Planning Ahead: Life Post-Graduation from High School or College
High school and college graduation caps have flown in the air, and your young adult is looking forward to the next phase of life. Or perhaps your young adult is unsure what to do next, and you are looking for a way to help.
Wes Crenshaw, PhD, works with teens and young adults affected by ADHD. He talked with parents about how to help their young adults enter into the stage following high school or college during the webcast Young ADDulthood: Preparing Older Teens for the Road Ahead.
Young adults fit into three categories, he says: optimistic, terrified, and lost. Parents can offer guidance for each type of young adult.
“The thing that is most helpful is to develop hope,” he says. “Hope is not an ethereal construct. The idea of hope is not that it is optimism. Hope is made of two constructs: willpower, how we think about our goals and the energy we put into pursuing them, and way-power, which is our mental plan about our goals.”
For some young adults, it will be time to begin the first job or start a career. Most will be establishing a home independent of their parents, and some will need extra time to launch. Young adults, he said, need to make choices that have meaning for them and their life goals.
“All choices need to be authentic,” he says. “The more parents try to make the choice for the child, the more the child will pull against the parent.”
What does Dr. Crenshaw suggest to help your young adult? Watch now.