Show notes
In this episode of Real Talk, KJK Student & Athlete Defense Attorneys Susan Stone and Kristina Supler are joined by Dr. Mark McConville, a renowned clinical psychologist and author experienced in parenting and child development, as well as adult, adolescent, emerging adult and family psychology. They discuss the struggle many young adults experience transitioning from adolescence to adulthood - a phenomenon Dr. McConville has labeled Failure to Launch. The conversation includes how this struggle came about, tips for parents to help their children get through it and anecdotal advice. Transcript: Susan Stone: Welcome back to Real Talk with Susan Stone and Kristina Supler. We're full-time moms and attorneys, bringing our student defense legal practice to life with real, candid conversations. Today's topic is Failure to Launch. Kristina Supler: We're so pleased today to be joined by Dr. Mark McConville. Dr. McConville is a family clinical psychologist in private practice here in Cleveland, Ohio. He's lectured and published on child development and parenting across the country. And within his private practice, he has really earned a reputation as the preeminent psychologist for working with patients, young adults, primarily, who are struggling with this adolescent to adult transition, a phenomenon he's labeled Failure to Launch. So we are so pleased to be joined today by Mark McConville. Susan Stone: I do have to add, welcome, Dr. McConville… Dr. Mark McConville: Thank you. Thank you. Susan Stone: ... his wife was my daughter, Alex's kindergarten teacher. Dr. McConville, we know you're a famous author, but to me you are Mrs. McConville's husband. Dr. Mark McConville: That's right. It's like being married to a rock star. We can't go into a restaurant without some young person jumping up across the way and coming over and giving a big kindergarten hug. Kristina Supler: That's so sweet. Susan Stone: I love that. Kristina and I had the pleasure of ordering your book on Amazon. And I still remember Kristina coming in that morning, and when I got to the final chapter, and I read that letter you wrote to 20 somethings, and I read the excerpt from your mother, I just started to cry. I could not stop crying. I just want you to know that. And I said to Kristina, maybe it's because I have two kids now out of college, and one who is a sophomore, but your book made me think about my own parenting, myself going through emerging adulthood, and then all of our clients, and it just brought just a torrential amount of tears. Kristina Supler: I so enjoyed the book as well. I have a son and a daughter, they're younger. They're not in high school, but nonetheless through our legal practice and what Susan and I deal with every day, sort of know what lies ahead. And I was so struck by your approach in the book. You demonstrated such kindness towards these young adults who are struggling. And while your advice I think was so rooted in sound psychological theories, I also love that it just had such an element of practicality to it. Dr. Mark McConville: Yeah. That's what comes with being at any line of work for a long time, you begin to tease out what sounds elegant, but isn't really useful. And you discover all kinds of things that are quite ordinary, but are very useful, put in the right context. And one of them, Susan, I certainly did not intend my readers to cry heavily. But I really had in mind that people would understand more compassionately what these people are going through. If I put myself in the shoes of being a client, and over the course of my life I have done, several times. But if I don't feel gotten, if I don't feel that I'm talking with a counselor who gets where I'm coming from, they don't have to necessarily agree with everything I say or think. But if I feel understood, I am so much more available for change. And so that's the part of the premise of the book is that these kids often feel, whether it's true or not, they often feel that their parents don't understand them. And they'll come in and complain about that to a therapist. But when the parent can get to that place of, I can identify with what they're going through. I can see the poor choices, but I understand them better, kids are much more amenable to the parents' strategies and intervention. So, thanks for the shout-out. Susan Stone: Thank you for that. Can you help our readers and listeners, because we do put it out both in written and we put our podcast out, understand, how do you define failure to launch? Dr. Mark McConville: Yeah. I first have to tell you, I objected to that title, but the publishers were adamant. They said, that's what we're calling it at the office. And I knew there'd been a movie by that title. My original title was Getting a Life, as in, get a life. But they said that's a little too subtle. It'll be lost on some people. There is a developmental transition from the world of adolescence to the world of emerging adulthood. And they are very different worlds. Adolescence is organized largely around high school life. Even if you're a disinterested