How to Launch a Teen: What to Study

Recap:  Thinking about what you want your life to be, in the long term, helps identity goals that can be accomplished in the next five years.  Long-term goals can be broad and should cover as many aspects of life that are important to you.  Shorter term goals, like those in a Five-Year-Plan, should be defined as specifically as possible.  I identified one of the goals in my Five-Year-Plan as Provide Sarah with whatever assistance I can to help her reach her career goals.

30 minute brainstorming session as I ask myself the question What has to happen in order for the goal to be reached? begins now:

This is an action-based goal focusing on providing career-related assistance to you in support of your goals.  It will require me to be flexible given the likelihood that you will change your mind.  (Stats on changing programs?)  But it seems the first thing that has to happen is for you to get a clearer idea in your head of what you want to do.  I am a bit concerned that selecting a specific focus too early in the process will limit your opportunities for the perspective-stretching experiences that university study can provoke (a focus too much on the end at the expense of the journey).

Anyway, to help you clarify your own career goals, I think we need to look at several online career tests, followed by research into the top 10-20 suggested by the results.  Talk to people who do these jobs.  Think about what they require and how that fits with your idea of yourself.  [10 mins] Where there are differences, what are you willing to do to change that idea of yourself to pursue a particular career.  Volunteer work or short internships are helpful, especially to help you evaluate the work environment.  As an adult, you will spend at least as much time working as you do sleeping.   How would it feel to spend that much time with the people in these work environments?

So, identify and research.  Then it's decision making time.  I have an earlier blog post on this.

It's obvious that this is a process, a series of steps that could take several years.  It may be 4 years before you make a final, specific, career decision. 

But before then, you do have to decide on a degree program at university.  I am going to recommend the most flexible and wide-reaching course of study possible in the two areas that interest you most.  Everything is connected.

Then you have to pick a school that offers the papers that most interest you.  More research.  Possibly entrance essays to be written, certainly applications to be submitted, identify teachers and others for references.  .

All of these are points at which I know how to find the information and can act as a guide because I have been there before so many times.

I have to maintain a relationship with you that makes it easy, in fact seems natural, for you to trust me as a resource.

There has to be research on how much it will cost you to live away from home.  How much financial support you will need and how much of it we can provide?  How many hours will you be able to work and keep up your studies?  We will want to identify scholarships and submit those applications.  Here we are looking at really short-term (over the next year) actions that must be completed. [20 mins]

And while all of this is going on, you have your last year at college.  Then we have to get you moved.  What will you need?  What help will you want as you look for a job?  Can you fit in volunteer work for experience that can help narrow your career focus and provide references for possible future internships?

Now I'm focusing too much on you and not on what I can do.  What do I want to accomplish?  I want to help you understand that interdependence is useful, and that you can count on me to do what is reasonable and within my skill set to help you in your career goals (and anything else).  Who will I need to involve?  If you don't want or respect or give consideration to my input, I can't support you at all.  So we have to have a certain relationship for this to be possible.  I also have to involve your dad since he is the money man.  Where?  Don't know yet.  What is essential?  Selecting a course of study, applications, continued good efforts at college next year.  For me, supporting our evolving relationship as you mature.

How will I know we get there?  Well, in five years you would have an undergraduate degree and be finishing an honours degree or a professional certificate or halfway through a masters degree. [30 mins]

How to Launch a Teen: Goals Are Not Rules

Fourteen years before Doran outlined SMART rules, Aaron T. Beck, in his treatise on cognitive therapy for depression, advocated defining goals in terms of specific behaviors rather than in global terms: what I want to do rather than what I want to be. He described vague or and unrealistic goals as a potential source of punitively self-critical thinking. Beck prescribed the accomplishment of a series of relevant yet modest goals as a means to reduce self-doubt. Recent research at the Beck Institute included goal setting as a primary ingredient of self-care methods for medical students.

It's important to remember, in the face of all this emphasis I'm putting on goal setting, that goals are not rules.  It is not necessary that they be things you should or must do.  You make them, and you unmake them.  There are many reasons to modify or put aside a goal.  Life is full of changes, and what we want will change as we meet new people, new opportunities and experiences shift our perspective, and economic trends or governmental policies or technological advances alter the future.

