Young Adults with ADD: 3 Tips for Parents

Here are three tips to try at home based on our work mentoring young adults with ADHD we want to offer you to try.

1. Create a structured routine for ADD

Young adults with ADHD often struggle with time management and organization. Creating a structured routine can help your child manage their time more effectively and reduce their stress levels. Additionally, work with your child to co-create a daily schedule. Make sure to include specific times for activities such as studying, exercising, and socializing. Also, encourage your child to stick to the schedule as much as possible and provide positive reinforcement when they do. Avoid negative reinforcement when they don’t.

2. Break down tasks into smaller steps

Large tasks can be overwhelming for young adults with ADHD. Breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable steps can help your child stay focused and motivated. Encourage your child to create a to-do list for each day and break down each task into smaller steps. For example, instead of studying for three hours straight, your child could break their study session into three 1-hour sessions with breaks in between. Celebrate your child’s progress and provide positive feedback to help them stay motivated.

3. Create a positive and supportive environment beyond ADD

Young adults with ADHD often struggle with low self-esteem and negative self-speak. Creating a positive and supportive environment at home can help your child build their self-confidence and feel more optimistic about their future. Encourage your child to focus on their achievements, no matter how small. Avoid criticizing or punishing your child for their mistakes and instead provide constructive feedback and support.

In conclusion, raising a young adult with ADHD can be challenging, but there are strategies that can help your child succeed. While trying these tips at home can be beneficial, it’s important to consider seeking the help of a mentor who specializes in working with young adults with ADHD. Our mentoring program provides your child with personalized strategies and support to help them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. Remember to be patient and understanding with your child, and seek out support from a mentor when they are ready. With the right strategies and support, your child can rise above their ADHD challenges and reach their full potential.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

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Young Adults on the Spectrum: One Year Later

As the parent of an adult child on the autism spectrum, you may be wondering about the benefits of mentoring for your child’s growth and development. Mentoring Young Adults understands the special challenges and rewards of working with autistic youth. Based on our experiences, this article will share what you can expect after one year of mentoring.

1. Improved Social Skills

One the many goals of mentoring autistic youth is helping them mature socially. Each of the following areas will have increased greatly in one year: communication skills, capacity to establish friends, and confidence in social situations. To help young adults develop crucial social skills, we employ a variety of methods beginning with listening judgement-free. Together, we play out difficult scenarios such as phone calls or in person communication. The will have learned to deal with conflict in a calm manner, listening and being heard. Employing the use of taking a moment to gather their thoughs when needed. Additionally we model best-practice behaviour, while promoting participation in virtual situations that progress to “real world” situations.

2. Enhanced Independence and Life Skills

Our mentoring program promotes independence by teaching young adults on the spectrum essential life skills such as organizing, cleaning, and time management. After a year of mentoring, your child will start to see the benefits in ways the speak to them. Additionally, they will demonstrate an increased confidence and skill in performing these tasks on their own. The focus on skill-building and problem-solving during mentoring sessions are a key focus of our mentoring work. This helps young adults gain the practical abilities necessary for long-term success and self-empowerment.

3. Better Emotional Regulation and Coping Strategies

Our mentors also focus on helping young adults on the spectrum develop emotional regulation and coping strategies. After one year of mentoring, you can expect to see improvements in your child’s ability to manage stress, express emotions appropriately, and self-regulate in challenging situations. Our mentors work closely with our mentees to identify triggers, develop personalized coping strategies, and encourage self-reflection and mindfulness.

4. Strengthened Parent-Child Relationship

Although the mentee is the primary target of mentoring, the whole family can reap the rewards. We use “Parent Time” to assist parents enhance their own skill sets so they can better communicate with and support their children as they grow and develop. After a year of mentoring, you and your child will have a stronger bond and more open lines of communication. Our “Parent Support” program is designed to assist parents better understand their child’s perspective on life on all fronts, provide them with new tools to help their child succeed, and ultimately fortify and enrich the parent-child relationship.

5. Personal Growth and Increased Self-Esteem

After one year of mentoring, our mentees experience personal growth and increased self-esteem. By addressing their unique challenges and building on their strengths, mentoring helps young adults develop a more positive self-image and gain confidence in their abilities. As your child begins to see their progress and achievements, their sense of self-worth and motivation to continue growing will just keep growing.

After one year of mentoring at Mentoring Young Adults, you will experience meaningful progress in your child’s social skills, independence, emotional regulation, and overall well-being. While each young adult on the spectrum is different, our personalized mentoring method creates a significant impact in helping them reach their full potential. As a parent, being part of our mentoring team for your child’s growth and development through mentoring is both rewarding and encouraging. By investing in our mentoring program, you are offering your child the support and resources they need to thrive and soar in their hero’s journey towards independence and self-fulfillment.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Interested in learning to become a mentor for young adults?

3 Proven Mentoring Tips for Parents to Help Their Child on the Spectrum Reach Their Potential

Parenting an autistic adolescent or young adult comes with its own set of challenges and rewards. Although every autistic young adult is unique, there are effective ways to guide them as they transition into adulthood. Here, drawing on our work with MentoringYoungAdults.com, we’ll discuss three suggestions for parents to try at home.

Tip 1: Establish Routines and Clear Expectations

Young adults on the spectrum often do best in structured environments with predictable routines. Developing a routine provides young adults a sense of routine and security. That is the first step:. Here’s how to start:

  1. Create a routine that takes into account your child’s preferences, interests, and abilities through teamwork with your child.
  2. Don’t make excuses; Try to be as consistent as possible with the regimen, but be willing to make adjustments as needed. Give them plenty of notice and comfort when changes are inevitable to reduce their anxiety.
  3. Establish unambiguous guidelines: Whenever possible, give your child step-by-step instructions and be clear about what you expect from them.

Tip 2: Foster Social Skills Development

Young adults on the spectrum often struggle with social skills despite their importance for promoting autonomy and well-being. Here are some strategies for encouraging their progress in social competence:

  1. Role-playing is a great way to hone their social skills by simulating real-life interactions like ordering food, making small chat, and settling problems. Respond to their questions and concerns while offering suggestions as required.
  2. Encourage them to consider participating in clubs or groups that reflect their interests, such an art club, a sports team, or a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG). This helps give young adults a risk-free opportunity to hone their interpersonal skills.
  3. Model for them how to respond in social situations by demonstrating how to respond calmly in situations by practicing speaking politely, showing empathy, and keeping a level head when addressing opposing viewpoints. Don’t take it personally if they seem emotionally distant.

Tip 3: Promote Independence Through Skill-Building

Helping your child develop practical skills is crucial for their long-term independence and success. Focus on:

  1. Daily living skills: Teach them how to perform tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Start with simple tasks and gradually increase complexity as they gain confidence.
  2. Time management and organization: Use visual aids, such as calendars or to-do lists, to help your teen learn to manage their time and stay organized.
  3. Problem-solving: Encourage your child to think critically and solve problems independently. Offer guidance when needed but allow them the opportunity to develop their own solutions.

As a parent, you are always seeking out support and resources your child requires to thrive as they mature and evolve. Employing these mentoring techniques, will build on their safe zones, enabling your child to reach their full potential. Bear in mind, patience and trying to come from how they perceive every issue is crucial, and each new milestone reached deserves acknowledgement.

I know you will try your best to implement these tips we have shared with you but don’t be surprised if they don’t bear out all the success they should proved. The reason people seek us out to do the mentoring work with a child on the spectrm is that often the best work is done with your collaborating with an outside mentor. We provide an unbiased outlook along with years of experience with young adults on the spectrum, empowering your child to form new life skills and grow their confidence on every aspect of their life. As parents, mentor and mentee, working as a team we will empower your child to become their best self and build the new mentoring skills we teach you to work on at home, reinformcing even more growth and development for your child.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

4 Tips to Convince a Young Adult with Autism on Trying Our Mentoring Program

So many parents of young adults with autism spend a great deal of their time seeking resources to help their child succeed our in the world. Mentoring can be a powerful tool to unlock your child’s potential and provide them with the guidance and support they need. An experienced mentor offers emotional support, guidance, and practical skills that help young adults with autism navigate unique challenges, such as developing social skills, building self-esteem, managing school life, improving communication, coping with sensory overload, and finding the right career path. In this article, we’ll provide tips on how to convince your child to try our mentoring program and explore the many benefits of mentoring for young adults with autism.

Remember to ask their opinion about trying mentoring. “I found a place with a lot of experience mentoring young adults. They are there to help you with whatever you feel you want to work on. What do you think?”

  1. Highlight the benefits of mentoring: 
    Discuss the benefits that our mentors provide, such as improved social skills, enhanced self-esteem, and dealing with school or work challenges. Explain to your child our mentors are experienced with working with young adults on the spectrum. We offer guidance, advice, and emotional support, which can help your child navigate the challenges of dealing with a neurotypical world.
  2. Emphasize the flexibility of the program: 
    Explain that our mentoring programs is flexible and is tailored to meet your child’s individual needs and preferences. They are conducted virtually, allowing your child to remain in ‘their own space” and will be scheduled at a time that works best for your child.
  3. Highlight the mentor’s expertise: 
    Discuss our mentor’s skills and experience, and how they can provide valuable guidance and support to your child. Emphasize that the mentor is there to help your child overcome their challenges and achieve their goals.
  4. Empower your child in the decision:
    It’s essential to involve your child in the decision-making process and get their input on whether they are interested in participating in a mentoring program. Discuss their concerns and answer any questions they may have. It’s crucial to ensure that they feel comfortable about trying out mentoring and that they have the power to decide if they wish to continue.

Our mentoring program can be a valuable tool for young adults with autism to reach their full potential. By highlighting the benefits, focusing on their interests, emphasizing the flexibility of the program, and involving your child in the decision-making process, you can help convince them to try our mentoring program.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Expert Tips for Parents Wanting to Mentor a Young Adult Struggling with Anger Issues”

Parenting a child with anger issues can be a real struggle. The outbursts are never easy to deal with, and understanding why your child is struggling with anger and how to help them manage their emotions effectively can feel like a daunting task. But there’s hope. Mentoring has been found to be an effective tool for supporting your child in developing the skills they need to manage their anger and lead a healthy, productive life, according to Mentoring Young Adults.

Here are three expert tips from our mentors for mentoring your child with anger issues:

  1. Building Trust and Communication is Key 
    Establishing trust and open communication is the foundation of any successful mentoring relationship. Building trust with your child may be challenging, but it’s essential before you can support them effectively. Start by listening to your child without judgment, validate their feelings, and assure them of your commitment to help them manage their anger.
  2. Encourage Positive Coping Strategies 
    Positive coping strategies are effective in managing anger. Encourage your child to explore different ways of coping with their emotions, such as deep breathing, mindfulness, or physical activity. Modeling positive coping strategies by practicing them yourself and sharing your experiences with your child can also be helpful.
  3. Help Your Child Set Realistic Goals 
    Motivate your child by helping them set realistic goals. Work with them to identify achievable goals such as learning a new skill, developing healthy relationships, or pursuing a hobby. Celebrate their successes and encourage them to keep moving forward.

Remember, seeking out an outside mentor can be extremely beneficial for both the parent and the child. At MentoringYoungAdults.com, we have a team of experienced mentors who provide a supportive and non-judgmental environment for young adults struggling with anger issues. Don’t hesitate to seek professional help if necessary, as it can make a significant difference in your child’s overall well-being.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Mentoring Your Child with Communication Challenges: 3 Expert Tips From Our Mentors

Effective communication is so important for success in almost every aspect of life. Many young adults these days have trouble communicating effectively in so many parts of their lives. It can be so frustrating to yourself struggling with communication issues as a parent. Mentoring can be a powerful tool to help build your child’s communication skills. Here are three tips from our professional mentors from MentoringYoungAdults.com to help help you help your child rise above communication issues. 

Tip #1: Encourage Active Listening

Active listening is a powerful tool towards building effective communication. Most young adults with communication issues have rarely, if ever, practiced this skill. As a mentor, it’s important to show a young adult the art of active listening. To truly listen, the listener must empathize and validate the speaker, free of judgment or justification. Practicing these skills in the proper manner with yourself or your child, switching who is the speaker and who is the listener will develop these skills over time. This will instill more natural and intuitive communication skills in challenging situations between yourself and your child, leading to improved communication with others.

Tip #2: Practice Communication through Emails

Writing emails can be an excellent way for young adults with communication issues to practice putting their thoughts and ideas into words. As mentors, we encourage your child to write emails to family members, friends, or even fictional characters. We begin with figuring out what we want to say to the reader, what is our goal, and the best way to say it. This exercise will help your child develop their writing skills, as well as practice expressing themselves in a structured and clear manner. Encourage your child to think about their audience and what they want to communicate before they begin writing. With practice, your child will become more confident in their ability to communicate effectively through writing, which can slowly be transferred into improved verbal communication skills by the same process.

Tip #3: Model Positive Communication

As mentors, it is essential we model positive communication behaviors with our mentees, the same applies for you and your child. This means using clear and concise language, maintaining a calm and respectful tone, and avoiding negative language or behaviors. When you communicate with your child, be sure to give them your full attention and respond in a way that shows you understand and value their perspective. Over time, your child will learn to model these positive communication behaviors themselves, leading to improved communication and better relationships with others.

Mentoring can be a valuable tool for helping children with communication issues improve their skills and overcome barriers. By encouraging active listening, practicing communication through emails, and modeling positive communication behaviors, parents can support their children’s growth in this area. However, it’s worth noting that sometimes the best way for a child to receive mentoring is from someone outside the family, such as a professional mentor from MentoringYoungAdults.com. Our mentors have the training and experience to provide tailored guidance and support to help young adults with communication issues reach their full potential. Whether it’s through a professional mentor or a supportive family member, the important thing is to provide the resources and encouragement necessary to help your child succeed.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

A Parent’s Guide to Persuading a Young Adult with Communication Issues to Try Mentoring

Watching a young adult struggle with communication issues can be heartbreaking, especially when it’s combined with anxiety. However, there is a solution that has shown great promise: mentoring. Mentoring is a powerful tool for helping young adults develop the skills they need to succeed in life, especially those who may be struggling with communication issues. In this article, we’ll explore how mentoring can help, and how to convince a child with communication issues to give it a try.

Communication Struggles and Anxiety

Young adults who frequently experience communication challenges may feel overwhelmed, anxious, or frustrated in social situations. They may find it hard to express themselves, share their thoughts, and connect with others. This can lead to low self-esteem, isolation, and other mental health issues, including anxiety.

Mentoring Can Help

Mentoring is a great way to help young adults build critical communication skills. A qualified mentor provides a safe and supportive environment where the mentee can practice their communication skills. The mentor offers feedback, guidance, and tips on how to develop communication skills. By working with a mentor, the mentee gains confidence, learns to express themselves more effectively, and ultimately feels more at ease in social situations.

Building Critical Life Skills

Mentoring helps young adults develop a wide range of other important life skills, including problem-solving, time management, and goal setting. Mentors offer a fresh perspective on life’s challenges and opportunities, enabling the mentee to gain a sense of purpose and direction. Additionally, mentors provide guidance and support, helping young adults develop their sense of responsibility and accountability.

Persuading a Young Adult to Try Mentoring

If you want to encourage a young adult to give mentoring a chance, you must be sensitive to their communication challenges. Here are some tips:

  1. Listen: Take the time to listen to their apprehensions and difficulties with communication. Let them know that you are there to support them by genuinely listening to them.
  2. Explain Mentoring: Explain what mentoring is and how it can help them. Highlight the supportive and non-judgmental nature of mentoring.
  3. Choose a Good Mentor: Help them find a mentor who is patient, empathetic, and willing to listen. A mentor whose area of expertise is mentoring young adults. The mentor should be someone who understands the challenges of communication and is willing to work with the mentee at their own pace.
  4. Encourage Trying a Session: Encourage them to try just one session or one month of sessions (one hour each time online) to see if it might be worthwhile.
  5. Be Patient: Be patient with their progress. Communication struggles are challenging, but with the right support, they can overcome them.

Mentoring is a powerful tool for helping young adults who are struggling with communication challenges. By providing a supportive and safe environment for practice, mentoring helps young adults develop their confidence and enhance their communication skills. When attempting to persuade your child to try mentoring, take the time to listen to their concerns, assist them in finding a suitable mentor, and be patient with their progress. With the proper support, they can overcome their communication hurdles and soar!

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Helping Your Child to Overcome School Failures:  3 Mentoring Tips for Parents to Try at Home

As parents, it can be difficult to see our children struggle with school failures. We want to do everything we can to support them, but it’s not always clear what we should be doing. Fortunately, mentoring can be a powerful tool for helping young adults overcome school failures and achieve their academic goals.

Here are three mentoring tips for parents to help their children overcome school failures:

  1. Listen and Validate

The first step in effective mentoring is to listen to your child’s concerns and validate their feelings. It can be tempting to jump in with solutions, but often what your child needs most is simply to be heard. Let them know that you want to understand how they’re feeling and that you are there to support them.

By validating their feelings, you are creating a safe space for your child to share their struggles without fear of judgment or criticism. This can be incredibly empowering and can help your child feel more confident in their ability to overcome their challenges.

  1. Encourage Growth Mindset

One of the most important things we do as mentors is to encourage a growth mindset in a young adult. This means helping them see that failure is not a reflection of their intelligence or abilities, but rather an opportunity to learn and grow. An opportunity to start again and again, free of judgment.

Encourage your child to view challenges as opportunities to develop new skills and to see mistakes as stepping stones to success. When they encounter setbacks, help them identify what they can learn from the experience and how they can use that knowledge to improve in the future.

  1. Set Realistic Goals and Celebrate Progress

Finally, it’s important to set realistic goals with your child and to celebrate their progress along the way. This can help them stay motivated and focused, even when they encounter setbacks.

Work with your child to set achievable goals that are aligned with their interests and strengths. Break larger goals down into smaller, manageable steps and celebrate each milestone along the way. This will help your child stay motivated and feel a sense of accomplishment as they work towards their goals.

Mentoring can be a powerful tool for helping young adults overcome school failures and achieve their academic goals. By listening and validating their concerns, encouraging a growth mindset, and setting realistic goals, parents can help their children develop the resilience and confidence they need to succeed. For more information on mentoring young adults, visit www.mentoringyoungadults.com.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

From School Failure to Success: What One Year of Mentoring Can Create

Picture this: a student who has been grappling with school failures for years suddenly undergoes a remarkable transformation after just one year of mentoring. They go from barely scraping through their classes to soaring in every subject, and their teachers are astonished by their progress. The student becomes more involved in their studies, actively participating in class discussions and posing thought-provoking questions.

Not only that, but the student also discovers new talents and interests that they never knew existed. They join a robotics club and find a passion for programming or start writing poetry and go to poetry slams, sharing their art with other like-minded people. As they realize their potential, their self-confidence builds and builds, and they experience the fact that they are capable of achieving incredible things.

The parents are bewildered and elated by the progress their child has made. They could never have imagined that their child could accomplish so much in just one year. They envision a bright future for their child, filled with endless possibilities and triumphs.

However, the benefits of mentoring go beyond academic and personal growth. The student also develops vital life skills, such as leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving, which will be valuable in college and their future career. They create robust relationships with their mentor and other mentors from the program, creating a support network that they can depend on.

In short, after just one year of mentoring, the student has transformed into a confident, capable, and successful young adult. They have discovered new passions and interests, developed important life skills, and built strong relationships with their mentors and peers. The parents are astonished by the progress their child has made and are eager to witness what the future holds.

The incredible transformation of a struggling student into a successful young adult is possible with the guidance of a mentor. Mentoring can provide students with the guidance, support, and skills they need to overcome school failures, explore their passions, and achieve their dreams. At MentoringYoungAdults.com, our program is designed to help students master organization, time management, communication, self-advocacy, and other critical skills that can pave the way for success in college, work and beyond. With the help of a mentor, students can unlock their full potential and create a brilliant future for themselves. If you’re a parent searching for ways to help your child overcome school failures and accomplish their goals, consider the power of mentoring.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Effective Strategies for Encouraging a Young Adult with Anger Issues to Try Mentoring”

As a parent, it can be incredibly overwhelming and distressing to witness your child grappling with uncontrollable rage and feeling unheard. One potential solution to help your child manage their emotions and feel validated is through the practice of mentoring. However, convincing a child who is struggling with intense anger to engage in mentoring can seem like an insurmountable challenge. Luckily, there are a few strategies you can employ to help convince your child to give mentoring a chance:

  1. Start by empathizing with your child and validating their feelings. Make sure your child understands that you acknowledge how they feel and that you are invested in helping them find a positive way to deal with their emotions.
  2. Outline the benefits of mentoring for managing anger. Emphasize how mentoring can provide a safe, supportive space for your child to express themselves and learn effective coping mechanisms.
  3. Allow your child to choose their own mentor so that they feel more invested in the process. Encourage them to seek out someone who they feel comfortable confiding in and who shares their interests.
  4. Make sure to be supportive of your child throughout the mentoring process. Keep in contact with their mentor through emails and attend parent support sessions with their mentor and check in with your child regularly to see how they feel about the process. Celebrate the small victories as well as the large ones and encourage them to keep pushing forward.
  5. Finally, set achievable goals for your child and their mentor. Start small, such as meeting once a week for a month or focusing on creating new skill. By setting realistic expectations, your child will feel less overwhelmed and more confident in their ability to manage their anger.