student, it's still in many ways, it's the town square where you live. And that life is organized, plotted out and overseen by adults, by educators. It has evolved over the course of a century and a half. And so while they don't know it, they're living a little bit in The Truman Show. There's a structure to the framework of their being. And when they transition out of that, they often find themselves at sea. Just to give a simple example, there are so many things that growing up, even if you are, let's say you are a highly responsible, effective 11th grader, still, so much of the administrative management of your life has been taken care of by adults. And then that whole college application process starts. And all of a sudden you're expected to fill out forms, solicit teachers for recommendation letters, communicate with the college about roommate selection, et cetera, et cetera. And we'll see these highly competent kids just stall out, because it's a new set of ground rules. And that is often their first introduction. Or for kids who aren't college bound, maybe that first job, the job interview, having responsibilities that actually matter to a store or a restaurant. You really are transformed. If you make it through that transition by age, let's say 25 or 28, you have a whole different sense of yourself, in a sort of fledgling way, but as competent, as knowing more or less what you're doing. And in that transition, you are fraught with experiences of not really having a clue what you're doing. And unfortunately, and this is true more for males than females, often resistant to the kind of support and guidance that would make things much easier. Kristina Supler: That's really interesting, the resistance to support and guidance. And I love at the beginning of the book, you make this observation that's just so insightful and in line with what Susan and I are seeing in our law practice every day. You say that kids today, they worry more and they risk less, which really ultimately contributes and leads to anxiety, depression. And I know, Susan, wouldn't you agree, every day we're dealing with students who are depressed, anxious. They have ADHD. They've been in therapy. I mean, don't you think they're- Susan Stone: They're frozen. We see kids who get to a point where they just freeze. They can't get out of bed. They can't go to school. And then we see the parents trying to overcompensate and say that's okay. And then when you hear the okay, it reinforces it. And then they need a legal defense, and we need them to participate and help us. And then we're told that they can't because being with us is too upsetting. And we're like, wait, we've got to be able to do our job with your child. And it leads to this cycle. Kristina Supler: I'm just curious to hear your feedback on what got us to this point or contributed to this trend where adolescents and young adults, they're afraid to take risks and everyone's anxious? How did we get here? Dr. Mark McConville: Yeah. Well, first a comment about the thing of parents, is supporting their kids and not meeting with the two of you. That's very telling. I would not, having met the two of you now, I would not see you as particularly terrifying representatives of the adult world or the real world. I know you're doing serious business, but you both seem to have a very receptive kind of gentle good listening sort of way. So for a parent to say, I have to protect my kid from that experience, tells you the equation is not balanced. There's something out of whack here. The question of how this came about is we could do a symposium on it, because it has a lot to do with how the world has changed from say the time that I was their age. When I was their age, 30% of high school graduates went to college. Today it's more like 70%. When I was their age, had I chosen, I could have taken a bus across town, gone to the employment office at Kodak, and had been making a living wage within a month, bought my first car within three or four months. I could have down payment on a small bungalow by the time I'm 20. I mean, those were options. Those really aren't options today. The amount of education that you need just to get a foothold. And if you talk to kids with good four year educations from good schools, and while some of them land terrific, interesting jobs, many of them are extremely frustrated because the job opportunities, if they can find them, they don't meet their fantasy. Remember, this is the generation that we encouraged dream. Laurel School, dream, dare, do. And it's a wonderful inspiration that we're giving. And I think most kids absorb it and utilize it. You're seeing the ones and I'm seeing the ones who that lofty aspiration becomes a millstone around their neck. I'm not going to live up to that. And so it's harder growing up. Everything you look at, from the cost of housing to the salaries, wages have gone steadily down since 1970. You have to be a much more sophisticated being to make your way in the world. And because of that, your generation of parents, yours specifically, has been the most supportive