How to Launch a Teen: More on Goal-Setting

Today finds you continuing to add to your Action PotentiaList for one of your goals.

Any goal can be refined to be more specific.  This can be helpful in compiling a more complete Action List as well as providing clear indicators that you have reached your goal. 

One of the most widely used methods for establishing goals came out of industrial/ organizational psychology research in the early 1980s.  George Doran established five criteria to help more precisely define a goal.  He used the term SMART goal and suggested that goals should be specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time related.  Variations of these five criteria for evaluating and refining goals have been adopted by management experts, health care professionals, and those working in the mental health field. 

A goal is specific if it contains answers to the W questions: 

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why do I want to do this (reasons, benefits, values)?
• Who will I need to involve (for support, financing, advice) besides me?
• Where?
• Which aspects of the goal are essential and which are not essential but desirable?
• When will the goal be met?

If I look back at the goals I selected from my own Five Year Plan, I find that none of them are very specific.  Do I want to be nicotine-free or will I use a nicotine-replacement technology like electronic cigarettes?  Will I use support from Quitline?  Do I want to involve family or will I do this alone?  What is my stop date?  In order to answer these questions, I need to do additional thinking and research about the goal I have set.  This early planning helps make my goal more clear and attainable.

A goal is measurable when you have clear guidelines about how you will know it has been accomplished.  Since I frequently quit smoking for 2-4 weeks at a time, how long will I need to have not smoked a cigarette to say that I have accomplished this goal?  Three months?  A year?  Five years?

The assignable aspects of the goal identify the extent to which you must or wish to involve other people in this goal.  Those you will rely on for support must understand what you need from them and agree to provide it.  There are goals that can be accomplished without the input and support of others.  It is, however, the rare goal that cannot be more efficiently achieved through the use of networks of information and support.

Goals should be realistic.  For example, it would be unlikely that I could perform with the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

Finally, a goal has a clear timetable.  If a goal has not been or cannot be reached by a specific date, it should be revised.

The process of identifying these criteria will help you distinguish goals from aspirations.  We strive toward our aspirations and dreams by setting and achieving our goals.

How to Launch a Teen: Backward Planning

A goal without a plan is just a wish. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

I was in my mid-20s when, having left university without a degree, I got a job with a psychology group practice and had the opportunity to become a certified stress management trainer. As part of the process, I created my first Five Year Plan. Through the implementation of that plan, I was able to complete my Bachelor's degree and enter a Masters program in counseling psychology.

I like to develop a Five Year Plan using backward planning. I start with the goal and work backward. Here are a series of questions that I find helpful:

• What has to happen in order for the goal to be reached?  At this point, you aren't thinking about how long a particular action will take or when it needs to happen or the sequence in which you will do things.  This is a brainstorming session.  You should spend about 30 minutes coming up with as many actions that need to be performed for you to reach the selected goal.  Now keep the list available over the next few days and add any other ideas that come to you.
• Do any of these things have to be done so that other things can happen?  It is helpful to transfer all your ideas to individual index cards and sort them in chronological order along the various chains of events that will surface from your action list.  You will probably find gaps and need to add to the list.
• Of the things on your list, what needs to be done in the 5th year?  The 4th?  Continue working backward until you get to an action list for the upcoming year.

How to Launch a Teen: Identifying Time Stress

Two days ago I talked a bit about routines.  Before we moved to Trippy Roads Ranch, you had a solid routine for getting to school every day. You got up and did the things you needed to do to get to school on time. Your weekday hinged on the success or failure of that routine. In the same way, you arranged your study time in such a way that you were able to consistently achieve academic goals.  I recognize that you already have skills at building routines.  This is an aspect of time management that we might come back to another time if you experience time stress when incorporating a job into your schedule or when you return to a school-imposed schedule.

