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THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Advocating for Autistics, One Story at a Time
🎙️ Welcome to The SJ Childs Show Podcast! 🎉
Join Sara Bradford—better known as SJ Childs—as she bridges understanding and advocacy for the neurodivergent community. This podcast shines a light on autism awareness, empowering stories, expert insights, and practical resources for parents, educators, and individuals alike.
Brought to you by The SJ Childs Global Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting autistic individuals and their families worldwide, this show is your weekly dose of inspiration and actionable ideas. Visit sjchilds.org to learn more about our mission, find resources, and connect with our growing community.
Catch us on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Goodpods—or tune in Fridays at 8:30 AM EDT on the Helium Radio Network’s Life Improvement Radio (Channel 1). Together, let’s foster a brighter, more inclusive world! 🌟
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THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Advocating for Autistics, One Story at a Time
Episode 304-The Heart of Independence: Nurturing Growth and Freedom to Empower Young Adults with Dr. Jack Stoltzfus
How do you navigate the complex landscape of parenting adult children while fostering their independence? In this enlightening episode, we delve into the essential principles of navigating this transition with love, support, and a focus on boundaries. Our expert guest, a seasoned psychologist, offers invaluable strategies that help parents understand the dual roles of love and discipline when guiding their children into adulthood.
From discussing the varying challenges young adults face, especially those with developmental disabilities, to practical tips on creating a five-year plan together, each segment is designed to empower parents to foster emotional and social growth while allowing for independence. Discover how focusing on intentional parenting and recognizing cultural biases surrounding independence can significantly impact both your relationship and your child’s trajectory.
Join us on this journey of understanding how to let go while reinforcing the bond that sustains a nurturing family dynamic. We encourage you to reflect on your experiences and engage with our community—subscribe, share your thoughts, and leave a review to help us support families embarking on their parenting journey.
The SJ Childs Show is Backford's 13th season. Join Sarah Bradford and the SJ Childs Show team as they explore the world of autism and share stories of hope and inspiration. This season we're excited to bring you more autism summits featuring experts and advocates from around the world.
Speaker 2:Go to sjchildsorg.
Speaker 3:Hi and thanks for joining the SJ Child Show today. I am really excited for our guest today. How many of you parents, parents of young children, you know have thought, oh, what are we going to do someday when you know our children need to leave? And parents with adult children, are you thinking when are our kids ever going to leave, right? And so here we have today, somebody wonderful to help answer all of those questions and especially the in-between, and let us know some great advice on how to move forward with some intentional parenting. And I think that that's the most important part is that we put our intentions into everything we do. But it's a pleasure to meet you, dr Jack, and I don't want to. You know, mess up your last name.
Speaker 3:I'm going to let you introduce yourself, but it's so great to meet you. Please introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about you.
Speaker 4:Sure, I am a psychologist specializing in working with parents at the launching stage of young adulthood, so helping parents navigate that process successfully. And I have three. They're no longer young adults but you know, at least two of them are in the millennial generation and one in the Gen X, and they're happily married and have marketable jobs and all. So I think they're pretty well launched at this point. And some of my story goes back to issues with my father, some estranged with my father, that I had to work through. And then I actually did my dissertation work at the University of Wisconsin on trying to define and measure healthy separation from parents.
Speaker 4:So, I've got two perspectives one coming from the young adult, the adolescent side, of what it feels like to be in a healthy relationship with parents, and then one more from my own parent side. What does that mean? To be in a healthy relationship and be able to facilitate this, this launching process? So I've been doing this for about 50 years, so I'm old as dirt.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the wiser, the better and the more experience and the more we can learn from. So thank you, thank you so much for the work you have done and the parenting right, and sometimes I reflect back and think how can it be 21 years that I've been in this parenting position and it's still going on? I have older one and two younger ones that are still at home, 13 and 15. And so this is a perfect time to start thinking about it not being so far off in the future and what that could look like and what kind of good planning skills we can put in. But I think that and I'd love your opinion on this I think that it starts far, far further back and as soon as you can, probably at least for yourself as a parent.
