her a while to get comfortable with that.
I’m sure she was laying in bed still every night, like… But she worked really hard at holding that boundary, and that’s an, an example of an emotional that parents are over-functioning and they need to put into place. Another thing would be, let’s say this young person either has savings from a job they used to have, or they work a part-time job or something, and the parent still provides absolutely everything, right? The shelter, the food, the clothing,
[00:36:00] the DoorDash. And on top of that, I talk to parents who will give a couple hundred dollar a month allowance, which all that does is allow them to stay in that situation longer, and I don’t think, you’re right, to go back to what you said, I don’t think young people want to be in this situation.
Right. I think they want to have purpose and they want to contribute to life. Sometimes they need to work on themselves in order to get to the place to be able to do that, for sure, but it doesn’t help when parents are providing everything and taking care of everything so that there is no real purpose or reason for them to take a step.
This is such a classic example. There’s some parents I’m working with. Their son is in his late 20s. They have a dog. The parents are going away for a week. The mother is taking the dog to the neighbor’s house so that the dog can be taken care of because she doesn’t
[00:37:00] trust that her son is gonna get up at 6:30 in the morning or 7:00 in the morning to get the dog out to go to the bathroom.
So talk about a way that you’re just- reinforcing. She’s afraid that he won’t take care of the dog, and I get that on some level. But then I’m like, “You’re basically just telling him that you don’t believe he is capable. Does he love the dog?” She’s like, “Oh, yeah, he loves the dog.” I’m like, “Okay, his purpose for that weekend is to take care of the dog.”
Yeah. And dogs have needs, and they have structure, and they require going out at certain times. They require being fed. “Is your son capable of doing that?” “Well, yeah, I think he is if he can get himself up, but he might oversleep,” blah, blah, blah. And that’s when a parent is, like, trying to manage the situation instead of set a realistic expectation for her son to take care of the family dog while they’re away for the weekend. Yeah. That’s such a
[00:38:00] good example of how we can overcompensate and really feed the dysfunction, right? Like, we are figuring out a way to keep our child in a position where they are fully capable, but we’re not requiring them to step up and do it. That’s a really great example. We talked about boundaries.
Control. So I see a lot of parents come in with the belief that they are going to control the situation. They are gonna control with their kid, whether they go to school, whether they go to work, what they put in their body, what they don’t. Newsflash to anybody who may be new here, you don’t have that control.
So I’d love to hear from you, what do parents have control of, especially when, let’s say, your child is over 18 and you don’t have the legal responsibility? But what do you consider to be in that realm of control for parents? ‘Cause it can
[00:39:00] sometimes feel like nothing, right? And like I said, there’s three things that I fully believe that parents control at this stage, and that is how they show up in the relationship.
And under that umbrella of how you show up in the relationship, I teach parents the four Cs. Clarity, parents, you need to get very clear on what you will and won’t support. That is extremely important. That’s something we work on in coaching, whether it’s in the group or the private setting. Second, being able to practice staying calm even when you’re being triggered by whatever behavior’s coming back at you, whether that’s pointing fingers at your parenting or whatever it is they’re doing, shutting down, isolating, whatever. Your ability to practice staying calm even when you’re being triggered has a better chance of bringing that young person who’s dysregulated back to a
[00:40:00] logical brain than if you are go, escalating with them, right? So what are my triggers? How does that feel in my body? ‘Cause quite frankly, I know when I’m being triggered.
Every parent or every person, there’s a body feeling that you get. Some parents, it’s a knot in their stomach. Some, it’s a heat in the chest. For me, it’s prickles up the back of my neck. Like, that is my- Mm-hmm … when I feel that, that is my cue to myself, I’m being triggered. What’s going on for me in this moment?
How do I want to show up when my son is triggering me at this very moment? What parent do I want to be? And then making the conscious choice to be that parent. All of that takes practice, but it can be down to a nanosecond once you get good at it, right? So the second C is calm. The third C, by the time parents get to my group or parent coaching with me,
[00:41:00] they have lost a lot of their confidence. Mm-hmm. Yep. And so they’re parenting from fear, and many of them for good reason, but fear smells like control to their kids, and they will push back against being controlled. It also breeds disconnection, so parenting from fear breeds disconnection, and you have no influence in the situation, not control, but you have no influence if you have no connection or relationship with the young person in your life.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that confidence, and then the fourth C, and parents will tell me they know that they’re not good at this, and that’s consistency. Follow through. Oh, yes. Their words and their actions being aligned. Do not say something you will not follow through on, and that tends to happen a lot with the parents
[00:42:00] that I work with. They’re like, “We’ve had three family contracts. We’re not gonna do this again.” Well, we talk about where the breakdown was, and it generally is with the parents, and I’m not looking… not my intention to blame, but we also have to be accountable, and if we want our kids to follow through on things, we have to model what we want them to see, and it doesn’t matter if they’re 32 years old.
