Entitled young adult children.
This is what parents need to watch out for and I'll give you some things that you can
do about it.
I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins I'm a clinical psychologist and this question comes up a lot from the
parents that I'm coaching.
I'm going to give you a life raft and a pill.
Now, raft and pill are both acronyms.
I'll tell you what each one of those means.
Before I get into the life raft relationships are foundational to our joy to our experience
that life is good and when things aren't good that get toughs all around.
So it's important that we take a look at this.
Entitlement happens through habits of things coming easy or not connecting the principle
of work to reward.
This is what sets up an entitlement mentality where we think that the world owes us something
or that somehow we have special access to privileges or rights or comforts or luxuries
that we didn't personally purchase.
Young adults sometimes get into this position with their parents because the parents had
provided so generously for a living and can we just pause there for a moment?
You are the benevolent, generous, loving parent connect with that for just a minute.
Because some of what we need to do to correct this is going to feel like withdrawal of some
of the things that people are used to already.
You probably already know what I'm talking about.
Don't buy into the idea that you are restrictive, you're not.
You're benevolent and generous.
That's part of the issue.
So, keep that in mind as we're talking here today.
Now, I promise I give you a life raft.
This is what parents need to watch out for to see if we're into a parent of entitlement
that isn't helping our young adult children and the raft that I'm speaking for refers
first to 3 feelings (R) resentment, (A) anger, (F) frustration.
If you're feeling resentment, anger, and frustration in this relationship.
That is an indication that (T) it's time for the conversation.
I'll get to the conversation in just a minute.
Let's look at those 3 feelings.
It is really distracting when we feel resentment, anger, and frustration because we think automatically
that it's about somebody else.
Somebody else needs to change.
After all, they're the ones causing my feeling of resentment, anger, and frustration.
That's the deception Don't be deceived, this isn't about what they're doing.
This is about what you're doing.
That's going to sting perhaps right at the beginning.
But let's use those feelings productively.
See, usually, when we feel resentment, anger, and frustration we end up yelling or accusing
or having unproductive kinds of communications with our young adult kids.
So, let's use that line step instead.
Remember (T) stands for its time for the conversation and I'll lead you through that by taking you
to this pill that I've referred to that's also an acronym.
Hey, before I give that pill though for more content like this take a moment to hit that
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So, here's the pill for your conversation.
(P) permission, start the conversation by asking permission.
Now, what conversation am I talking about?
Remember, the life raft?
You're feeling resentment, anger, and frustration.
That means it's time for this conversation where you ger to have some effective communication
with your young adult child and you'll start that conversation by asking permission.
It might sound something like this, "Hey son, I've got a few things in my mind.
How open would you be to having a conversation with me about that?", now listen to the wording.
I got this from Phil M. Jones he wrote a book called Exactly What To Say.
I'm not going to say, "Are you open to it?", I'm going to say, "How open would you be?",
and that assumes openness.
This is a little psychological trick that will help.
Remember what you have to talk about is probably not something that they're eager to talk about.
But keep the objective in mind.
Remember that the reason we're having this conversation is because the entitlement is
not good for them.
Forget for a minute how comfortable or awkward or costly this becomes for you.
It's not good for them to go through their life with the entitlement mentality.
So that's why we have to have the conversation.
(P) strat it with permission.
The (I) in pill stands for invite.
Meaning, invite consideration of another way.
Now, we're not gonna get into all of the details about effective communication and that's not
the purpose of this particular video.
We have other videos here in the channel that can help you with that.
You want to express well in terms of inviting them to see another way of looking at this
and so cost tied to reward for example.
Nothing is free, I remember when I moved into my first apartment and Vicki and I were just
married and we got this little basement apartment and we walk in the front door and flip the
light switch and nothing happened, My dad stepped in and he said, "Paul, you have to
go downtown to the power company and pay them to turn on your power in your apartment.
See, this was my first place that I was living independently without my parents.
I didn't know about all of that stuff.
So, we went downtown we got the power turned by the power company.
came back to the apartment flip the switch, nothing, and my dad the benevolent person
that he is stepped in and said, "We've got to go down to the corner convenience store
and buy some light bulbs."
That will make a big difference too.
I didn't know you have to buy all of these things it always came as part of the package
before.
So, remember that your young adult if there's an entitlement mentality going on it's probably
because they are in a habit of receiving all of these things without any cost, and part
of this conversation has to tie the cost to the benefits.
They're going to understand that concept they just probably earned in the position where
they have to face it head-on until now.
That's why we get to invite them to consider another way.
There's 2 (L) in this pill that we're talking about.
So, (P) is for permission, (I) is for invite and the first (L) is for listen.
Once you invited them to consider another way, zip it for a minute.
Listen to their response.
Try to connect with empathy to what they're telling you because you're going to get some
clues as to how they're thinking, what their expectation are, what they're hoping for from
you.
Listen and listen to understand.
No, a lot of people in communication make the mistake.
When they're listening see the letter in the word listen are the same as the ones in the
word silent.
That's probably coincidental but it's useful.
You wanna be silent but you cannot just be silent.
See, some people are silent while they're thinking of rebuttal or all things that they
wanna say next.
Now, don't go there, listen to understand, and then take an extra step before we go on.
The extra step is that you reflect your understanding.
So, as you're listening to understand try to catch the keywords and the phrases and
the feeling was behind what they're talking about and then give it back to them.
It's going to sound something like this.
So, if I've understood you correctly and then you give it back to them.
You'll know you're on target when they say, "Yes, that's exactly what I meant", or something
that's very equivalent to that.
So, listen to understand that's out first (L).
The final (L) in our pill acronym is leverage.
Don't try this until you've done the other steps.
I want you to have permission from them to have the conversation.
I want you to invite them to another way.
I want you to listen very carefully and reflect your understanding and at that point, you
can go to the leverage, and here's what I mean.
You leverage what you provide to encourage a higher level of responsibility.
You don't control your young adult.
This is one of the frustrating things for a lot of parents.
But you don't have the control.
So, instead of control were looking for influence.
What you do control is what you provide.
Let me give you a quick example of what this looks like.
A couple that I was working with whose young adult daughter had moved off to school and
they were paying for her rent, her books, her tuition, and everything.
They're still covering all the costs.
Felt that she was getting into entitlement mentality and they kinda knew that because
they felt resentment, anger, and frustration.
See, why those such key indicator feelings.
So we have this conversation about asking her permission.
Inviting another way of looking at things.
Listening carefully to her response and hers the leverage part.
They were obviously providing a lot to her and the new arrangement was that they would
continue to provide all of those things for her if she would show up every week for Sunday
dinner.
Does that sound ridiculous?
The daughter might have thought that it was ridiculous.
But really what we are asking her to do.
The parents are essentially offering to pay her very well to show up for Sunday dinner.
She never connected the cost to the reward.
This part of her thinking that she needed the [inaudible].
The parents were helping that by leveraging something that they provide against her commitment
to consider another way.
This obviously helps the daughter in her development.
But it also helps the parents with their own resentment, anger, and frustration.
I noticed from my own experience and in working with a lot of clients that it's different
parenting adults from parenting our teenagers to our kids.
But we've got you covered.
The next video up is three big skills every parent of a young adult needs to know and
master.
Click on that next and we've got your back.