Speaker 3:I'm finding maybe just because it's on child number three, but I'm finding that the more I envision kind of what my relationship might look like with my youngest child later in life, the more it drives me to want to create a different type of relationship with her. I find myself much more concerned about her social, emotional wellness than I was with, you know, the oldest one. I was more concerned about grades and discipline and things and such. And so it's this shift. What is your approach and what you generally kind of guide parents to? How do you start that process?
Speaker 4:Well, I'll make one comment about how parenting. There's a certain bias, I think, in our culture that you know, once your kid reaches 18 or 21, they ought to be out of the house, and that's the definition of a launched young adult. Well, that's not my definition. Young adult Well, that's not my definition. My definition is that the parents enable an adult child to increase their self-sufficiency and their independence while retaining a caring relationship or bond with the parents. And it doesn't have anything to do with whether living at home or not. But our culture says well, if he's 23 and he's still at home, something's wrong, or you know, then the alarm bells go off when it's 26 or 27. If you go to India and I can, you know, characterize this as a cultural bias In India I was on a podcast with an Indian person from India and he said you know, if you're 23, 24, and you're living outside the home, there's something wrong in India.
Speaker 1:It's just the opposite here.
Speaker 4:So I say our parenting role continues through life, but we have to really make that shift of learning how to both send the message of love but also the message of letting go, and I think that starts very young.
Speaker 4:I talk about the holding the child and letting go. Holding and letting go and that's constantly continues to need to happen throughout the family life cycle, the development of the child. And if you just some parents will say, okay, they're 18 or 18 now I'm going to just totally step out and I've demonstrated in my research that if you just give autonomy alone, without love, the results are not that good. In fact, with the two populations I studied the delinquent population, drug abusing population, had lots more autonomy, but they didn't have the love factor in there. So that's why even the subtitle of my book, the parents launch code loving and letting go of our adult children. So I really want to be sure that parents start with love, unconditional love, no matter what, and that's the that's foundational to being able to build the launch pad so these kids can can successfully move into adulthood yeah, and I guess you know it might be great to define and I'm sure everybody has their kind of their own definition possibly but what types of mannerisms, shall we say, should we give with unconditional love?
Speaker 3:Things like you know, forgiving our child or not judging them, not shaming them, trying to connect more with them? What are some of those ideas that you have about that?
Speaker 4:Yes, I mean I really make a distinction. And some people say, well, you can't just give unconditional love. I think you can, and there's a very real distinction between unconditional love and unconditional approval. Unconditional love means, no matter what, I love you as my son and daughter. That will not change. Nothing can break that bond of love that I feel for you. That's very different than saying I have a problem with your behavior. Your behavior is something that's irresponsible, or I don't think it's helpful to you, or it's antagonistic, and I think you need to address that. So that distinction is really really important, need to address that.
Speaker 3:So that distinction is really, really important. Well, and I think that in offering those types of constructive criticism, then they you are offering love and because you're only looking out for their best interests, and you know, yeah, they might not view it as that at the time, but I agree with that that you are in once again having intent of allowing this human to you know, develop in the way that's conducive for their own success and wellbeing, and I think that that's an important part of early parenting that has to be learned. Maybe, and hopefully, something like this podcast will definitely help give those tools too.
Speaker 4:Sure. Well, I always say no is not a four-letter word and sometimes it can be the most loving thing a parent can do. You know, and or say to a child you know, if your toddler's toddling to the street, you're going to say no, pick them up and bring them back, you know, and that's the loving thing to do. It gets harder when you've got an 18-year-old getting into a car and maybe they've been using alcohol or smoking weed or something. And now what do you do with that weed or something? And now what do you do with that? And in my opinion, no means you call the police and say, hey, you pull them over because that's a loving thing to do, so they don't kill themselves or somebody else.
