Episode 358: The Real Work of Parenting ND Young Adults (Part 4), with Debbie Reber
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Penny Williams: Welcome back, everyone. I am so excited to have Debbie Reber joining me again on the podcast. This is actually a continuation of a conversation we have had now in multiple parts on both of our podcasts around parenting neurodivergent young adults. So this is part four. We did parts one and two early on, maybe five or six months ago, and we did not get to all of the material we wanted to cover.
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So now we are here doing parts three and four. To listen to part three, you need to go over to Debbie's podcast, Full Tilt Parenting, and look for that episode. It will be labeled part three. Then come back here and listen to part four. In this part, we are going to talk about the relational and emotional layer, which I know is everything, and it is even more so when we are talking about teens and young adults.
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I am also really glad that we are going to get deeper into our own experience as the parent, that emotional piece, because it is a lot. It is a whole lot. Debbie, let us start with this idea of consent language, supporting our kids without controlling our kids. I am a type A fixer. I always wanted to just solve the problem or do the thing, and I had to really learn to pull back from that.
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And especially when we have young adults, they do not want us doing it for them. They do not want us telling them how to do things. So what does that look like? What shifts have you maybe made as your kiddo has gotten older?
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Debbie Reber: Yeah, we have fully embraced and leaned into declarative language, which your listeners are probably familiar with. It is just very much low-demand statements that leave room for our kids to feel like we are not putting them on the spot or placing demands on them. So it is starting things with "I notice," or "I wonder if this would be helpful," as opposed to "I am going to do this," or "I want to help you," or "What do you need?" It just has a completely different vibe. That is something we have really leaned into.
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I have to tell you a funny story, because this has been something I have been doing for a couple of years now. I have explained it to my husband many times. Recently, we were doing a course for parents of young adults, and there was a module on declarative language. My husband was downstairs and he was texting me, "This declarative language stuff is really interesting. I think it would make such a difference." And I was like, "Yeah, it is what I use all the time and have for several years now."
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So that has really become our way of providing offers of support without imposing ourselves on our child. Just to give listeners some context if they have not heard the other episodes: my kid is at a university, not living at home, and is out of the country right now. This is the second year.
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It has been incredibly challenging to support a human who wants to do everything alone, without help, and who keeps saying, "I can do this." My husband and I can see so many potential pitfalls and problems coming a mile away, and we want to prevent them. We talked about that in the last installment.
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To explain the dynamic a bit: I am the one who orders licorice from Amazon if my kid needs a pick-me-up. On a Saturday night, if they say, "Can you just get me some Papa John's sent to my place?" I am like, "Yeah, I got you. I will get you some takeout tonight and throw in a treat." That has been my role.
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Darren has been the more hands-on parent. "Are you on track with your assignments? Do you need help with this?" What we have noticed is that the more pressure mounts for my kid, the more my husband also gets activated and wants to really impose help. "You need to be doing this. We have to do this." And when your kid is living 414 miles away, across the North Sea, they are going to say, "Okay, I am just going to do this on my own and not respond to your Discord messages."
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So trying to impose help without getting consent has backfired. That is when I step in with, "Hey, do you need anything from the store? Can I get some groceries delivered to you?" We have been almost tag-teaming, though it is not really good cop, bad cop. We have gotten a lot of evidence that the more we try to impose help and support, the more pushback we get.
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So we are learning to just hold steady, stay calm, and offer. "I am wondering if it would be helpful to jump on Zoom and co-work this afternoon. I will be around all day, just let me know." Or, "I am wondering if talking through this assignment would help." And then we have to let it go. We have hit the tennis ball to the other side. It is up to them to hit it back.
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That is the practice we have been living for the past two years, and we are getting a little better at it. I wrote about this in my newsletter recently. I was getting really good at hitting the tennis ball and then running to the other side and hitting it back to myself, until my sister called me out and said, "Deb, you cannot play tennis against yourself."
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So we are learning to just stay on our side of the court and know that nothing happens without consent. Especially with a kid who has a strong desire for autonomy, there is nothing that is going to happen without that consent. What about you?
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Penny Williams: I would be staying on my side of the tennis court, but begging and pleading in desperation for him to engage and hit it back. That would be me. Like, "Please, I need you to do this."
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Debbie Reber: Can I ask, what does that look like? Because I would get cut off if I did that.