generation in history. And that's not a knock, that's praise. Because we do in fact have kids who are willing to soar. Why can't I go to medical school? Why can't I become an international business expert? Kids have lofty aspirations. Many of them meet them. I like to look at sports. I have a 13 year old granddaughter who just happens ... Doesn't happen to be, her extraordinary focus and hard work, is a tremendous soccer player, but she has her full parent, grandparent support, an extra soccer coach, leagues that are run by dedicated adults. And I think, boy, we had to go out and make our own team and coach ourselves and call somebody from another school to say, if they wanted to play us on Saturday morning. So the support. So there's a reason why, let's just take this generation of women athletes, imagine them playing a team from 1968, it would be cruelty. It would be cruelty, because they are so much better supported. So there's a lot to be said for support. We only hear about the helicopter parent, the snowplow parent. So parents get dinged for this. But in fact, as a cohort, your generation of parents has done an extraordinary job. Susan Stone: I have to share with you, my mother was first generation American. My grandparents all came from Europe to escape oppression. And my mother had a different attitude. I remember saying, "I don't want to do my homework." And she would say, "Don't do your homework, it's your education." And if I would wake up and say, "I don't want to go to school," she'd say, "Your education." And so I took ownership early on, and I was a latchkey kid, so I would go to school, come home, make dinner, help my sister. I think about my own parenting. If my kid said, I don't feel like going to school, I'd be like, "Of course you have to go to school." The question I have is I feel like it's very late. Are there earlier signs in middle school, early high school, before that senior year where you can see? And what can you do to prevent the struggling transition? Dr. Mark McConville: Yes. Yeah. So it's just a little anecdote. I was doing a radio talk show, and a father called in and said, "I have a three year old. What should I be doing with my three year old?" At first my jaw dropped, but then I said, "Well, you should be sitting down on the playroom floor saying, 'Come on over here, buddy. We're going to pick up these toys together. I'll get all the trucks, so you get all the puzzles.'" That kind of parenting takes so much more time and energy than just picks the damn room up, and put the stuff in wherever it goes. But to sit down and work with that child, where you're really paying attention to the sort of just emergent qualities of initiative and ownership, and that's what your mother did brilliantly. Your mother was a good gambler. She was able to read her opponent. Susan Stone: Still is. Dr. Mark McConville: She knew if she played that card, that you would pick it up. But what she was doing was challenging you to take initiative and ownership. Now, a lot of kids today need more fine-tuned parenting than that. And even when you say to your kids, what are you talking about? Of course you're going to do your homework. That's very efficient parenting, and most kids respond to it. I'm watching my kids parent their kids, and I see that. We don't make an issue of schoolwork because it's not an issue. It's taken granted that you're going to do it. It's out of the question that you wouldn't do it. They don't fight over a lot. But what if you get one of those oppositional kids who seem to come along on their own to nobody's bad parenting, and they come along and say, yeah, it's done. I did it in school. And of course they didn't. And then that's where parenting becomes high maintenance. Kristina Supler: I mean with the student who, Susie or Johnny, who's been amazing all through school. Has these dreams of going on to a prestigious college. Involved in every extracurricular under the sun. But all of a sudden senior year hits that moment where there's a total loss of initiative, motivation, the student starts to shut down from anxiety about the future and what lies ahead. When parents see that collapse coming on, what can parents do? I mean, what tips do you have? Dr. Mark McConville: Yeah. We call that senior year collapse actually. And it's a very interesting phenomenon because it's ... Deep in the background of our consciousness, we all sense the passage of time and the passage of life's ground rules. And that's maybe, other than say leaving home for kindergarten or preschool where the ground rules change pretty dramatically, a lot of those kids feel the hoof beats of the future. Like I'm not going to have this support. And we see that more frequently with kids who have been on 504 plans, or they've benefited, because those are kids who have really utilized that support. Some of them, in the context of a therapy session, will be quite insightful. Not all of them, but occasionally there will be a kid that says, I'm afraid of next year. What if I just don…
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