Speaker 4:So it's harder to say no when they're older because you're trying to, you want them to make their own decisions in some ways. But you have to have values in the home. You have to have rules, guidelines that are kind of deal breakers you can't bring drugs into the house, you can't steal, you know. You can't damage property, you can't threaten people. I mean you can't let young adults, teens, violate those rules. It doesn't help them because society is not going to allow them to do that.
Speaker 3:So absolutely no, they're. The boundaries are have to be kept and you have to have clear consequences and discussions about those things I think that are lining kind of the expectations up for those things is the best, because then there's a clear understanding of, well, you already knew ahead of time that this was something that was off the table. So, uh, makes it a little bit easier for some accountability in the end, and I wrote this blog which has been pretty popular on YouTube never evict your child.
Speaker 4:You know Well when you go, when you read what I have to say, it's a young adult. A teen or young adult can say, can indicate in two ways they don't want to live in the house. One is to say I want out of here, help me move, I need to move on in my life. And the other is they disobey and they don't abide by the rules in the house. So by their actions they're saying they want to live in another space, another place.
Speaker 4:But I also tell parents place. But I also tell parents, you know, help them make that move, be a partner to them. You know, maybe you give them some furniture, help them get started, but not to make it as a huge, angry kind of confrontation Okay, you're not buying by the rules, get out of here. You know, say listen, it looks like you you don't want to live here and under our rules and I understand that maybe it's time to be someplace where you can have your own rules. So we'll help you. We'll help you move out and we'll help you look for some housing and maybe help you find roommates or something. And we'll work with you to you, because you're telling us you want to move on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that. Offering some options to help. I think that's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 4:It stays in. You're staying in a positive, partnering way with the young adult on their move into adulthood. You'd like it to go smoothly and for them to say okay.
Speaker 3:I'm time to leave. It's time to leave now. Let's lay out a plan, but it doesn't always work. Yeah, that's certainly true. Sorry about the lag we might be having in our internet there. Um, it's really important to to obviously individualize. You know what type of child, adult child, you know individual, are you dealing with and we, you know kind of talked about this. So let's talk a little bit about um, the uh, autistic community, and how we can um with the individuals who are going to be ready and at whatever point that means in their 30s, whatever it doesn't like you said, that's not like a time limit. How do we and what kind of systems should we help put in place for those individuals and those parents?
Speaker 4:Well, in my book I talk about four types of launch challenges. The one is more the classic failure to launch the movie that came out with Matthew Conaghy and is the couch potato just taking advantage of the parents. I like it here. It's free food, get the free Wi-Fi and TV on. Hey, it's time to move on. It's time to get a job, go to school, do something. That's one group.
Speaker 4:Now, they may have some, there may be some anxiety and maybe some depression going on, but I'd argue it's typically somewhat related to their failure to move on in their lives. That that's a contributor. At least that's one group. The second group and this is where the autistic young adult falls is the I would call it the kind of impaired group, where there's something that's impairing their process. It could be learning disability, adhd, spectrum issues, physical disabilities or whatever. So in some ways they're trying to overcome those things.
Speaker 4:The third group is what I call the derailed launch problem, and this is the person with serious mental health issues where they've got to be medicated, maybe even a facility, or it's going to be hard, maybe on the street, but it's going to be hard. Or they have an addiction problem, and I agree with this group. Until you deal with those two, they're not going to move forward. So they're kind of derailed. Got to help them out. And then the last one excuse me, last one is the estranged young adult, where they have cut off the relationship with the parents, and to me that's still a failure to launch because you haven't retained a caring bond that needs to be there.
Speaker 4:So in that second group then, and across the board, I think that every teen and young adult wants to be more independent. They have an internal drive in that direction. So when you're dealing with someone that has some impairment or limitation, it's important to understand that they still want to be as independent as they can, and parents should honor that and try to help them to be as independent as they can, to kind of recognize that that need is there. So I've got two young adults that I'm working with who are autistic. One of them has made great progress. When I started living at home they couldn't have eye contact with me. It was a lot of communication problems. That young adult has now made it all the way to being in an apartment, have his own car and driving to work you know Wow.