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Penny Williams: Yeah, I get cut off too. Or, "I do not want to talk about this right now." It is that pressure thing, and this is probably the number one lesson I have learned from my own kid. The more I pressure, the less willing he is. He said this to me in no uncertain terms, probably in high school. He finally vocalized it in a way that felt like a smack in the face. Like, hear me when I say this.
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So I have had to really learn how to pull back, which is really hard for me because that is not the way I am wired. I am trying really hard not to be part of that tennis game anymore. I want to be like the coach on the sideline, not an active part of what is happening, because I cannot impose my will. I cannot even impose my support, right? Which is what you were talking about at the beginning. We can either offer support or we can try to impose support. When we impose it, it comes with all that pressure that shuts down their nervous system. It makes it physiologically less able to do the thing.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah, a thousand percent.
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Penny Williams: But that is so difficult. Not jumping in, not trying to do things for them or telling them what to do instead of guiding them to figure it out themselves. I am curious, do you try to prompt your kiddo in ways that support them in supporting themselves? Does that make sense?
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Debbie Reber: Yes, I do. And I think the trick is to do that without attachment. We talked about this in our last conversation, because I get really excited when my kid connects the dots on something. They might say, "Today I went for a walk, and it was really nice out. I sat outside in this field for a little while and just kind of closed my eyes, and it felt so good." And in my mind I am thinking, "Yes, more of that. Your anxiety, your nervous system, all of it needs that."
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So I try to encourage it. "Oh, that is great. I am so glad you did that for yourself." And then I might try to slip it in another time. "I am wondering if you have time to sit in that field again. It sounded like it really felt nice for you." The problem is if I am doing that encouragement while still feeling attached to it actually happening, then I am setting myself up for disappointment, and it will still feel like pressure for my child.
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So it is just about putting stuff out there and then letting it go. It is like putting an idea out there and saying, "See you later." I really have to just turn away from it. It is not mine anymore. That is what I have been leveling up on the past couple of months. I feel like I am getting better at actually embodying that. Doesn't mean I do not still have moments where I cannot let it go and I am just like, "Ugh, just do the thing." But I am getting there.
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There is a little side note I wanted to tag onto this idea of consent, because I think what we are really talking about is that we have to retrain ourselves. No one tells us, "Okay, when your child reaches this age, your relationship is going to change and here is what you need to do." We have to completely change our approach, our entire relationship, if we want to prioritize connection with our kids.
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And one of the things I have found really powerful is not making assumptions about what my child needs or wants. Here is a small example. Last summer, when we were planning our family holiday, I just assumed of course we would all go as a family. And then I realized, "Oh, I cannot assume that this 20-year-old wants to go on vacation with mom and dad."
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I was so proud of myself in that moment. I put it out there: "Hey, we are planning this trip, and we would love for you to come, but it is totally up to you. Here is what we are doing. Just let me know." I was not sure what their plans were for the summer. I had to say that, and I was surprised that I did. I think my kid was surprised too, but in a good way. It shifted something.
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It was my way of saying, we have moved into a new era, and I am going to respect you and see you as an adult. Not make assumptions. That was a big game changer for us. We have to retrain ourselves to think about these things differently as our kids move into young adulthood.
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We have to redefine our relationship with them. This has been a moving target in some ways, because I did not know what our relationship was going to look like with my kid living away from home. I only had examples from friends whose kids call them every day or text constantly. My kid is not like that.
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So I really struggled. How do I not feel personally hurt when my child is not being as communicative? What does it mean? Maybe our relationship is not as strong as I thought. We homeschooled for six years and we were so close. I had to unpack all of that and what I was making it mean, and then start to realize my kid is busy. Living a life, figuring things out, navigating college. It is not about me. But that is easier said than done.
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So what I have been figuring out is how do I stay connected and make sure my child knows that I am thinking of them and that I am still a safe person, while also managing my own expectations and not feeling disappointed?
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What it looks like now, after almost two full school years, is that instead of overthinking every message or making weird rules about when I should reach out so I do not seem overbearing, I just send what I feel. If I am lying in bed at midnight and I miss this kid, I will shoot a quick text: "Miss you, love you, hope you had a great day." And then I put the phone down.
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I also collect memes, and I am very selective. I only send them if I think they will genuinely get an eye roll or a real laugh and feel connected to our relationship. I just put stuff out there, staying detached from the outcome, and that has actually helped us feel closer.
