You're Not Done Yet
Parenting Young Adults in an Age of Uncertainty
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A clear-eyed, optimistic guide for parents with adult children who need help navigating the challenges to launching an independent life.
Times were already tough for young adults looking for ways to start living independent lives after high school and college: rents were up, wages were down, student loan debt was burdensome, then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. A generation of young people were forced out of their classrooms, jobs, and social lives, returning home to live with their parents. Now many of these young adults carry the scars of the internal pandemic, with increased anxiety and depression, poor coping, and the uncertainty of how to restart their lives. Parents want to help, but the old rules of advice-giving can clash with the need to respect their child’s autonomy.
In You’re Not Done Yet, two leading adolescent and young adult mental health experts provide a practical and compassionate path to parents combatting the worry and frustrating isolation many feel when supporting their twentysomethings. Hibbs and Rostain explain when and how developmental markers changed, and invite parents and young adults to learn new, more effective ways of communicating with each other. Part I of the book covers the “new normal,” of young adulthood, with its educational and career changes. The new normal of parent-child relationship asks us to rethink our “shoulds,” and in the process develop a closer relationship based on talking and listening to understand each other, rather than “being right.” Part II addresses the common and challenging problems that arise when mental illness creates a drag on a young adult’s progress, and shows how parents may be engaged in their child’s treatment. Packed with helpful information and step-by-step guides to specific problems, this book will be an invaluable resource for parents and their twentysomething children.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Family psychologist Hibbs and Rostain, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, team up again (after 2019's The Stressed Years of Their Lives) for a compassionate parenting manual on how to help 20–somethings navigate young adulthood. The authors suggest that such factors as declining real wages, rising student debt, and economic turbulence caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have left young people more reliant on their parents than previous generations. Helping adult children develop autonomy requires collaborating with them to develop solutions, Hibbs and Rostain contend, encouraging parents to listen attentively to their children's perspectives to better understand where they're coming from and ensure they feel heard. Client stories shed light on intergenerational dynamics, as when the authors recount counseling a mother concerned about her daughter's eight hours of daily screen time, concluding that because the daughter was able to maintain a job and friendships she didn't "meet the criteria for a treatable mental disorder." To keep perspective, the authors urge parents to recognize how concerns about excessive social media use may mirror their own parents' anxiety about long hours spent watching TV. Hibbs and Rostain excel at explaining large-scale social trends, and the empathetic explorations of how parents and adult children perceive the world will help both find common ground. Not-quite-empty nesters will appreciate the guidance. Correction: A previous version of this review misidentified Anthony Rostain's academic institution.