Hi, It's Lynn, your adulting coach. Our kids are transitioning from school to adulting. Even if it's been a few years, they're still in the middle of that transition.
It's taking some time because there's a lot to transition and it's uncomfortable. So there's some avoidance happening. And that is the reason why they're on screens or doing other things that distract them from taking the actions they need to build a life that they want.
We notice in our own lives that little transactions are uncomfortable. I mean, I just wanted to escape that discomfort.
Big transitions are super challenging. You know, like the ones they are experiencing right now. So why is that?
1 Well, first, because I'm not sure that our kids feel the ownership of this transition yet. They haven't quite pictured where they want to be when they're an adult. It takes a while to form that picture of what they're going to be doing, how they're going to be thinking and what they're going to be feeling when they're building that life on their own.
2 So it gets, you know, a little lonely because they used to have a crowd of people around them at school now they don't, and they're escaping into the rooms often in a lot of those connections that these to have are just gone, people move on.
3 Their identities are changing. When we do these transitions from school to adulting or from adults into parenting, or getting married or whatever it is partnering, whatever it looks like, our identity changes. They're in the middle of deciding what their identity is going to be.
4 We need to make decisions during these transition periods. There's a lot of new things that we haven't had to face when that whole structure of the school calendar, the school day, the school homework and expectations is all gone. And so there's a lot of decisions that we make about what do we expect from ourselves? How are we going to structure our day? What are we going to do to create the habits that we have to create what is necessary for us to do what needs to get done and get some adult traction?
5 We just, you know, are facing new things and don't feel good enough. Our life seems like it's just isn't going very well. Is it the two most common concerns that all humans have.
6 There's a lot of unknowns. Our brains do not like the unknown. They don't like transitioning into it into job searching and interviewing and sometimes getting the job and sometimes losing the job. And sometimes finding the job just isn't a good fit. We you know, we have a hard time preparing for all these changes.
7 We can't really predict what is going to work and what isn't going to work.
8 A lot more thinking is required and frankly, we're much more emotional. Our our nervous system isn't as regulated because it's just scary. There's just a lot of new things going on.
9 And it's exhausting and very uncomfortable. So sometimes we sleep longer, or we spend more time in our beds, on screens or you know, just trying to feel better. That's the problem we're trying to solve if we don't like the way we're feeling we're trying to solve to feel better.
10 This unstructured and unpredictable life that we're having right now is not at all what we've come to expect.
11 So our brains are going, "How much resources? How do I keep us safe? How do I keep us connected to the tribe? And right now they've lost they had at school. Their culture is gone. And so they need to create a new one. And maybe it's just us for a while maybe it's just the family.
When you look at the research, it suggests that all transitions are going to have an impact. And they start from the the toughest impact which is the death of the spouse on a scale of one to 100. That one's 100 and everything else falls underneath that.
You'll notice that beginning or ending School is in there around the 20s and changing in their living conditions, meaning that you know, when they've decided to go to college or and live in a dorm or if they've decided to move out, those are the that's the kind of impact those are in the 20s they're not as bad as you know, the death of a spouse. Or whatever, but they sure are difficult for our kids. And that's what the research suggests.
So I want us to notice that we don't like transitions either. I mean, even little transitions cause discomfort. We want to escape them. So sometimes we go and have a snack. We argue with ourselves. There's a lot of confusion. What should I do next?
Even just getting up from the couch after watching a show or you know, binge watching. The streaming options that are just infinite out there now.
We have to kind of negotiate with ourselves. Am I going to get up now? No, this is so cozy. Maybe it's just pet my dog a little bit longer. And you can just kind of see how we negotiate with ourselves. It's not so much fun.
We have to transition from okay, I know I'm comfortable on my couch. What am I going to do next?
There's a little bit of fear of, you know, what's that going to look like to be able to get to where I want to next.
There's a transition with relationships just as there was what these big transitions were alone or we're together it's just a difference in our brains going, "I don't like this change."
Our identity changes. We change from being somebody watching TV to somebody that has to get the kids to bed or has to get ourselves to bed or has to clean up and get the house ready for the evening sleep.
So I just noticed that a lot of this discomfort that we experience in these arguments that we have and the indecision that happens is mostly unconscious and it's really, it really helps us to notice that it affects us as much as it does our autistic adult. And notice that it's requiring energy, and it's because it's a transition.
So how do we minimize this discomfort?
1 We make decisions in advance. We decide what do we want? That's more important than what we're going to take, who we want to be what are what are our strengths and how are we going to make sure that they are used in our everyday actions, because the closer we are to being the person that we want to be, the happier we are, the more the more fulfilled we feel though this is the path to flourishing.
2 We want to, if we can, make our schedule as predictable as possible, so we can even block it out. In the practice that I have now, I do some one on one coaching, but I and I mostly do group coaching.
So in the morning, I usually am preparing my marketing materials, gathering and learning. Then in the afternoon, usually that's when I'm working one on one with people or in groups with people. So I blocked my schedule out and then after that it's dinner prep and then at dinner and eating and then after that. It's usually settling down for about an hour to watch something on the television.
3 When I create my routines with intention, then I have fewer decisions to make I know unsafe. I know where my energy is going. So there's no surprise to the way that I allocate it. I able to block time with the people that I care about so that we have those connections that are so valuable. And are really part of flourishing.
So this is a summary of the concepts that Jody Moore presented. She's one of my coaches. She presented these concepts in one of her podcasts that I thought were so relevant to the transition between schooling and adulting and why it's tough, and why we need to pay attention to what's going on.
It kind of explains why this is taking more time than we expected. And I hope it's helpful for you to notice what's going on, for the parents to notice what's going on as well so that we can clearly be compassionate with each other and understand that this is all part of being human.
I hope that's helpful and bye for now.
