How to Launch a Teen: Asking the Google

Google tries to decide what I'm looking for as I type in the phrase "how to launch a teen."  The search engine runs through its algorithms as a I press each letter on the keyboard:  how to a launder money is first to the top but is quickly replaced by how to launch a boat.  Once I've finished typing it in, I have a few hundred million hits, and most on the first page are about starting a business.  This is not what I had in mind.

I try again..."failure to launch."  Google gives me pages of sites reviewing the movie or selling the DVD.  I add  "young adults."  Now I have something promising:  a blog, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which discusses the changing nature of young adulthood and a book sold by Amazon called "Emptying the Nest: Launching Your Young Adult toward Success and Self-Reliance."

The book's reviews indicate that it can teach parents to foster success and close family relationships as their young adult children confront obstacles and are tempted by detours in their transition from financial and emotional dependence to autonomy.  I buy it at the Sony Reader store.

While its downloading, I go back to the blog.  It has two posts.  Just two.  One is called "Why Do Twenty-Somethings Move Back Home?" and the other is titled "Failure to Launch or Launching Too Soon?" 

The first article looks at changes in the jobs market over the past 50 years.  It seems that it takes longer for young adults to become financially independent than it once did.  The second article presents research done at Penn State.  Only about 25%, or 1 in 4, 25-year-olds have a college degree.  Young adults who leave the family home quickly, the so-called "fast-starters" who get married or begin working full time at an earlier age, are more likely to get divorced and to hold low-level, low-paying jobs. 

I import the book into my Reader Library.  I quickly page through it.  The author is a psychologist and presents his ideas in the form of case studies, providing examples of potentially sticky situations and what not to say to the "launchee." 

I'll start reading it tonight.

Until then, think about your average day.  What does it look like?  When do you sleep?  When do you study?  What other things do you do and when do you do them?  Use this form to make notes about your average day.