Mentoring can be a valuable tool for young adults who are struggling with intense anger and feeling unheard. By empathizing with your child, discussing the benefits of mentoring, allowing them to choose their own mentor, being supportive, and setting achievable goals, you can help convince them to give mentoring a try and equip them with the necessary tools to manage their emotions. Remember to be patient and understanding, as the mentoring process requires time and effort to be effective.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

Empowering Your Child’s Academic Success: 4 Tips to Encourage Your Child to Try Mentoring 

As a parent, you understand the importance of academic success for your child’s future. However, when your child struggles with school, it can be frustrating and disheartening. Poor grades, time management issues, and a feeling of being unsupported can all contribute to a negative outlook on their abilities to succeed in all aspects of their life. But don’t worry, there is hope!

MentoringYoungAdults.com provides the guidance and support that your child needs to overcome these obstacles and achieve their full potential. In this article, we’ll discuss how mentoring can help your child master time management, communication and advocacy skills and provide tips to help them to consider trying our mentoring program.

Effective time management is crucial for academic success. Balancing schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and personal commitments can be overwhelming for many students. Our mentors help your child find the best way that works for them to use our tools to slowly master prioritization, goal setting, and scheduling, empowering them to manage their time effectively. Our Mentors provide accountability and support in a judgement-free environment to help keep our mentees on track and prevent them from falling behind. But when things go off track, our skills on how to pierce the target, start once more, free of judgment, makes all the difference to a long and successful career.

In addition to time management, communication is an important skill that our mentors will help your child develop. When students struggle in school, they may not know how to seek out the resources and support they need. Our Mentors will find the ideal way forward for your child to learn how to communicate effectively with teachers, counselors, and other school staff, and with our help, identify and utilize support systems both inside and outside of school.

If you’re wondering how to convince your child to try our mentoring program, here are a few tips:

  1. Be supportive and encouraging: Let your child know that you believe in them and that you want to help them succeed. Explain that mentoring is a positive step towards achieving their goals. It does not involve talk therapy. Mentoring is about working on whatever they feel then want to work on.
  2. Highlight the benefits: Explain how mentoring is a different approach and how mentoring can help them develop valuable skills that will benefit them not just in school, but also in other areas of their life.
  3. Address concerns: If your child is hesitant about trying the program, listen to their concerns and reassure them that the program can be tailored to their needs.
    If they are worried about the time commitment, let them know that the program can be tailored to their schedule.
  4. Involve your child in the decision-making process: Give your child a say in whether or not they want to try our mentoring program. By involving them in the decision-making process, they’ll feel more engaged and invested in the program.
    If they are still reticent, suggest they try just one hour (it’s online, no need to go anywhere) and they can let you know if they want to try it for a few more weeks.

Our mentoring program has been a game-changer for students struggling in school and in life. By mastering time management, communication and advocacy skills, your child will overcome academic challenges and achieve success in all areas of their lives. Use these tips to convince your child to try MentoringYoungAdults.com, and watch them flourish both academically and personally.

Schedule a Free 15 minute Consult to See How Our Mentoring Program Can Help Your Child.

From Failure to Success: What to Expect After One Year of Mentoring for Young Adults with Failure to Launch

Here are some outcomes you can expect to see after one year of mentoring young adults with failure to launch from our mentoring program:

  1. Increased motivation and focus: Mentoring helps young adults clarify their goals and develop a sense of purpose, increasing their motivation and focus in all areas of life.
  2. Improved academic or job performance: With increased motivation and focus, young adults see improvements in their academic and/or job performance. They will be more engaged in their endeavors, leading to better grades or success at work.
  3. Greater independence: One of the key goals of mentoring is to help young adults become more independent. After one year, you can expect to see your child taking more responsibility for their own life and making decisions with more confidence.
  4. Stronger social skills: Many young adults with a failure to launch struggle with social skills. Our mentoring program empowers young adults to improve their communication and interpersonal skills, leading to stronger relationships and a more fulfilling social life.
  5. Improved mental health: Failure to launch can often be accompanied by mental health issues such as anxiety or depression. Our mentors provides our mentees with emotional support and guidance, leading to improved mental health and well-being.

Overall, mentoring can be a powerful tool for helping young adults overcome their failure to launch and achieve success in all areas of life. With increased motivation, focus, independence, social skills, and mental health, they will go on to lead a fulfilling and successful life.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

Encouraging a Young Adult to Try Mentoring for Failure to Launch: A Guide for Parents

As a parent, it can be difficult to watch your child struggle with failure to launch. It’s a challenging situation that requires careful navigation and support. One approach that has shown to be effective in supporting children in this situation is mentoring.

Mentoring is a process where a more experienced person (mentor) offers guidance, support, and advice to a less experienced person (the mentee). It’s an opportunity for the mentee to learn from someone who has already navigated the challenges they are facing. Mentoring can be an excellent way to help your child build confidence and find their path forward.

If you’re considering mentoring for your child, it’s important to approach the conversation in a supportive and non-judgmental way. Here are some things you might consider saying:

  1. “I know you’re going through a tough time right now, and I want to help. Have you considered working with a mentor to help guide you through this transition?”

This statement acknowledges that your child is going through a tough time, while also offering a solution to help them navigate it. It’s important to approach the conversation in a supportive and caring manner to help your child feel comfortable with the idea of mentoring.

  1. “A mentor helps young adults grow through micro-successes, which can be incredibly valuable in overcoming the challenges they’re facing.”

This statement highlights the benefits of mentoring, specifically how a mentor can help your child build small successes that can lead to bigger successes. It’s important to emphasize that these small wins can be incredibly powerful in building confidence and momentum.

  1. “Working with a mentor doesn’t mean you can’t do it on your own. It just means you’re open to learning and growing, which is a sign of strength.”

It’s essential to address any potential stigma your child may have around mentoring. Many young adults may feel like they’re admitting failure if they seek out a mentor, which can be a barrier to getting the help they need. This statement reinforces that seeking out a mentor is a sign of strength and resilience, not weakness.

  1. “I’m here to support you in finding the right mentor. Let’s look at this mentoring program “Mentoring Young Adults” and see if it might be worth trying out”

Offering to help your child find a mentor can be incredibly helpful. It shows that you’re invested in their success and that you’re willing to be a partner in the process. Together, you can research our program and make sure that it could be a good fit for your child’s needs.

In conclusion, supporting a child through failure to launch can be challenging, but mentoring can be a powerful tool in helping them build confidence and find their path forward. By approaching the conversation in a supportive and non-judgmental way, emphasizing the benefits of mentoring, and offering to help identify potential mentors, you can help your child get the support they need to succeed.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

What to Expect After One Year of Mentoring a Young Adult with Anxiety: Strategies for Success

Having a young adult suffering from anxiety can be a challenging experience for parents. Anxiety can affect every aspect of a young adult’s life, from their social interactions to their academic performance. It can be challenging to know where to start when it comes to helping your young adult cope with anxiety.

MentoringYoungAdults.com provides your child with the support and guidance they need to navigate their anxiety and achieve their goals. But what can you expect after one year of mentoring? Let’s take a look at some of the strategies for success outlined in the article “Mentoring Young Adults with Anxiety: Strategies for Success” and what they can mean for your child.

First and foremost, it’s essential to understand that mentoring is a process. It takes time and consistent effort to see results. However, the rewards can be significant. Our mentoring program helps a young adult develop coping skills and strategies that last a lifetime. With that in mind, let’s dive into some of the strategies for success outlined in the article.

  1. Setting goals and creating a plan

One of our first steps in mentoring is setting goals and creating a plan to achieve them. Goals give your child something to work towards and can provide a sense of purpose and direction. Our mentors help their mentee identify goals that are realistic and achievable, and then create a plan to make them happen.

  1. Developing coping skills

Anxiety can be overwhelming, but there are coping skills that your child can develop to manage their anxiety effectively. Mentoring will help your child identify which coping skills work best for them, such as deep breathing exercises or mindfulness techniques. With practice, these coping skills can become a part of your young adult’s daily routine, helping them manage their anxiety more effectively.

  1. Building a support network

Having a strong support network is essential for anyone struggling with anxiety. Our mentos will help your child build a support network of people they trust, such as friends, family members, or therapists. Knowing that they have people they can turn to when they’re feeling anxious can help your child feel more secure and confident.

  1. Building self-esteem

Anxiety can erode a young adult’s self-esteem, making it challenging for them to believe in themselves and their abilities. Our mentors help your child build self-esteem by recognizing their strengths and encouraging them to take on new challenges. Building self-esteem will help your child feel more confident in their abilities, reducing anxiety and improve their overall well-being.

  1. Fostering independence

Ultimately, the goal of mentoring is to help your child become more independent and self-sufficient. By setting goals, developing coping skills, building a support network, and building self-esteem, your child will learn to manage their anxiety and achieve their goals independently. Our mentors provide guidance and support along the way, but the ultimate goal is for your child to become self-reliant.

Mentoring can be an effective strategy for helping young adults cope with anxiety. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have developed coping skills, built a support network, and fostered independence. While the process of mentoring takes time and effort, the rewards can be significant. With the right support and guidance, your child can learn to manage their anxiety and achieve all of their goals in life.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

Three Strategies for Parents to Help Young Adults Overcome Anxiety

Anxiety is a common problem that affects many young adults. As parents, it can be difficult to watch our children struggle with this issue. Fortunately, there are steps we can take to help our young adults overcome anxiety and build the confidence they need to succeed. In this article, we’ll discuss three things parents can do at home to help their young adult suffering from anxiety based on our mentoring work at World Wide Youth Mentoring.

  1. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a powerful tool that can help young adults manage anxiety. Mindfulness involves paying attention to the present moment without judgment. When we’re anxious, our thoughts tend to race and we may feel overwhelmed. Practicing mindfulness can help us stay grounded and focused on the present.

As parents, we can encourage our young adults to practice mindfulness by doing it with them. We can set aside time each day to practice mindfulness together. This can involve simply sitting quietly and focusing on the breath, or it can involve more structured mindfulness exercises like yoga or meditation.

  1. Encourage Positive Self-Speak

Negative self-speak is a common problem for young adults with anxiety. They may tell themselves that they’re not good enough, that they’re going to fail, or that something bad is going to happen. This type of thinking can make anxiety worse.

As parents, we can help our young adults overcome negative self-speak by practicing positive self-speak yourselves. This involves replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, if your child is worried about a test, you can encourage them to tell themselves, “I’ve studied hard for this test and I’m going to do my best.”

  1. Celebrate Micro-Successes

When young adults are struggling with anxiety, it’s important to celebrate even the smallest successes. This can help build confidence and self-esteem, which can make it easier for them to tackle bigger challenges in the future.

As parents, we can help our young adults build micro-successes by setting small goals and celebrating when they achieve them. For example, if your young adult is struggling to leave the house, you can set a goal of walking to the end of the street and back. When they achieve this goal, you can celebrate with them by doing something they enjoy, like watching a movie or playing a game together.

While parents can play a significant role in helping their young adults overcome anxiety, it can be challenging for children to learn these skills solely from family. This is where the option of having a mentor can be particularly beneficial. Our mentors provide a fresh perspective, offer guidance and support, and help young adults build the necessary skills to manage anxiety and succeed in life. By working together with us as a team, parents can give their young adults the tools they need to thrive, both now and in the future.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

What to Expect After One Year of Mentoring a Young Adult with ADHD

As a parent of a young adult with ADHD, it’s natural to want to help your child overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. Working with a qualified mentor can make a real difference in your child’s life. Here’s what you can expect after one year of mentoring based on our work at MentoringYoungAdults.com:

  1. Improved Focus

One of the biggest challenges for young adults with ADHD is maintaining focus on tasks and goals. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have improved their focus and attention span. A mentor can work with your child to develop personalized strategies for improving their focus and help them stay on track with their goals.

  1. Better Time Management

Young adults with ADHD often struggle with time management and organization. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have developed better time management skills. Our mentors help your child create a structured routine and break down tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. This will help your child manage their time more effectively and reduce their stress levels.

  1. Increased Self-Confidence

Young adults with ADHD often struggle with low self-esteem and negative self-speak. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have increased self-confidence and a more positive outlook on their future. Our mentors are trained to provide your child with positive feedback and support, as well as working on transforming negative self-speak into positive self-speak, helping them build their self-esteem and celebrate their achievements.

  1. Improved Communication Skills

Effective communication is essential for success in both personal and professional life. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have improved their communication skills. Our mentors help your child develop effective communication strategies and build their confidence in social situations.

  1. Progress Toward Goals

After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have made progress toward all of their goals. Our mentors will help your child set realistic and achievable goals and provide them with the support and strategies needed to reach those goals. Celebrate your child’s progress and encourage them to keep moving forward.

Working with our mentors can make a significant difference in your child’s life. After one year of mentoring, you can expect your child to have improved their focus, time management, communication skills, and self-confidence, as well as made progress toward their life goals. Remember to be patient and understanding with your child, and consider working with our mentoring program. With the right strategies and support, your child can overcome their ADHD challenges and achieve their full potential.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

Rising Above ADHD Challenges: The Power of Parent-Mentor-Child Teamwork

Being a young adult with ADHD can be a challenging experience. However, with the right tools and support, you can help your child improve their focus and achieve their goals. One of the most effective ways to do this is by working as a team with a mentor and your child.

Mastering ADHD is all about developing specific skills and strategies that can help your child overcome their challenges. By working with a mentor, your child can learn how to better manage their symptoms and develop strategies for success.

The first step in this process is to find a qualified mentor who has experience working with children with ADHD. At World Wide Youth Mentoring, this is one of our specialties. It’s essential to find someone who your child can trust and build a strong rapport with. Our mentors provide your child with a safe and supportive online environment where they can explore their strengths and challenges.

Once you’ve begun our mentoring program, it’s time to start working as a team with your child. This involves sharing issues with your child’s mentor through emails. Allowing you child and mentor to set clear goals and expectations for themselves, and communicate regularly with you through emails and “Parent Time”. You can help your child by providing your mentor your observations of the effects the mentoring is having at home.

One of the most effective strategies for helping children with ADHD is to establish a routine. That is what your mentor will do guided by your child’s input on a way that works for them. This will be challenging and there will be many false starts. By keeping the lines of communication open with your mentor, you will help the mentee/mentor team know what works based on your observations.

Remember Pavlov! In some ways, all the false starts in the past may make our mentee’s parents respond to any of the “old routines” as a panic-inducing fear that this will not work. If we have our mentee doing 30 minutes of a routine, followed by a break and then another 5 minutes of a routine, we have built the framework for success. It will take a while. However, that success may still look to the parent as nothing has changed when seeing the 15 hours a day of video gaming continuing. (It used to be 16 hours 🙂

Communication with your mentor and asking what they are working on and how it is progressing can keep the Pavlovian pooch at bay.

Raising a child with ADHD can be a challenging experience. However, by working as a team with a mentor and your child, you can help your child develop the skills and strategies they need to succeed. By working as a team with your mentor through emails and Parent Time, you can help your child overcome their challenges and achieve their full potential. With consistent support and encouragement, your child will thrive and succeed in all areas of their life.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

5 Steps to Encourage a Young Adult with ADHD to Try Mentoring for Improved Focus and Goal Achievement”

As a parent of a young adult with ADHD, you know how challenging it can be for them to stay focused and achieve their goals. You may have tried various strategies to help them manage their symptoms, but have you considered the possibility of working with a mentor? Mentors can provide guidance, support, and accountability for your child, helping them to navigate the unique challenges of ADHD.

Here are some steps you can take to encourage your child to consider working with a mentor for their ADHD issues:

  1. Start the conversation: It’s important to approach the topic of mentoring in a non-judgmental and supportive way. Let your child know that you are there to support them and want to help them find the resources they need to succeed. Share the article from MentoringYoungAdults.com with them and encourage them to read it.
  2. Explain the benefits of mentoring: Share with your child how a mentor can help them develop coping strategies, build self-esteem, and achieve their goals. Our mentors provide support and guidance in areas such as time management, organization, and communication skills.
  3. Find the right mentor: It is important to find a mentor who is a good fit for their needs and personality. Our mentors have experience working with young adults with ADHD.
  4. Encourage your child to take the lead: (If they are open to it.) It’s important that your child feels empowered in the mentoring relationship. Encourage them to take an active role in setting goals and determining the areas where they need the most support. This will help them feel more invested in the process and more likely to stick with it.
  5. Just try it one: Sometimes the concern about a commitment can stop someone from trying new things. Let them know it’s ok to try just one one-hour session to see if it is right for them and then they only have to commit to one month at a time.

Working with a mentor can be a valuable resource for young adults with ADHD. By approaching the topic in a supportive and non-judgmental way, explaining the benefits, and finding the right mentor, you can help your child develop the coping strategies they need to succeed. With the right support, your child can learn to manage their symptoms and achieve their goals.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

Mentoring for Mental Health: What Parents Can Expect After One Year

If you are a parent of a young adult who is struggling with mental health challenges, you may feel overwhelmed and unsure of how to support your child. One way to provide your child with the support they need is through mentoring. A mentor can provide guidance, support, and a listening ear to your child, helping them navigate difficult situations and build their self-esteem. Here is what you might expect to see after one year of mentoring, based on the article “How Mentoring Can Help Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges.”

  1. Improved Self-Esteem

One of the most significant benefits of mentoring for young adults with mental health challenges is improved self-esteem. Our mentors help your child build their confidence and self-worth, which can have a positive impact on their mental health. After one year of mentoring, you may notice that your child is more self-assured and willing to take risks. They may be more willing to try new things, and they may be more comfortable speaking up for themselves.

  1. Increased Resilience

Another benefit of mentoring for young adults with mental health challenges is increased resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficult situations, and it is an essential skill for managing mental health challenges. Our mentors help your child develop resilience by providing them with support and guidance during tough times. After one year of mentoring, you may notice that your child is better able to handle stress and adversity. They may be more willing to seek help when they need it, and they may be more resilient in the face of setbacks.

  1. Improved Social Skills

Mentoring also help young adults with mental health challenges improve their social skills. Social skills are essential for building positive relationships with others, which can have a positive impact on mental health. A mentor can help your child develop social skills by providing them with guidance and support as they navigate social situations. After one year of mentoring, you may notice that your child is more confident in social situations. They may be better able to communicate their needs and feelings, and they may have developed new friendships and connections.

  1. Increased Independence

Finally, mentoring can help young adults with mental health challenges increase their independence. Our mentoring program helps your child develop the skills they need to take care of themselves, such as managing their finances, navigating public transportation, or cooking healthy meals. After one year of mentoring, you will notice that your child is more independent and self-sufficient. Being better able to take care of themselves and manage their mental health challenges.

Mentoring can be a powerful tool for supporting young adults with mental health challenges. After one year of mentoring, you will see improved self-esteem, increased resilience, improved social skills, and increased independence in your child. If you are interested in working with one of our mentors for your child, book a consultation today. With patience, love, and support, you can help your child manage their mental health challenges and thrive.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

3 Ways Parents Can Support Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges at Home

As a parent, it can be incredibly difficult to watch your child struggle with mental health issues. You may feel helpless, overwhelmed, and unsure of what steps to take to support your child. However, there are several things you can do at home to help your child manage their mental health challenges. Here are three tips based on the article “How Mentoring Can Help Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges” that you can try:

  1. Encourage Your Child to Seek Out a Mentor

One way to support your child is to encourage them to seek out a mentor. A mentor who specialized in working with young adults provides guidance, support, and a listening ear to your child. A mentor can help your child navigate difficult situations, make positive choices, and build their self-esteem. You can help your child find the right mentor by clicking on the link at the bottom of this blog. You can also encourage your child to talk to their therapist or mental health professional about engaging a mentor who specializes in working with young adults and mental health issues.

  1. Practice Active Listening

Another way to support your child is to practice active listening. Active listening means listening to your child with an open mind, free of judgment. It means giving your child your full attention and allowing them to express themselves without interruption. When your child is talking, try to focus on what they are saying rather than thinking about your response. Validate your child’s feelings and let them know that you are there to support them. Active listening can help your child feel heard and understood, which is incredibly beneficial for their mental health.

  1. Encourage Healthy Coping Mechanisms

Finally, you can support your child by encouraging healthy coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms are strategies that people use to manage stress and difficult emotions. Encouraging your child to develop healthy coping mechanisms can help them manage their mental health challenges in a positive way. Some examples of healthy coping mechanisms include exercise, meditation, journaling, spending time in nature, and talking to a therapist or mental health professional. You can help your child identify healthy coping mechanisms that work for them and encourage them to practice these strategies regularly.

