Failure to launch: Is your kid equipped to leave the nest?

Episode 36:

Have you equipped your teen to leave the nest of your home? Listen in for a few tips you can use to ensure they have these three basic skills in place!

As mentioned in the episode:

Learn to type website: https://www.typingtest.com

Greenlight Debit Card: https://www.greenlightcard.com

Click Up is designed to help YOU as the mom to organize your to do list and day to day obligations in your life. CLICK HERE OR go to https://www.clickup.com and use code BETHATMOM for a discount!

Kajabi.com is my go to for everything related to having a website, doing email marketing, my blog, online courses and more. CLICK HERE for a 28 day free trial to check it out! 

Pinwheel phone: Click here or go to https://www.pinwheel.com/?via=dolly and use code BETHATMOMTEN for a discount! 

Gabb Wireless phone: CLICK HERE

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BARK HOME: CLICK here!!

Covenant Eyes 30 day free trial CLICK HERE!!

Listen to it now here or click HERE for your favorite podcast platform!

Full Transcription:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Welcome back. Welcome back today. We're going to talk about the failure to launch. Have you heard of this phenomenon? Apparently this is a growing trend. It's not something that's new, but it's a growing trend among our teens and young adults in this day and age. And this episode is going to focus on a few tips that you can use to help your kiddo and a couple of specific areas so that they feel confident and ready to leave the nest. At some point, when the time comes,

Speaker 2: (00:28)
Stay tuned. Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host Dolly Denson. Okay.

Speaker 1: (00:55)
Before we get started today, I just want to tell you about something that I have been using. And if you are a busy person like me, who has, has all kinds of things going on, I think you might want to check this out. It is a platform called click up. You can check it [email protected] and it is a way for you to get organized. I am like a squirrel and it is so hard for me to wrestle all of the things that I have to do on a daily basis. You know, so if you're kind of like multi-passionate, or just have a lot of things going on, this is a way for you to organize your to-do lists so that you can put them down and then forget about them and, you know, just have them pop up as with the due date. And all of that, I know this took me forever to wrestle and I was totally like spastic when it came to shifting from my nurse practitioner job, to my coaching business, to my podcast, stuff that I needed to do.

Speaker 1: (01:47)
Plus the podcast mastermind, I just finished all of the things like there's just so many things to keep up with. So click up is the one thing I have started using, I've tried so many different things, but it has helped me to really start to kind of get myself organized around all the things I'm doing. So if you are a busy person like me and just need a convenient way to keep track of your things that you're doing, if you own a business, especially take a look at it because it connects to Zapier into other things. So it integrates well with other apps that you may be using. I also use Kajabi for my website. It integrates with that, and it will send things back and forth with Gmail and different things like that. So if you are someone who has a business or is just super busy and has lots of different things that you, you are managing or handling checkout, click up, I have a discount code for you in the show notes, or you can use the code, be that mom for a discount on the unlimited or the business plan.

Speaker 1: (02:44)
All of them are very, very affordable, even without the discount, but check them out and use my code. Be that mom for discount. Alrighty, let's get rolling today. So failure to launch, there was a movie that came out years ago. I don't know what year it was, but I think it had McConaughey. And I can't remember the name of the girl, but she was like in one of those popular movies, like sex in the city, I think. But basically it was about this guy that failed to launch out of his parents' home. And he was, you know, a little bit older. I don't even know late twenties, early thirties. I haven't watched the movie in a while, but he basically had no ambition and no desire to get out of his parents' house. Well, over the last five years, they have started to see an increase of this phenomenon or syndrome in teens and young adults is that they don't have ambition to get out of the house and do other things, or they don't have the confidence and feel like they're prepared to leave their parents' home to live independently.

Speaker 1: (03:39)
And so what they're finding in kids is that they have less desire to learn how to drive. They have less desire to get out and get a job. All of those different things, as a result, they are saying related to social media and the digital things and being distracted and, you know, just it all coming together. So there's a few things that I want to mention that I think might be helpful for you in, uh, things that you can help your kiddos with her. Certainly what I've noticed with my kiddos, number one, that they never learned how to type. And so they have all these digital things that they, you know, can navigate better than I can. Like I have to have them show me how to use some of the apps when I'm trying to figure them out. But when it comes to writing a letter or doing a homework assignment, they're over there hunting and pecking on the keys.

Speaker 1: (04:27)
And I know me personally in high school, I took a typing class and that's probably one of the most valuable things I ever took is because I type every single day with everything that I do. So I found a free website that you can go to, to have them practice how to type. And I'm going to show this to my kids and I don't know if I'll get them to actually try it, but it's really, really cool because it's kind of like you're sitting and typing class, but it's on your computer. So that is called typing test.com is a free website that they can go to. They can do a one minute, three minute or five minute test. And then they have different like quizzes and drills and different things that they can use to learn the keys on the keyboard and learn how to type.

Speaker 1: (05:07)
Maybe my kiddos are the only ones that haven't had this, but I think it's kind of an across the board thing that a lot of parents are noticing is that their kiddos don't know how to type or didn't learn how to type in school. They really need to be teaching that in school, or we just need to be teaching it as the parents and be aware that it's not something that's included in school anymore. The second thing that I wanted to share with you as something that can help your kiddos is just handwriting and penmanship. So you always hear people saying kids these days don't know how to write in cursive. They're not teaching cursive anymore. I've kind of said the same thing. And last night, as I was looking at information, uh, for this episode, I read a viewpoint that I thought was pretty interesting.

