How to Help Your Teens Grow Up to Be Independent Adults

One minute you’re changing your kid’s diapers, and the next you’re arguing with her about curfew. Your baby has grown into a young person with strong opinions and a fierce desire to be independent. As a parent, it’s your job to teach him life skills. But, like everything with teenagers, it’s complicated. By the time you’re butting heads over phone and car privileges, the best time to teach independence has passed. Raising an independent kid begins in preschool, says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free from the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.

“Kids don’t acquire life skills by magic at the stroke of midnight on their eighteenth birthday,” she writes. “Childhood is meant to be a training ground. Parents can assist, not by always being there to do it or to tell them how to do it via cellphone—but by getting out of the way and letting them figure it out by themselves.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t happening as often as it should. We are in the midst of an overparenting era, Lythcott-Haims says, and our kids are suffering for it.

The 2018 Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Study by the Higher Education Research Institute reported the emotional and mental health of freshmen in 1,900 U.S. colleges has declined since 1985. While there are many factors at play, researchers have found a strong correlation between parents who are overinvolved in their kids lives and undergraduates who report poor psychological well-being, problems making friends, low self-efficacy, and anxiety. 

Lythcott-Haims warns that if we want our kids to be happy and successful adults, we urgently need to let them do more. “The narrative has to shift so we see that it is most loving to be interested in our children learning skills for themselves,” she writes. “It feels unloving…in the moment, but when we remember that our job is to put ourselves out of a job, that’s actually the most loving thing we can do.”

Kids Should Choose Their Chores from an Early Age

Doing tasks around the house from an early age is a predictor of success in adult life, according to Marty Rossmann, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. Yet the amount of time kids spend doing chores has been declining since the ’80s.

Psychologists believe household work teaches kids how to look after themselves and develop a good work ethic. By 10-12 a child can take on laundry, change the bed, and mow the lawn. High-schoolers can manage most adult chores, such as shopping for and preparing meals and unclogging drains. Your kids will definitely complain, but at least they won’t be calling you asking how to vacuum after they’ve moved out.

Teach Financial Literary as Early as Possible

“It’s never too early, or too late, to begin teaching about financial literacy,” says Jennifer Myers, CFP and president of SageVest Wealth Management and SageVest Kids. “Kids can really begin to conceptualize money as tweens.” 

“Budgeting is the most important thing a parent can teach their child,” Myers says. “We always recommend attaching purchase responsibilities with allowances. It forces kids to learn about the importance of budgeting and saving.” By the teen years, kids should be paying for outings with friends, makeup, clothing, and more (think things they want, not things they need), to help conceptualize real life costs, Myers suggests.