Supporting a young adult child with mental health challenges can be a daunting task, but there are things you can do to help. Encouraging your child to seek out a mentor, practicing active listening, and encouraging healthy coping mechanisms are all effective strategies you can try at home. Remember that it’s okay to ask for help if you need it, and that your child’s mental health is important. With patience, love, and support, you can help your child manage their mental health challenges and live a fulfilling life.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

How to Encourage a Young Adult to Consider Online Mentoring for Mental Health Support

As a young adult navigates through life, they may face a variety of challenges that can impact their mental health. Whether it’s stress from school or work, anxiety about the future, or feelings of loneliness and isolation, it can be difficult to cope with these challenges on one’s own.

Fortunately, mentoring can be a powerful tool to support young adults with mental health challenges. In fact, research has shown that having a mentor can improve mental health outcomes for young adults, including reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression and increasing resilience.

If you’re looking for ways to support a young adult’s mental health, here are some reasons for a young adult to consider mentoring online:

  1. Benefits of Mentoring: Talk to your child about the benefits of mentoring and how it can help them with their mental health challenges. Share this article from MentoringYoungAdults.com with them and encourage them to read it.
  2. Research our program: Our mentoring program is specifically designed for young adults with mental health challenges. We provide the resources and support that can help your child build resilience and cope with stress.
  3. Encourage your child to take the first step: Once you believe that our mentoring program seems like a good fit, encourage your child to take the first step and reach out to the program. They can start by filling out an online application or sending an email to the Ken Rabow at Ken@WWYM.org.
  4. Be supportive: If your child decides to pursue mentoring, be supportive and encouraging. Offer to help them set up a quiet space for online mentoring sessions, make sure their computer is set up for a Zoom call and remind them of the benefits of having the right mentor.
  5. Celebrate progress: As your child engages with their mentor and begins to make progress, celebrate their micro-successes and encourage them to keep going. Remind them that it’s okay to ask for help and that they’re not alone in their mental health journey.

Mentoring can be a valuable resource for young adults with mental health challenges, and it’s important to encourage your child to consider it as an option. By starting the conversation, investing out mentoring program, and being supportive, you can help your child build resilience and cope with the challenges they face. Remember, there’s no shame in asking for help, and your child deserves all the support they can get.

When you a ready to see if Mentoring Young Adults is the right step for you, click here.

Generation Z: The Anxiety Generation?

Gen Z are labelled the Anxiety Generation for good reason.

As a life coach for Generation Z, the anxiety generation, I spend roughly 1000 hours a year face to face with Young Adults. We meet through Zoom world-wide. I mentor Young Adults who are not doing well in life. One of the main causes is Anxiety, followed by self-sabotage and failure to launch. One could easily believe that this is truly the anxiety generation.

What is fascinating about Generation Z is how extraordinary they are.

Gen Z’s are extraordinary in non-linear thinking, embracing new concepts (like Big Data).  and in caring about their peers (virtual or real-life).

Once they have gone through life coaching, Gen Z’s often find their way towards daily micro-successes. They learn how to assess what they do in their lives in a non-judgmental fashion. Most importantly, they learn how to breath and get back into their bodies. How to get  out of their heads. The Gen Z’s who do this find a great deal of their anxiety goes away permanently.

Blanket diagnosing of Gen Z’s with all forms of anxiety is happening on all fronts. Professionals, parents and the young adults themselves witness the effects of a person who feels unsafe in the world. Anxiety becomes their self-diagnosis. To have Gen Z’s understand the underlying issues requires a different way of looking at things.

So many Gen Z’s feel safer in the virtual world then in the real world.

They feel uncomfortable advocating for themselves in words and writing.  Tweeting is their gateway to communication. They would rather give in to the many self-soothing vices like video-gaming, social media and weed, then figure out how to communicate to the “others”.

When we never look down as we hammer things, it’s easy to blame the hammer for our bruised finger instead of the fact we never learned to really look at what is going on.

Self Diagnosing vs Professional Diagnosing of Anxiety

People who self-diagnose and those who have been given a diagnose of anxiety disorder need to realize one thing; you are greater than your labels. For those who self-diagnose or who have professional diagnoses of depression they share a truth. Both are suffering, need understanding and need to rise above perceived limitations.

Is Anxiety the New Cyberdonian Excuse?

I do not believe people use anxiety as an excuse for being stressed out. 95% of the Gen Z’s I mentor suffer from anxiety. It is no less debilitating if they have been professionally diagnosed or not.

My heart breaks when I see them suffering as they do. The thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that I have overcome my own crippling personal anxiety where I could not function, I could not get into a subway car, an elevator, a plane or even a car and I know that with the techniques a good life coach for young adults can provide Millennials, they can rise above these debilitating anxieties just as I did.

Unless you are in a person’s shoes…

you cannot know how hard anxiety can be to do battle with on a day-to-day basis. Every time Gen Z’s attempt to rise above their challenges they are performing quit acts of bravery. Victory is not the true measure of their bravery.

To those suffering with anxiety, I say to you: Have faith, seek out mentors, align with those who see you as more then your labels. I believe in Gen Z’s as the generation who will help this world get on track. Heaven knows we need it.

Know a young adult in need of mentoring? Check out www.MentoringYoungAdults.com

Interested in Mentoring Young Adults? Check out www.MentorsProfessionalWorkshop.com

Young Adult Self-Sabotage

Why are so many young people willing to self-sabotage every aspect of their potential future?
Young adult self-sabotage is everywhere. Not participating in class, not doing the required studying, staying up late, sleeping most of the day away and missing more and more school. For quite a few, video gaming and/or pot addiction is another big factor.

The most frustrating part of this is that these same people are very often gifted in some way and yet here they are ….. off the tracks.

Many young people today are able to thrive or at least get by in a nuclear or single parent family, learning from their caregivers and finding other elders to learn from at school, sports, dance, music, etc. These young people grow through the ritual of daily tasks of homework, tests and projects. Graduation becomes their rite of passage. But what if your child does not connect to such a system? This creates young adult self-sabotage.

You’ve tried it all — traditional therapy, behavioral therapy, conditioned response, pharmaceuticals, begging, pleading, tough love — and some of it worked for a while and some didn’t work at all.

Young adults sabotage can leave all concerned feeling hopeless sometimes.
Feeling that your child will never grow up and take responsibility, but it has been my experience that some alternative approaches can make a world of difference. Once your troubled teen or young adult goes beyond their regular world filled with all the trappings that keep him/her where they are and finds a support system with a mentor / life- coach who is non-judgmental, on their side and open to thinking “outside the box”, that child will become motivated to start the process of getting back on track.

Four ways to create success for a troubled teen or young adult.

  1. 1. Find a mentor to work with your child.
    Someone not from the immediate family, preferably through Skype. Skype sessions allow the client to learn positive new habits at the place where they usually get in trouble: their computers.

Have the mentor ask the student these pertinent questions:
a) Name three goals you would like to work on.
b) What are the challenges to those goals?
c) What would be the first sign-posts of success?

2. The mentor and the student can put together a daily routine based on the student’s goals and interests
(e.g. meditation, yoga, tai chi, weight lifting, biking, jogging, playing an instrument, singing and reading). Basically all the things we were told that have no real financial benefit. Start with two 5 – 15 minute routines to be attempted five to six days a week. Then slowly build up to as many routines that the client feels they can comfortably handle. (Five is a good final number.) Make a weekly worksheet that divides the tasks into columns. Make room for the student to write the duration of each daily exercise (0-20). The goal of these exercises is to empower the student. These exercises are self-motivated without help from the family.

3. Hold bi-weekly meetings discussing progress.
Looking at existing obstacles and exploring solutions to these obstacles in a non-judgmental way. Therapy works well in once-a-week sessions. Mentoring / life coaching young adults requires two times a week. We are building whole new structures to succeed. This requires six to nine months of twice-a-week support until the client has internalized the habits.

4. During these sessions the mentor asks: 
“If you could do anything at all with your life, without concern of how you would make it happen, what would you choose?”
With this answered, the mentor and the student can go about finding ways to put their toes into the pond of these life purpose quests. Whittling away at young adult self-sabotage. It could be a 12-week workshop, a college class, a volunteer position or starting a small business. This time is used to help the student bring his “daily work” training into these new situations. To enhance his successful patterns accordingly. For so many young people, their home has been their box of safety and joy. Something they find wonderful and yet limiting . . . not a good long-term strategy.

Mentoring young adults is an important goal is to help these newly empowered youth create the tools they need. Allowing them  to feel safe going out into the world successfully. To eradicate young adult self-sabotage, you need to create mini-boxes of safety for them to thrive in. Places where they can learn to be self-empowered. Without exception, students who go through the entire process choose self-empowerment over self-sabotage. They not only succeed but most often become examples of leadership in their chosen vocation.

Help your child find their inspiration and get on track for a successful life!

Know a teen or young adult in need of mentoring? Check out www.MentoringYoungAdults.com

Interested in Mentoring Millennials? Check out www.MentorsProfessionalWorkshop.com

Young Adult Depression and Life Coaching

How can we transform young adult depression? One of the things I hear more often than anything else as a mentor for young adults is parents asking for help with their child’s school failures, depression, low self-esteem video game (and/or pot) addiction.

Often the depression seems most prevalent on both the parent’s and the potential Mentee’s (the young adult in question) mind. What I often say to this is: “Most of us tend to remember things in reverse order”.

Reverse Memory Syndrome with Young Adult Depression:
When a Mentee has a “discussion” with his or her parent for the bazillionth time about why they stay up so late, the parents tell the young person why they are doing it and why it’s wrong. Their child tries to explain what is really going on. Neither side listens. Voices raise and finally the Mentee tells the parents to do something that is anatomically impossible. That’s when the parents say: “We just tell you how you need to be more responsible about going to sleep at a good time and all you do is shout and scream and curse at us”. That is reverse memory syndrome. The escalation and the accusing gets lost as a factor in the final result.

Reverse memory syndrome is often the reason why the depression is foremost on the minds of the people who contact me with the issues stated above. Let’s deconstruct the actual order of events for these clients and parents contacting me.

When Millennials were magic.
This generation is the first one that was told that actually everything they did was perfect. They were the best crayoners; the best howlers; the best poopers; and everybody got a medal when they “competed”… (you wonder why they think they’re magic).

For this particular group, they were able to pull off acceptable or really good marks out of their butts at the last minute at school and of course, Mumzy and Dadzy told them “they were magic”!!

Until they weren’t magic anymore.
Fast forward to the time when pulling marks out your butt (beside being non-hygienic) no longer works for our magic client. What comes next? False epiphanies.

Most of the people I meet have at some time come up to “issues” that blocked them in their lives. When natural talent wasn’t enough anymore. At that point, if they come up with “gee, I better learn some new study habits and work harder” I never get to see them. However, if they go for the false epiphanies: “My magic is gone”, “I am stupid”, “The world is not safe” or “If I choose to fail and I do… then I’ve won”, that’s when they are getting into choosing bad coping mechanisms.

What are those coping mechanisms? Self-medication (Video games or pot), anxiety, negative self-speak (low self-esteem) or depression.

Being careful with issues such as young adult depression.
There are thee kinds of depression that one comes across as a mentor for young adults.

1) Situation-based depression where the client’s constant failures and inability to find a way out lead to depression.

2) Negative self-speak depression. Where the mind has stopped being a motivational force and has become the worst in-your-head parent constantly leading to you towards self-defeat. This requires learning to retrain the mind through mindfulness-based exercises (meditation, visualization or things like yoga).

3) True clinical depression; a chemical imbalance requiring mental health professionals to do what they do best and help find the best way to get back that proper balance.

When it comes to clinical young adult depression, a Mentor’s job is make sure that a good mental health specialist is onboard, chosen by the family and that we help make sure that this label is not all that the client becomes but is a new starting point to help that client find their personal powers.

For situation-based and negative self-speak based depression, we begin with choosing goals, the challenges to those goals and the first indicators of success, creating micro-successes through daily routines chosen by the Mentee and with the Mentee in charge. The Mentor’s job is to let the client walk every step of that journey and simply help them out of dead ends in a way that speaks to the client.

We teach the Mentee organization skills that makes sense to them in incremental stages. How to pick the best times to succeed in adding studying into their lives when it seemed impossible before. They learn how to advocate for themselves with teachers, school staff and parents (seeing both sides of the equation). This can really change things in young adult depression.

We work on finding the mindfulness-bases system that best works for them
Deep Breathing, Visualization, Meditation or, for some, Prayer. The client starts in five or ten minute increments. Beginning by doing the work first with their mentors and slowly being able to do it on their own over time. This is the beginning of self-motivated empowerment.

The big take away.
Everyone tends to see things in reverse. Become a detective, free of judgment and go back and look for false epiphanies, coping mechanisms and most importantly, seek out people outside the family to help Mentor the child and the family to find that person’s true magic. It is there, waiting to be found.

How Life Coaching Young Adults can make profound change.

Life Coaching Young Adults is an alternative way to help young adults with depression find a new way forward. Instead of focusing on what is not working, we help the Mentee create practical goals in their lives.

Once they begin working on these goals, the challenges to these goals and the first sign-posts of success, they are training themselves to look for  solutions (with the help of our Mentors) and make consistent micro-successes. These micro-successes help build up an earned self-worth the reduces depression and, in fact, builds up positive self-speak to believe that with work and trial and error, they can succeed in life.

Ask for a free 15 minute consultation.

Check out the payment options and see if one is right for you.

Interested in mentoring young adults? Check out www.MentorsProfessionalWorkshop.com

Know a young adult in need of mentoring? Check out www.MentoringYoungAdults.com

Young Adults Failing at University

Young adults failing at university. This is the time of year where old habits get in the way of troubled teens and young adults in school.
The Just-in-Time habits from high school have not helped in mentoring young adults to succeed in college/university. This is where life coaching young adults in new ways to succeed is desperately needed.

In fact, these just-in-time habits have raised a lot of university student’s anxiety levels about whether they will or will not succeed to the point of the inevitability of failure in their minds. Most young people’s response: Ignore it and maybe it will go away… it doesn’t. This can also bring on major depression.

I have good news and bad news.

Bad news:  Dealing with young adults failing at University; The likelihood of them sharing these troubles with their parents is between zero and not-a-chance-in-hell. Not because they don’t care. Because they often care too much and don’t want to disappoint and unfortunately, the internet has trained them to one great Millennial truth: if life is overwhelming there are unlimited ways to get quick gratification through gaming; facebooking; youtubing and many other wonderful diversions.

Good news: Chances are your Millennials really does care and just doesn’t know how to move forward. Let us share with you some tips that really help the young adults we life coach.

Here are five simple steps to help your Young Adults Failing at University:

1) Your calendar is your friend. Write down in your calendar all of your classes (one color) all of your tutorials (another color) papers (a third color) and exams (you guessed it). Put in reminders for the first class of the day and any classes that are after more than a one-hour break.
2) Pick your reading times in each day. Once you have your outline of the stuff you have to show up for, it is easier to figure out what days and times are best to do the required readings.
3) Reading requirements: Go through all reading requirements and keep notes about when you do what and how you are required to do it.
4) Gravitate to the kids-who-care. There is usually an area in classes where students are who actually care about their work. Get in that area. Make connections with the ones that seem like they might be good to create study groups with.
5) Your teachers and T.A’s are your best resource. When s**t hits the fan and you are having problems, teachers and T.A’s are a great resource to get on track.

Parents
To get these things working requires an outside person; a Mentor. Someone who does not have all the history of issues in the past. Someone who can say things you may have suggested in a way that your child will actually do! That is why it is so helpful to seek out life coaching for young adults.

I train Life Coaches and Mentors to work with troubled teens and young adults struggling with these issues and what we find is that families the invest in a Mentor for the children are helping the whole family succeed.

Success in school: success in family communication; success in organization and so much more. Consider getting a Life Coach / Mentor for young adults as one of the best investments you could ever choose!

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

Ken

Interested in mentoring young adults? Click here.

If your child is in serious mental health crisis, please look into it immediately. This link is a good staring place. Click here. When things are more settled, life coaching can be a great addition to a complete program.

Getting Your Child A Youth Life Coach

If you searched for a Youth Life Coach. You probably found us.
If you are reading this then you have spoken with Ken and you felt that a youth life coach for your child is definitely worth investigating and now comes the tricky part (for some)… how to get your child onboard with life coaching for young adults.
You may have called about depression, anxiety, video game addiction, pot 
addiction or one of the other many things we specialize in with mentoring young adults.

 Here are four different ways to go about getting your child on board with a Youth Life Coach:
If none of them work on your child, don’t give up. Contact us and we will see if we can find another way to help get your child onboard.

 Try a Month
1) “I was just speaking to Ken Rabow. He’s a life coach for young adults and he seems like he has an interesting way of helping people in similar situations to yours’. I would really appreciate it if you would try it for four weeks and if you decide it might be helpful you can continue. If you don’t, then I promise not to bug you about it again”.

Try One Session
2) “If you don’t feel you want to try one month, how about trying just one session with Ken. I promise that if you do that and if you don’t like it, I won’t bug you again. It’s life coaching for young adults not therapy. You don’t have to talk about your life”.

We Will Stop Arguing
3) “Look… there are a lot of things around here that we aren’t happy about and you are not happy about us nagging you about them. Ken Rabow says he can eliminate that and make your life easier and our lives easier. Try one session. Maybe a youth life coach can help”.

Ken Will Call You
4) Tell your child that you are letting  a life coach for young adults named Ken Rabow contact them to chat for a few minutes and you will let them see what they decide. Then email Ken at info@wwym.org and give Ken the text number for your child and permission to text them about life coaching for young adults sessions.

If all else fails but you believe this might work… don’t give up.
Your child has trained all their life to trip up things that you suggest that they don’t want to do. We are happy to help you find a new way that works for you guys. Remember, we are there for the family as well as the client (your child). Email us and let us know where it stands. It might not be the right time but we can sew the seeds for when your child knows they need something new.

Life coaching young adults can really help when counselling young adults hasn’t. It is empowering for the client and helps them rise above their challenges.

Good luck!!!

Ken Rabow
Founder and CEO
World Wide Youth Mentoring Inc.
www.WWYM.org

Know someone who would like to learn to Mentor Young Adults? Click here.

You Haven’t Failed If You Are Still Trying: Teens Failing School

As a life coach / Mentor for teens failing at school, young adults and their families,
a great deal of my work is with teens failing school. Teenagers in jeopardy of completely failing their school year or Millenials now living at home, playing video games all day, who have given up on life after failing and dropping out of University. So maybe it’s best to say that me and the Mentors I train are turn-your-life-around coaches.

Each time we meet with parents, there is an unspoken question in each of their minds, followed by what I imagine is an even harsher version of inner self-flagellation and screaming in their minds: “I am a bad parent!” The truth is: If you are still trying, even if your child’s life seems down the crapper, you are a good parent. Bad parents are those who have given up and accepted failure for their child.

You are a good parent – you’re here to help!
Every person is a person with potential, many of those young adults whose talents do not catch on fire from the standard models can do great things in life. No therapy; micro-managing; freedom or meditative chanting: “go do your work!… go do your work!! …. go do your work!!!” will help.

You have done your work. Loved them, nurtured them and allowed them the space to find their own path and guess what? Many of our most inspirational leaders were exactly these kinds of people; Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and many more. I wonder how their parents felt in the rocky school years.

What should you do for the young adults for whom counseling did not work? How will this help teens failing school?
In fact, what these young adults need is someone outside their circle of friends and family to create a safe space for them to stop their whole world twice a week, help them take a deep breath, exhale their fears and self-doubts and look at where they are in their lives. Getting them to ask themselves if they are truly ready to make meaningful changes in their lives one micro-success at a time. It rarely works with people too close to them. Think of all the people we have always had around us in tribes and families throughout time. These were the Mentors. We have lost those mentors for the most part but there is a new solution: Professional Mentors. Instead of going down to the village hut, you bring the Mentor to the young adult through Skype on their computer, changing the place they run away from the world, which is why we have so many teens failing school, to a place they go to for personal growth.

It is proven over and over without a shadow of a doubt that so many of the parents have done great parenting once these young people show that they are now ready to consider empowering themselves in some positive, but alternative way. Just by considering it, their lives are put on a better path. Once you have found that good mentor for your child, make sure that, with your permission, they contact your child allowing a greater likelihood of your child considering it. You child has heard too many parental promises of the perfect, guaranteed “fixes” that have just led to the opposite of success. (Who is to blame?)

The path of teens failing school are not carved in stone,
it is carved in silicone. Their greatness lies in the fact that although they live in the on-line world of the Internet, they are so much more than that. Their minds are open to so many possibilities and it is the older generation’s duty to teach them how to interact and translate their on-line greatness in to the “real world”. This is the job of professional Mentors.

Once the Mentor and client start to choose goals towards their growth, they begin a bouncy path, two steps forward, one step bong until that young adult is ready to find the keys towards success; at school, at family; at life.
Suddenly, teens failing school becomes the first step towards a better way.