Speaker 4:But I can tell you a little interesting part of that process was him learning to drive and get his driver's license and his parents would try to teach him. But every time they get in the car and said would you like to drive, he could tell they were quite anxious about that and he said no. So he actually got a friend from church to teach him how to drive, because the parent's anxiety was so high that it affected his anxiety and he was in some ways bailing them out as well as himself on that. So it was a good decision to make. It's somebody else that isn't quite so anxious about the process. So he's made good progress.
Speaker 4:Now I have another young man he's 25, 26, who has both a physical disability and he's autistic, and it's unclear how far he's going to be able to go in terms of ultimately living on his own. And that's a. You know, that's a decision people parents need to make at some point in time. But the goal there is to increase as much as possible his independence at home. And as he gets more and more independent at home cooks his meal, does his laundry, cleans his room he gets closer to being able to be in an apartment on his own. So we don't just say, ok, wait till you move an apartment, we'll teach you the independent living skills. You start to do that right away.
Speaker 1:But it may be at some point.
Speaker 4:I just it just can't happen. It's too risky, the falls, the problems that this, this young man might have. He may have to live at home. But again back to that bias. So he, so he lives at home and he maybe gets some part time job or some volunteer stuff and I think that that's okay. I don't think parents should be kind of denigrating themselves or their actions in those cases.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for our son we have that possibility that it could be lifelong. And we've thought about, do we look into something like ADU, which is like a dwelling, an outside dwelling and outside attached dwelling uh, that would be suitable for him to have his own independent lifestyle but yet be on the same properties that we could assist in those life skills. So I think that there's some flexibility if you can make some arrangements in those areas for for those adults as well. Um, but okay, I said those areas for for those adults as well. Um, but okay, I said we still have a few years to worry about that hopefully, but yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:Um, one thing that I have definitely been um, kind of embracing with my youngest is saying like I want you to go and be happy and be independent and I want you to be able to come back and to be happy coming back and visiting and wanting to come back and doing these things. So I want it to look different than it is in, you know, for other situations, situations, and I think that maybe, um, in having those conversations as well, I hope that it's letting her know the the importance of the intent I'm putting into it and you know, I think it's a good uh conversation to have, even when they are early teenagers, to let them know like I really want you to leave the house and be out on your own and and be independent, and so just you know, how can I, maybe even how can I help you? How does that? How does that look to you know, asking your teens what their ideas of of moving out looks like someday and maybe cultivating those ideas with them. That just popped in my head.
Speaker 4:I don't think it's ever too early to start talking about that, and particularly if they end up bringing it up, but I think along the way, you can increase their opportunities for greater independence and greater decision making. I think there's a book I think it's called Raising Free Range Children or something like that, which kind of takes the position that we've coddled and made decisions for our kids too much and we need to let them go more, let them be free range more. So I think, as much as you can give them opportunities for independent experiences and independent decision making, which I think will set the stage for that leaving process then Set the stage for that leaving process then, and let's talk about your book and how that came about.
Speaker 3:What were the kind of the lead ups to that? What made you decide, ok, this is going to be the book I'm going to write about and show you. Have it right there. Let us take a look at that for a second and talk about that. Here it is.
Speaker 4:I'm sorry I don't have my bookshelf in back of me.
Speaker 1:It's off to the right here, or I could have it sitting there like a lot of people do.