Mm-hmm. We have to model the behavior we want from them. So how you show up in the relationship, including those four Cs. Mm-hmm. What you’re willing to provide at this point in their lives- Mm-hmm … now that they’re an adult, because quite frankly, you are not obligated to continue to provide for them. Right.
And then the third thing is how you are, you control how you respond to them, to their words, to their shutdown, to their explosive behavior, to whatever it is they’re doing or choosing. You control how you respond to that. So concentrating on the three things that we control at
[00:43:00] this point is what I work with parents on. Mm-hmm. Out of those three, how you show up, what you provide, and how you respond, is there one that parents struggle with the most out of those three? I think- That’s a good question, and one I would pose to my parent support group. I’m gonna have to do that. Because we talk about which C is the hardest, and- Mm-hmm
and people will answer me and say which C is the hardest, which- Yeah … it varies on parents. I wouldn’t say there’s a strong any one of those Cs. But I would say from the parents that come to me for, say, private coaching, the biggest challenge they have is looking at all that they’re providing emotionally and financially and everything, and realizing that this, the, it’s kind of the aha moment.
Like, w- why would this kid do anything to move themselves forward? Like, that we really are providing absolutely everything, and why
[00:44:00] are we doing this? And a lot of times parents will, you know, they’ll say, A, because we can financially do it- Yeah … ’cause a lot of them can. Yeah. And B, because we wanted them to have a better experience of life than we had.
There’s a myriad of reasons that they will say that. And I will say, let me tell you just a brief part of my story. I mentioned that I had my son when I was 18. My parents asked me to leave home. I had to leave home, and I did not know how I was gonna support myself, and the woman that I was babysitting for at the time told me about the welfare system.
So as a very pregnant 18-year-old, I went downtown and I applied for benefits and m- moved out on $360 a month, and I had to figure that out. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have a choice in the matter and you are committed to being the parent to your
[00:45:00] child. So I think what parents don’t understand, if they look back at their own life, if they looked back at the challenges that they’ve had in their life, that is where we have the opportunity to grow.
Growth doesn’t typically take place when everything’s working for you and you have everything Growth takes place when you… There’s something missing, there’s something you need, there’s something… ‘Cause you’re motivated. The most difficult times in my life were when I had the most growth, and it wasn’t smoothed over by my parents.
Yeah. I was just talking about that this morning, that if we look back at our own life, holy cow, the, the things that have made me who I am today and have given me the most learning are the difficult times. I would have never learned anything if I would have just been sort of like held
[00:46:00] and supported through all of that. Like, we gotta figure it out. And so I appreciate that because I think, I think that is what I see as well with parents of older kids, is that, that like, “Well, we can’t not provide this.” And so I think you just have to get really creative about, okay, well, what would a different way look like that would still be supportive but not giving everything to that, right?
Yes. Yes, yes. And parents will sometimes say to me, “But they know I have the money.” And I’ll be like, “I don’t care. I don’t care if you have the money. What you’re doing is justifying why it’s okay for you to continue to provide for this stuck situation. That makes no sense to me. Help me under- Mm-hmm … I don’t care that you can afford to do it.” Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it might be easier if you would say, “Well,
[00:47:00] there is no option.” Like, there’s no option other than to just, you got to go figure it out. But I see the same thing where it is like, “Oh, but I feel guilty because I could pay for the next rehab and then the next rehab and then the next rehab,” and sometimes that’s not necessarily the right way to solve that problem, so.
Yes. Yes. Ooh And I’ve been in situations with my own son at times where I didn’t have the money to bail him out of jail, and later he has said, “Thank you, I’m really…” I’m like, “If I could have anyway,” but it did help in some respects that- Right … I really just couldn’t. And you know what? He figured it out anyway.
Yep. They do. They’re brilliant and resourceful. That’s the thing about these kids, is they tend to be incredibly resourceful, incredibly bright and intelligent, and if they’re figuring out how to not have a job but still somehow acquire substances and
[00:48:00] somehow still… Like, they can figure it out. Really good at that. Yes. So tell me about your new book, Lost in Place. Yeah, so Lost in Place is my version of that saying that is so prevalent now of failure to launch. I feel like, and I need to give credit to a good friend of mine who’s a coach of young people. He’s the one that came up with the term lost in place. But when he said it to me, I said, “That is exactly what my parents are, the, the parents that I coach.”