Not everything is supposed to be done inside the family unit. It’s OK.
Let me share with you a Rollo May quote:

Tell the child,
“Look, I love you, I believe in you.
I know you are going through a lot of upset the only thing that counts
is that in the long run, you find out who you are and you live it.”

Here is my challenge to you: Go find a mentor who will heal the family dynamic, and like the pied piper, play a tune that inspires the child and unlike the pied piper creates greatness in the child and harmony in the family. It can be done. Just believe and if you believe… you are on a new and better path.

Know a young adult in need of mentoring? Check out www.MentoringYoungAdults.com

Interested in mentoring Young Adults? Check out www.MentorsProfessionalWorkshop.com

Life Coaching Young Adults: Creating Communication

As someone who trains Boomers and Gen X’ers in the art of life coaching young adults,

I often find that the best examples to explain my work to those wanting to know the secrets of working with young adults, comes from my own personal practice life coaching young adults. Today’s topic is: Mentoring Young Adults: Helping Parents and Teens Communicate or How to I Learned to Stop Screaming.

Although most people seeking help in life coaching for young adults are usually dealing with school failures, social anxiety, depression, pot or video game addiction (or both), it doesn’t take long until the other shoe drops. Parents and young adults with an equal and well earned disdain for each other. Its not that they don’t love each other, there are just too many war wounds to be ignored. What do we end up with? Each side shouting their “truths” across the room while neither side truly hears the other. How do we get to truly life coaching young adults from that place?

Want to get your child to not do something? 

Tell them you think it’s important!

Want to get a parent to nix an idea?

Have their child tell them that they think it’s a great idea!

How did it come to this?
How do we change it?
(You know what I am going to say… don’t you?)

Change comes from outside the family unit… through a professional Mentor/Life Coach.

Here are the tried and true steps I use on a regular basis and that the Mentors I train find immensely helpful (as do the families).

The 7 Steps to Transforming Miscommunication into Co-creation using life coaching for young adults.

Step 1: Parent identifies issues:

school issues, home issues, personal mental health issues (anxiety included). This is our first consultation either by phone or Skype.

Step 2: Mentor meets with mentee:

(the client is the young adult) and establishes goals, the challenges to those goals and the first sign-posts of success. This usually occurs in the first one hour Zoom session, the only time it doesn’t is when clients come to me as the sky is falling (read that as massive school failures that can no longer be ignored). We deal with putting out fires first and the on to the Goals; Challenges and Sign-Posts of Success. Zoom is the best way to reach young adults (vs in person therapy) as you are doing positive, healthy work with them in the place they tend to get messed up the most; their internet portal. This is how we show the mentee how life coaching young  adults can be of help to them.

Step 3: Parents are freed from having to play “cop”.

You get to let go of the head-butting, enjoy each other and email your Mentor the “issues” that keep coming up. Mentor and mentee look at each issue, and learn how to put them in perspective, how to communicate and advocate for themselves and how to understand the “other’s” perspective.

Step 4: Poop hits the fan.

So, you have all agreed to try life coaching for young adults. Both sides knew the calm would be short-lived. Something happens. The parents blame their child. The mentee isn’t responding to what they are saying but just yells back at the same decibel level: “Call Ken! Call Ken!” That p**ses off the parent even more (really not how I suggested to use the Mentor-in-the-middle get-out-of-jail-free card at all). The Mentor gets the client to hear the parents. The parents get to not want everything that has never been done to be done RIGHT NOW!!!! We all agree on a reasonable incremental way forward that makes sure everyone is heard. Fan de-pooped.

Step 5: The parent confession:

This is where I usually get a call or email from one parent thanking me and then calling themselves an awful parent. This is where I tell them the real truth: “You are a great parent! An awful parent gives up, doesn’t care or doesn’t notice. You are a parent who needs support from a Mentor to help you with a child who doesn’t respond to whatever worked when you were parented by your parent. That to me is not only a good parent but a wise parent.

Step 6: The mentee confession:

The Mentors that are now working with mentees through us are always amazed that our clients often share their truths about their short-comings and their frustrations in now knowing how to get out of those problems. That is why the system is based on empowering young people and not focusing on the failures. Next.. Mentee and Mentor go back to work. Parents send emails and the Mentee/Mentor team incorporate their home issues with the goals the client wanted to focus on. It works. Things get better. The mentee starts to succeed at school, at their personal issues, and at communicating.

Step 7: A new way of communication

The goal of life coaching young adults is create new ways of communication  for mentees and parents. “Open Listening”. First the Mentor trains the client in the system. We practice on friends or family members willing to try new things. Finally we show the family how to use it during confrontations. Would you like to know how open listening works?

What is co-creation?

It’s where both sides share their concerns, each side listens with an open heart to the other and together the create a new way forward. As missteps happen, both sides communicate, evaluate and recalibrate.

Interested in life coaching young adults professionally   Check out www.MentorsProfessionalWorkshop.com

Know a young adult in need of life coaching? Check out www.MentoringYoungAdults.com

Young Adult Hygiene – Getting Kids to Brush!

Young Adult Hygiene:

Once parents begin to see real changes in their teens, they take me aside and in a hushed voice they ask: “Do you think you could get him/her… to brush?” Young adult hygiene: the band of many parent’s existence.

Brushing and showering are often the most daunting things to get young people to buy into on a regular basis these days. (Less so, once they start having a regular dating partner)
I have found a simple way to get young adults to bring showering and tooth brushing into their daily routines.
I will share it with you but first you must let go of three things:

Three things you must relinquish:

1) Stop thinking that they are disgusting aliens for not doing what you think is common sense.. It is not common sense to them. It is, in fact, equally alien to do it.
2) Let go of any guilt you may have about this “issue”. It really isn’t about you. It really is about them.
3) Free yourself from judging, checking, testing etc. If it hasn’t worked by now, it will not only not work, it will make them equate doing these things with “giving in”.

The Magic Young Adult Hygiene Formula:

Errr. There is no magic formula. Sorry 🙁
But wait! There is good news! I really do get all my clients to brush and bathe but it is a slow process.

The basics of WWYM Life Coaching is using some self-chosen tasks and a daily scheduler to help young people get things done that are external i.e. not what they feel like doing at the moment but things they had determined in advance that they would like to be able to do.
Once we have this system working (it takes about 12 weeks) we can add personal hygiene items and these issues slowly resolve themselves with very little effort.
The trick is having them decide that it makes sense in a rational time (our sessions) and then go about deciding what a good starting point might be.

For those who never brush, it might be brushing five times a week. Now, I’m sure a lot of people reading this would say that this isn’t good hygiene and won’t prevent their teeth from rotting.
But once you can instill a habit in somebody, it is not that more difficult to get them to brush six days out of seven. Then to brush twice a day and eventually, it becomes a habit that is automatic.

What we consider “obvious” is not to them.

It therefore requires the patient steady training and the explanation of the advantage of daily habits. It works and it works without having to nag!

So what about showering? Follow the same formula. If they rarely do it, find a few days a week that might be good practice targets for showering. It has to fit into a routine and you have to make sure that it makes sense to mix into their habits.

Do you have a story about young adult hygiene? Let us know and we’ll share it!

Update: 5 years later… how goes the young adult hygiene challenge?
The Daily Scheduler really works! We have now added morning brushing and nite-time brushing in the daily routine. If I get 8 or more out of 14 brushing incidences, I am a happy Mentor 🙂

Now… about flossing. I explain how it has been said that the easiest way to add three years to your lives is to floss. (literally 0 Millenials I work with floss). I explain about the easy access for bacteria to get into gums with gum disease. Then I mention that if you don’t floss, you have rotting meat between your teeth. That can sometimes get us to add flossing.. once a day… a few times a week. It’s a start!

Now on to video game addiction

Interested in mentoring young adults? Click here.

Check out Ken Rabow’s blogs on Mentoring Young Adults: click here

Self-Sabotaging Teens and the Search for Success

There is a group of roughly 20% of our youth who are doing great in school, in relationships and in their lifestyles but for the majority of the young people today, being a self-sabotaging teen is the norm.

So many parents and teachers are finding more and more kids who are non-compliant to the point of failing to thrive, educationally, emotionally and/ or nutritionally. There have always been problems with getting teens and young adults to “get things going” but it seems that this generation is having more difficulty than we remember through the rose-colored memory glasses of our youth. They are the self-sabotaging teens.

What are the stumbling blocks that have so many young people today choosing to derail everything that they are given instead of testing their mettle and what are the remedies?
It comes down to three things:
1) Lack of Inspiration
2) Perfectionism
3) Instant gratification

Inspiration

Challenges for Self-Sabotaging Teens

For most teenagers, school, sports, music or other traditional organized interests offers a chance for them to see adult role models and pick what they want to incorporate into their own lives, but for teenagers who did not make those mainstream connections, there is no adult role model physically present for inspiration.

Remedies for Self-Sabotaging Teens:

Let them embrace whatever they are passionate about and find groups who get together to work on perfecting their craft. It is in the day to day work of things that they love that they shall find the resolve to rise above their personal challenges. There is another way: Find a mentor outside their regular circle of friends and family to help them find their positive power and release their fears.

Procrastination in Self-Sabotaging Teens:

Challenge:
Most people blame this generation’s chronic habit of putting off everything to laziness. In my experience, procrastination occurs from these young adults caring too much about succeeding.
When getting a 70% is not good enough, or any interest in a new hobby is met with pointing out the flaws, the child determines that it is better not to try anything new past the infatuation stage and as for school; if they wait until the last moment to study, they can always live with: “60%?!? What would have happened if you had only studied sooner?” knowing they don’t have to ever worry about it as they have the perfect excuse – “meh, I’m just lazy!”

Remedy:
Minimize focusing on natural raw talent. Let your child know that it’s ok to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes and change and grow from your experiences. In fact, that is where most greatness comes from. It’s too late to undo the desire for Baby Mozart factory-made geniuses but it’s not too late for their genius to flower by learning from mistakes and creating their own structures for success from them. The best way is let them see your mistakes. Own them and show them how you learn from them. It’s all in the process not the potential.

Self-Sabotaging Teens and Instant Gratification:
Challenge:
Young people today will not wait more than 3 seconds for a website to load before moving on. Their average conversations are texted and their group-speak is on Twitter or Facebook. Food is only food if it can be eaten several moments after being chosen. A pot or pan is only an obstruction to getting the “good food” they want.

Remedy:
Make the time for slow stuff in your life. Cook from scratch at least twice a week. It could be chicken breasts in a nice spice with some steamed veggies, or a chili prepared in the morning and slow-cooking until you get home at dinner. Grow something in the garden and take a few moments each day to tend to it. Knit or paint or something else that is slow to unfold. If you are saying that you just don’t have the time – you are back to the challenge. Teach by example and then invite them to show you how they would do it differently and embrace their ideas. Use those ideas and learn together from them, free of judgment. They will learn the magic of the process of creation.

The phrase I often hear from my young clients at some point or another is “if I choose to fail and I do … then I’ve won!” This system that they have perfected over most of their lifetime encompasses every aspect of their lives; from school to hobbies foisted upon them, from therapists that they have learned to toy with so well, to the addictions that give them a false sense of empowerment; their coping strategies are the only ones they have learned to count on to keep themselves safe.

It is the simple things in life from where we obtain our deepest lessons.

Embrace them into your life and see the effect it has on your children.

The work I do with young adults is about helping them find their personal, positive power. I let them know that they will be in charge, making all the decisions, with me being their guide. I may turn them around from a dead end but they walk each step so that they own every victory and defeat, growing from each.

Once they choose to look for a different way and start a daily routine of simple effective steps to find their own positive power, these young adults embrace these new possibilities, showing amazing amounts of courage and fortitude. The best work in guiding young adults is done in team work. They really do possess all the answers.

Passion, process, patience are the keys.

When in doubt, find an outside mentor for young adults.

Want more articles on Mentoring Young Adults? Click Here
To contact Ken for a Free 15 Minute Consultation Click Here

Teen Mentoring Programs: Volunteer!

If you ask a Millennial what they want to do this summer, most teens and young adults really want to see summer as a time to play the most video games, go to sleep just before the sun is up and possible smoke their brains out. Can you blame them?  The idea of teen mentoring programs such as life coaching young adults seems unnecessary. But what about those dealing with school failure, bad sleep habits, pot addiction, low self-esteem, anger issues and more?

How do we inspire young adults to make wise choices for the summer?

I have always found that when given proper motivation and a true understanding of the benefits, most young adults will choose the best things to help themselves grow. “Because I said so” rarely works and never helps in a long-lasting way. In our teen mentoring programs we promote new ways for young adults to seek personal growth.

What if it is too late to find a job?

The two places to look are jobs and volunteering in an area that interests them. Teen mentoring programs like our for mentoring young adults is a great way to help encourage teens to grow and challenge themselves.
If your focus is that summer can become a time that could change your child’s future job prospects in an ever-changing world versus keeping them busy to not get into trouble, you have started on a good path.

Our new summer goal in Teen Mentoring Programs: Widen your child’s horizon.

The more a young adult in today’s world widens their horizons, the richer their lives become and the greater their potential for a good living becoms. Summer is the perfect opportunity for this through the experience of volunteering. Lots of young adults bristled when I use the word “volunteer” seeing it as merely “working for nothing” (i.e. where’s the money?!?!). Our program which mentors young adults is a great example of teen mentoring programs built to encourage new ways to look at summer volunteering.

Here is a different way to view volunteer work:

In our work mentoring young adults, our teen mentoring programs focus on ways to get new experience:

Try and get a job without experience or training at the zoo and you will probably end up scraping bird-poop off the glass enclosures. Volunteer at the zoo and you may have a chance to be up close and personal with the animals. Learning things few people get a chance to learn.

This is where one of my most favorite books comes into play: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I still read this book once a year and have found it
training Millenials to use the Carnegie principals immensely useful in getting my clients through many a closed doors and getting them the volunteer positions they wanted. Read this book!

Picking the proper area to volunteer in is a fairly easy exercise once you know how.

As Joseph Campbell said: “Follow your bliss”.

First choice should be something you know tons about just because you love it; animals, reptiles, stamp collecting, rock climbing, motorcycle repair, gardening … whatever you love; if you know all about it, take advantage of that knowledge to volunteer with people who do it for a living and see your passion through a professional’s eyes.

Second choice could be something you were always curious about. If you have great people skills or sales skills or are good with your hands, there are all sorts of organizations that can use those skills over the summer in a volunteer position.

Saving the best for last:

Most noteworthy: Work with a local community political cause you really believe in. We got Brexit and Trump because Millennials were not engaged and felt un-empowered. You are not. You are the future. Consider volunteering also at a pet shelter, a homeless shelter, a food shelter, a summer camp for at-risk youth or one of the many organizations that help third world countries. Your life will never be the same.

Volunteering: Widening your circle of knowledge and people. Learn how different people who are passionate about their lives work. Making a difference in the world. These “summer experiences” are the beginning of becoming a renaissance person in the 21st century. There is no price that can be put on that.

Interested in more articles on mentoring young adults? Click here.

Know someone in need of mentoring? Click here

Know someone interested in being trained to mentor young adults? Click here

Top 10 Best and Worst Father’s Day Gifts for Dad from his Teenager

Ah, Father’s day!

The smell of pig-skin, power tools and sawdust wafts through the air mixed with the beaded Dad-sweat of uncertainty. What shall the Father’s day “gift” be this year? Should I practice smiling in the mirror?  Will I need shots or is their a pleasant surprise waiting for me today?
Here are some things Dad may want to ponder, just to be prepared.

10 Worst Father’s Day Gifts

10: Socks.

9 A paisley tie.

8 A papier-mâché ashtray made up of forged absentee notes.

7 Borrowing dad’s car to get the gift … a coupon from Brian’s dent and
fender repair shop

6 Dollar store aftershave that seems to attract raccoons.

5 A raccoon named “frothy”.

4 Second hand bowling shoes with the name “Bubba” stenciled on.

3 A mug saying “World’s 2nd Best Dad!”

2 Waking up to a gift wrapped carpenter ant farm
– in a broken case.

The number one worst gift for dad from his teenager:

A certificate saying “Worlds’ Greatest Dad” – stuck in your printer.

10 Best Father’s Day Gifts

10: Spending time with dad
(lying in front of the TV with headphones on while texting doesn’t count)

9: Acting Happy for a day – 24 hours mood-free!

8: Two words – Cordless Power Tools

7: Sit and have a conversation with Dad
that doesn’t start with “I need” or “I broke”.

6 Having friends over who aren’t named for their felonies.

5 Hugs all day long – (even when it gets annoying).

4 A promise to be home on time for a month… no, seriously.

3 Breakfast together.

2 A can of ant spray (see worst gift #2)

The number one best gift for dad from his teenager:

Anything they make for you.
Some food, a card, a song and its always perfect!

Active Listening with a Millennial and a Gen Ex-er

Here is a recipe to completely turn around the next year in communication between your teen and yourself:

The Challenge:

You know what your teenager is going to say. Your teenager knows what you are going to say. Before anyone says anything both sides are ready for the post-yelling repercussions.

Here’s a Father’s day suggestion:
Pretend!

Pretend you have no idea what the other is going to say.

Then what?

One person is the listener and the other the speaker for 5 minutes, then switch roles. The listener asks one of the following questions:
Why are you here?
What makes you happy?
What would you like to see changed in the world?

Here’s the tricky part, the listener should do the following;
Do not comment or add to the listener’s story, do not give any verbal cues (mmm, ah, oh!) and don’t give any visual cues. Simply take in the speaker with love and acceptance.

Each speaker gets approximately 5 minutes to speak.
Please email me and let me know how it worked. ken@wwym.org

Happy Father’s day to all the dads, all the teenagers and the Moms who put up with them!

Thanks to all the people who inspired this list!

Help For Young Adults: Communication

The goal of these articles is to change your life for the better:

To find lasting help for young adults, you have know how you perceive your children. How they interact with you and how you learn to be your best in the world in the very place where it is most difficult… amongst the people you love. All of that will change for the better!

When parents contact me to help them help their teen or young adult find their way, the whole family often seems lost and without hope. Dealing with depression, anxiety, School failures, pot addiction. Once they hear how this system works they often say something like: “this is the first time in a long time when I have felt some hope”. This is true help for young adults.

Help for Young Adults in a Book

The system I work from is based on my first book “The Slacker’s Guide to Success – 13 steps to Personal Success in the New Millennium”. It works for almost anyone. Most young people really do want to succeed and do good work while gaining a sense of self-worth (this may sometimes be hard to believe for those who know these young people but not by me). Given the proper tools these teens and young adults find their way to success.

Something very interesting happens as they progress and the parents see the impossible occur. It becomes very clear that the old ways of communication between parents and their children also need a new way to evolve to a richer and healthier way.

How Does This Book Create Help for Young Adults?

This book shall give you the tools to discover your child as the new person they are becoming and they are a new person. Not because of their Mentor. Not because of surmounting their challenges (although both of those things help). They are a new person because that is the evolutionary truth of people. The baby you held in your arms is not the same person that the toddler became. The toddler is not the same person the teen became. The young adult is again completely different again. In fact, look at your own life. Investigate the things you have done at different ages and think about how you would have felt being judged at these different stages by the things that challenged you as a child.

Here is the greatest part of the new skills you will gain: You will meet a whole, happy, healthy person who has been the object of your life since you first laid eyes on them. This new person will bring to your new relationship, new thoughts, new things to share and their own wisdom to enhance both your lives.

Isn’t that worth the price of changing your own habits of being heard and listening in a new way? Yes. That’s right. The title of this book is “How to Be Heard” but (and you can quote me): “If you want to get something… give it”!

To get help for young adults: The best way to be heard is to learn a new way to listen.

That’s what this book will help you do. Give you a great way to be heard by you taking the time to learn to listen. This is the work I do with the parents willing to try something new as they see how well their child and I communicate and how I am able to get their children to do things that they have been hounding those kids to do for what seems like an eternity.

Actually, I never get anyone to do anything. I show people things what “others” want them to do. We investigate. We analyze and I listen to the client’s (the young person’s) thoughts and we go from there. To the parents, it seems like I “got” their kids to do what they had always known their child should do but never would do.

In fact, I simply laid out options and let the client choose. The difference might seem arbitrary to some but I hope that when you have finished practicing what this book preaches, you will know the difference and it is a country mile apart.

First, I shall share with you the secrets of what your child really means when they say things. Are you ready?

To Find Help for Young Adults: Learn to Speak Gen Z

“Fine”.

The ultimate passive-aggressive diss.
Fine stands for f***ed up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.
When a child gives up to your repeated requests and says “fine” what they are really saying is “it is so not worth arguing with you. I shall give you this agreement, which is not really an agreement but my disdain for you, your clothes and the high horse you rode in on”. (Caution: Gen Z’s don’t actually speak that way. This is my translation of them in a way that you can relate to ☺

“I’ve already done it”!

