As a parent, your number one job is to make yourself obsolete, meaning that you want to train your children to think for themselves, make educated decisions, and be wise when navigating major life chapters. Of course, when they are young (babies and toddlers) and utterly dependent on your guidance, it’s a bit easier to know where you stand regarding your role. After all, when children are small, they need you to feed them, clothe them, and orchestrate their entire lives. However, as they age and enter adulthood, the line can become a bit gray in terms of how much guidance you should offer to your emerging adult child. The following will outline some key strategies for navigating this sometimes confusing time of life when your child is becoming an adult, taking on adult responsibilities, and making adult decisions., perhaps for the first time ever.
What Adulthood Means?
Before moving further into the topic of strategies to help your child navigate life, it’s helpful to define adulthood. Emerging adulthood is the period between late teens and early twenties, often described as the ages from 18 to 25. Of course, the age of emerging adulthood can go upwards to even age 29 for today’s more modern kids, as life circumstances have led to them putting off living on their own for longer than in previous generations. At any rate, this time of life is when kids become adults and learn how to navigate life’s stages.
Get a Job: What Do They Want to Do For a Living?
One of the first steps a young adult should take when moving forward in life’s stages is to get a job or a source of income. Getting a job doesn’t necessarily mean they must determine what they want to do for the rest of their lives or decide on a career path they will stick to for decades. It could also include part-time jobs while they go to school for further training. Many times, jobs are a great way for young adults to learn what life is all about, learn how to earn money, learn how hard it is to earn a dollar and begin to understand the pride of paying for something themselves.
Learn How to Budget: What is Their Preferred Lifestyle (Income Wise)?
It’s important for young adults to learn that money problems can never be improved simply by adding more money to the equation. Instead, it’s imperative that they learn how to budget. This way, they can determine how much income they need to get into a house they want down the road or how to set the right amount for a mortgage. Walking with adult children through this process can get them ready to be the keepers of their own homes as they will learn how to budget for food, gas, bills, and more. Having this understanding will guide them as they make major purchases throughout life. It will also reveal how much income they need to live the lifestyle they prefer. In many cases, their ideal lifestyle is simply not obtainable with their current income, and understanding this is the first step in making the hard decisions necessary to begin living within their means.
Understand the Necessities: Is Insurance Really Necessary?
Young adults will often not understand the importance of having insurance or even legal guidance in various matters. This is because they have never experienced what it is like to pay for a mistake or illness without the aid of insurance, a professional service, or their parent. Therefore, another important strategy to implement when helping kids navigate new adulthood is to educate them on what is necessary. Car insurance might not seem important to them, or perhaps they don’t see the sense in having full coverage at the very least. Other types of insurance, like renters’ insurance and even health insurance, are often seen as simply not important to the young adult. They don’t know what they don’t know. Therefore, it’s up to you as a parent to help them learn before it hits them hard. Without this type of protection, they can find themselves facing bankruptcy before they even really get started on their own should something catastrophic happen.
Educate Them on the Dangers of Debt: Why It’s Not Okay to Depend on Debt
Young adults do need to build credit, so some form of credit card use can be helpful, but it’s important to educate them on the dangers of carrying a balance on a credit card. This problem is all too common, with the average credit card balance being $6,501 throughout the United States. It’s up to you, as a parent, to show grown children why it’s not a good idea to charge unnecessary items on their cards and then not pay it off in full. Teach them how to make credit cards work for them by charging only items they can pay off at the end of the month and never rolling a balance over from month to
month. Young adults shouldn’t fear credit cards but instead use them for their benefit, not to dig themselves into a hole of debt.
Treat Them Like Adults: Is it Good to Keep Instructing Them?
While this point might seemingly go against everything covered up to this point, it really doesn’t. As you navigate new stages of life with your adult child, it’s important to redefine your place in their lives. While it’s good to educate them and advise them leading up to these years, once you are here, it’s important that you step back and let them fly at least somewhat. This doesn’t mean being completely hands-off; instead, simply taking a step back and letting them try to make some decisions on their own while keeping your support and guidance just a quick phone call, text, or conversation away. If they don’t ask your opinion, it’s important not to insert your opinion, as they need to learn to navigate life without you weighing in on everything.
Adulthood Isn’t For The Faint of Heart
Adulthood is challenging overall, and young adulthood can be immensely confusing and even downright frightening. Thankfully, by implementing the strategies listed above, you can help your kid navigate young adulthood. Through these steps, you will both move forward to a new, adventurous stage of life, young adulthood.
