Customer Reviews

Emptying the Nest: Launching Your Young Adult toward Success and Self-Reliance

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My husband and I launched our two young adults over the last 4 years. The launch experience was loaded with challenges and traumas, so I purchased this book primarily to seek understanding of our experience and confirmation of the approaches we took. (Yes, our young adults are now self-reliant and we are going to keep it that way.)Out of my launching experience, I am now able to confidently coach clients who are launching their young adults.

Brad Sachs is a seasoned psychologist who has worked with hundreds of clients to enhance their family relationships. His writing style is warm and winsome. The content is organized, practical and insightful. As I was reading the tips and tools he provides, I secretly wished that I had access to this book at least 10-15 years earlier when our children were just little.

He outlines the developmental tasks for the young adult and the family dydnamics that either help or hinder such development. He also highlights some developmental tasks for parents, an insight that may be surprising to some parents but an insight I have gained through our launching challenges. In a nutshell, Sachs does an excellent job of articulating the key feature of the launching process: the ability to launch well is an art and the relationship with your young adults in this launching phase is a dance. The turnkey solution to the challenge of launching is for parents to strike a balance between Parent Guidance and Parent Control and prepare for separation.

This book is a critical guidebook for parents attempting to sail in the rough waters of launching young adults.

The author of this book is a psychologist, and he writes with authority on the topic of preparing young people to make their way out in the real world. The author makes the case that parents should never give up on their children. He stresses that the parents have not completed their job until the child moves successfully through adolescence to adulthood, to become an independent adult.

The advice offered in the book is appropriate, since parents have many "excuses" for the reasons that their children are not independent of the parent's sphere of influence or control. There is a fine line between supporting a child and enabling the child, and the author goes into details where the lines should be drawn.

It is important for parents to read this book well before their children are planning to strike out on their own. There are many important skills that parents should teach to their children and young adults at various stages in their lives. Notably: worldliness, how to act out in the workplace, hot to develop and build relationships, how to budget money, etc.

Parents are entrusted with the task of imparting the tools for teaching their children how to separate from them, according to this author. The children are expected to reach the end result of living productive lives. The author notes that children who have been encouraged to be self-reliant usually will thrive when let out on their own to make their way in the world. Other issues discussed in the book include: failure of the child to launch, the "rites" and wrongs of passage, and understanding how to communicate with young people at any age. The book includes communication and discussion topic starters, answers and suggestions to how parents can open talks with their children on the tough issues, and more. I would suggest that parents read the book when the children are entering high school, then they will be able to ensure that they are ready to move on after high school ends to be independent and successful in their own way. The book is easy to read, and will offer parenting tips for anyone interested in brushing up on parenting skills where young adults are concerned.

hot air and more hot air!! Whoosh! What a wonderful life if you do not need to put into practice what one preaches. The old proverb is sooo true....You just can't believe everything you read. If only this had any practical value and could be applied to real family situations. I wonder where he gets these clever ideas? Just another example of someone blowing smoke up the chimney. Nothing scientific, just lots and lots of self-promoting....ABC next??? Must have a buddy who works there ...

Any well intentioned parent can figure this out and I didn't really get any new insights with this book. While there are one or two interesting vignettes it really wasn't enough to hold my interest. There are so many books out there giving parents advice on how to raise kids that sometimes they feel more like recipe books than parenting books. I've gotten more out of an hour of Oprah than the 4 hours it took to read this book. A better use of my time would have been to enjoy my teen rather than ignore him while I was trying to read about how some self- promoting Dr. Phil wannabe thinks we should parent our teens. My feeling is that teens are often troubled by parents who abdicate their role as parents and expect some "expert" to fix their problems for them while they pursue their own interests. No doubt, effective parenting is a pain-staking yet rewarding process that one would be best off experiencing first hand rather than at arms length and through the eyes of a stranger. No one knows your kids better than you, so my advise is to drop the book and get to know your kids better.