(Translation) “I know and you know I haven’t done it and we both know that if I say I haven’t done it you will yell at me and then I will yell back so, in effect, I have vowed to get this done after I play endless amount of video games… unless I forget… which doesn’t count because I intended to…”

“Yes I will”!!

“My friends are waiting for me online to keep playing the game. You are merely an annoyance and so whatever I tell you now is my nice way of not telling you to f*** off because I want to play. You should appreciate that. Promises void where prohibited by my doing you a favor”.

“I promise”!!!

“Oh my G-d!! Did you not understand what I meant when I said “Yes I will”?!? Read the above translation. Trust me. I am doing you a favor. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”

The real promise:

“I really intend to do whatever it is you have asked of me if I happen to remember it (which is not likely based on past experience) and I do believe that my intention should be all that is truly required of me. The resentment I feel from you reminding me over and over that I NEVER do these things just makes me want to do these things even less. That is all”.

I’m sure you know what we call the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome:.. Parenting.

Here is my promise to you; learn the steps in this book and work on them with your child and others and you will not need those conversations ever again. They will be replaced by communication; cooperation and mutual respect.

How to Use This Book and Get Help for Young Adults

This book has a companion book written for your child. Please, for the love of Crisco, don’t read theirs’. There’s nothing secret in it but it says soooo much about you if you do read it and so much more about you if you don’t.

The best way to use this book is to do a quick read of it once all the way through and highlight the parts that are most meaningful to you. Then take each chapter and work on your parts on your own, and with your child when it calls for it, for a month. The whole book will take one full year to go through. (Hello? Hello? Still there?)

Yes. In this world of “three easy things to make your child do whatever you want” (good luck with that), I am saying that the true meaningful way to communicate with your child will take time, patience and determination. Only constant, steady work in small regular doses on your part and letting them work on their part will bear the fruit you seek: To truly be heard.

The Three Stages to Create Help for Young Adults

The three stages you will experience are:
1) Unlearning
2) Reframing and
3) A new beginning.
There are explanations for each of these at the beginning of each stage.

Every stage is a complete separate entity with four steps to guide you towards completion. The 13th step is about taking what you have learned into all future chapters of your life. Acknowledging and honoring yourself for the journey you have taken in being heard. More importantly; learning a new way to listen.

Sometimes we do great things but don’t take the time to acknowledge what we have accomplished. To climb that mountain and not take the time to take in the view from the summit is not have taken the journey in our hearts. Our hearts needs the time to reach whatever physical summits we achieve in life. Always take the moment to let all of you; your physical, mental and spiritual/emotional sides witness the great things in life.

May your journey be filled with challenges. May you overcome each challenge with inner-faith, kind self-speak, grace and humor and may the creative force of life guide your path with a sense of adventure and wonder.

Enjoy!

Ken Rabow

Want to read more blogs on help for young adults? Click Here.

Know a young adult in need of mentoring? Click Here.

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Mentoring and Mentorship – The Difference Between Heaven and Hell

How do we implement Mentoring and Mentorship of young adults  and get them where they need to go? Start with where you are… So here we are. A new year has begun. Your Millennial is back in university and you are hoping that last year’s effort (best described as crap-tabulous) will not be repeated. Horrible marks. Terrible self-talk/self-image. Massive anxiety.
Here’s the worst part… who can you talk to about your child? Especially if you believe (as so many of the parents who talk to me about this feel) that every other person’s child is doing fine and it is just your child who cannot cope.

I will give you the answer to the parent/Mentor issue at the end of this article but let’s start first with helping your child:

The Three Challenges

1. Just-in-Timers. for lots of students, it was easy in High School to wait to the last minute, binge study and pull off some nifty grades. The harsh reality is that this doesn’t work in University/College and the student does not have the resources or experience to try another way.

2. The Deliciousness of Indulgence. Being away from home and having no external controls, mixed with a massive amount of booze, weed and fellow video-gamers with unlimited internet access is a recipe for badness. The uninformed will say “just say no”… good luck with that.

3. The Scourge of Social Anxiety.
This is at epidemic proportions in North America. This anxiety can make it practically impossible to reach out for help in school. Making it difficult to get back on track when they fall behind, it can push them to make self-destructive choices when the inevitability of their situation is shoved in their face by mid-terms.

The Three Solutions

1. Just-in-timers meet the Daily Routine. By starting with the simplest tasks inserted in one’s day-to-day life, the Millennial learns to use a scheduler (why does this generation prefer to keep notes on loose slips of paper?!?) to take control of their daily lives. It may seem like a small step but simply being able to do one five minute task a day instills in them what they didn’t get by obligation or just-in-timing High School

2. Indulgence meet Observation: Remember what I said about “just say no”? Well double that on this one. We are not talking about people doing serious stuff in a way that is self-endangering. Those people need immediate action but for those indulging just enough to keep them from doing anything in life; here is the solution; observe it. Yes. Notice when you are doing your indulgence. Think about why you are doing it. Is it to self-medicate (i.e. deal with your anxiety)? Is it to alleviate boredom? Is it for social sharing? Is it ‘just ‘cuz? This may seems nuts but all of those are valid. The trick is to figure out which one, when, offer better things to do that you would enjoy more for some and leave the others (at the beginning). This is the start of conscious use and helps make different choices in the future.

3. Calming Social Anxiety. This can seem so formidable. It requires a Mentor who conveys non-judgmental trust. It requires the Mentee looking at their challenge with kindness instead of harsh self-judgment and then to implement the following over six months; deep breathing (versus shallow breathing); visualization/meditation; learning positive self-talk; patience and relaxation.

Why Mentoring Young Adults May Not Work (at first)

OK. It will work. (Deep breaths please). The three solutions I mention above work for 90% of the young adults I encounter, just please don’t try this at home folks at least until you finish this article: Let’s start with a story:

The Long Spoons.

So… true story. I wanted to understand Heaven and Hell. So first, I travelled to Hell (Insert Donald Trump joke here…)
There were rows of tables piled high with platters of the most delicious food. Each platter was more aromatic and more beautiful to behold than the last. Every person held a full spoon but both arms were splinted with wooden slats making it impossible to bend their elbows to bring the food to their mouths. The people were emaciated, suffering and bereft of hope.

So I went to Heaven (Insert Wayne Dyer tribute here…)
Everything was the same. Same tables, same platters of food, same splints on the arms making it impossible to bend elbows but the people were satiated, happy and fulfilled. The big difference: In Heaven as a person picked up their spoon and dug into the nourishment availed to them, they stretched across the table and fed the person across from them. That person thanked them and then leaned across the table to feed their neighbor.

What’s This Got to Do with Me?!?

Chances are there is nothing wrong with your mentoring skills (if you have been working on them) but imagine the mentor is the person with the spoon, the wisdom is the food and the person starving is your child. You cannot mentor your own child, the whole concept of tribe was designed to have you mentor your neighbor’s child and them mentor yours’.

This is why people come to Professional Mentors/Life Coaches like myself and the Mentors I train. This is why you should become a mentor but get a distant relative or friend from another city to study mentoring with you. Then, you mentor their child and they should mentor yours’.

Let’s start a movement and use the long spoons the way the were meant to be used. I believe today’s young adults have the potential to be the greatest generation since the 1940’s but they need new mentoring paradigms.

Find someone you trust and believe in to train you and your mentoring partner and begin a tiny revolution! It shall grow.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Mental Illness in Young Adults – The Lesson

Do you know where you were when you heard that Robin Williams had died?

I do. I felt like I had lost a family friend. Back in the day when TV meant something, Robin was a breath of fresh air, even on Happy Days.

Mental illness in young adults affects so many families and yet so few feel safe talking about it.

He even made the Fonz look cooler. Then there was Mork and Mindy. His Johnny Carson appearances, including being one of the last two guests to be on Carson’s show.

Robin’s love of Jonathan Winters helped a whole new generation learn about a brilliant, improvisational comedian who had a great influence on Robin. From The World According to Garp, The Fisher King, Good Morning Vietnam to Aladdin, Robin grew and brought us along with him with kindness, humility and a never-ending well of creativity.

Then one of my troubled teen’s parents said to me:

“You know, Robin seemed a lot like your clients” and it hit me. He did seem a lot like my clients. Creative people. Sensitive people. People struggling with life. Some with Aspergers. Some with Bipolar or other mental health issues but they had one advantage that Robin did not (I really wasn’t going to say me, please)… they had not learned how to succeed in life. They were stuck and nothing before our work had worked. The work which did help them was being mentored to use their talents to rise above their challenges. To have a mentor that could discuss their private fears free of the “real world”, friends and family. That is sorely needed when dealing with mental illness in young adults; an impartial ear.

Of course, this made me happy and hopeful for my clients but very, very sad for my lost family friend. Robin. Through his successes, his genius, his drive to push himself into new territories, Robing played the old magician’s trick of misdirection. We were looking at the wrong hand while the other was suffering.

There are three things I will take away from this.

1) Those who can should decide right now to mentor our troubled Millenials. Millenials with addictions, those with anxiety, those with mental illness and those with learning challenges.

2) We must be ever-vigilant to also mentor the Millenials who seem to be successful but underneath the surface are also suffering. Those with the same issues and more who are good at misdirection

3) In a world filled with divisions, hatred, war, gatherings of people wishing to cut off the head of democracy, we must counter that with love for all people, find those young adults who might fall under the thrall of hatred and calls to war and help these Millenials to find how to be great from their powers of kindness, grace and charity. Honor the differences. Mental illness in young adults is not the end, it’s a call to action to help find their greatness beyond the labels.

Here is what I promise to do.

To help mentor young adults with mental illness, I intend to train 1000 mentors by the year 2020, to help young people, focusing on young adults in inner cities and underdeveloped nations to offer the three things I have just mentioned. This I so vow.

Interested in mentoring young adults with mental illness? Click here.

If your child is in serious mental health crisis, please look into it immediately. This link is a good staring place. Click here. When things are more settled, life coaching can be a great addition to a complete program.

Teen Life Coaches offer success tips

So here we are. A new school year. New clothes, new books, new gadgets, but most kids are walking in with exactly the same old labels. No. Not Calvin K. I’m talking about: ADHD; Depression; Anxiety, Slacker, Stoner etc. As a mentor for teen life coaches, I have a few suggestions to transform this year but…
First, let’s start with a quick pair of definitions:
Mentor; one who guides his/her charge.
Telemachus: one who seeks the help of a Mentor to make their way “out there”.

In the world of Teen Life Coaches, the best ones are Mentors.
At World Wide Youth Mentoring Inc, we have worked with countless young people who have made great changes for the better in their lives. Changes where they were responsible for their successful outcome. Teen life coaches can be the vehicle to having someone guide them in whatever challenges they take on in life.

Most systems of “repair” seem to be focused on the symptoms.
Many systems use the deficiencies to define the whole of the person. Statements such as: “I’m ADHD”. Hello, my name is Skeeter and I’m a stoner.” “I’m such a (fill in the blank)” ring throughout the school hallways.

To those who spend so much time on their symptoms, know that good teen life coaches would suggest you reflect on the following: We amplify what we focus on, in word, thought and action. The more frequently we are defining ourselves by what we lack, the more we allow our inner thoughts to validate those beliefs in our million micro-decisions of the day. Teen life coaches are here to help you build your inner-voice to one of support.

We cannot underestimate the amount of people who are in denial about their personal foibles.
I am not suggesting self-delusion as a the road to success. I encourage you to (and by extension those you mentor) to “own” their challenges as well as their strengths, but please do not let yourself be defined by them.

Every young person I have ever met has the ability to be successful in every aspect of their lives, even school ☺ That may seem like a bold statement but the truth is, evolutionarily speaking, if you are alive, then you are doing something right. But to move forward, the Telemachus must find their own personal way towards success.

Teen Life Coaches; know this!
Each Telemachus has in them the seeds for success and the challenge is to find the proper system for that particular person. What you need to bring to this system and how you can determine when your “Telemachus” is ready for your mentoring.

A questions to all parents: Who knows your child better than you do?
They do. They may not “know” it or share all of it with you but your understanding of your child is based on history. More than likely, theirs is about right now and tomorrow. The past is often the same place where broken toys reside. Rich and meaningful at one time, but now it is mainly of use for stubbing toes and tripping us up.

Secondly, to the Teen Life Coaches:
It is in the future and the now that one must re-learn about your Telemachus.

You, the Mentor must bring an open mind, humility and the presence of mind to NOT JUDGE.

Finally: To the Telemachus.
You are not your label(s). Not the ones your parents gave you, the ones “professionals” gave you, the ones teachers or peers gave you nor the ones you give yourself when you feel lost.

Live each moment as a new creation.
Learn from the past and set a course for a new future. This is the job your Mentor should join you in but remember, it is YOU who must be in command. Use your courage to venture forth, your wisdom to assess, your determination to soldier on in the face of setbacks and your faith to learn from those around you.

Now go out there and kick some butt!

Know someone in need of teen life coaches. Want to find the right one? click here

Know someone would like to become one of our teen life coaches? click here

Teen Life Coaching Online – The Best Place for Life Coaching Teens

The best place to work with a teen life coach is the same place these young adults spend most of their time. That is; watching videos, playing games, facebooking, and sometimes for a few moments studying. Yes. The best place for work is on their computer screens in their special lair; their bedrooms.

The advantage to having a teen life coach working through videoconferencing are many:

  1. Once your child works online they find their runaway place becomes a go-to succeed place.
  2. They will have two hours a week where they go to to be truly heard. Someone who connects with them and gives them a place to do personal reflection, free of judgment.
  3. For teens with anxiety, fear of going “out there” working with a life coach online is the first step to getting them to feel safe “out there”. Trying to get a teen with anxiety to travel to a teen life coach every week reinforces their fears before the teen life coach can give them the strength to venture forth with the tools to succeed.

    Reasons for Seeking Out a Teen Life Coach
    For some, anxiety is a big reason for seeking help.
    For others, school failures are the main reason for seeking help.

No matter the reason, working online with a teen life coach can be life changing!
That is what Skype sessions have done for Ken Rabow and Ken’s mentors  with their clients all over North America  since 2001. Working online allows the opportunity for client and mentor to share school work, test and paper results, applications for courses or jobs and work together online on daily routines.

The advantages of life coaching teens online are many. If you want to know if it is the right system for you check out our site and ask for a free 15 minute consultation. 

Know someone in need of a teen life coach? Click here

Want to know the different programs? Click here.

 

Mentoring Teens and Extra-Curricular Activities

Mentoring Teens can make great and permanent positive change:
Meet Three Clients who were Troubled Teens: Tim, Julie and Doug (not their real names).

Tim, 13 years old,
is practically never at home. Hockey practice, scouts, hockey games, religious class and pre-planned get-togethers with friends, shuttled by his parents take up every non-school moment. A great kid but he seems to have trouble focusing on one thing for any length of time. Basically he is a troubled teen with anxiety.

Doug, 18 years old,  is a talented, clever man in his late teens who can charm any person he meets. He has also failed in his first terms at two universities and could usually be found in his room 24/7, smoking pot, playing video games or in the basement playing drums to his iPod. The epitome of depression in young adults.

Julie, 19 years old,
is now in university and has a part time job in sales. She was constantly bullied from grades 1 to grades 8 by the cliques for not dressing the way they did. “I did my own thing, I didn’t like to conform and I would get harassed daily”. The poster child for pot addiction in young adults.

Daily lives pre-mentoring teens:
Since turning thirteen, Tim, has been oppositional, scattered and disinterested in his school, studies and after-school activities. He has also started talking back to his parents.

Doug has been to every type of therapist and a few “camps” but nothing seemed to stick. “Eventually, I would get them to say to me; I really want to be your friend .. and that’s when I knew I had them”. Doug would always end up back in his room, playing video games and smoking pot.

Julie would often go to the principal after being bullied. The principal would then bring the girls in to her office and the girls would say they were sorry, that they didn’t mean it and wouldn’t do it again. The girls would leave, the principal would say “everything’s OK now!” and the bullying would continue during class, at recess and after school.

And now for something completely different:
The pre-frontal cortex, the area in the brain responsible for things such as judgment, executive control and emotional regulation continues to develop well into the mid 20’s. During this time, the brain is highly adaptable and influenced by external forces. There have been many studies that support the idea that multi-tasking and over stimulation during these formative years can lead to attention deficit disorders. This is why mentoring teens can help mitigate the challenges coming for the outside world and within.

Where are they now? Post mentoring teens.
Julie found that her competitive Irish dance classes and sax classes helped her build her self-confidence and to realize that if one group of people don’t like you, there are others who will. A mentoring teens success.

Doug has begun a daily routine of meditation, music lessons, playing in a band and reading seminal books on psychology. He is preparing to go back to school – smoke free. A mentoring teens success.

Tim has continued his over-programmed life and has attention issues.
Really, really needs a mentoring teens program.

Mentoring teens: I’ll leave the final words to them:

Julie: Head high, eyes open, heart strong. Keep fighting for yourself and don’t give in.
Doug: Find the things that you love doing and go do it.
Don’t worry what other people think, just do your best and if you mess up, get up and do it again.

Tim:……… Tim? ……… Tim’s not listening.

Interested in mentoring teens? Click here. 

Before considering mentoring teens, if your child is in serious mental health crisis, please look into it immediately. This link is a good staring place. Click here. When things are more settled, mentoring teens can be a great addition to a complete program.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Life Coaching Teens Failing School

A new school year is upon us and like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are not sure if it is the ghosts of past, present or future school years that shall be visited upon us. Here are four steps to guarantee a successful school year through life coaching teens. (guarantee void where prohibited by over-achieving siblings who make us look bad no-matter-what).

We are rarely taught how to succeed in life. Some people “have it” while for others, success seems elusive. Many of us have some things we do well but don’t always know how to transfer those successes to the things in our life that challenge us.

Life Coaching Teens with P.L.A.Y.

Here are some steps that will help you have a successful school year.
It can however be used for anything you choose to excel in.
P.L.A.Y Prepare, Listen, Assess, Your Rewards

Life coaching Teens Rule # 1. Prepare.

Space. The final frontier…. either it helps you take care of business or makes a mushy brain.

a) Workspace:

Where do you do your reading and writing for school?
Is it at your computer work-desk or do you have a separate area for schoolwork.
(on or near the floor of your bed does not count) Wherever it is:
Decide to make this area clutter-free.
You don’t need to do it all at once unless you have a desire to.
Simply do five minutes of organizing every time you go to this area.
Within a week most of it will be done.
A proper workspace free of clutter frees the mind of a subtle constant stress.

b) Reference Finding your stuff when you need it is half the battle.  Set up proper shelving for any books or binders that will be required for your classes.

Make sure that the materials will be easily seen and accessible when you need it.
Organize some drawers for “stuff” that usually clutters your workspace.

c) Feng Sh-who?  Look at the images you have on your walls. Make sure that they are ones that inspire you to success.

d) Time.
Once you know your schedule for the next term, write down your class, travel, homework, clean-up and kicking-around times into a weekly schedule.

Add to the last day of the week time to reorganize your work area throughout the school year. Consider it a weekly reset to being organized.
If you use a smartphone – start using either Google Calendar or iCal for writing in your weekly schedule. Use it on your computer as well. Your scheduler should always be up to date. If there is a change to one scheduled event do the change right away. Make it so that whatever is written in your schedule is always dependable. Being organized and showing up where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there is empowering.

Life-coaching Teens Rule #2.
Listen. Concentrate. Read. Engage!

Notes.Note taking in class is an art. You have to figure out what is important and where to focus your work. Also, figure out the standard duration of the classes you are taking and do a concentration exercise at home (meditation is a great one) that is 5 minutes more than your standard class. If you can train yourself to focus for a whole class, you can make sure you are ready for whatever important notes need to be taken.

Do the reading! Then try to ask the occasional informed question. This helps you make sure that you are on track and it creates a good connection with the teacher. They really are there to help you.

Know yourself!
If you are going to waste time if you have a computer in class, do hand written notes and then transcribe them at home. Don’t put stumbling blocks in your way.

Life-coaching Teens Rule #3
Assess and Re-assess Projects, Tests. Re-tests?Remember the kid who always did their book reports the day after they were given? They were on to something. Step 1) Create an outline within three days of getting an assignment. You will find it easier now to figure out when to get each part done. Imagine your paper is due three days before the due date. Use the other days to go over it and refine it.

Testing Through Tests.
Tests. Most first tests are there to help the teacher assess you and help you assess your strengths and challenges in a class. If one part or many parts are off the mark that you were shooting for, make an appointment to see the teacher and ask the teacher how you can prepare to get the marks you want. If you failed, see if there is something you can do as a make-up to improve that mark and still ask how you can study more efficiently for the class. Once more; teachers really do like to see people do well and are usually pleasant when you see them off-hours to improve. (Major note – take responsibility for your “mess-up” instead of making excuses. They will respect you for that)

Life-coaching Teens Rule #4
Your Rewards.
Enjoy life! Give yourself treats.
If you know where you are going with your future career, find out what marks are needed (and what courses are needed) and shoot for that grade point average. If you are not sure, you can never go wrong with low 80’s.