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Because now when I communicate, there is no agenda. Before, there would be an agenda. Either I needed my heart filled up by this kid, or I had a list of things that needed to get sorted. That did not foster connection. Now I just reach out. And my kid no longer feels a demand attached to my texts, so it feels so much better and I feel like it is keeping us close in a way that works for both of us.
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Penny Williams: It does feel better when we are able to really fully make that shift. I think it is a practice, and when we fully make it in a moment, it does feel better. Before you said the word "agenda," I had already written it down because this is such a big one. I was just having this exact conversation with another parent in coaching last week.
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I said, "You have got to lean into connection." This was an older teen, maybe 16 or 17, who has just withdrawn from the family and does not want to engage anymore. And it is because every time they interact, there is an agenda.
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Penny Williams: And that feels completely different than just saying, "Hey, I hope you had a good day." That is received very differently by our kids' nervous systems. We are looking at genuine connection, human-to-human connection. Not "I am talking to them, so I am connecting," but the actual nurturing of the relationship.
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And that can be really hard because we are anxious about their future. We want the best for them. We want to protect them from making the same mistakes we did. And we end up coming into the relationship with an agenda. If we do not pull that back, we are actually pushing them further and further away.
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Debbie Reber: It is so true. And to add one layer of complexity, when you do not have much communication with your kid, but there are still real things that have to be discussed, it is this tightrope. How do I maintain connection and not have an agenda, while also getting a couple of necessary things sorted? And sometimes there is a cost to not pursuing those things. Like, maybe your kid does not get their ADHD meds for a week because there was no opening to bring it up. So it is a constant weighing of what is most important right now.
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Sometimes the opportunity is not there, and we just have to default to connection. What does staying connected look like for you?
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Penny Williams: It is difficult. A lot of it is about music. We set this pattern when he was in middle school. He would get in my car after school and I would say, "How was your day? Tell me all the things." And he would just shut down and not want to talk.
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And I had to find another way in. That was my agenda. My agenda was to find out how things went, because I cared, but also to see if there was anything I needed to be advocating for or taking care of. So it was loaded, and he felt it. I had to learn to shift into something he was actually interested in.
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He is super into music. We are a whole family who enjoys music, though not all of us have talent. I genuinely do not. But I was genuinely interested in what he was listening to. So I started just saying, "Connect your phone. Play a song you discovered this week." And then we would talk all the way home. Whereas if I just asked how the day was, I was a chauffeur and he was a passenger in silence.
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We have continued that. He will come in and say, "I am going to send you something. I just watched this video and I think you will appreciate it." We are into very different things. I do not really watch YouTube. Everyone else in my house is on it nonstop. But I stay open to receiving what they are interested in and letting the conversations live there.
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Because I think if we sprinkle in those moments of just communicating because we love them, it helps the other pieces, the agenda items and the important conversations, to land a little softer. They know we care. Whereas if we only show up with an agenda, it feels like nagging and disappointment on the receiving end.
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Just really trying to get to know him. "What are you watching these days? Who are you hanging out with? What games are you playing?" Really inviting that.
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Debbie Reber: Yes. Getting to know who our kids are now, because they are always changing. We have to keep up, right? And once you hit on something they are genuinely into, it is like the floodgates open. With some of our kids, you will not be able to get them to stop talking about that particular thing.
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Penny Williams: Sometimes, yes. Absolutely. So when we think about the future, we can get really keyed up and anxious because there is not yet a clear path connecting where we are to independence. We try to get our kids on board with thinking about the future, setting goals. How do we talk about that in a way that is not heavy, not packed with emotion? My kid has ADHD, so it is either now or not now, and we really struggle with that. How do you have those conversations with your kiddo?
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Debbie Reber: We really do not talk about the future very often, honestly, because the anxiety response to any conversation about the future is so high that it can shut everything down. That has been the case really since COVID. The thought of the future, of getting older, of all that stuff, has created so much anxiety that we have had to proceed with a lot of caution.
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So we very much talk about what can we do now to keep opportunities open. You are always going to be changing and growing and learning. How can we just focus on where we are right now in a way that might present potential opportunities later? And we do a lot of "We will figure that out when we get there."
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What Darren and I do is, if we read an article about something we know our kid will be interested in, or that is tied to an area they are focused on, like graphic design or optics, Darren might send it. My kid is really into optics. I do not even know exactly what that means, honestly, but it is a thing. And when there is a lot of passion around something, Darren might say, "You know, this is actually a specialty. Not a lot of people know how to do this. It is possible to make a career out of it. That is a pretty interesting thing to think about down the road."
