How Helping Your Kids Can Hold Them Back
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To love and to cherish. To love and to itch. I mean, cherish. Uh, sweetie? For as long as we both shall live. For as long as we both shall itch. Sorry. Dave, come on. From this day forward. Look, I'm sorry. I just can't do this itch. If you have eczema, Michael? you know that itch is a four-letter word. Learn about reducing that offensive eczema itch fast at fourletteritch.com.

Listen to all my episodes of Dr. Laura's Deep Dive in your favorite podcast app. Search for Dr. Laura's Deep Dive podcast and follow my deep dive today. Dr. Laura's Deep Dive. Dr. Laura's Deep Dive podcast.

Raising children to become independent adults is every parent's task. But there's an increasing phenomenon of kids who experience a failure to launch. In their 20s and even 30s, far too many adult children are not just living off their parents or with their parents. They actually expect it to be that way.

The problem usually starts early. You don't want your children to be upset. You don't want them to struggle. Your child doesn't like sleeping in her room, so instead of teaching her to cope with being uncomfortable, you let her sleep with you. You're constantly protecting them from getting hurt physically and emotionally. You overpraise, under-criticize. You make excuses.

When my listener Amy called me, she was adamant that her daughter's fourth grade teacher was a bully. I didn't push, but I did suspect that there was more to the situation than a mean teacher. Here's our conversation.

Amy, welcome to the program. Hi, Dr. Laura. Thank you for taking my call. I have listened to you for 30 plus years. I'm a second generation Dr. Laura listener. And I kind of lived my life according to Dr. Laura's wisdom. I've been married for 20 years and I'm a stay at home mom to four girls. But I have a question for you. My youngest daughter is very, very attached to me. And I believe that her teacher is a bully. And I believe that she's a bully.

And I just want to make sure that I'm making the right decision. You have been in the back of the classroom and have seen the teacher be a bully. I have. And what do you call... So the teacher has picked out your kid to bully? No. Or the teacher tends to be tough on all the kids? Let me finish my question before you answer it. I'm sorry. She's very tough on all the kids. Then she's not bullying your kid. She's tough. She's very...

Very unpleasant. She embarrasses them in front of their class. This is fourth grade. Okay, ma'am, you can do anything you'd like. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not even going to assume that what you're saying is the absolute truth.

It's possible. There are bad teachers. There are bad everythings. You think she's really a bad teacher and you can't get her shifted into another classroom and fourth grade? This school only has one fourth grade room? Is that true? Yes or no? No, they have several, but we've had five meetings with the principals and the superintendents and they refuse to move her. Okay, then either find another school, homeschool, send her to private school, do whatever you'd like. There's no reason to... I'd like to homeschool her. Fine, go ahead. Okay, thank you.

That's it. You know, that's not really sort of a heavy duty question for me. My number 1-800-375-2872. And I didn't think our caller would be interested in my perspective that dealing with a demanding teacher is probably good for kids. Holding kids accountable.

When they act up in class in front of other students, I'm good with that. This is actually a brutal, out-of-control teacher, then it seems odd that the principal and the superintendent that many times would stand up for the teacher. Five times, what did she say? That seems odd. So when it seems odd to me, I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know.

I'm not sure about Amy's situation, but I do know that there are lots of parents right now protecting their children from the consequences of their own actions in school. You think you're helping them, but your help can come back to hurt them and your relationship with them. That's exactly what was happening with Sue when she called me about her 22-year-old daughter. Sue, welcome to the program.

Hi, Dr. Laura. Hi. I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I have a 22-year-old daughter who just graduated from college. She moved back in. Why did she move back in? Why? What's funny about that? She's 22, for God's sake. Yes, she should be in her own place somewhere. That's what I think. What are you doing babying her?

Charge her rent. Let her pay rent at some place where they collect rent. Wow, I didn't expect this. She's what? You've only listened to the program for the last 20 minutes.