Before that, we had a look at my Average Day.  This is what my Ideal Day looks like:

	MOM'S IDEAL DAY
12am – 01am	Sleep
01am—02am	Sleep
02am—03am	Sleep
03am—04am	Sleep
04am—05am	Sleep
05am—06am	Sleep
06am—07am	Desk time
07am—08am	Get dressed and start housework
08am—09am	Desk time
09am—10am	30 minutes of gardening and more housework
10am—11am	Desk time
11am—12pm	More housework
12pm—01pm	Errands
01pm—02pm	More housework
02pm—03pm	Gardening or decorating project
03pm—04pm	More housework
04pm—05pm	Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
05pm—06pm	Fix dinner
06pm—07pm	Dinner
07pm—08pm	Family time
08pm—09pm	Desk time
09pm—10pm	Read
10pm—11pm	Sleep
11pm—12am	Sleep

Totals:

Activity	Hours
Sleep	8.0
Desk Time	4.0
Housework	5.5
Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch	2.5
Family Time	1.0
Fix Dinner	1.0
Dinner	1.0
Read	1.0

How does my Ideal Day compare with yours?

If I compare my Ideal Day to how I estimated using my time on an Average Day, I see that I estimated spending less time on housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch and more time at my desk, with family, or reading than I would like.  (We both know that I actually don't want to spend less time with the family, but I would like less of my family time to involve the television.)

What does it look like if I break it down according to Dagfin Aas' categories? 

Time Use Category	Hours
Necessary Time (sleeping and dinner, plus (on average) an hour per day fixing dinner, showering, and getting dressed)	10.5
Contracted Time (about 1/3 of my desk time spent doing bookkeeping and filing)	1.5
Committed Time (housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch)	8
Free Time (reading and family time, plus the desk time that involves social media or writing projects like this one)	4

From this, we can gather that I would like to use more of my time on committed activities than I currently do.  In particular, I would give up free time doing whatever in favor of having more time to get the house clean, organized, and decorated and to do projects around Trippy Roads Ranch (like gardening).  I think that is a fair, if superficial, assessment of some of my personal sources of time stress.

How to Launch a Teen: Mom's Average Day

Let's have a look at what I came up with for my Average Day.  The broad descriptions I used to describe the predominant activity in each hour are:  

• Sleep
• Desk Time
• Housework
• Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
• Family Time
• Fix Dinner
• Dinner
• Read

This is what I think my Average Day looks like.

	AVERAGE DAY
12am – 01am	Sleep
01am—02am	Sleep
02am—03am	Sleep
03am—04am	Sleep
04am—05am	Sleep
05am—06am	Sleep
06am—07am	Desk time
07am—08am	Desk time
08am—09am	Housework
09am—10am	Housework
10am—11am	Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
11am—12pm	Housework
12pm—01pm	Housework
01pm—02pm	Desk time
02pm—03pm	Desk time
03pm—04pm	Family time
04pm—05pm	Family time
05pm—06pm	Fix dinner
06pm—07pm	Dinner
07pm—08pm	Desk time – online socializing
08pm—09pm	Read
09pm—10pm	Read
10pm—11pm	Sleep
11pm—12am	Sleep

Totals:

Activity	Hours
Sleep	8
Desk Time	5
Housework	4
Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch	1
Family Time	2
Fix Dinner	1
Dinner	1
Read	2

I found a site that has online tools you can use to play with your numbers.

What does it look like if I break it down according to Dagfin Aas' categories?  Some of these are combinations of two or more activities with others are a fraction of the time spent in a single activity. Using Aas' categories requires some thought about what I do that fits the definition of contracted time?  For the moment, I choose not to include my writing time even though it could be argued that what I am doing could be part of some future business development. 

Time Use Category	Hours
Necessary Time (sleeping and dinner, plus (on average) an hour per day fixing dinner, showering, and getting dressed)	10
Contracted Time (about 1/3 of my desk time spent doing bookkeeping and filing)	2
Committed Time (housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch)	5
Free Time (reading and family time, plus the desk time that involves social media or writing projects like this one)	7

How does my Average Day compare with yours?

How to Launch a Teen: Time Tracking

Well done for working out your Average Day and thinking about what your Ideal Day would look like. Have a look at how they compare to one another. Is there anything that you want to do more of? Less of? Are there things you'd like to include in your day that you don't seem to have time for?