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So we look for opportunities but we move very slowly so my child does not shut down. And we also model our own zigzagged path. I am probably on career number 15 at this point. So we try to model that experience of self-discovery. Really understanding what environments do I thrive in, what kind of work style would suit me, who am I out in the world. Because understanding that stuff will narrow things down and point toward environments that might be a good fit later. Always framing things as, "Oh, good information. You are learning a lot about yourself."
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Penny Williams: Slowly as well. I love that you are meeting your kid where they are with that. If it provokes anxiety, honoring that is really important, because the more anxiety there is, the less forward momentum there will be. We are making it less doable when we push too hard.
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For us, it has been a lot around finances and money. Those are the future conversations I feel most desperate about. But I try to otherwise be goal-oriented. His goals, not mine. Several months ago he said to me, "If I am still living at home at 25, it will basically be the end of the world." And I said, "You are 23. Do you think you have time to get from where you are now to fully independent by 25?" He changed the subject, but a couple of days later he came back and said, "You are right. I do need to be focusing on what I need to do to get there." And then crickets.
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So it ebbs and flows. It comes up for them, we get an opportunity to talk about it a little bit, and then I have to let it simmer. I have to be okay with whatever timeline it ends up being, because it cannot be my timeline.
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And as you were talking about anxiety, I realized I am probably putting some of my own anxiety about his future onto him, and I have to be really careful and mindful of that. It is hard. And I think we were talking before we started recording about how we were very different at that age. We were out there working multiple jobs, going to college, doing all the things, and that felt natural. But those are not the kids I have, and this is not that time. It is a different world, and it is very hard to separate from that sometimes.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah, absolutely. I will add one more thing. My friend Julie Lythcott-Haims just released her new TEDx talk, and her new book is focused on young adults living at home in multi-generational households. Because that is the reality for so many people now, and it used to be seen as a bad thing or a sign of failure.
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Because of the reality of the world we are living in, I think we are at a watershed moment where we are all being asked to look at independence and launching differently. If we can design what actually works for our family, what feels right for our unique dynamic, what allows everyone to keep growing, that can be so much more helpful than thinking "by this age, this needs to happen."
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And I love what you said about tying goals to your son's vision. That is where the buy-in and the motivation live. A lot of our kids need a lot of evidence before they take a step. He may need to think about this many times before he decides, "I am going to take one step to move a little closer to my goal." But us being a little less rigid about what it all looks like also gives our kids more freedom to figure it out.
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Penny Williams: And that shift does not just come from us. That is where we have personally struggled. Our kids are still getting messages, from school and from society, that they should be independent at 18.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah.
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Penny Williams: Both of my kids are at home, 27 and 23. My older child beats herself up about it on a daily basis, no matter how okay I am with it. I love having her at home. I am not disappointed. I understand that if housing were affordable, she would probably be out there doing it. There is a legitimate barrier. But she is having a really hard time accepting that it is okay, and not attaching a whole bunch of negative meaning to it. We can make that shift ourselves, and we have, and still our kids are getting other messaging. This antiquated expectation that does not work in today's world.
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Debbie Reber: Yep.
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Penny Williams: I want to make sure we talk about risk before we close, because I get so many questions about it. I was actually thinking about this last night, listening to a podcast about the cocaine trade in the '70s and '80s, and it made me think about how many more extreme dangers there are now than there were even then. It can make a parent really scared. How do we help our kids protect themselves?
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Debbie Reber: I mean, this looks so different depending on who your kid is and where they are in terms of their desire to experience things. Some kids are very by-the-book, and others are massive risk-takers with impulse control challenges.
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The way we have navigated it, we have had important explicit conversations about drinking. I really love Jessica Lahey's book "The Addiction Inoculation." She has really good guidance for talking about alcohol and drug use in a matter-of-fact way. Here are the facts, here is what I want you to know, here are the risks.
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We have had those kinds of explicit conversations about alcohol and drug use, and about sex as well. And I know the sex talk is not one talk, but we have covered those things. What I have found most effective is using a news event as an entry point. Something will happen in the world or I will read an article, and because my kid is endlessly curious, I can say, "I was reading this article the other day about..." and it opens up this huge window for a really nuanced conversation. Within that, I will insert the things I want my kid to know, sort of in disguise. It feels like an open, exploratory conversation, not a lecture.