I have. She was telling me all her friends' parents don't charge for a year, and she feels unwelcome in my house that I'm charging her anything. Sue, most parents in your range are stupid, weak, and frightened of their kids and don't want to look bad. Consequently, they sacrifice being true parents and leaders, helping their children navigate toward being an adult.

And they're manipulated by their little snowflake twit kids easily. And yours is doing you. Get her the hell out of your house. She's an adult. Let her figure it out. I agree. I think that's true. I mean, I want to help her pay off some of her student debt. No, you don't want to help her pay off her student loans.

Really? Okay. She's an adult. Gosh darn. You're right. What happened to the days when we looked at 22 years old people as adults responsible for themselves? How do you expect her ever to be a competent adult? She already is a twit. Everybody else's parents are not making them pay and you're bad because you're going to make me pay. You're bad. She's already a twit. You already created a twit. A snowflake twit.

She told me she feels unwelcome in my house. Get her the hell out of your unwelcome home. Yeah. Well, thank you, Dr. Laura. I really appreciate your no-nonsense point of view. It's great. No nonsense at all. Tell her she's got two and a half weeks to get her butt out. Love it. I will. Thank you so much, Dr. Laura. And tell her it's not because you're asking me about not charging rent. It's because, oh, I forgot. You're an adult and you're responsible for yourself. That's right.

Love it. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. My number 1-800-375-2872. I can't believe it. 22, finished college, back in. What? I feel unwelcome in my own home. It ain't your home, babe. You paying mortgage, maintenance, utilities? It ain't your home. Go stay at a friend's house and be welcome. What a twit.

Oh my God, can you imagine? I would fall down on the ground laughing if that happened to me. And I'd say, turn around and leave. You're not, you aren't welcome. I have to take a break now. I'm going to earn my own self-esteem by taking a break and taking what comes of it. You should too, but I'll be right back. Dr. Laura's Deep Dive Podcast.

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Come on. From this day forward. Look, I'm sorry. I just can't do this itch. If you have eczema, Michael, you know that itch is a four-letter word. Learn about reducing that offensive eczema itch fast at fourletteritch.com.

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Dr. Laura's Much Deeper Deep Dive Podcast. When kids develop an unhealthy sense of entitlement, there are no limits to the things they want. The more you give them, the less they appreciate and the more they demand. My conversation with 23-year-old Mo and her sense of entitlement was, Mo, been a little mind-blowing to me. Ha ha ha.

Oh, welcome to the program. Hi, Dr. Lara. Okay. So I'm 23 and my...

question is, and you can ask background if you need. Um, so I am, I've moved back home and I have a full-time job, but I am currently living at home with my parents. And, um, I've made the decision to do that, um, because they offered and I get to save money and, um,

I do whatever else around the house to kind of help out, but I'm doing it to save money for myself. The issue is that in several occasions about the decisions that I make for myself, my parents will... And I'm not sure if this is relative to what you opened about yesterday about constructive criticism, but...

They will give, I get very frustrated with the things that they tell me to do. And I know what I want to do. I have no idea what you're talking about. So you want to give me a couple of examples? Okay, here's one example. So I wanted to travel abroad next year. I thought you were trying to save money.

Yeah, but I feel like I'm young and I can save as much as I want, but I want to travel abroad. And so I'm making that decision for myself and I decided to seek out...

So when you live there because you want to save money, they're assuming it's for significant things like housing and a car and whatever stuff is necessary in life and not so you can live off them and then go travel. So if they criticize that, I agree with them. So the answer to your mentality, no, honey, it's your mentality. It's a very childish mentality. Sorry.

Okay. You are living off your parents, so they do have input. Okay. Because it's costing them to have you there. Okay. So you're wrong. They're right. Okay. You want to go live on your own and save money for traveling. Go live on your own as an independent adult and put money in the bank for when you have enough to go traveling.

All right. I understand what you're saying. If you were my kid, I would not have you living under my roof to save money to go traveling. There would be no way I would agree to it. So are you confirming that if...