Speaker 4:But it's the Parents Launch Code Loving and Letting Go of Our Adult Children available on Amazon Amazon. So this is a kind of a culmination of my work, while going way back into my childhood and my dissertation. But in the last 10 to 15 years I've been working a lot with parents of young adults who have been struggling with helping them get traction on their process of moving toward greater self-sufficiency and independence. So I started seeing that in my clinical work and then I did some workshops in the evening. But that wasn't. I'm supposed to be semi-retired I'm not sure my wife would agree with that, but anyway I didn't want to keep doing workshops at night and that type of thing. So then I built the website and then on the website I began to develop this set of practices, which I call the launch code, that I think parents need to apply or strengthen in order to create the best launch pad for facilitating that movement into adulthood. And I can go through those briefly if you want.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 4:So there are foundational practices. One of them is the unconditional love which I noted earlier. It's just no matter what, you're loved, you always have a place in my heart. You may not always have a place in my house, but you have a place in my heart, okay. The second practice is build a closer relationship to your young adult or your late teen.
Speaker 4:Now people would say, well, no, no, you don't want to do that, you're trying to let go, you should back away. Well, what I say is you need to change from a directing and controlling to more of a consulting and partnering with them on their identity development and their independence. So how can I help you develop who you are and what you want to be and what skills you have and talents and strengths, and how can I help you be more independent so you bring your love in there in that supportive way? So those two are foundational. And then there's two practices that I call healing practices. The first one is apology, because I just find parents you know and I work with parents autistic kids years ago when I was at a child guidance clinic and there's a lot of guilt that parents feel at times. Well, you know, maybe there's something I did or maybe I'm not doing enough or whatever. So I think parents need to.
Speaker 4:If there's something they feel like they did or didn't do that they're still hurt, they're still disappointed in themselves or feel guilty about, they need to apologize to the young adult. And I encourage you writing it out and reading it to them, because that reduces the guilt for the parent as well as it softens the potential for resentment to remain there in terms of the young adult. And then sometimes there's a second step. The parents then need to forgive themselves too. Okay, I apologize Now. Don't keep carrying it on. You forgive yourself, and sometimes parents need to forgive their kids too. I just talked to the mother earlier and she said I hate my kids and I said well, you better read chapter four, because you need to forgive your kids you know for your sake because you need that relationship with your kids and if you're angry at them, you need to get over that and let go of that anger.
Speaker 4:Then the fifth practice is bringing love and backbone together. Practice is bringing love and backbone together and this is really essential for the launch, because this is where the parent needs to say you know, these are the rules here and there are certain deal breakers. You can't stay here anymore if you break these rules which I just described earlier. So it forces the young adult to stand up. Now you always use the kind of analogy if the young adult's leaning on you as a parent, well, you can back away, or they're going to fall down, or you can push them over the other way and they're going to fall down. But if you just stand up now they have to stand up. So it's coming up and saying here's who I am, here's what my rules are, here's my boundaries, you have to respect those. So now they're forced to respect those and now they have a chance to move on their own.
Speaker 4:And the last practice is just it's kind of a grief stage, it's letting go. It's dealing with the sadness of the young adult leaving home and the dismemberment of the family. It'll never be the same again, because you now have someone living outside of the home too, and even if it's been a contentious relationship, there's often a certain amount of sadness and loss that parents have to have to deal with there. But it's really important to do the grieving and move on with your life and not keep hanging on to the kids and and living your life through your, through your kids.
Speaker 4:So that's really powerful advice yeah definitely so one thing I'll tell you that I do that. I think in the book I describe this and I think parents can do this on their own is to work with the young adult to have them come up with a five-year plan. That's about as far out as you can go with it. 18, 19, 20-something-year-olds, and where do they want to be living? What do they want to be doing? Will they be living alone or with somebody else? And it's aspirational. What would you like? You know this is the goal. And then, what are your talents, what are your skills? What do you need to do in the next six months to move toward that five-year plan? And what do you need to do in the next three months? What do you need to do in the next three months? What do you need to do in the next two weeks to move toward that?
