And Keep On Going Forth: Six Steps To Raising Independent Kids

NOTE: This is Part Two of a two-part column. Part One appeared a week or so ago and can be found the way such things are found. I ended Part One with a promise to reveal my Fail-Safe Formula for a Mutually Happy, On-Time, and Successful Emancipation or FSFMHOTSE, which means something in the lost language of Easter Island. (As they say, “If only the stones could talk.”) And so, here it is.

As will become obvious, my formula does not necessitate changing locks, putting said child’s possessions on the front lawn, having him kidnapped and taken to Mongolia, hiring lawyers or scary-looking men whose last names end in vowels, or any other such nonsense. Furthermore, I know my formula works because my wife and I employed it to successfully emancipate two children who remain happily emancipated to this very day, thirty-plus years later.

I came up with FSFMHOTSE because my daughter, the second of the above-mentioned children, told us when she was six years old that she was never leaving home; rather, she was staying on as our permanent housekeeper. Isn’t that cute? Yes, it is cute when it comes from a six-year-old. It is not cute when said child is above the age of twelve and it becomes increasingly obvious that she means it.

Amy’s announcement caused my wife and I to ponder the question, “Why did we leave home?”—me, at twenty; my wife, at nineteen. What, exactly, were the operative variables?

It did not take much reminiscing to determine that we left our natal homes when we did because we were absolutely, unequivocally, indubitably certain we would be able to create better lives for ourselves than our parents were obviously willing to create for us. From as far back as we could remember, our parents made it clear that living indefinitely with them was a non-starter and definitely not in anyone’s best interests. They subscribed to the idea that the overarching purpose of raising a child was to get him to move out without love lost. They did not believe a child needed to be “ready” to move out, but simply and merely capable of getting himself, by trial and error, in tune with the necessities.

Why are nearly half of all young people ages 18 to 29 still living with their parents? Because since around 1970, many parents have subscribed to the foolish notion that the purpose of raising a child is to make him happy.

Here’s the problem: Children and authentic adults define happiness in two entirely different ways. Adults are happy when they are responsible. The more responsible an adult, the happier the adult. Children, on the other hand, equate happiness with irresponsibility. Therefore, it is a Cosmic Rule that parents who focus on making their children happy can only succeed if they enable irresponsibility in said children.

Paradoxically, however, an irresponsible person is not going to be happy for long, which is why I have found, over the fifty years of my career as a family psychologist, that children who fail to launch on time and successfully are not happy campers. Most of them qualify as miserable, in fact. They deal with their misery by engaging in various dysfunctions—alcohol, drugs, video games, etc.—any of which makes it more difficult for them to emancipate.

Emancipating a child is not an event that occurs spontaneously when said child is in his late teens or early twenties; it is a process that begins before the child is three years old. The process begins by helping the child learn that independence is to be preferred, always, over dependence. From the beginning, do not let your children sleep with you, period. Mastering the art of going to sleep on one’s own, after a BRIEF tucking-in ceremony, is STEP ONE toward successful emancipation.

STEP TWO is learning to use the toilet before age two. Two? Yes, two. The idea that children are not “ready” to use the toilet on their own until they are nearly three is why toilet training has become so difficult of late. If a puppy can be house-trained at four months or earlier, a human being can be toilet trained before age two. Follow toilet training with teaching said child to dress himself, bathe himself, fix basic snacks for himself, and anything else he can reasonably master that will reduce his dependence upon YOU! In effect, the fundamental instruction to parents who are embarking on STEP TWO is, “Stop being a go-fer.”

STEP THREE is assigning the child a routine of household chores that teach fundamental domestic skills—running a vacuum cleaner, using a mop, cleaning bathroom fixtures, basic outdoor responsibilities, and so on. As the child ages, his chores should occupy more and more of his attention. By the time our kids were thirteen, for example, each was cooking one evening meal a week for the entire family.

STEP FOUR is setting up the child’s environment such that he learns to play on his own, keeping in mind that the fewer toys a child has, the more creatively and independently the child will play.

STEP FIVE is to make it increasingly clear that your purpose is not to make him happy or solve his problems, but to help him learn to take responsibility for life’s problems and his own emotional well-being.

STEP SIX of six is to administer regular doses of Vitamin N, the most emotionally strengthening word in the English language. “No” forms the core of a realistic worldview. It should go without saying that the more realistic an individual’s worldview, the more emotionally resilient he or she will be, and there is no greater lack than a lack of emotional resilience. Every young adult I’ve ever encountered who is suffering from Failure to Launch Syndrome is a young adult who has great, great difficulty accepting that the world is not a “bowl of cherries,” but more akin to a bowl of daily challenges.

So there you have it! It’s now time for you to get yourself on the right track because whether your child emancipates successfully and on time is largely a matter of how well you drive that train.

John Rosemond’s websites can be found at johnrosemond.com and parentguru.com. He also writes a weekly Substack and will be resuming a weekly podcast in October.