You've managed a lot in your life and career and acquired a lot of wisdom, but when it comes to your adult children, all that seems to go out the window. You are not alone. You also have options to help.
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Join an impactful program uniquely for parents of adults
Positive Intelligence® (PQ) and Mental Fitness combines App-based training, group coaching, and experiential hands on application. It is about getting out of negativity and stress and accessing the higher parts of your brain and improving your capacity to generate enhanced life experiences, happiness, and outcomes.
The nutshell
This program is all about and for parents who wants to explore how you feel and act with younger adults in your family by helping you:
be the person and parent you want to be
navigate your evolving role as a parent
adapt how you relate with and support your kids
There can be ripples in how everyone benefits and great impact in all areas of your life.
The short cut
Take five minutes to do your Saboteur Assessment
Join a free 60-minute webinar: Intro to Positive Intelligence & Mental Fitness
Contact me for a Saboteur Debrief or ask for a PQ® & Mental Fitness program summary
Get some specifics about the PQ® Foundations Program
Read on for the longer version.
As you read, consider there are spectrums, ebbs and flows in circumstances around parenting and being a young adult. You may not see how you feel or where things are for you, and that is not the intention of the author - only you know where your are at. Take what might be helpful or inspiring for yourself and your evolving role.
The inspiration
It feels like every day, all around me are parents struggling with how their grown children are struggling. It can feel angst-making for us, to in turn witness the angst, overwhelm, overwork or underwork, and struggles of our kids as they make their way in the world.
As much our kids are learning what their role is in the world, it is also about us redefining our own role as parents of these younger adults. We’re all now adults here AND there will always be the parent child love and dynamic. We know we can all learn. And if we do learn, we can all adapt with time as we unfold into a new normal for our roles.
Until then, it can be stressful at times, even crazy making, full of great lows and highs, failures (and triumphs). It can be a challenge to figure out the right balance – when to help, when not to. How to manage ourselves when our kids are in trouble, or don’t want our help.
Check in: That might be a bit to think about.
How are you feeling having read this? Maybe a bit stressed? Curious? What else?
I invite you to make a few notes about how you are feeling. This alone can be helpful.
Witnessing this and experiencing my own parent-child dynamic, I felt inspired—even called—to see how I could help. I’m really excited about:
How PQ training can make a difference by helping parents—and by association their kids.
How that can positively impact parents’ wellbeing, relationships, and performance.
Ripples this can create in families and out to communities, even beyond into our world today and tomorrow.
About me and PQ (Positive Intelligence®)
I am Toni Crow, a mom and wife, enthusiastic about learning, gardening, travel, mindfulness and spending time with those I love. I feel privileged to be an executive, leadership, team, and life coach, and a facilitator, keynote speaker and educator. I am also a Certified Positive Intelligence® Master CoachTM (CPQM) and trainer.
Positive Intelligence®, abbreviated to PQ®, is about learning to grow and sustain your mental fitness – your capacity to navigate life with greater calm, ease and effectiveness.
Without going into all the details, it is science-based and mitigates our own stress. Mental fitness clears our thinking, so that we can feel and be our best.
My thinking, based on personal and witnessed experience, is that rather than focusing so much on our kids (and all the angst that goes with that), we first need to focus on ourselves. Get to a better place—even model that for our kids. Once we can do that, we go from worry, reactivity, or trying to fix everything and everyone to being able to access calm, clear, creative thinking. Brain research shows that heightened stress and negative emotions lead to “impaired” thinking with our primitive survival brain. We can help our younger adults much better when we are able to think with our whole beautiful brain. This is a much better place to be and to figure things out from.
Check in
How are you feeling now? Hopeful maybe? What else?
How is this making sense, so far? And what are you curious about?
What if you stopped here and did nothing? What might be the impact of nothing changing? What are possible costs?
What if things could be different? How might they be different? What might that mean? How is this important?
Being a parent is awesome, and it is hard
We want to help our kids, make things easier for them, reduce their stress and suffering. And we know they need to learn things for themselves. Deep down, we have faith in them, that they’ll figure it out just like we did). Still we can help in some ways. How much or how little we should try to do this is hard to say. There’s not a science.
There is no manual.