Time has been identified as a major source of emotional distress, along with situational stress, encounter stress, and anticipatory stress.  Time management is widely recognized as a fundamental skill for successful planning and as a tool for reducing time-related distress.  In part, the launch from adolescence to young adulthood requires you to make commitments about how you will spend your time in a way that may be very different from your previous experiences.

Before you can begin to manage your time, you have to know what you're doing with it.  You've already made some guesses about what your Average Day looks like.  Find out what really happens.  For the next few days, use this form to keep track of how you spend your time.  Each hour is likely filled with a large number of activities, so select some categories like "Gaming" or "Study" or "Socializing" to describe your major focus during that hour.

How to Launch a Teen: Imagine an Average Day

I was halfway through the introductory chapter of the book when I decided I wanted to know more about the author.  It turns out that Brad Sachs is an interesting man.  A graduate of Brown University, he maintains a clinical psychology practice in Maryland.  He writes and lectures, particularly in the area of family life.  He is widely interviewed by the media and also writes poetry and songs.  His books and CD are available at his web site. 

I search Google Scholar and find two scholarly publications.  One in Family Therapy discusses ways that therapists can overcome resistance to family therapy, particularly in working-class fathers.  The other, appearing in Contemporary Family Therapy, examines the use of systemic family therapy in an institutional setting.

Systemic family therapies focus on relationship patterns and dynamics rather than on an individual.  Systemic therapies are practical.  These therapies acknowledge that observation influences both the observer and the observed and that creatively calling attention to patterns of behavior provides a space for changes in the interactions and patterns of relationships.

But I digress.

Let's look at that Average Day.  How many hours would you sleep?  Study?  Chill?  Was it hard to think of an average day because your days are so different?  Maybe weekdays are different from weekends because your brother is home from school.

Now I'd like for you to think about your Ideal Day.  What does it look like?  When would you sleep?  Study?  Chill?  Be with others?  Use this form to make notes about your ideal day.

And by ideal day, I don't mean an awesome day out with your friends or the schedule of your dream 21st birthday.  Just an ideal average day that goes just like you want it to from beginning to end.

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. 

Using Grid Analysis in Decision Making

This blog is largely about making choices.  Because nearly everyone has difficulty making choices at some time, I decided to write a post about using Grid Analysis as a decision-making tool. 

The situation:  On 30 October 2009, due to a combination of family obligations, health problems, and academic issues, I suspended my work on a doctorate in clinical psychology.  It had been some time since I had been able to devote myself full-time to my research project, and I hoped that a year's formal suspension would provide me with perspective and relieve feelings of guilt and anxiety related to my academic career.  The end of that year (October 2010) found our family in the midst of fulfilling a long-desired goal:  selling our house in the Auckland area and buying a lifestyle block in the New Zealand countryside.  I spoke with the program director and my research supervisor and told them I would be in touch once we were settled into our new home.  In March 2011, I received a notice that another 6-monthly report regarding the status of my research project was due.  I spent several weeks thinking about the unresolved academic issues related to the project, then outlined a revised project complete with timeline and research aims.  As I corresponded with my supervisors, I learned that my extended suspension of study and change of focus meant I would need to resign from the clinical program, recruit another supervisor with experience in qualitative research techniques, and pursue either a PhD or a Masters level research project:  any clinical qualification I wished to pursue would be delayed until after completion of the disseration.  Throughout this process, I noticed increased symptoms of anxiety, including difficulty sleeping, muscle tension, increased worry, and a migraine headache.  After a bit of self-reflection, I determined that it was time to reassess my academic goals. 

I have previously recommended to clients facing difficult decisions that they use a grid analysis as an aid.  Grid analysis can be useful with decisions in which there are a number of factors that deserve consideration.  I find the download and instructions available from Mind Tools to be particularly helpful.

First, I brainstormed a bit and then identified four viable options regarding my future academic career:

1. Upon withdrawal from the clinical psychology program, pursue an application to continue my research as a PhD project.
2. Take a step back and pursue a Masters degree.
3. Forget academics and get a practical degree that would lead to a mental health registration, such as a Diploma in Counselling.
4. Set aside my academic career in a more permanent way.

 The second step was to identify the most important factors related to the decision.  These factors are highly personalized to each individual and situation.  In this instance, I selected the following factors as being most important to or relevant for the decision I was making:

• future earnings potential,
• impact for my family,
• time to work on other projects and goals, and
• impact on my self-esteem.

