How to Introduce Your Kid to the Real World

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I have a 22-year-old son who still lives at home. He was third in his high school class, but he went to college for less than a year, came home, and never left. He’s had four jobs in the last three years. His passion is cooking, but restaurant jobs are not working out. He has been unemployed for the last three months and doesn’t seem interested in finding another job. He just sits around the house, and doesn’t really even contribute. He doesn’t pay rent, and his father wants to charge him to live here, but I’m uncomfortable with that. He conveniently “forgets” to do the chores we ask him to do. His father and I are so frustrated because he’s smart, people like him, and he’s a mentally healthy, competent person! What do we do for him so he can succeed?

The quick answer is that you don’t do anything more for him to succeed. You’ve already done WAY too much.

All of us parents know the feeling of watching our kids struggle. It’s painful. I think parents usually love their kids more than they love themselves, so it’s even more painful to watch your kids struggle than it is for the kid to struggle.

I’m going to ask you to require your kid to struggle.

By requiring him to struggle, you are going to do the brave thing and deal with the pain that you will feel by watching him struggle with real life.

Real life requires struggle. Struggling brings pain, but also the opportunity for growth, strength, toughness, gratitude, more pain, passion, knowledge, more pain, and maybe even some wisdom and happiness.

The idea here is to allow your kid to struggle as early and often as possible so they get good at fighting through tough times. At first, we just allow them to fight through being temporarily uncomfortable. If we do it right, our kids will get tougher and tougher as they grow and the struggles get bigger and bigger.

It looks like you may have failed at this up to this point, so your kid is going to struggle mightily for a bit. Here’s how I would allow your kid to start living a real life. This one’s going to be really simple since the problem isn’t the kid. The problem is you.

Kid Whisperer: Hey. I need to talk with you.

Kid: Can it wait? I’m staring at my nose.

Kid Whisperer: No, sorry. I think your mother and I have made some huge mistakes in how we have tried to tell you life lessons and warned you and lectured you about real life. I think we’ve failed to actually let you live real life so that you can succeed and fail on your own.

Kid: Is there a point to any of this?

Kid Whisperer: Yes. I think that we haven’t allowed you to grow since we’ve been saving you from your own laziness and irresponsibility.

Kid: I’m fine with my level of laziness and irresponsibility. Could you close the door on your way out?

Kid Whisperer: Feel free to live here for the next two months. After that, we will require you to not live in this house anymore. I love you too much to allow you to think that the world will take care of you. Two months from today, or sooner if you choose, you will start to be able to experience the adventure called The Real World. We are so incredibly sorry that we didn’t require you to live in The Real World until now. I hope that, in time, you will be able to forgive us. This hasn’t been fair to you because The Real World is way more fun and interesting and exhilarating than our house. I love you and wish you all of the happiness in the world. We’ll be here to give advice and guidance and love, but that will be all. We love you so much.

This will make Kid feel temporarily uncomfortable.

And that’s the point.