We will always deeply feel what our children go through, at any age and stage, positive or negative situations, in opportunities or challenges, when they are thriving or simply surviving. It impacts us. When they are younger, under our umbrella and some level of influence (depending on age ;)), it can be easier to support and influence them.
Once they mature to adulthood, whether or not they are living at home, it gets harder. There’s a sort of push pull thing that happens, often starting in teens, where they sometimes resist, rebel, ignore our well-meaning support of whatever form. We know that is the sort of the natural order—we may recall doing this too with our own parents.
So what?
Somewhere along the way, our role as parents needs to evolve to be more hands off. We’re still their parents, we love them, care for them and so we can’t be completely hands off. Nor should we be. Staying involved and in communication is important. Our kids need to know we love them, we’re there for them. Being too hands off can seem bewildering, worrying and feel unsafe for both us and them.
So our role evolves – this is a change for everyone to navigate. As parents we are figuring out our new role and often trying to listen for cues to figure out what is needed in any given moment or situation. It can put us into a sort of hyper-vigilant mode.
And there is no manual for this! There’s no manual on how to navigate this. There’s no manual for how to be or act. It can be crazy making, stressful – and your crazy, your stress don’t help the whole dynamic.
There is so much unknown for younger adults as they make their way in their lives. That’s hard for them. That’s hard for us – that uncertainty felt on their behalf. Our brains don’t like uncertainty – it feels unsafe, causes anxiety, stress. In response, as parents, we might tend to become controlling in our efforts to advise and try to help fix, to somehow address the uncertainty.
All this can give rise to so much emotion!
The emotions and hormones in younger adults are one thing. Our own emotions and transitions, and even hormones, are another. Floods of empathy going into overdrive might push us from a normal level of supportiveness to one that gets into a mode of wanting to please – to push and bend over backwards and try to do it all for them. That’s not healthy for us or our kids.
You are not alone.
No two people, relationships, or situations are the same. Scenarios and intensity can vary and fluctuate across a spectrum in time. You are not alone in the inner and outer challenges. I'm guessing, if you have read this far, you have a sense that there are costs, and something has to change for you. You know this. Have likely been trying. And you are having your own struggles here that are impacting yourself, others and situations.
This is the reason for my Positive Intelligence® (PQ) & Mental Fitness foundations program specifically for parents.
PQ can help us navigate and evolve with less stress and pain, and greater ease and flow. PQ is practical science-based training in managing your own mind and energy. This is paired with small, confidential, non-judgmental group coaching sessions. Research shows by pairing training with group support and discussion, we are 500% more likely to succeed.
This is a proven program, built over 10+ years and provided for over one-million people and 50 countries globally. A key to its success is that it is:
Primarily experiential
Designed to fit easily into real life.
As a master Certified PQ CoachTM and trainer, I am honoured to witness the difference this training makes in peoples’ lives and in my own. I am with you. I feel inspired and energized to bring this opportunity to parents.
Check in
Having read this, and as you reflect, what’s making sense for you now? What are you curious about?
What has this made possible? What stands out?
Now what?
What can be next? As with anything, break it down into small steps, consider your why—why is this important and meaningful—and see where this might go as things unfold.
Here are just two small steps you could take—easy, fun, free things to help you learn more about whether this could support you as a person and as parent.
Take five minutes to do your Saboteur Assessment
Join a free 60-minute Intro to Positive Intelligence & Mental Fitness webinar
Check out the Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ]
OPTIONAL: For those feeling reflective, I invite you to consider:
How are you feeling as a parent of an adult? Yes, I am asking how you are feeling (not your child.)
As you navigate your own life and your role as parent of a maturing human, who may be able to vote and make big decisions and is essentially trying to navigate their own life. How is this feeling for you?
How are you feeling about yourself right now?
How much is going on in your mind when it comes to your child?
What is the impact of all this? On you?
How are you experiencing navigation of your parent role?
What is the impact of this on your relationships with your child? With others, such as your spouse or other family members?
And let’s make sure we shine a light on the fuller picture: What is working right now? Or has worked in the past? What goes well? How does that feel for you? What is the impact of this?
Contact me to ask questions or to set up a complimentary consultation.
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