As a third step, I assigned a number from 0-5 (0 = poor and 5 = very good) for each option with respect to its impact on each factor.  Here is the partially completed Grid Analysis following Step 3:

Factors	Future Earnings	Family	Other Projects	Self-Esteem	Total
Factor Weights	-	-	-	-	-
PhD	5	1	0	4	-
MA	3	0	0	0	-
DipCouns	2	2	3	2	-
Stop	2	4	4	3	-

For the Future Earnings factor, I felt that a PhD would be most beneficial and the Masters less so.  I felt that a Diploma in Counselling would make no difference to future earnings when compared to leaving school and pursuing self-employment opportunities. 

In terms of the impact on my family (aside from the financial gains included in the Future Earnings factor), the PhD would be advantageous in terms of providing a model of academic success for our children, but this benefit was offset by the tremendous investment of time necessary to complete my research and writing.  The Masters would require a near-equal amount of time without the benefit of providing my children with a model of an adult finishing what was started.  Pursuing a counselling diploma would allow me to study on a part-time basis and for a much shorter period of time.  Finally, leaving school would provide me with the flexibility to free up my time to support my daughter in her home schooling and upcoming university applications; go on family outings; take on more daily responsibilities such as shopping, preparing dinner, and cleaning; and just be available for those impromptu talks.

The time constraints of both the PhD and the Masters led to 0 ratings in the Other Projects column, while the counselling diploma option garnered a 3 because it could be completed on a part-time basis.  I rated Leaving School as a 4 because a decision not to pursue further educational qualifications may limit my credentials for some writing projects I am interested in pursuing.

In terms of impacting my self-esteem, I rated the PhD at a 4 rather than a 5 because the benefits would be offset by certain activation of negative core beliefs such as "I am a bad mother" and "I am selfish."  The Masters would do little to boost my self-esteem and would result in activation of beliefs like "I'm not good enough."  I rated the counselling diploma as a 2 because it would allow me to achieve a long-time goal of working in the mental health field.  Because leaving school would enable me to devote time to a wide variety of other projects that are important to me, I rated this at 3.

Proceeding to Step 4, I rated the importance of each factor, with 0 being not important to 5 being very important.

Factors	Future Earnings	Family	Other Projects	Self-Esteem	Total
Factor Weights	3	5	4	2	-
PhD	5	1	0	4	-
MA	3	0	0	0	-
DipCouns	2	2	3	2	-
Stop	2	4	4	3	-

The final step involves some math.  The weight for each factor is multiplied by the impact score for each option, and these are added together to arrive at a total score.  For example, the PhD option score = (3 x 5) + (5 x 1) + (4 x 0) + (2 x 4) = 28.

Factors	Future Earnings	Family	Other Projects	Self-Esteem	Total
Factor Weights	3	5	4	2	-
PhD	5	1	0	4	28
MA	3	0	0	0	9
DipCouns	2	2	3	2	32
Stop	2	4	4	3	48

Given my current value ratings of factors that are important to me, leaving school and devoting more time to family and other projects outweighs whatever positive impact that continuing my academic career might have on my self-esteem and future earnings.

I have submitted my formal withdrawal from the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology program.  I have yet to talk with my supervisors to let them know that, at this time, I will not be pursuing further academic research.  But the headache has faded, as they always do.  I feel optimistic about the future.  I expect to experience intermittent regrets about not continuing an academic career, particularly because I will miss academic writing.  But I know that I have a capacity for self-reflection and an arsenal of tools that can assist me in any number of difficult circumstances.  I'm looking forward to working on other projects--redecorating our new home, landscaping, starting on a huge kitchen garden, returning to volunteer work for a literacy program, and writing posts like this one.  I hope to spend time with my family without being preoccupied with thoughts about a research project and worries that I'm not good enough.  I feel free.

Special acknowledgements:  It would have taken me a lot longer to re-learn HTML table construction if I hadn't come across this post by Isaac Yasser.  Thanks, Isaac!  I again want to recommend a click over to Mind Tools for a browse through their fabulous collection of self-management articles.