Speaker 1: (05:47)
Basically, the person was saying, people don't know how to write. Don't need to know how to write in cursive. It's basically cursive is basically linking letters together. And that's not something that's a necessity now because you can write however you want. And I sat back and I thought about that. And I'm like, you know what? That's really kind of true because I traditionally do not write in cursive most of the time when I actually write things out, except for my name, I traditionally print things. And that's what I prefer. So I really think the focus should be on just like penmanship, like legible penmanship, and then them knowing how to sign their name. And if they decide that they want to kind of print their name, then that's okay too. But handwriting and penmanship seems to be a place that a lot of kids fall through

Speaker 3: (06:31)
On for that. I didn't really find anything

Speaker 1: (06:33)
Online that you can actually do online, but there are a ton of downloadable worksheets that they can use to learn how to write in cursive if you wanted them to learn how to write. But I think the basic premises is just having them practice their penmanship and learning how to write their name in cursive. And then the third thing that I wanted you to consider is money management. And within that writing checks, like I know most of us do not write checks. I hardly ever write a check, but there are a few things that I write checks for. And when I have had my two older kids, when I have gotten them checking account, I taught them how to write a check, but I noticed that it just wasn't something that they were taught in school. I remember I learned that like in elementary school and I was so excited to learn that I don't know why it like fascinated me, but I'm learning to write checks because sometimes you still do have to write checks and then money management, just learning how to manage their money.

Speaker 1: (07:29)
What they say is happening with kids and money is that because we oftentimes are using debit cards, they don't see money as real. They see it as I'm going to hand over this card and it has money on it. And there's a disconnect between them realizing that that's money that you have to earn. And you know, that there's a finite amount of it. That's not unlimited. So a couple of good things that I recommend you do as in terms of learning money. Management is number one, Dave Ramsey of course has a ton of tools that you can use for kids of all ages, for them to learn money management, not getting into debt, handling, you know, credit cards and buying big purchases and all of those things. There's a ton of information on his website. I think most of us know who Dave Ramsey is.

Speaker 1: (08:11)
So check out his website. I believe it's probably Dave ramsey.com. Um, but another thing is to look at a debit card. And one that I found that I think has the most robust system is called Greenlight. So Greenlight card.com is the website. And it is basically set up to where it can help you to raise your kid in a financially smart way. So the drawback of some of the stuff with Dave Ramsey is they really need a hands-on thing. So this screen light, and I'm no way affiliated with them. I'm just sharing this with you. Greenlight is a debit card for kids. It's managed by the parents. They can earn money on there. Like if you're one that gives like an allowance or a, like a, a reward or reimbursement for chores or for different things, it's their card. And you can add money through the app.

Speaker 1: (08:58)
You can set it up to where it adds a certain amount each month or each week is based on things that they do, that they check off in the app and they own it, but you control the money. And then they also can't like go into the red, like a real debit card would, but so that's one option is to use something like that. And they have a really low fee. It's like $5 a month. So the Greenlight card is a great option for younger kid, for older kid, for you to be able to put some responsibility into their hands of earning money and seeing the money and learning how the card works and that there is a finite amount to it. All of those things and Greenlight is in the U S I know that there's similar cards like this for Australia. And I found one for the UK too.

Speaker 1: (09:44)
I don't think it's the same company, but it is, uh, something very, very similar besides those things. So, uh, learning to type and writing and penmanship, money-management learning to write checks, all of that stuff. The other things that I recommend that you consider that would be, you know, getting them out into the real real world, shutting off the digital world. And all of those things is learning how to drive. If they haven't done that already, you know, having them go through driver's ed learning, how to drive, getting a job somewhere, you know, where they get some responsibility to do something, maybe get it in an area that they have some sort of interest in. When I was in high school, I got a job at a hospital and I was working in the lab. And then I connected that with a health co-op class that they had in my high school.

Speaker 1: (10:29)
So I went to school for half a day, my senior year. And then I went there for half a day. I absolutely loved that. And that was the best thing that I could do for my future, because it showed the potential donors to my education, the scholarships that I got, it showed them that I was dedicated. And that I had knowledge of this world that I was saying I wanted to go into. I wasn't just a kid saying I want to be a nurse, but having no inkling of an idea, what that world was like by me already working in that area, I was able to demonstrate that I knew where I was going and I was going to be successful. And if they gave me money for my college education, I absolutely was going to use that. And you know, that it would help propel me forward in the things that I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: (11:13)
So helping them find a job in an area where they have some sort of interest. And then finally, if they're not able to get a job in some area, or they don't know what they're interested in, just getting them a job somewhere. So they get responsibility and an earning and income, but then the other thing would be to have them volunteer someplace where they can see what the real world is out there, you know, and see something outside of the bubble of your family, in your home, like a homeless shelter or a food place, or you know, where they serve the homeless. So definitely consider some of these things as options for your kiddo, because this failure to launch thing is definitely something they're seeing more and more in kids. And the are the research that I've read is from like five years ago, but it's still continuing to be an issue and getting worse and worse. And probably with this whole COVID situation that we're in right now, I would venture to say that it's gotten even worse, that fear of, you know, getting out and being independent and doing other things, because we have been so sheltered and so at home and all of that. Okay. So hope you found this helpful connect with those things. I'll drop links in the comments for the typing thing and the Greenlight card. Definitely check those out,

Speaker 2: (12:20)
Chat with you next time. Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time.