Failure to Launch Counseling & Coaching:
One of the biggest issues that I see in my practice are parents asking for my advice on their failure to launch children. They come in all shapes and sizes, affect families from every back ground, and affect families in a deep & profound manner. It’s not only the parents, but the young adult children themselves who are frustrated as well. Failure to launch is simply defined as a young adult child who is simply not moving forward in life. They often have either not gone to college or have failed out several times. They often have no clear career direction and when confronted about what their plan is by parents, are often met with anger and just want to be left alone. Many parents feel like they are prisoners in their own homes and feel powerless to do anything since they are adults. With 60% of young college graduates struggling to find a job after college, more and more are moving back home to figure out what their next move is. In other words…this problem is not going away anytime soon.
The reasons for this problem are many. Maybe its pure entitlement, mental health issues, substance abuse, autism spectrum disorders, career indecision, or a combination of everything. Whatever the reasons at the root of a failure to launch child, I am the clinician who is best equipped and the most experienced to help your child and your family do what is necessary to get them launched off into their future. Just don’t take my word for it, go ahead and check out my book “Failure to Launch” and read for yourself what my views of the problems are and how I teach counselors and parents on how to deal with this problem.
My failure to launch program is designed to work with families in several ways. First, we attempt to understand why we have the failure to launch problem to begin with. This is key because the reasons for why the problem exists completely dictate the approaches that I use. If the problem is more mental health related, we address those issues first; whereas if its career indecision then we address those areas first. If we identify that the problem is more due to an enabling family system then we usually start with the family system.
After identifying where we need to start, we don’t just talk about the problem, we actually start to develop a black and white plan to help address those issues. Whether its career coaching, teaching therapeutic skills, family counseling, etc., we will develop a plan and walk through the plan step by step. Never at any point in time will you or your family not know what they need to do…there will always be a plan to walk through. If the plan is not working then we adapt the plan until it does work.
As you can see…there is no one stop shopping here. Every plan is unique to you and your family. Even if the adult child does not want to participate, we can still work with the family to coach them on how to stop enabling, set boundaries, and become part of the solution rather than the problem. If the problems outlined on this page sound familiar and you have no clue how else to handle it, just reach out to us for help and let’s take the first step to fix it.