This is a really challenging one. How to parent a young adult with anger management issues.
I'll give you four powerful strategies that will help you to do this. Stick around for
number four because I'll talk to you about the biggest mistake that parents usually make.
I've been a psychologist for now 30 years which blows me away because I don't feel
that old. But I've learned something really important it's about stage not age.
What I mean by that is that your young adult is at some stage of moral development. There's three,
these three stages are important to understand as we try to figure out what strategies to employ
when we're working with a young adult who has anger management issues and that already
tips me off to what stage they might be on. Here's a quick summary for you. Stage one,
selfish, self-centered, immature,
demanding, yelling, and screaming, refusing to cooperate, sound familiar? This is stage one
and it requires a very specific style of parenting to cover the other two really quickly. Stage two
is about cooperation. It's stage two they're willing to communicate with you in a rational way.
They're willing to work something out. They don't want any trouble they want to keep the peace.
Yeah, you're already thinking, "Yeah, that's not my kid", okay but notice that there's a big
difference between stage one and stage two. Stage three is the highest stage
of moral development. This stage is characterized by responsibility and taking initiative
and having empathy which I think is a dual meaning here. Empathy is that you
understand and care how someone else feels. That kicks in at stage three. At stage three
they're being responsible, they're taking care of things, they're paying their way. Now,
if you've got a young adult who's on stage three you're probably not watching this video.
If they're on stage two, you're dealing with things. If they're on stage one,
you probably saw this title and you thought, "Yep, I need that", because anger management issues are
characteristic of stage one moral development. Now, this is important because the parent's job at
any of those three stages depends on which stage your kid is on or in this case your young adult.
At stage one we have to use consequences.
I'll refer back to that in some of the other points.
At stage two, we kick into communication mode. This is where you can negotiate you can work
it out with them. At stage 3, you become a consultant and that's where your kids come
to you and ask for your sagely advice and when you share it with them they go away with appreciation
and take care of their own five kids. Now it can happen before then but that's just an illustration
of what stage three maturity is all about. So we're probably talking about stage one.
Once they move to stage two we shift our strategy.
I'll be focusing mostly in this video on stage one.
How do we parent a young adult who's got these anger management issues and they're on stage one?
For the second tip, it's really important once you understand what stage your child is on and if
they're on stage one. You've got to get clear next about what you control and what you don't control.
What I would suggest is just take a piece of paper draw a line right down the middle of it
so that you have two columns and jot down a few ideas here so that you get clear about what you
control about your young adult child's life. That's going to go on one column. I usually like
to put that over there on the right-hand side. So just have that right-hand column what I control.
Now on the left-hand column you're going to write down everything they control about their life.
Let's start with that one. What do they control? Their attitude, yep that's on their side.
How they handle respect cooperation, communication, yep on that side.
How they handle their anger when they start to get tipped over,
their side. The language that they choose to use you're getting the point. So you make a list of
all those things on the left now let's go over to your side. What do you control about their life?
This is where a lot of the parents in my coaching groups they kind of like throw
their hands in the air. Nothing, I don't control anything about their life. Well, okay pause.
What do you control about their life? Probably since we're having this conversation they're still
in fairly close proximity to you, right? They may be living in your home still. They've reached
that ripe old age of adulthood whatever that is in your jurisdiction and they're still around.
Eating your groceries, living in your home. That's going to give us some clues as to what
you control and here's the shorthand, you control what you provide.
You control that and once your kids hit an age of adulthood you're no longer required legally
to provide all of those things for them. You must be doing it out of the goodness of your own heart
and you are a benevolent generous loving parent apparently. Because the the lifestyle
that you're providing the comforts, the services, everything that you provide to them is probably
more than what they can afford on their own. Would you agree?
And that's why they're still sticking around. Will you control that? So let's get clear about
what you control and what they control. Because we're going to need that for the other two steps.
Before we get to those next two points take a moment to subscribe to the channel and if you can
think of another parent who could really benefit from this please share the video with them. As we
implement this strategy the next important thing to understand and honestly this is one of the most
powerful things that I've learned about working with teenagers and young adults. Detach from the
outcome. Put that in your notes, detach from the outcome. Notice that as a parent you get pretty
wrapped up in what the outcomes are. You really want your child to be successful, be happy, do the
thing that you want them to do. We have to detach from that outcome, why? Which side of the page is
it on from our last exercise, who controls that? You don't, if you controlled it then we wouldn't
be having this issue, would we? Because if you controlled it'd be the way that you want it to.