They give me their opinion or tell me something and I don't agree with it. There's no, I shouldn't even try to come up with a respectable way to give them, to tell them my thoughts back. And I just take it as is. Well, who cares about your thoughts? You gave your thoughts. You said, I'm going to use the money to travel. And they're thinking, screw that. We thought we were actually helping her. We're just making it nicer for her so she can go travel. Forget that. She's 23. Let her take care of herself.

You can give your opinion back. I'd throw you out by the weekend. I mean, the issue wasn't over the specific travel. Ma'am, you have a second one? Yes, it was. That's what you told me, and I'm going with what you said. And when people backtrack, I don't permit it. So you want to have another criticism? Because you'd be out of my house by now. So that you're still in their house, you ought to be very grateful for. Of course, of course. You need to be grateful that with that attitude, you still have their roof over your head.

My number. Wow. Talk about entitlement. Take care of me so I can go travel. It's an important part of being young. So it's taking responsibility for your damn self. Please let your children mature by paying their own way. When kids have a lot of privileges that are unearned, they don't gain self-confidence. How do you think you gain self-confidence? Well, you look back at what you've done and you say, I am hot. Look what I did.

That's what happened for my listener, Lori, and she sent me this email to tell me about it. She wrote, I was a snowflake. At 23 years old, I was still living at home. My mom had no problem with me living at home, but my stepdad did. He threw me out in a roundabout way, which ultimately was for my own good.

He gave me the cold shoulder, spoke to me only when he would tell me to do chores, tried to pit my brother and me against each other. The tension was thick. So when I couldn't stand it anymore, I got an apartment 15 minutes from home. Several years later, he confessed that he threw me out by making it hard for me to continue to live there as a snowflake.

I struggled at my new life at first, but I got through that. I worked two jobs to make ends meet, and after two years, went back to school to finish my degree. My parents didn't pay a penny. I did it myself. Three years after moving out, I took a huge leap and moved to another city where I created a life and a family for myself. I got my nursing license and have been a hospice nurse now for 14 years. It's not a job. It's a mission, and it is possible to unsnatch.

snowflake. Kids cannot reach their full potential when you coddle and rescue them. When you see that your adult child is avoiding adult responsibilities, it's time to hand them the pink slip on their lives. When I spoke to Kara, her husband was ready to take a firm stand with their college flunky son.

Kara, on the other hand, wanted to help her boy by giving him another chance, another chance, another chance. She didn't see that her idea of help would just enable him to continue down the wrong path. Kara, welcome to the program.

Hello, Dr. Laura. How are you? Good. Thank you. I'm calling about my soon-to-be 20-year-old son who just completed his sophomore year at college, about five hours from where we live. He did not do well at all. He failed one class, got a couple of C's and a couple of D's. And the reason he's doing so poorly is? He joined a fraternity.

Okay, so the bottom line is he's not working hard. Correct. Well, you just paid for your last semester. Okay, that's what my husband wants to do, and I don't agree with that. You're wrong. Why? Are you serious? Is there no forgiveness? He needs to go get a job. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. It has to do with raising a boy into a man. Okay.

So just... It's cut off. He's 20. He'll have to figure out something else to do rather than waste money and get paid for a social life. My feeling is letting him go back. Your feeling is irrelevant. I understand a mother's feelings. Protect at all costs. That's usually why it's very important for women to be married to men because men have a very different attitude.

Right. They don't operate on feelings. They operate mostly on good sense. My concern is that he'll not do anything. That's right. And he'll be out on the street. So he'll figure it out. I don't think I'm capable of that. Well, then go to your doctor and get a sedative because leave this to your husband. He's trying to turn your boy into a man. You're trying to interfere with that. Okay. You are 100% wrong. Your husband's 100% right. Turn it over to him as an act of faith.

