Looking Toward A New Year
The prospect of a new year brings to mind fresh starts, making goals and resolutions to improve one’s life. You might have goals for your child or young adult, whether it be preparing for college entrance exams, getting him to apply for a job or become self-sufficient outside your home.
Young adults can get stuck at home and become difficult to dislodge. They make lots of cooperative statements, such as “I’ll apply for that job tomorrow,” but they are unable to follow through due to their habitual pattern of behavior.
Young people have difficulty taking initiation in terms of receiving services at Weaver Center, and are sometimes resistant to parents’ efforts to enroll them in tutoring or coaching programs. If this is true for your young adult, Dr Weaver offers this advice to parents on how to get your young adult child to engage in a workshop. Consider the following:
1) Parent(s) can have an initial meeting with Dr. Weaver and Marla Stone, Life Coach and Facilitator of Weaver Center’s “Failure to Launch” workshop, so all can understand the strengths and challenges of the young adult and develop a strategy to start and maintain their engagement in the process.
2) If there is a high interest in a privilege or material want, Dr. Weaver has found it successful to offer that as a payment for engagement in the program.
3) Often there is another adult in the child’s life who gets along with him or her and is trusted by the parents. Ask that person to help get your son/daughter to Weaver Center rather than have it be a stress-filled request by the parents.
4) Weaver Center clinicians are able, and have had success, working with young adults via Skype. If they are tough to get out of the house, we can work with them via Skype to help get them to engage in the process.
For more information on the "Failure to Launch" workshop, see http://www.weavercenter.org/page.asp?pg=94