Well, it's not. So we have to detach from the outcome because we don't control it. This puts
you in a powerful position as a parent. Think about it when you're detached from the outcome
what happens to your emotional overtones? You start to experience more peace. It's like,
"Oh, I'm good either way. Whatever happens, I'm okay", this is important because whoever's the
most attached to the outcome still has the problem and if you're more worried about your young adult
and his or her anger management issues then who has the problem? If you're more worried about
it than they are this is still your problem. I'm helping you to detach from that shift the
problem back over to them. So we detach from the outcome and in doing so we are now in position
to focus our emotional energy on the relationship that's the second part of this particular step.
You detach from the outcomes and you attach to the relationship. Look, your job is to love them no
matter what and even if, that's your job. If you think your job is to make sure that they get that
job, make sure that they're a good citizen, make sure that they are happy, you're going to feel
frustrated, angry, and resentful. Those three feelings will be a signal to you that you're
getting off of your job. Detached from the outcome it's not your job to make sure that they anything.
It's your job to love them no matter what and even if.
Now, remember the list that we made in step two. There are things that you control things
that they control. When we detach from the outcomes then it simply becomes an economic
transaction and you agree to control some of the things you're providing for them
in exchange for their control of certain things that you don't have
any control over but you kind of care about. It's simply an economic exchange at that point.
Hey, I will control this in a way that you like in exchange for you controlling this
in a way that I like it's really up to you, either way. See, that way you're detached
from the outcome, this is powerful. If you can master this and you might
need a little coaching to do that this will change the dynamic between you
and your adult child. Now I promised you upfront that I would share with you in this fourth step
what the biggest mistake is that parents make and it's one that I've done, lectures.
Lectures we think when our young adult children are getting off track somehow that
they must not know where I stand on this issue. They know, believe me, I've interviewed hundreds
of them. They know where you stand on the things that you're getting all upset about
and it might be being respectful. It might be how they're handling work or employment. It might
be how they handle education or sexuality or any variety of other things that you've already taught
them about. Trust me, the lectures do not work and it just irritates and annoys them. You'll
feel frustrated, they'll feel annoyed, so let's get away from the lectures and instead,
we're going to set and enforce appropriate consequences. Back to
what I shared with you first about the three stages.
When our kids regardless of their age are on stage one consequences are the only thing that works
and you don't get cooperation until they move over to stage two. That comes later so we have
to choose consequences that do not require cooperation. That's why I had you make the
list. Get onto the things that you control and those become the enforceable consequences for the
limits that you're setting with your adult child. Now you can see this will apply to more than just
anger. There's a lot of different issues I know that are coming up but this can be applied
in that context as well. You don't control whether they express their anger in certain ways. You can
set limits around that and then use enforceable consequences once they make that choice. Let
me share with you a quick story that illustrates all four points that we were talking about today.
This was a young man who was 19 years old living with his single mother. He was having some
anger management issues and was popping off with disrespectful language and yelling and
screaming and sometimes he would break things in the home. This poor mother didn't have control
over any of that, she was smaller than he was. In her frustration she had reached out to me
for some coaching and we went through these steps she got it. She was making the chart here's what I
control here's what he controls. It was coming together now it's time to practice it.
One of the things that was so disturbing to her was the profanity that he was using in the home.
She didn't like it, it made the whole environment of the home feel uncomfortable
and unpleasant and so she approached him. Now remember you got to detach from the outcome.
You're okay with whatever he chooses and you have to have enforceable consequences. So in this case
she approached him and I was so proud of her she smiled okay when parents are smiling kids are
thinking and that's true for young adults as well. She approached him with a smile and said,
"Sweetie, I've talked to you before I'm not going to lecture you about the profanity. I don't like
it it's unpleasant for me but I'm willing to put up with it for a small fee, any questions?",
and I like that tool any questions. He's like, whatever and then he pops off with one of his
profane remarks. Well, she had decided that what she controls is the money she had been giving him
every week for his lunch. He was working at a construction site and she gave him money. I think
it was like 30 bucks a week and so she decided that any profanity was simply a five dollar
fee and she just deducted it from whatever she was going to give him for lunch money.
I thought it was brilliant because she was able to detach from the outcome,
"Hey, I'm okay with either way. I'll put up with it for five bucks a shot,
no problem." Now it's on his shoulders. See how that shifted it back to him
and it was still hard for him and he lost several five-dollar fees during the next several days
but it shifted that dynamic. So no longer is mom yelling and screaming at him. His anger is now
on his shoulders to control and he chose to do that a little better with the five-dollar fee.
That's just an example of how you could apply this as well. Parenting teens and young adults is not
for the week of heart. We've got other resources available for you including this next video five
things that every parent of a teenager should know. Cue that one up next and we'll help you out.