Okay. And keep out of it. Your son calls you, you say, talk to your dad. I just, I have such a hard time with this. Well, that's why your boy is a little bit of a bum, because he knows mom will let him get away with it. But I hadn't done anything like that. Really, ma'am. It doesn't come out of the woodwork at the end. No, I understand that. You're protecting, you're protecting where protection is unwarranted. He is not being attacked.

He is giving you both the finger. He's not a victim. He's a perpetrator. I understand that. Then get out of the way of your husband turning him into a man. Okay. Get out of the way, please. Okay. I will do that. Good. Thank you. Good. Trust your husband. Okay. Will do. Good. Excellent. You might need a sedative.

Unless you want a snowflake, you will have to let your kids suffer the natural consequence of whatever they've done. Teach them how to earn the things they want. It's a really important concept to get. Letting them figure life out is how they grow up. Unfortunately, many parents don't seem to understand that. Giving them money, paving the way, isn't how they will feel impressed with themselves.

And that's what I explained to Bruce when he called about financially supporting his son and his son's wife.

Bruce, welcome to the program. Hello, Dr. Laura. It's an honor to talk to you. Thank you. We have come into an impasse with – I'll quickly see if I can get through this. My son, when he started college, undergraduate school, met a girl. Two months after he was at college, they became good friends, and they continued to date exclusively for the five years that both of them were in undergraduate school.

They both graduated last spring. My wife and I have been talking to him about when he was going to propose marriage and buy the ring. Propose marriage? Well, they've been dating exclusively. They've been talking about this for about getting married for a couple of years. Oh, a couple of years. I missed that part. Okay. Oh, yes. They've been dating exclusively for five years. Getting engaged to somebody who can't support her?

Well, let me get into this. This is part of the problem right now. When they graduated, she's been unable to get a job for a year. They graduated last spring. He had a job as an intern, and he continued that job after graduation until he gave notice a few weeks ago. He has been accepted to graduate school at an Eastern Ivy League college in engineering, and we are super enthusiastic about it. And we said, look,

You guys, to continue your relationship, marriage is probably the best move to make at this time, and we are willing to support both of you while you're going to graduate school. We think life would be easier that way. And goodness knows that's what parents are here for, to take adult males and just make life easier for them instead of allowing them to make adult male decisions.

But okay. Okay, thank God for him that you're his dad and not me. Well, we think that part of the responsibility of having children is to provide their parents. Not to marry children, no. No. When they marry, they have a whole other level of existence and autonomy that should be respected. When he takes over a wife, he is no longer your little boy.

He is not to be maintained or protected by you anymore. He's a grown man making grown man decisions. Well, let me delve into this a bit further. In other words, he needs to stay single and not be shacking up and not knocking her up if he wants to have continued education paid for. He's either a child or he's an autonomous man. He has to pick one. He's a dependent or an adult independent male. He has to pick one.

Well, our background is that my wife and I actually went to graduate school with loans from her parents. You know, I don't want to know what your background was because it doesn't change anything for my advice.

Now, actually, my perspective. My perspective is there are too many parents like you who baby your adult children, and they become less and less competent, more and more dependent, and then more and more resentful when there are some expectations of anything back and forth when they're being financially supported. So their lives will be easier. Since when is your job to make your boy's life easier?

I thought that the responsibility of parents is to bring their kids to the point that they're able to be more easily self-sufficient. And graduate school seems like the next step. No, it isn't. It's to bring them up with all the philosophy and the wherewithal for them to take care of themselves. And when he makes a decision to be a husband, he has severed that dependency tie with you.

I know you and your wife's ego and expectations are all wrapped up in his advanced education, but he has a choice to make. Either pays for that advanced education himself while he's married to her or she's working her butt off slinging hash to make sure she can pay the bills or they're taking out loans. It's their life now. Well, I'm... You're insulting them.

You're telling your son he's not man enough to take care of himself. Okay. I'm a bit surprised. That doesn't quite solve our problem, but I... You don't have a problem. He does. You don't have a problem. So...