Working successfully means having a complete life. Do your work and then reward yourself with some video game play or anything that won’t affect you waking up clear for the next day (watching the ring trilogy at two in the morning is not recomended).
When you are making changes, let your parents know your plans.
Everyone benefits from good lines of communication.

There you have it
The four steps to a successful school year.
The whole world is a P.L.A.Y. Get out there and remember:
It is only through failures that we learn to succeed…

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

My Troubled Teen is Failing. What Did I Do Wrong?

Hello. I’m Ken Rabow. I am a life coach for troubled teens, unmotivated young adults and their families. Consequently, a great deal of my work is with students in jeopardy of completely failing their school year or Millenials and Generation Z’s now living at home, playing video games all day, who have dropped out. So maybe it’s best to say that I am a turn-your-life-around coach.+

Each time I meet with their parentsthe title of this article is the unspoken question in each of their minds, followed by what I imagine is even harsher versions of inner self-flagellation.

So, I am here to tell you parents that these particular types of students are simply highly gifted people whose talents do not catch on fire from the standard models. No therapy; micro-managing; freedom or meditative chanting: “go do your work!… go do your work!! …. go do your work!!!” will help.

In fact, what these young adults really need is someone outside their circle of friends and family to create a safe space for them to stop their whole world twice a week, help them take a deep breath, exhale their fears and self-doubts and look at where they are in their lives. Finally, asking themselves if they are truly ready to make meaningful changes in their lives. It works best with someone outside family and friends.  Think of all the people we have always had around us in tribes and families throughout all of time.

It is proved over and over without a shadow of a doubt that the parents have done great parenting when these young people show that they are now ready to consider empowering themselves in some positive, but alternative way. Just by considering it, their lives are put on a better path.

You have done your work. Loved them, nurtured them and allowed them the space to find their own path and guess what? Without a doubt, many of our most inspirational leaders were exactly these kinds of people; Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and many more. I wonder how their parents felt in the rocky school years.

The psychologist Rollo May explained that there were certain stages of development:
Innocence: the pre-self-conscious stage of the infant.
Rebellion: wanting freedom without understanding the ramifications that go along with it.
Decision: Deciding what to do with their lives and fulfilling the rebellion stage’s needs.
Ordinary: Conformity and traditional values (What? Your kid missed this one?)
Creative: Self-actualized, authentic and caring.

Not everything is supposed to be done inside the family unit. Its OK.
I shall leave you with a Rollo May quote:
Tell the child,
Look, I love you, I believe in you.
I know you are going through a lot of upset the only thing that counts
is that in the long run, you find out who you are and you live it
.”

Know a troubled teen in need of life coaching? Click here for how it works.

Know someone interested in life coaching troubled teens? click here

Basketball, Autism ……… and Deception

As a life coach for teens and young adults, I work with all sorts of people in their teens and twenties. I learn from all of them. One of my most powerful learning lessons came from a 13 year old client with Autism, who allowed me to see the dangers of people in power trying to “do the right thing”. I am pleased to share with you now the inner workings of one the most interesting minds I have ever met.

My name is Stephen. I am a creative, charismatic, wise, 13 year old who gets good grades and I’m autistic. Yeah, I said that. No, I’m not some dysfunctional shmoe sitting on a couch with my coach translating all my words. I’m a guy who has something to say, who happens to be autistic.

Let me tell you a story.
It’s a real story about truth, deception and the school I used to go to (you know who you are). One day last March we had an assembly telling us about the “special” basketball game that was going to happen one week from then.

Our principal told us that we would be facing a “pro” basketball team made up of grade sevens, eights and high school kids and that it was supposed to be just for fun.

Our team was mostly grade sixes. Pretty young. Not very experienced. Kind of noobs and it was a fairly small basketball team made up of kids with different levels of Autism. I hadn’t signed up that year because I thought I had enough to do with karate and had done basketball and soccer the year before. The last year we hadn’t faced another school, though.

The team started practicing and my friend found out who the other basketball team was and he was pretty confident that we were going to get demolished. I thought they were going to get demolished too, but as it turns out what happened was even worse!

On the day of the basketball game
, we walked into the school. It had massive hallways with lockers on both sides. At least it was massive compared to what I was used to.
We walked down a few flights of stairs and went to one of the three gyms in the school.
This gym was gigantic. The basketball nets were very high with a score board up top and bleachers for us to sit in .

I went to sit down on one of the middle bleachers only to find out that the opposing school basketball team was even bigger than I expected – high schoolers galore and even huge grade sevens and eights.

They started by introducing the teams and all the players.
The teams set up and we began the first quarter. On the very first play our team got the ball and went to the other team’s net. They were just standing all around shooting the ball over and over. They kept missing and then trying again to the point that it became ridiculous. Me and the teacher beside me made a joke that our team was camping and roasting marshmallows. Game-related chuckles ☺

After that our team eventually scored and the game continued. The same thing kept happening. We scored most of the goals while the opposing team would score the occasional points. It was in the third quarter that I realized what was really happening.

One of their players passed the ball to our player. That was when I got it. I knew why our team wasn’t being demolished. When our players were “camping” the other team wasn’t fighting back because the other team was being easy on us. We were lied to. Deceived. It was then I realized the truth. This wasn’t just for fun. It was to deceive us to make us feel good about ourselves.

It made me feel angry. It made me think I was lied to probably every other time we had played. It made me doubt all the victories I had achieved in the past. It made me feel that it was all for nothing.

I asked the teacher next to me: “why is the other team being easy on us?” The teacher said “I’ll talk to you about this afterwards” and the way he said it to me made me feel that he wanted it to be secret. That he didn’t want it to ever be known.

Now many teachers at my old school may argue that they weren’t “technically lying”,
but it doesn’t even matter. They used a form of deception on students that they knew would never figure it out. As one of those students who did figure it out, I can tell you: I’d rather be told I’m weak in something than to find out later that I had been lied to about it.

The Moral of the Story;
You can have compassion for people without deceiving them.

Try to find teams that are balanced and equal to each other and if that’s not possible, then switch the teams around, put some of the monster players on our team and some of the autistic players on their team. Then all the players would learn to cooperate with people that they aren’t quite used to working with.

Honest and realistic compliments and criticism would be much more effective and tolerable by people like me.

Afterward by Ken.
I was probably the fifth person that Stephen had shared this story with and the typical response Stephen had heard was that he should just let it go. My response was; “let’s write it down, figure out a moral and share it with everyone”! Now I’m asking you to please share this with parents, teachers, schools and every person who truly wants to help people in need, using respect and honor as their guidelines.

Please share with us your own inspirations and I’ll get Stephen to write back ☺

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50 Easy Exercises for A Happier Life

Hey parents! Stop for a minute. Take a deep breath and realize that in most cases your kids will end up fine despite your worst fears and worries. Yes, there are cautionary tales out there but if you are reading this, you are one of those parents who really care and spend the time searching for different sources to learn from to improve yourself and your family. Here now is the best piece of advice I can give you. It helped a brilliant but not-so-mainstream artist to “make it big” Don’t worry be happy! (Thank you Bobby McFerrin)

Easier said then done but here are ten really great things you can do to make sure that your life is on the road to happiness.

Wake up and be thankful. That’s right. Every day is a new day. A chance for new opportunities so when you wake up, think about how lucky you are to have another chance to do something good in the world.

Look in the mirror and stare into your eyes. Marvel at the fact that you can see. Think about all the things in your body that have to work just so for you to walk, eat, breath and rid yourself of toxins.

When taking your shower today feel the water as it cascades over your body. Revel in the feel of water. Enjoy the idea of cleaning away yesterday’s dirt and beginning a new day clean and fresh.

Appreciate the people in your home. The wonder of their creation. The image of when you first laid eyes on them and the feeling you first felt in your heart about them that made you feel happy to have them in your life.

Investigate the first food you are about to eat. See the shapes, textures and colors. Smell it. Sample the taste of it and then enjoy the feeling that it unfolds as you slowly chew on it.

As you go out into the world take in all the aspects of nature that surround you. The weather. The sky in all its variations. Trees. Animals. Birds. Listen to the sounds of nature. They are there no matter where you are. Watch the tiniest insect for a moment and be amazed at what they can do.

Find people at work with a positive mental attitude. Make it your goal to be around those people as much as you can and when you are with others, who tend to focus on the negative, try to avoid those conversations and steer the talks to something good.

Choose a moment in the day to take a break. It may be for five minutes or it may be for 30 seconds. Reflect on something that you are striving for (or will start striving for) that will enrich your life and the lives of those you care about. It could be a vacation, a home improvement project, a creative family endeavor or anything else that is out of the ordinary and get everyone away from their routines and “in the moment”.

Take some time to listen at the end of the day to each family member and have them tell you something inspiring that happened that day. They can follow with why that makes them feel thankful.

Write down in a journal three things that you are grateful for that happened today. Make sure that at least one of them is something completely new or at the very least rare.
There you have it! The secret to happiness is focusing the mind away from worry, away from judgment and onto the beauty of the world. It is so easy to let ourselves get lost in the detritus of this existence but remember that there is beauty all around us. Love yourself and your place in the world and be aware of how that can make you feel and how you make others feel by extension.

Be happy. Be thankful. Be giving. Be loving. It’s not easy but it’s that simple.

Wait a minute! Where’s the others?!?

The first 10 Easy Exercises are things to do every day.
The Following are exercises to do once a month.
They follow the same patterns as the One Minute Meditations
And the 365 Mentoring moments.
Those are quick ideas to inspire and keep with you during the day.
The following are actual exercises to try for about 5 minutes a day.

The Daily Themes:
Friday: Observe Something Special
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Share A Meal
Monday: Communication – You Listen
Tuesday: Generativity (adding something meaningful to your day)
Wednesday: Communication – You Share
Thursday: Free For All! (Whatever floats your boat – spiritually 🙂

This Week’s Theme: Giving Children Their Space

Friday: The best leaders are the best followers Teach your child to lead by letting them have a leadership excursion. Make it appropriate to their age and abilities and let them organize it, lead it and deal with the mess-ups that may occur. Avoid micro-managing, judging or complaining. You will be surprised at who learns the most from this.

Saturday: Walk for adventure. : Let your feet guide you. Your sense feed you. Your heart inspire you. Leave your worries, your planning, your electronics at home. Do this for as little as 10 or as much as 60 minutes. All the great thinkers of times past used one hour walks for inspiration.

Sunday: You are what you eat. Take time to plan your meal tonight. Make something just for yourself that is nourishing to the senses and to the soul. Make sure it also is healthy, colorful and ethically made. Think of those who make all the different parts and give thanks to them before consuming it.

Monday: We learn from listening. Decide today that you will pretend that you don’t know the best answer, the proper quip or the smartest piece of information. Think of yourself today as a miner of the gold in the thoughts of others. You mine gold by sifting through all the crud to the rich nuggets.

Tuesday: The three most important rules for mentoring a child 1) Be Kind. 2) Be Kind. 3) Be Kind. How do you do that? Let go of judgments. Give your child a safe place to go “out there” and try things. Let them learn from their mistakes. Be there as a sounding board.

Wednesday: We are either succeeding or we are learning Help show your child examples of great people (or ones you know) learning and doing something outstanding by not being stopped and sometimes changing direction through failures.
The easy example: Edison and the Light Bulb.

Thursday: Be Fletcher Reede The character from the film Liar Liar was cursed into being forced to say the truth. Try the same thing but filter it with kindness, wisdom and only that which will inspire others. A truth told before its time is worse than a lie.

Stay tuned for more!

Secret S**t Your Kids Won’t Tell You

There are so many things that teens and Millenials think that are simply not being heard by their parents. How do I get to hear it? As a life coach for troubled teens and unmotivated millenials, I ask the simple, slightly obvious questions that it seems no one asks them or takes seriously.

What is weird is that once you hear the answers they seem obvious and they actually work!
This will be series of short facts and solutions.
If you like them or if you have one you want us to look at please comment at the bottom of this blog.

The following are in no apparent order. Just when they are shared by my clients.

Case Study #3 – Why I Have So Much Anxiety Reason # 12

Kid’s Statement: I never know what will trigger it but when the anxiety comes I lose all control and feel lost. I get these attacks 4 – 6 times a day.
Fact: Most anxieties have specific triggers.
Question: How many attacks to you get?
Response: I’m always anxious. I get many attacks a day. I can have between four and six in a single class.
Ken: Are their times you can control them?
Client: Yes.
Ken: When and how.
Client: When they are not taking over. I can just calm myself down.
Ken: What is the range for your anxiety?
Client: My panic scale goes from 1 – 20. Up to six I can calm myself down. At 10, I’d stay home. 10 – 15 is a no man’s land. I’m a crying mess. At 20 I won’t remember saying or doing things. Over 10 I’m sort of out of control. Between 6 and 10 grounding exercises will help me snap back out of it.

Ken: What if I could show you a way to be anxiety free for one day a week?
Client: I would get anxiety without my anxiety.
Ken: That makes sense. Let’s find something that you would be OK having instead of anxiety. That let’s you feel safe. In command. And that you might prefer.

Result: Client now has two anxiety-free days a week and averages two to three panic attacks on other days. Client goes above 10 only once every one or two weeks and the over-all scale is reducing in intensity. Client is also finding that they can enjoy the healthy feelings they are choosing on the anxiety free day and has begun writing brilliant poetry.

Ken’s Comment: There is no way that this sort of issue that presents itself in this way can be dealt with by close family members. It requires an outside coach. My concern is that certain people would be too quick to medicate such a client. Although I am in favor of medication when self-harm is apparent, I do not feel that such a client, in this case required it and in fact, they didn’t.
Sometimes the triggers are not the first place to go. If the client already has some coping mechanisms, I want to get those “solid” before going back to the triggers. Everything is based on what the client’s strengths are. Rules are made to be broken 🙂

TIP #! Daily Showering (or the lack thereof)
Statement: “I only shower when I need to or if I have worked out or if I’m going out somewhere special”.
Fact: They sometimes smell like a homeless person.
Question: “Why don’t you wash more often?”
Response: “It dries out my skin”.
Ken: “What do you wash yourself with”.
Client: “(A commonwealth country) spring”.
Ken: You know, its close to impossible to really tell if you smell ok or nasty at least 1/2 the time. If I got you a quality shower soap, that didn’t have toxic crap in it, had moisturizers and didn’t have you smelling like a tart. would you try it?
Client: Sure!

Client now washes (almost) every day.
Ken’s comment. Up until now the discussion between parent and child stopped at you smell like a homeless person.

TIP #2 Reasons NOT to study – Reason #372

Kid’s Statement: I always intend to study and the day just slips away from me. Before I know it, the day’s done.
Fact: You know you’re not going to study and we know you’re not going to study.
Question: Why aren’t you studying?
Response: I just can’t seem to get organized.
Ken: If you started doing three 5 – 15 minute sessions of study a day, do you think you could handle that?
Client: I think that is do-able.
Ken: Let’s just start with that and figure out in each day the best time to get those sessions in and see what happens. Tick them off in a chart so we can figure out your best patterns.
Client: I can handle that.
Result: Within one month, client is doing three 15 – 25 minute sessions and learning how to take brakes (and what kind to take) and get back to studying.
Ken’s Comment: Parents pointing out the problem or telling them to “just do it” only reinforces the child’s self-condemnation. It’s kind of like the Chinese finger puzzle.

Stay tuned for more Secrets!

Finding The Confidence ……. To Find Love

As a life coach for troubled teens and unmotivated Millenials, I work with a lot of people with mental health issues ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia. What is really a great honor is to have people in their teens and 20’s trust me enough to share their deepest thoughts about their lives with me.

Sometimes, these thoughts need to be shared. I am doing so now with permission.

Meet Reginald (Really? You think that there is a twenty-something schizophrenic living in Toronto in the 21st century named Reginald?!?). No, it’s not his real name. He is on a fair bit of medication which he takes consistently since we have been working together. Reginald has gone back to university and is following my regimen of taking one course in semester one, two in 2nd semester, all the way up to five once he has learned how to study efficiently, prepare to write papers (not in the 24 hours before its due) and work with T.A’s and teachers when something doesn’t make sense.

Regg is doing famously. He is also in a wheelchair, more round than tall and although when I met him he radiated “I know more than you” (which he often did) he now radiates the warmth, the grace, the brilliant humour which is how I know Reginald to be.

So here we are. Doing great at school (low 80’s), contributing really well in class and what should come along? Valentine’s day! And who is sitting next to him in class but a warm, sensitive woman who seems to “get” Regg’s humour and he senses there is something there. Now remember, this is Reginald 2.0. Through the work we’ve done he has found new faith in himself and his self-worth has grown with every task we have set upon doing and succeeding or figuring out how to rise above.

They go for coffee. They share thoughts. They share fears. Esmeralda shares the fact that she used to be a cutter and then Reginald tells her that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Esmeralda’s starts shifting uncomfortably in her seat, not making eye contact and shortly afterwards excuses herself due to a very bad headache. She also doesn’t sit on the same side of class anymore.

I see Regg twice a week, which I do with all my clients, better to reinforce good habits and less time to acquire bad ones. We meet the next day and he shares the Esmarelda incident with me.

What do you say to someone who is the most thoughtful, astute, wise and sensitive guy you could know who has just had all his self-worth shattered. His greatest fears realized. “No one will ever love me for who I am”.

This is not just the cry of all the Reginalds in the world. It is the call of a great many people out there who feel less than worthy.

I told Regg the simple truth: “Regg, you are special. There is no one like you and I feel honored to work with you, laugh with you and learn from you. There is no question that there are other people out there like me who will see you for who you are and women who will not care about any labels you may have. They will fall in love with you”.

You can’t just give up because you haven’t found love or met people who live their lives based on appearances or fear. You know that. Tell yourself: “I deserve to be loved. I deserve happiness and I will be patient and relentless in my pursuit of both”. Say it again.
Say it everyday into the mirror while looking into your deepest self.

To all the Reginalds and the Esmeraldas out there: Keep your eyes sharp, your hearts open, your faith strong and your resolve everlasting and Happy Valentines Day to those who are loved and those waiting to know that there is a lover out there who will love them as they are.

Check out more of Ken’s articles on Huffington Post by clicking here

What’s the Point of Doing This?… The Teenage Mantra

So, you’ve asked your teen for the 400th time to do whatever.
You scream in front of their “friends”. Your yelled back at. Doors are sent slamming and just as the door is about to close you hear the words: “What’s the point of doing this anyways!!!”

I was just Skyping with one of my younger clients who seemed to have the nervous habit of tapping continuously at his keyboard while we Skyped. When I occasionally asked why he was doing this, he responded; “I’m not doing anything! I just like to tap.”

One day, he tapped the wrong button on his laptop and the sound of a snorting beast being zapped by a space ray filled the room. So there you have it, the “moment of truth”.

(First, confirmation)
Me: So, you’ve been playing this game for the last six sessions while we’ve been Skyping?
Skeeter: Well, not all the time.
Me: Most of the time?
Skeeter: Yeah. Pretty much. It’s so addictive!
Me: I can understand that. But, you’ve been telling me that you weren’t doing anything, right?
Skeeter: Yeah.
Me: Can you see where I’d have a problem with that?
Skeeter: I guess.
Me: What do you think the problem with that is?
Skeeter: ‘Cause I was lying?
Me: And what’s wrong with lying?
Skeeter: It’s …. Bad?
Me: Why is it bad?
Skeeter: I dunno.

(Time for left field)
Me: What do you know about Abraham Lincoln?
Skeeter: He looked weird, he became president. He got shot.
Me: True. Do you know anything about his life?
Skeeter: Nuh-uh.
Me: When Lincoln ran for president, he was an unknown and considered a “hick”. He was running against three of the greatest hopes for the presidency yet it was he who won. One of those men, Stanton, wrote about the new President’s choices as “the painful imbecility of Lincoln.” Yet, Lincoln saw a greatness in Stanton that would help the country and brought him into Cabinet.

When Lincoln was assassinated it was Stanton who said: “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages”.
Lincoln was a man of great character that even his detractors could recognize.

(The Point?)

I’m not going to ask you every time if you are still playing that game anymore.
I’m just going to ask you one thing.
Skeeter: What’s that?
Me: Do I have your word of honor that you won’t play the game while we work?
Skeeter: Yes.
Me: Longer, please.
Skeeter: Yes, I give you my word of honor.
Me: That’s all I need. I know I don’t have to worry about that again
(And Skeeter never did play that game during our Skype sessions again).

So, why do I tell you this story?
Because there is no answer to “why should I bother!”
There is only the opportunity to find some way to challenge a young person to want to be a person of good character.
I don’t know why we don’t champion that in daily life anymore but let’s start.
Share with me an example of how you inspired you child to be a person of good character.

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The Slacker’s Guide to Success – Introduction

The Slacker’s Guide to Success is Ken Rabow’s method based on his work Life Coaching Troubled Teens, Young Adults and their Families over the past 13 years. Here is an excerpt. Enjoy!

