Episode 7: "Hit the pause button on the Shoulds."

As director of the University Center for Child and Family, Dr. Erin Hunter provides and oversees clinical mental health services for many teens and young adults who are poised on the launch pad but can’t seem to lift off. The phenomenon had been accelerating for the last 15-20 years, spurred by stagnant wages, dwindling prospects, moving targets, academic pressures, and wobbly social contracts.

Then the pandemic came along and knocked everyone off balance.

At a time when a young adult’s opportunities to grow normally trigger developmental phases of individuation and separation, the uncertainty and isolation of lockdown has had the exact opposite effect. And since the modern world renders a parent’s experience less relevant, counseling your kid can feel like playing your favorite old-school video game on an entirely updated gaming platform.

We talk about how to release a child’s pressure valve by re-building confidence in exploration and failure, encouraging agency in their decisions, resisting social comparisons, and understanding why 64% is an excellent grade.

Other links:

• Find Erin at the Mary A. Rackham Institute (MARI)

• The multi-layered caregiving existence of “club sandwich caregiving”

• A black swan is an unpredictable, high-impact event that is often deemed in hindsight as having been inevitable.

• Self Compassion, by Kristen Neff

• Just because a movie is completely stupid doesn’t mean it can’t make a pile of dough at the box office