Speaker 4:So it's a way that begins to lay out a plan, that is a vision of how they're going to move forward, and then the parents can come in as partners on that. We'll help you, we'll work with you and the parents will say, okay, we can support you in this way. Here's some things you're going to have to step up on your own and if you're didn't, bust your dishes back from your room. I said all these battles then it's. Then it feels like you're always in this kind of contentious relationship. But once we get this five-year vision and the parents and the young adult can meet every couple weeks or month and say how are we doing on our plan, it really shifts the relationship in in a much more positive direction.
Speaker 3:No, I love that. I love that you said partnership and I think that that's something that we should embrace and realize that we can have with a relationship like that with our kids, and that I think it's important to facilitate those types of journeys with them as much as we can. I love that and your website. I'm going to put it up here Parents letting gocom Tell us what kind of resources parents and adults can find on the website.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, there's a there are a number of resources. This book is described on the website, as well as some earlier books that I wrote that are shorter, that address each one of these practices that I went through. So if you thought, well, I only need this practice, you could order one of these smaller and cheaper books if you wanted to. So that's on there. There's a section that has interview questions that you can interview your young adult tips on these different practices, and then there's a section with a couple videos that I've done. There's a listing of different podcasts that I've done.
Speaker 4:And then there's a whole area of probably close to 150 blogs that I've written that really have come from parents with whom I have worked and the issues they brought up. Well, how do you deal with this? You've got a kid in the home with a drug problem. How do you deal with that? Or how do you deal with a child in the home that lies and doesn't tell the truth? So if people have a specific issue, they could kind of flip through those blogs and likely be able to find how I have addressed one of those issues that they might be having.
Speaker 3:So then there's a bibliography and then there's a section on parent resources and resources for young adults.
Speaker 3:You know websites and there's a good bit of resources like that on there too, so Well, thank you so, so much for the work you're doing and obviously you, like you said, have been doing it for a long time now and have seen success in what works and probably, what doesn't. I think it was one of the most important lessons Sure, sure, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, and any what's in the future for you, what are your plans? Any other things coming up?
Speaker 4:Well, I think one one thought I had was to maybe create a workbook off of the book that I could make available, and then people could just go right through the practices there. You know how to assess this, how to lay out your, your actions around that particular practice, and so I may do that. I don't know if my wife may shoot me if I tell her I'm going to do that.
Speaker 3:You're supposed to be retiring. That's fantastic, oh my gosh. It's been so nice to have you here today and I thank you for your time and and the work that you've put in and, obviously, the um really uh service that you provide for families and parents and in a hard process of transitioning uh, in many ways, for you know, like you said, life changing. There's a process I didn't even consider having to go through. So some really good things for me to be able to think about and listen to again as I listen back to this. So thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you for the resource that you offer to this community of neurodiverse young adults, teens and parents. I think it's just great to have this available. One thing with the Internet you can get so many good resources out there, so this is great that you're doing so.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it's a passion of ours and I really look forward to just seeing how far I can take it. So, oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it's a passion of ours and I really look forward to just seeing how far I can take it. Really, we'll see, right? Um, I would love to stay in touch and, uh, check in on you and see, and, if that workbook does come out, give me a little email and then we'll have you back down to check about it.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, and I'd love to stay in touch.
Speaker 4:Good yeah, me too, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. In the heart of the city she's shining bright. Oh yeah, stories of love and courage. All throughout the night, her voice resonating An anthem for all. Through the trials and the trials, she answers the call. A mother and a fighter, breaking barriers and strife. Love is her guide. She'll never hide. Thank you. Followers gather like stars in the night. So bright, 44,000 voices sharing in the light. She stands for family, advocates for more. A movement of compassion. Ways we'll soar Podcasts together. Symphony of support In life. A change of report. She's changing the world for you with a heart that's fierce and strong. Empathy's a melody, a journey we all belong to. Her eyes, a vision clear. Together we ride, shedding fears. In every heart, she plants the seed of understanding and love for dearly me. She's changing the world for you With a heart that's fierce and strong. Empathies and melodies In a journey we all belong.