And here’s the thing, if you’re lost, you can be found. Failure to launch is, to me, a very negative and final term. Like, how do you come back from that? Yeah. Lost, you can be found. And so Lost in Place is really what I think is what’s happening with young people who are delayed, delayed independence, often as a
[00:49:00] result of mental health and/or substance use struggles, or just feeling hopeless about the future. And maybe substances aren’t involved, but they’re scrolling and they’re… I do think a huge contributor to this is the amount of information, the kind of information. I think no wonder they’re anxious, because they probably saw things online they couldn’t wrap their minds around, and you can’t unsee certain things.
Like, I think that definitely has had an impact on their ability to trust the world, to have hope for the future. So I think that’s definitely impacted them. I agree. I agree. Well, I think that’s a, a really great title, both with parents and the kids, right? Because we can get really lost in fear. We can get lost in shame about what our kids are doing or not doing, what we think they should be doing, especially when you look around and
[00:50:00] everybody’s Instagram account has- The latest family vacation Yeah. Yes, and we’re all in our jeans and our white shirt, and don’t we look so great? And we’re over here like, “Wow, I don’t even, like, know where my kid is,” or, “My kid hasn’t left their room for a year and a half.” It’s so hard. Well, I just thank you so much for the work that you do and for helping those parents get unstuck, help their kids get unstuck, and I just think these young people have so much to offer, and the more we can help them find a way to offer that to the world versus to let them stay stuck, to let them stay in the pain that they’re in and dealing with what they’re dealing with, it’s just, it’s really a gift to everybody involved.
So what would be a final word of- Yeah … like, encouragement or wisdom that you would give to a parent? Well, I’m gonna go back to my, the first book that I wrote, and I had a quote that
[00:51:00] was downloaded to me, and it’s the last page of my book, and I think it really will give your listeners something to really think about, and that is, “Our children come through us,” or to us sometimes if through adoption, but, “Our children come through us, not for us, except for the lessons they reflect to us during their journey in an effort to grow us up along the way.”
So I want parents to think about whatever situation you’re in with your young person right now, what is that teaching you about you, about life in general? Like, there are lessons here for you. And I think you would agree, as much as I have taught my children, they have been my greatest teachers. 1,000%.
Absolutely. I love that. That’s so beautiful. And that’s in your first book, you said on the last page? Yes, the last page.
[00:52:00] Oh. Yes, ’cause I just, like, wrote it down, like, when it came to I don’t know. Yeah. It was kind of a re- I was, like, vacuuming and I, like… I don’t know. It came to me and I was like, “I gotta jot this down.”
So nonetheless, it’s something I use with parents on a regular basis ’cause I want them, aside from control, ’cause you know that you don’t have control, that’s one thing you’re learning. There are other things you’re learning in the process of parenting through this situation. What is it that you’re learning, aside from the fact that you don’t have control?
Because there are things. And when they start thinking about that, that tends to be a bridge to more aha moments and moving the needle with the parent’s behavior, which is not as fast as parents want, but it tends to move the needle on their young person’s behavior. Love it. Well, thank you again. I’m so excited to know you.
I’m excited for your book to come out. I believe it’s November, end of November it’s coming out? Yep. November 24th, yes. And then the Audible version will be
[00:53:00] January. I get to read that, so I’m very excited about it. Awesome. That is gonna be really, really cool. So we will put links in the show notes of how to find you, how to find your parent coaching groups, and then when the book comes out, t- to get that as well. So thank you, Kim. Awesome. Appreciate it so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. Yes.
Okay, my friend, I am so glad that you are here with me today. Do you want the resources from this episode? If you do, head to hopestreamcommunity.org, click Podcast, and you will find this episode along with 300 or so others and every link that we mention. And if you haven’t tried it yet, we offer a free two-week trial of our online community for moms, The Stream. No credit card needed, no commitment, just go to
[00:54:00] hopestreamcommunity.org/try and we can get you set up with a free two-week membership. And if this is your first time here or if this whole approach feels new and uncomfortable, that is normal. You can grab a free e-book I wrote called Worried Sick. It will help you start seeing new ways to respond to your child and find new ways to approach this whole situation that feels very confusing.
You can find that at hopestreamcommunity.org/worried. You, my friend, are an elite level parent. You are doing an incredible job. You do things most parents never have to do, and I am so honored to be walking this path with you. Take ridiculously good care of yourself, and I will meet you right back here next
[00:55:00] week.