My advice should be take the ring back and go to school. No, your advice should be, listen, when you're an autonomous married man, your life is yours. I hand you the pink slip on your life. Very happy to come to the wedding where we're responsible for the rehearsal dinner and the flowers, and you guys are on your own. That's what it's like to take on life, that next step in life. You take it on. We don't take it on. We don't put you on our shoulders.

and take it on for you. You take it on. That's what a man does. That's what I would expect you, his father, to tell him. That's what a man does. A man figures out how to make it work. You want to be a married man and you want this graduate education. Go get it. Figure it out. That's what a man does. I don't think there are many fathers teaching their sons how to be men anymore, and you even sound a little surprised and perplexed. But your job is to teach them how to be a man, not to make life easier for him.

We have expressed exactly the same philosophy to him in the past. That's it? Then why'd you back off from it? I want my baby to have his graduate education, no matter what he does. I want my baby to do that. We were trying to avert a living together situation that her parents are pushing. You can't. That's their decision. And everything that goes along with it. He shacks up or gets married.

He's still responsible for himself. Okay. And his woman. That's what a man does. That's what you should be telling him. Not when to get married, if to get married, to whom to get married, but tell him a man takes over the pink slip to his life, makes all his decisions, pays the prices, makes it all happen. Mommy and Daddy are done. We did our part. Now it's your turn.

The other tickler in here was that her parents will support her in a shack-up situation. Okay, her parents don't care that she's a slut. I agree. Her parents are nauseating, vulgar, and ridiculous. But your job is to teach your son to be a man by your definition of what a man is. And a man does not treat a woman he loves by making her an unpaid whore.

That's another thing you should teach him. That's the problem, Mary Ellen. Excuse me, Dr. Laura, you've been on this. Who's Mary Ellen? Oh, she's my mother-in-law who's an angel. And I'm sorry, I just caught her walking over. That's okay. If you like her, I'll take the name. She's the best person in the world. Well, there you go. Then you can call me Mary Ellen anytime.

She's an absolute angel. I miss you on regular radio. I did not find you until a few days ago on the Internet. So your advice has not been supporting me like I needed it, I guess. No, my advice is supporting you to teach your son to be a man. That's what I'm trying to support. My memory hadn't been refreshed, let's put it that way. Okay. All right, thank you very much. You're welcome. You are welcome. And her parents are pigs.

I have to take a break, and I want you to think about, in your whole life, what made you feel proud of yourself? Hmm. Give that advice to your kids. I'll be right back. Dr. Laura's Deep Dive. Deep Dive Podcast. To love and to cherish. To love and to itch. I mean, cherish. Uh, sweetie? For as long as we both shall live. For as long as we both shall itch. Sorry, tape.

From this day forward... Look, I'm sorry. I just can't do this itch. If you have eczema... Michael! You know that itch is a four-letter word. Learn about reducing that offensive eczema itch fast at fourletteritch.com. At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent. Being there day and night...

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Kids don't launch themselves. You have to launch them. And too many parents don't understand that part of the launching process is allowing kids to make their own decisions, even bad ones. How else can they learn? You can give them your advice, then give them a smile and a hug and empower them to make their own decisions. And if you could use some help, I wrote a best-selling book,

called Stupid Things Parents Do to Mess Up Their Kids. And of course, you can call me at 1-800-DR-LAURA. Now, go do the right thing. If you like this podcast, be sure to rate it on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen to my podcast. Of course, I'd love if you gave me five stars. And be sure to share this podcast with a friend on Facebook or your preferred social media platform.

To love and to cherish. To love and to itch. I mean, cherish. Uh, sweetie? For as long as we both shall live. For as long as we both shall itch. Sorry. Dave, come on. From this day forward. Look, I'm sorry. I just can't do this itch. If you have eczema, Michael? you know that itch is a four-letter word. Learn about reducing that offensive eczema itch fast at fourletteritch.com.