An Introduction to The Slackers Guide to Success By Ken Rabow
So, you know you’re brilliant. Your parents know you’re brilliant. Your dog thinks you’re amazing, then why are so many things not working out in your life?

Hi, My name is Ken Rabow and I work with young adults struggling to find their place in the world. The ones I take on as clients are those who really want to make changes in their lives. Many of the clients I work with come to me when they have…
a) Been stuck in part-time jobs without a future
b) Become addicted to video games; or pot; or magic cards or something else.
c) Failed a course, a term or a whole school year
d) Major sleep or anger “issues”
e) All of the above.
Don’t you just love multiple choice?!?

As one of my clients once said to me:
“I really like staying at home, playing video games all day in my bathrobe…..
but I’m beginning to think that it’s not a great long-term plan”.
Let us call that client Skeeter. At the writing of this blog Skeeter is back in school working on a science degree. In his first semester, he caught the attention of an amazing professor doing ground-breaking research who has hired Skeeter in the lab.
So how did Skeeter go from being a stay-in-his room slacker to an up-and-coming science guy? And why should you care if you are into something else or don’t even want to go to school but have dreams of starting your own business or killer app?
Because! 🙂

Okay, that’s a parent-y answer. The real answer is that what worked for Skeeter can work for you in any field, in any format, in any situation. Your success will come from:
• finding your power
• learning to believe in yourself
• determining how to build habits that guarantee success and
• discovering the secret to success through messing up.

Yes, I’m here to tell you that you can’t really be great at anything until you can get past…. perfectionism.
That’s what this system is all about and it works! Each time. Every time.
I’ve seen so many young people change their lives around. There are a lot of people out there who deserve to learn how to be their very best and do great things in their lives.
I’ve written these articles so you can benefit from this “out of the box” approach that I have refined in my private practice over the years. This process that will enable you to succeed on your own terms. If you follow this method, you will find yourself growing in character and soon enough you will discover yourself achieving successes you didn’t dare dream of. You will find that it’s great to get out of bed every morning, feeling good about
An Introduction to The Slackers Guide to Success By Ken Rabow
doing things that earns people’s respect. More importantly, you will feel good about yourself for your personal achievements
.
You will need to do these exercises with a coach/mentor, preferably someone who is not a close relative or who sees you on a day-to-day basis. You need someone you can talk to, someone who will keep your secrets, someone who will respect you and let you grow at your own pace.
There are three sections in these articles and each section is one full stage of development. The first stage is personal development, the second stage, professional develpment is bringing your personal development out into the world with your new strengths and the third stage, inner development is giving back to the world and growing as a person.
Here is a brief outline of the 13 steps in three stages. Enjoy!
Stage One – Personal Development
1) Investigation: Looking at our strengths; challenges, past patterns; coping strategies and choosing role models and events or ideas as inspirations.
2) Opportunity: Searching for a mentor. Choosing three goals, defining the challenges to those goals and indicators of success
3) Mindsets: Abundance, Poverty Mentality and False Epiphanies.
4) Generativity: Creating your daily routine of a personal meaningful practice.
Finding the blocks that stop you from succeeding and creating remedies.
5) Out Into The World (and back again) Bringing your new skills in to practice in the outside world in a safe and limited way.
6) Setting limits: Learning to set limits gracefully on the time-stealers in your life.
7) Direction. (Following your bliss) Creating the groundwork for a successful, enjoyable life.
Stage Two – Professional Development
8) Out into the world: Putting into practice stage one in a more extended fashion and transforming all you have learned into new situations.
9) Forming new boxes of safety: Using mindfulness and success consciousness out there and seeing how they work in new situations while learning to feel safe.
10) Creating new generative structures. Schedules, coping and new friends.
11) Making your addictions work for you. Using your urges to indulge your addictions as a reward for doing the work you need to get done.
Stage Three – Inner Development
12) A complete life. Learning a sustainable daily practice of being mindful in
learning, work, relationships and even play.
13) Pay it forward: Once you’ve reached this point, your life is richer, you are happier and you will truly want to help others grow in their own way. This step will teach you how to do that.

Get the book; paperback or Kindle! Click here

Ten Tips For Fostering Creativity In Your Children

If you are a parent today in the western world, you have joined a very special club. A club of parents cast adrift, drowning in self-doubt while dodging waves of pyscho-babble lurching at them from every direction. It’s easy to throw blame around but what is the main question we all want the answer? “How do I help my child unfold to be their very best in today’s world?”

10 Tips to Foster Creativity in Your Children

Encourage your kids to sign up and embrace something that they love. Whether it’s drumming, hip-hop or clown school — give them opportunities to go out, sign up, and then make sure to give them the time and space to choose to do the work required at home.This is a recipe for self-discovery and building self-esteem.

1) Comedy: Join a comedy troupe. Then when someone asks: “What are you? A comedian?”, they can answer: “Yes!”

2) Start a Business: Dog walking. Cat sitting. Lawn mowing. Make something cool that people need like funky knitted hats. Find ways to get customers and learn how to keep them as well.

3) Write a Family History: It could be a book, a video, or it could be a blog. When you combine personal history with storytelling, you end up with a powerful creative skill.

4) Make Some Protest Songs: If you play an instrument you could write songs using your guitar or piano. If not, there are great music-creating software programs out there. Go out and sing those songs wherever and whenever you can.

5) Create Your Own Muppets: Find a character. Do parties. Go to hospital wards and have your new creation meet and greet. (That’s how Elmo started)

6) Knitting or Crocheting: This is huge these days with kids in their teens and twenties. There are knitting raves and flashmob knitting — it’s just a great thing that’s being re-invented. Yarn-bombing around telephone poles. Knitting cellphone covers, wine bottle covers, dog coats and more. This ain’t your Granny’s knitting!

7) Claymation: It’s slow — painstakingly so — but amazing. If you are willing to put in the time, you can create new universes and have them do what you want to do and say what you want them to say.

8) Filmmaking: This is how the great directors started: just doing it on their own on zero or minimal budgets. Sometimes, we can tell the very best story when we are limited in the way we can tell that story. Filmmaking on a budget can do that.

9) Cooking: Some film directors have likened making a film to cooking a meal: choosing your meal and getting the recipes is like the script. Shopping for the perfect ingredients is like shooting the film. Cooking the meal is like editing and the place setting and the food placement is like the theatrical opening of the show. See food that way and open up to a whole new experience in dining.

10) Write and Perform: Make your own musical on a theme that means something to you. This gets you to do some acting, singing, script-writing, set and costume design, marketing and build your organizational skills (when you get others involved).

It’s not important what creative outlet your child chooses, how they do it, or what they can do with it. It really is the process that enriches their lives. It teaches so many skills like patience, perseverance, faith in themselves and most important of all, it teaches them to marvel at the creative process from chaos to completion. A skill that many have lost appreciation for.

One last thing: If you are reading this, you are a parent who cares. Sometimes that may be all you need but never underestimate your child as a resource to guide you in what to do as a parent. Ask them. You may be surprised by their answers. Share in their creative endeavors as an impassioned spectator. Join in their communities and honour their mentors who earn your trust.

Empowering this new generation will give them something that stays with them their whole life. One of the most powerful forces for change is creativity. Nurture this in your children and you will open a place for self-worth to grow. A fantastic opportunity to believe in themselves. You have that power. That may be one of the greatest creative acts in a lifetime. Make it so!

Young Adults Communication Issues

Young Adult Communication Issues: Baby-Boomers and Cyberdonians

Baby-boomers. You thought you had it all together, man!

Like, you were totally prepared! The right retirement savings plan, paid off the house early, avoided Bernie Madoff and even had time to live a healthy enough lifestyle to enjoy your retirement but… the dread young adults communication issues.

The one thing you could never have planed for,
the one thing that makes Madoff look like a shmear at Carnegie deli reared it’s uncoiffed head… Cyberdnians! Young adults communication issues, work problems, school challenges, etc. If we were prone to metaphors, we might liken them to hurricanes on cyprolex… wiping out people’s savings, destroying homes (at least making them very messy), going into a rages or depressions without warning and sleeping really late while texting… so much for the metaphors.

Now here you are having to continue to work to pay for a 2nd or 3rd university education to prepare your 20-something to work as a Barista (not that there’s anything wrong with that).


Cyberdnians: You thought you had it all together, bro.

You had it totally planned. If by planned you mean buying into the ‘rents song and dance about education, hockey and
showing up for Christmas (and actually talking), avoiding the great recession by … oh wait… you didn’t ☹ They way you see young adults communication issues is in your parents problems. (they feel the same way btw).

The one thing you never planned for
, the one thing that makes the great recession look like a bad socio-economic hair day is the dreaded… Boomers! If we were prone to metaphors… OK, so I like metaphors, get over it! It would be like a big needy Kangaroo on Prozac, sucking up all the fun in life and sitting it’s big ass down on that place in line called “the gravy train”. Sucking up all that gravy, while letting some of it drop onto it’s gravy-stained golf shirt. Slowly, it turns back to the millennial stuck behind them in the next Kangaroo pouch and says “suck it up princess, its your fault I have to keep working”.

But wait! There is a way out of being stuck in the gravy-train line to nowhere-ville.

Here are the seven things Cyberdonians and Boomers can do to survive each other and eliminate young adults communication issues.


1. Avoid really talking to each other!
Talking is vastly over-rated. All it does it force you to actually hear the other’s side of things and that can only lead to understanding. which makes resentment much more difficult.

2. Eschew finding things you have in common. It’s soo hard to mock someone when you have common ground. Stuff you both like can really challenge the best reasons why everything is the other person’s fault.

3. Circumvent occasions for pleasantries. Nothing good comes from giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. They have a better opportunity for “winning” and you have missed the best opportunity for a cheap shot.

4. Sidestep teaching moments. Your job is not to teach by example, your job is complain why they aren’t doing what they should be doing.

But wait! There’s more!

5. Circumnavigate the cesspool of “sentiments”. Hey if showing your vulnerabilities would help, Oprah would be a multi-millionaire by now.
And exactly how could showing your vulnerabilities ever help the other side to do anything but take advantage of you. Better to be a dork with a cork then take the chance of sharing your deepest feelings.

6. Duck danger with disbelief. Believing in them? What is this, the land of the lost boys? Nine out of ten scientists have proven that showing lack of faith for each other is a great way to enjoy the day… of course they also said that about cigarettes in the 50’s.

7. Unconditional Love? We don’t need no stinkin’ unconditional love! It’s so messy. It makes you feel things and let’s face it, most of the times in the past when you opened up your heart to them, they didn’t just step on it, they ground their heel in it, through in some chipotle mix, a can of refired beans and then made a meal out of it. Why would anyone take the chance of unconditionally loving someone when things have gone wrong in the past?

There you have it.

The secrets to surviving each other in a challenging time.
Let me know how it worked for you. Did I mention I have some swampland for sale?

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Troubled Teens and Young Adults who Lack Motivation

For teens with anxiety, millennials dealing with self doubt, the slackers and the stoners who seem to lack motivation; there is one mantra they all share: “If I choose to fail and do… then I win”!

Let me repeat this for the high achieving, hard-working parents out there: Your child’s mantra just may be
” if I choose to fail and I do, I win”. Sends a shiver down your spine, doesn’t it? It should! It’s hard to know what is scarier. The fact that they think this or the fact that they would never tell you this. Yet, this is something I hear from new clients on a regular basis. y

Here’s the good News: They really do want to win. They just don’t have a single clue on how to do it. Let me share with you an example:

Take “Skeeter”.
A pot smoking stoner
who has made the skill of ignoring the outcome of his lack of effort in school, hygiene and relationships into and art.

What is odd is that when you get past all the negative situations that Skeeter has been through and really talk and listen to him, he really wants to succeed but he just doesn’t have a clue how to do that, so he channels all of his desires into self-sabotage. This goes on for so long that it is almost impossible for Skeeter to remember that this was a coping mechanism and not his true nature.

Given the opportunity, most people really will choose to succeed.

So what is the secret recipe. How do I get the self-sabotageurs to get “back on track”.
There are as many answers as there are clients. No two people have exactly the same road to travel but there are some common threads.

The first step is to believe that they really do want to succeed and that it is up to the Mentor to help them find “micro-successes”. Before I explain micro-successes, let me point out that what they have been learning up until now is that no matter what they are told, whatever they try will end up in failure, hurt feelings and self-loathing.

This is what I have to work with when they come to me. So why do they take a chance on my out of the box system? Because I listen. I take whatever they say seriously and I help them unpack their regular chants of “it won’t work”, “i’m just lazy” or (fill in the blank) and find their coping mechanism.

Now for the micro-successes: They are so powerfully conditioned to expect to fail that I must find the smallest little daily successes that they can see, feel, experience and start to consider that their might be the tiniest possibility that things don’t have to end badly.

That is all I ask for at the beginning.

And when things fall to poop (which they will), if we have built up enough trust and some micro-succeses, the will learn how to deal, how to assess, how to learn and finally how to grow.

It works. I feel honored every time I watch the transition and they are always in charge of what we do.

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To check out Ken’s website for helping troubled teens and unmotivated millenials, click RealLifeCoaching.ca
Want more Ken Rabow articles? Click Real Life Coaching Blogs
To contact Ken for a Free 15 Minute Consultation Click Contact Ken
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Anxiety in Teens – A Parent’s Nightmare

Anxiety in teens: Case Study #3 – Why I Have So Much Anxiety Reason # 12


There is an epidemic of anxiety in teens these days.

Kid’s Statement: I never know what will trigger it but when the anxiety comes I lose all control and feel lost.
Fact: Most anxieties have specific triggers.
Question: How many attacks to you get?
Response: I’m always anxious. I get many attacks a day. I can have between four and six in a single class.
Ken: Are their times you can control them?
Client: Yes.
Ken: When and how.
Client: When they are not taking over. I can just calm myself down.
Ken: What is the range for your anxiety?
Client: My panic scale goes from 1 – 20. Up to six I can calm myself down. At 10, I’d stay home. 10 – 15 is a no man’s land. I’m a crying mess. At 20 I won’t remember saying or doing things. Over 10 I’m sort of out of control. Between 6 and 10 grounding exercises will help me snap back out of it.

Ken: What if I could show you a way to be anxiety free for one day a week?

Client: I would get anxiety without my anxiety.
Ken: That makes sense. Let’s find something that you would be OK having instead of anxiety. That let’s you feel safe. In command. And that you might prefer.

Result: Client now has two anxiety-free days a week, averaging two to three panic attacks on other days. Client goes above 9 once bi-weekly and the over-all scale is reducing in intensity. They are discovering that they can enjoy the healthy feelings they are choosing on the anxiety free day and have begun writing brilliant poetry.

Ken’s Comment: There is no way that this sort of issue  can be dealt with by close family members. It requires an outside life coach. Some might be too quick to medicate such a client. Although I am in favor of medication when required.  I do not appear that this client required it and in fact, they didn’t.

Case Study #5 – 11 Yr Old Client. Anxiety – 2 – 3 times per week

The setup for anxiety in teens and the way to avoid it.
4:00 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. My day off. I hear my cellphone (that I forgot to turn off during our family nap) make the sound it does when someone has left me a Skype text.

It’s Victor (not his real name). An amazing kid. 11 years old. Brilliant. Funny. Some coping issues and he is asking if he can talk to me. “Ken can I talk to you for a little later in the evening if you can I want to talk to someone about a fear and your the best person”. I have worked on these sorts of things many times before with older clients but never someone of this age. I pick up the phone and we talk.

Since he has been very young he has had this recurring fear.


A fear that comes back several times each year. Sometimes an event can trigger it. Sometimes it just seems to happen. On those terror-filled days and sleepless nights, his parents are helpless to release their child from his terrors. They keep building and nothing works.

We spent close to an hour on the phone. The client and I had worked on breathing exercises in the past. Visualization exercises were incorporated to help Victor focus his mind towards positive thoughts. We mixed those up with some simple talk about his fears. His concerns and how they felt in his body when they would begin to appear.

Speaking with someone new on this subject seemed to help him a bit and he asked if he could come in with his mom the next day and work on the issue.


On the next day I met with Victor one on one first. We worked on a breathing technique where he put one hand on his belly and another on his chest. I had him focus on having his belly move on the breath without having the chest move and to breath in on a count of five, hold the breath for a three count and then breath out on a count of five.

This had an immediate effect of letting him focus on something new.

(There is more to the intake as to why I knew that diverting his attention would work).

We then added EFT (Emotional freedom technique). I don’t use this on a regular basis, but I really like the idea of having Victor doing tapping, focusing on breathing, and stating affirmations based on what he really wanted to focus on and had been avoiding.

All this brought him to a more relaxed state. At this point we brought in his mom. We determined that Victor should suggest three things that his parents could do when he was anxious at night that would be helpful.

This avoided all the frustration on the parents part of trying different things that didn’t seem to work. It also avoided the frustration on Victor’s part of feeling that his parents were diminishing his concerns.

We now have a short-term and long-term method of dealing with this and so far things are improving.


None of what I am saying in this article is meant to be anything other than a case study and to show parents and young adults going through anxiety and anxiety in teens, that there are many ways to deal with these things.

New choices must be based on what works for the client. The big question is; are they visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. I find that a great deal of these people are kinesthetic and that is why something that they feel has to be used versus talk therapy to get them to change their “reality”.

I just want you to know that there are alternatives.

2017 – Ken Rabow update on anxiety in teens and young adults.


It’s hard to believe but four years later, even more parents are coming to me dealing with anxiety in teens.

It is hard to know why things are getting worse out there but here is the good news. Mentoring young adults, giving them a place to be heard and not be judged for the anxieties. Allowing them to slowly build up good coping strategies: breathing; visualizations; better communication; and being listened to really works reduce anxiety in teens and young adults.

The wonderful part is when you remind them when they have a once-in-a-blue-moon anxiety event, how it used to be every day. It’s a great moment when they realize how far they have come.

For more articles by Ken Rabow on anxiety, click here

For a free consultation about how Mentoring Young Adults can help with anxiety in teens and so much more, click here.

If you wish to know the pricing for our mentoring courses, click here.

A Bully’s Inner World of Contempt

I remember when I first met Ricky (not his real name). He was a Grade 4 student in the school yard pushing and yelling with an aura of glee emanating from his face as the two Grade 5 kids (who were actually much larger than him) cowered, looking for a way to get out of Ricky’s sphere of influence.

I was the music specialist for grades 5 to 8 but was nonetheless required to do “yard duty” several times a week. I actually enjoyed seeing the kids interacting without the shackles of class rules and regulations to inhibit them. Usually this was a good thing. Today, I would be the “yard duty police.”

In my most resonant Alpha voice I said, “Ricky, what is going on here?” The question was innocent enough but the tone implied my judgment based on what I thought were clear and obvious facts. Ricky turned toward me, his victims took the opportunity to slip away and suddeny Ricky started weeping.

I tried to help him calm down and asked to him explain what was going on, but he was incapable of doing so at the time. It was only later I found out that Ricky had a series of sweeping emotional challenges. A bright kid who had control issues and major impulse problems.

Another Grade 4 student, Dominic (again not his real name), the Goliath of his group, had a tendency to physically bully anyone outside his circle of friends whenever the teachers were out of view. This was his group’s daily lunch activity (alongside basketball).

Dominic was always polite and respectful to me, yet, I wondered what his thoughts were as he said what was expected of him.

Both students’ parents had similarities as well as great differences. Ricky’s parents were caring, possibly overprotective and always searching for help from the teachers, yet seemed afraid to be rejected for asking of that help. Dominic’s parents (behemoths themselves) seemed to have an air of entitlement about them, yet cared deeply about their child.

I was new at recess duty and left the handling of discipline to others, but one thing was clear: calling attention to aggressive behaviour without judgement worked. Aggressing the aggressor (punishments, berating, etc.) would only bring more waves of aggression building up. I began to see this angst as a physical wave. When I would see either of these kids starting that wave (before it became actual aggression), I would ask them a few questions and have them help me understand a little about my upcoming students (they would be in my class the following year); their interests, their hobbies, etc. As luck would have it, Dominic played drums (as did I) and Ricky was a sophisticated fan of classic comedy (as am I).

I would take these moments to have them share and teach me their thoughts on these subjects and truthfully, I learned a great deal from their different perspectives. I also noticed that the cycle of those waves tended to not only reduce, but the whole yard seemed to have less waves growing.

In my work with troubled teens and young adults, it has become very clear that there is a strong theme of feeling disempowered. A great deal of my articles cover the various reasons, but I would suggest to parents and teachers that they start watching the waves of people acting out. Those waves are their inner worlds of contempt for themselves projected onto others. If you can catch the wave early enough, deflect them and encourage those kids to share their positive passions from a place of strength (letting them do the teaching), we may prevent those waves of angst from crashing down upon others.

As a side note, Ricky would turn out to be a fantastic student and would end up playing well at recess and Dominic is an amazing musician and became a defender of those being picked upon.