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Anchoring important conversations in a news story has been a really good strategy for me to bring up things that felt hard to raise directly. And sometimes I just know I have to go there even when it is uncomfortable. I will say to my child, "I know this is awkward, but I love you too much to not talk about this because it is really important. I just need to share this with you. We do not have to cover it all now, but I want you to know this is something I am concerned about." And then I look for windows to continue checking in and following up.
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Penny Williams: Seeds again. You have talked about planting seeds a couple of times now, and I think that is a really good theme for what we are doing as parents of young adults. Planting a lot of seeds.
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I made a lot of mistakes in this area and took a lot of risks as a teenager and through college. I know now it was self-medicating for social anxiety, but I did not even know social anxiety was a thing. I just thought I had a lot going on in my head and a lot of fears. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be accepted. It was a core nervous system need to not be judged and to belong.
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So I was doing whatever everyone else was doing because I thought that was what I needed to do. And it did tamp down the anxiety, so I continued for a few years. Part of the reason I dove in headfirst was because I was raised in a strict household where all of these things were forbidden.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah.
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Penny Williams: As a parent myself, I was not going to forbid anything, because I did not want to push my kids toward the very things I feared them trying. So the conversations in my house have been very different from how it was for me growing up, and I feel like it has worked well for us. There is an understanding about moderation, an understanding about self-medicating. We have talked a lot about that because it is a real risk factor for neurodivergent individuals.
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I have just been really human and really open with my kids. "Look, this is what I was doing, and I was doing it for reasons that felt good at the time but with hindsight were not good reasons. They were very risky." And I think they have really appreciated that openness and honesty. It does not carry a lot of pressure when you are just sharing a story. It is received so differently than "Alcohol is bad. Do not try drugs." It just lands differently.
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All of this, our own experiences, being in our own heads, knowing what to do, our fears for our kids, it all creates this complex pool that we are trying to learn how to swim in.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah. And I had a similar upbringing where everything was forbidden, so of course I did everything I could. I definitely wanted to do things differently as a parent. And I just want to add, Dr. John Duffy would say that a lot of parents worry they are going to plant ideas in their kid's head by talking about certain things. And he would say, "Oh no, they already know all the things. You really want them to get the information from you." They want to know they can come to you with any of this stuff without being judged. That you are going to be curious and open and human.
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Sharing your own experience and just holding space so they feel safe to explore this stuff with you, knowing they are not going to get in trouble, knowing they can rely on you for good information, that is the relationship we want to have with them.
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Penny Williams: Yeah, absolutely. We are out of time, Debbie.
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Debbie Reber: I know, we could talk about this forever.
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Penny Williams: We really could. So this was part four of our series that crosses both podcasts. Parts one and three are on Debbie's podcast, Full Tilt Parenting. Parts two and four are here on Beautifully Complex. Both of us will have all the episodes linked in the show notes so it is easy to go back to part one or find parts three and four.
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Any words of wisdom or kindness you want to leave parents with after this conversation?
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Debbie Reber: I really just want to encourage listeners to be kind to themselves. This is really hard. Parenting a neurodivergent young adult will test you in ways you were probably not anticipating. And it is a wonderful time to really double down on taking care of yourself.
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That can feel uncomfortable, like when we are breaking away from being so enmeshed with our kid, it can feel like, "Oh, this is wrong. I should be more involved." But it is actually the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and for your child. Give yourself permission to really prioritize your own joy and your own peace. That is going to benefit the whole dynamic more than almost anything else you can do.
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Penny Williams: Thank you for saying that. I needed to hear it today. This reminder that we do need to take care of ourselves. There is this void right now for me between being so involved and doing all of the things, and now they are mostly self-sufficient. There is this in-between space I have been trying to navigate.
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I am still in the old patterns, not necessarily of actually doing everything for them, but of putting myself on the back burner as though I was. I have been working with my therapist, really trying hard to start taking care of myself the way I always should have been. Now I have the time and space, and I have to branch out and take up some of that for myself. And it is okay to do that.
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Debbie Reber: Yeah.
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Penny Williams: Thanks, Debbie.
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Debbie Reber: Thank you.
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Penny Williams: I always feel so much better about what I am going through when I get to talk to someone on a somewhat parallel journey. I really appreciate it.
The show notes for everyone listening are at parentingadhdandautism.com. Make sure you check out all four parts of this series. I will see everyone next time. Take good care.