Rule #1 If you see bullying, do not confront. Simply ask: what is going on here?

Rule #2 If you have the option — engage young people prone to aggressive outbursts in positive uses of their energies before the wave crashes.

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Want more Ken Rabow articles? Click Real Life Coaching Blogs
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The Teenage Mantra: What’s the Point of Doing This?

So, you’ve asked your teen for the 400th time to do whatever.

(It’s not like he/she’s actually heard what you said — your voice blends in with the background noise, mixing with the sound of text message alerts, video game soundtracks with the slurping sounds of friends drinking Big Gulps while armchair directing W.O.W.)

You scream in front of their “friends.” You’re yelled back at. Doors are slammed and just as the door is about to close, you hear the words: “What’s the point of doing this anyway?!”

The immortal call of the teen. Having been birthed in one of the James Dean movies (how did that turn out for him, again?) it is the modern cry of teenage angst. I guess a bigger question is: when did we become the old, crotchety guy in the cardigan saying, “What’s all this hoopla ’bout slicken yer hair back and yellin’ 23 skidoo?”

I seem to have mixed up my generational angsts.

Back to the 21st century: I was just Skyping with one of my younger clients, a bright, dynamic young lad of 14 who seemed to have the nervous habit of tapping continuously at his keyboard while we Skyped. When I occasionally asked why he was doing this, he responded; “I’m not doing anything! I just like to tap.”

This particular day, I must have said something that caught him off guard as he pressed the wrong button on his laptop and the sound of a snorting beast being zapped by a space ray filled the room. So there you have it, the moment of truth. There were so many ways this could go. I chose (as I usually do) left field.

(First, confirmation)
Me: So, you’ve been playing this game for the last six sessions while we’ve been Skyping?
Skeeter: Well, not all the time.
Me: Most of the time?
Skeeter: Yeah. Pretty much. It’s so addictive!
Me: I can understand that. But, you’ve been telling me that you weren’t doing anything, right?
Skeeter: Yeah.
Me: Can you see where I’d have a problem with that?
Skeeter: I guess.
Me: What do you think the problem with that is?
Skeeter: ‘Cause I was lying?
Me: And what’s wrong with lying?
Skeeter: It’s… Bad?
Me: Why is it bad?
Skeeter: I dunno.

(Time for left field)
Me: What do you know about Abraham Lincoln?
Skeeter: He looked weird, he became president. He got shot.
Me: True. Do you know anything about his life?
Skeeter: He looked weird, he became president. He got shot.
(Sigh)
Me: When Lincoln ran for president, he was an unknown and considered a “hick.” He was running against three of the greatest hopes for the presidency, yet it was he who prevailed.

One of the most powerful legal minds of the time, Edwin M.Stanton, wrote about the new president Lincoln’s governings as “the painful imbecility of Lincoln.”

Lincoln saw a greatness in Stanton that would help the country and brought him into Cabinet in January 1862, defending Stanton against all sorts of assaults by people who wanted him fired. Stanton was often difficult, but Lincoln took it all in stride. When Lincoln was assassinated, it was Stanton who said: “There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen… Now he belongs to the ages.”

Lincoln was a man of great character that even his detractors could recognize.

(The Point?)

I’m not going to ask you every time if you are still playing that game anymore. I’m just going to ask you one thing.
Skeeter: What’s that?
Me: Do I have your word of honour that you won’t play the game while we work?
Skeeter: Yes.
Me: Longer, please.
Skeeter: Yes, I give you my word of honour.
Me: That’s all I need. I know I don’t have to worry about that again.
(And Skeeter never did play that game during our Skype sessions again).

So, why do I tell you this story?

Because there is no answer to “What’s the point of doing this?”

There is only the opportunity to find some way to challenge a young person to want to be a person of good character.

I don’t know why we almost never see that in the movies anymore.

I don’t know why we don’t champion that in daily life anymore.

But gosh darn it (he said, bringing the pipe to his mouth while dusting off the simulation tobacco from his cardigan) maybe it’s time we brought it back!

See you in the funny papers!

Teen Pot Addiction

65% of the young clients I treat are dealing with teen pot addiction.
Teen pot addiction is a huge problem for many clients when I meet with them. There may be others out there who do fine with marijuana but they don’t come to see me. The ones that I see have some or all of these factors playing on them at once:

When you put these together with a daily use of marijuana, you have a recipe for failure; drama; and a cycle of hopelessness.

So how do you get them to see “the light”?It begins by having faith in these individuals, that by letting them discover the roadblocks, free of judgment, that they are putting in front of themselves and offering them a simple, effective way to start succeeding at things that they enjoy in their lives, they will seek creative and original ways to self-limit their addictions in a way that make sense to them.

Secondly, we offer these young adults dealing with teen pot addiction the opportunity to choose what they want to create in their lives. To figure out the challenges and the first sign-posts of success. We then create a daily routine. When they start to see the challenges that teen pot addiction plays in their lives, they ask to find ways to begin limiting their smoking. It works best when it comes from the client.

The problem with teen pot addiction is all the mainstream ways that people have imposed on them have not worked.
so they may have given up on thinking that there is a solution. But once they are inspired to look for a new solution, and to realize through simple concrete examples that they can succeed, they choose to succeed.

I have seen this system work over and over again.

Find out more about teen addictions by clicking here.

Interested in becoming a professional mentor for young adults? Click here

Know a young adult with mental health issues? click here

Kids Failing at School? The 7 Steps To Turning Around A Bad School Year

It arrives. The phone call you’ve been dreading. It’s your child’s (pick a subject) teacher, or the vice-principal and they’re calling to tell you that your child sucks and that you are a bad parent. It’s all your fault, not theirs, and what are you going to do about it?

They don’t actually say that, but isn’t that what you’re hearing in your head when you get the call? If you got that call or note, you are in very good company. There are so many people in the exact same situation that it is scary. It’s not about you. It’s not about your child. It’s not about the school. It’s about finding a new way because the old way obviously isn’t working.

Now there are a few anomalies where what wasn’t working may still work, but something extraordinary has to happen (abducted by aliens, a shining light speaking to you, you go into a cave and see Darth Vader), but for most situations, that scary voice of your vice-principal in your head is on the right track… just the wrong solution.

Here are the 7 steps to bring long-term results.

Step 1: Let go of expectations. Telling your child that they have to start working 73 hours a day may seem like commons sense to you, but if it worked they would have done it already.

Step 2: Divide and conquer. Have your child look at all their coming exams, write out the dates and times and include what will be covered on the test and highlight all the problem parts. Write down the number of how many days are left until that exam.

Step 3: Pick a number. Ask them realistically how much time they are willing to study on a daily basis. Anything from one and a half hours to two hours a day is a great starting point. Tell them they can choose one day of the week to not study at all and suggest that they really think about which day would be best as their break day.

Step 4: Less is more-or-less OK. This is not about studying for the right amount of time. This is about giving up on thinking it’s hopeless and starting to take control of a daily schedule and “owning it” for them. If they do 15-20 minutes of each subject and that is 15 minutes more then they would have done, they are off to a really good start.

Step 5: Be their cheerleader, not their jailer. Ask them what they have done in their studies for the past few days, if they are willing to share it. If they missed something, do not react! Just ask if they have figured out how to deal with the lost time or was it just a way to learn to do better from now on. Let them be in charge. The idea here is to let them see what a bit of regular daily self-discipline can do and learn from the outcome.

Step 6: Lather, rinse, repeat. At the end of the first week, suggest that you both sit down and look at the results of the past week’s study program. Ask them if they would like to share how they are feeling about what they have accomplished. Suggest that they increase their study time by a small factor and see how that feels. Let them write out the new schedule and let them go at it.

Step 7: Review. If it is too late for this year, suggest that the next time they do the same process, they begin earlier and include a two week review time. If there is time this year for even one day of review, have them plan to get through all the work with one day of review, even if it is just for one course, and see what it brings them. When kids are asked to offer their opinion in a genuine way, two things happen: they feel empowered and they usually rise up to the opportunity, and you may learn something really good about your child that you never knew before.

What you are building in them is the faith to put down their toys (whatever they may be) for a bit of time each day and build a steady practice of self-growth with the idea that it may serve them well. This is difficult for some people and if you got that phone call or note, your child is probably part of that very large club.

It isn’t really about the marks or the tests, it’s about building character and belief in one’s self through a daily practice. This work, when mirrored back as being worthwhile, will last a lifetime and continue to grow. Focus on the accomplishments even if the outcome sucks and you will have turned a struggling student into someone who can consider taking a chance on success.
May the non-nagging force be with you

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Go to the Home Page of Ken’s website for helping Troubled Teens and UnMotivated Millenials, RealLifeCoaching.ca
Want more Ken Rabow articles? Click Real Life Coaching Blogs
To contact Ken for a Free 15 Minute Consultation Click Contact Ken
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Are We Killing Our Kids With Kindness?

If the best way to kill off someone talented is give them everything they want, then why are we doing this every day, in every way with our kids? Think about the over-givers, over-praisers and over-reachers.

Over-givers: A child given every game, electronic gadget, article of “cool” clothing and every form of chauffeuring has no reason to strive; they have it all now. They are living the lives of the rich and famous without having to do anything. “What’s be the point of trying and striving, or (heaven forbid!) failing at something! I’ve got it all now!”

Over-praisers: When a naturally gifted child is praised for the smallest of their natural abilities, they learns that it’s better to flit from one thing to another, showing off their “natural talent,” rather than striving to find what is beyond that gift in the realm of hard-earned mastery.

Over-reachers: Really, does your child have to be the best at everything? What happened to “normal”? (It’s very Zen, you know.) If every child had to be the best at everything, we would end up living in the Village of the Damned (the original, of course, not the remake). Do you want that? I would think not!

So, we know which group we fit into — oops, make that which group our neighbours fit into. Now the question remains: what do we do to avoid this trap?

10 Tips to Nurturing a Self-Reliant Student

1. Feel OK to say no! If children learn healthy limitations, they appreciate what they do get that much more. Sometimes creating something instead of getting something is the best gift of all. They learn to be self-limiting, yet open to infinite creative possibilities.
2. Be consistent. Learning the rules and understanding that they will always be enforced gives a person a sense of safety. Knowing that we do what we say is invaluable.
3. Be accepting. Their choices are supposed to shake you up sometimes. Revel in their individuality! You are here to teach them how to negotiate the world. They are here to teach you about your challenges and the infinite possibilities of love.
4. Admit your own faults and show them how you try to improve on your own imperfections. This will foster in them the idea that it is OK to try things and possibly fail.
5. Give them time to themselves. Walking or going on a city bus to school is a great way to learn independence. Most importantly, playtime without being electronically spoon-fed is quality playtime.
6. A pet that suites their age, maturity and nature (with your help) is a great way to learn self reliance, compassion and unconditional love. Avoid pet stores that buy from puppy mills.
7. Travel! Locally, nationally, internationally; seeing how other people live, eat and socialize teaches young people that there are many ways of doing things and many ideas of how life should be lived.
8. Let them choose their own hobbies — let your child choose what adventures and learning they wish to pursue, but make sure that that prep time, practice time and learning time allows for a healthy, well-rounded childhood. If the other parents are unkind, find a new hobby.
9. Let them direct one or two things a week; make or design dinner or a game. The best way to learn to follow is to learn to lead.
10. Benign neglect. Give them time to find their own way, choose their own goals, make decisions, learn from their experiences and move on. Let them know that you accept their choices and that your advice is there for them whenever they ask for it.

Our actions almost always come from love for our children… yet… we have to learn to mix our wanting to give with reasonable limits. Plant firmly the seeds in your heart of what you believe your children can achieve without attachment, and let them know that you believe in them. Show them what you see in them and teach by example that making mistakes is the better part of learning.

We are either succeeding or we are learning. Trusting in them to learn and grow is the best gift of all, and it never goes out of style.

Using Our Child’s Strengths and Challenges To Succeed

We can change our lives for the better right now!
It starts with looking at the strengths and challenges in our daily life. Through our challenges, we can understand the patterns that keep repeating and the self-limiting tapes running in our sub-conscious. Our strengths can inspire us to rise over these repeating patterns and tapes, leading us to a richer life. I invite you to try these exercises:

Exercise One: C.O.S.
A) Challenges – Write down three things that are challenges in your daily life.
B) Obstacles – Think about what stops you from getting beyond each of these challenges.
C) Success – Choose something that would show you that had been successful in rising above that challenge.

Exercise Two – Strengths:
A) Talent – Write down something that you are good at.
It may be what you know you do well or it may be something that comes easily to you but dismiss because “anyone can do that”. They are both strengths.
B) Inspiration – Think of a person, past or present, who you find inspiring.
When you find yourself in a frustrating situation, ask yourself:
“What would they do?”
C) Power Place – Imagine a situation that makes you feel powerful.
It could be something you’ve seen or heard about.

It could be something you hope will one day happen.

Try to make it feel real through your strongest senses.
Imagine what it would feel like to be experiencing that right now.
Something very powerful happens when you write down your challenges and strengths.

By choosing an indicator for success, you are allowing your mind to consider success.

As you move forward in the 13 steps to success for young adults,
you may find that you end up modifying what you have written down in these first exercises. That is to be expected.

A great film director was once asked what the most important quality for a leader was.

He responded that it was the ability to make an immediate decision.
It didn’t matter if it was right or wrong, that could be corrected, but once the crew sensed that decisiveness, they could relax into their jobs, knowing there was direction.

The same is true of our sub-conscious.
It is that crew waiting to be led and our will becomes the director.

What will these exercises do for you? They will create a direction.

Will your answers change? Probably.
Are they the perfect choices? Time will tell but they are a great start.

Here are some things you can do starting today with these exercises:

Daily Practice:
1) Choose the challenge that you wish to work on first.
Reflect on the obstacle that is in your way.
Choose three things you can do to “soften” the obstacle.
Decide to work on one aspect of this a day until you begin to see your indicator for success emerging.

Then move on to the next challenge.
It sometimes help to have an outside person work on this with you.
A mentor can often be very helpful.

2) Each night just before falling asleep, imagine your power place.
Live it as if it was happening to you right now.
Take in every feeling of it.
Decide to let yourself be open to things that happen during your day which bring you closer to making your power place a reality.

3) When you wake up, take a moment to reflect on one quality that your inspirational person has.

It could be one you have used before or a new one. Decide to implement that quality today.

4) Keep a journal.

The longest journey begins with a single step ……Lao-tzu

Delayed Gratification in the Entitlement Generation

Being a teenager is about living in the now. This is a double-edged sword.
We spend our whole lives trying to live in the now and give our teens grief for doing it way too much.
The main difference is that we have the experience and they have the conviction.

In the late 1960’s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel invented the “marshmallow task”. A four year old child would be asked to pick between a treat of marshmallows, cookies, or pretzel sticks. They were told that they could either eat one treat right away or, they could have two treats after the researcher returned in a few minutes. If they felt they couldn’t wait, they could eat one treat but would lose the bonus treat. Then the examiner left the room.

kid and marshmallow ourkids.netSome kids ate the treat the moment the researcher closed the door, others struggled to resist and ended up eating it within three minutes and about a third of them successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned 15 minutes later. They found a way to resist temptation.

Revisiting with these subjects a decade later, time had shown that the low delayers (who ate the marshmallow immediately) tended to have all sorts of problems, from behavioral, social to lower S.A.T scores, while those who waited did better across the board.

It was not “will power” but the “strategic allocation of attention” that made all the difference. Mischel commented: “The patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek, or singing songs to themselves.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place. If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television, and you can save more money for retirement. It’s not just about marshmallows.”

Studying people in grade 8, researchers found that the ability to delay gratification was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. test. The study showed that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”

Character matters for success. In the early years, parents should create rituals that help their children to delay on a daily basis. Encourage your child to wait and make waiting worthwhile. According to Mischel, even the simplest childhood routines such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning—are exercises in cognitive training: we’re teaching ourselves how to think so that we can outsmart our desires.

For teenagers, I have found that creating a daily routine which includes the following can be truly life-changing:

a) quieting the mind (meditation)

b) exercising (walking, yoga or playing a sport)

c) some sort of creative outlet (music, writing, dance, painting, etc.,)

d) keeping your workspace organized

Using these daily tasks as ways to give yourself rewards (video game time, texting with friends, some new internet site that has become the rage while I was writing this article) builds character. I have a client, let’s call him Ishmael and he has a dilemma. Ishmael, has an amazing new role playing video game (RPG) that will be coming out in December, during his end of term exams.

“The problem”, says Ishmael, “with an RPG is that it becomes difficult to take yourself back into the real world. It is good to have something immersive in your life but only if it’s done appropriately.

“I have some tools now that I put into place in my previous school term that I can call upon; (reward system vs procrastination) so I intend to do my schoolwork first and then get my video game reward breaks. To get to sleep at a reasonable time – I have a cut-off time”. There was a time when cut-off times were a hypothetical idea rather than a reality but now… Ishmael is able to honor his cut-off time by putting school “as my first priority”.

“You have to keep things in moderation. It’s ok for your thoughts to be of video games or magic cards as long as it doesn’t interfere with your daily stuff. You have to believe that finishing school is more important than finishing the game. I choose to find the middle path”.

I’ll leave you with Ishmael’s final thought which transcends the use of delayed gratification:
“Moderation in all things”. How very Zen!

Stress – A Good Thing or …Not?

What? Stress? A good thing?
I’m here to tell you… Stress is good!
It’s what you don’t do with it, that makes it bad.

As a very dear friend of mine often says:
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”

It’s easy to say, “well, they don’t know My stress”!
Whatever stress you are going through can be true major stress but how you go through it and whether it gives you any equivalent benefit, depends on what coping mechanisms you have been taught. But, of course, your were taught to deal with stress in school, weren’t you? 🙁

There is so much that I would love for people to be taught in school. How to deal with stress is a really big one. Here is some stripped down versions of things I teach my clients in our classes. It can also be found in my book “The Slacker’s Guide To Success”.

There are two secrets to dealing with stress.

Breathing and 2. Mindfulness.

Let’s start with breathing.
Next time you’re walking down a busy street, look at people’s heart/lung meridians. It’s the area between the shoulders (in front) above the nipples and below the neck.

When someone is really stressed you can see it as they walk down the street. They breathe shallowly. Which means all of their breath is happening in that heart/lung meridian area.

This is called distressed breath and it alerts your system to kick into fight or flight mode. Your adrenaline will increase. Your nostrils may flare. And “being chill” is not an option at this point.

Now, if you are in a quiet place, lie down, put your right hand just below your belly button and your left hand on your heart/lung meridian. Try taking a few deep breaths into your right hand (below your belly) without having your left hand (H/L Meridian) move.

This is deep breathing or diaphragmatic breathing and gives your body the all-clear from danger. Allowing your system to begin to relax and work more efficiently.

2. Mindfulness. 
As you find yourself becoming stressed, notice where the stress is in your body. Be aware of your breath. Pay attention to the words you use to yourself.
Now choose to relax the breath. Try to relax the stress points and finally use words that are meaningful to yourself in calming yourself down. Getting this to work takes a Mentor but you can do a great deal of it on your own.

So how can stress be a great thing. It is a motivator to action. it is a power within ourselves to push beyond our comfort zone. Once you can control this power, with breath and mindfulness, it will become an ally in many situations: public speaking; pushing beyond what is comfortable in projects; and so much more.

How weird is it that the thing that seems to be our greatest foe holds the seeds to our greatest powers?

Help! My Teen Won’t Get Up Before 3 pm!

Help! A parent contacted me the other day concerning her recurring summer problem with her teenager. “I practically never see my teenager from June to September! They refuse to come to dinner, never speaks to us and they have wasted every summer since turning 13 with their friends; playing video games (doing who knows what else) and going to sleep when I am getting ready to go to work at seven in the morning! No amount of discussion will get them to change their ways”.

Just the facts, Ma’am: Researchers have recently discovered that while most adult’s melatonin levels (which help us fall asleep) start to be produced at 10 p.m., teenagers tend to begin producing the hormone at around 1 a.m. How much of this time difference is due to changing hormones and how much is due to the disruptive effect from the lights of computer monitors and TVs over-stimulating their minds? While the melatonin issue makes a good case for later start times in high school classes, it does not justify going to bed at seven in the morning.

Crisp or Mooshy. A teenage client of mine calls it the cereal effect. The less he would do during the summer, the more soggy his brain became making his September brain mooshy. The more he engaged in stimulating summer activities the more “crisp” his brain was when he hit the school season.

10 ways to a crisp brain for the new school term:

1. Three days a week (at around noon) some sports; weights, tai chi, ball hockey etc.
2. One day a week – (same time) a creative class; music; comedy class; writing; etc. (plus 15 minutes a day of unmonitored practice).
3. One day a week – personal power class; public speaking; sales technique etc;
4. One dinner a week – The teenager is in charge. They choose the meal and cook it as well. Help is welcomed but the teen is in charge. Same evening each week.
5. One topic a week – The teenager chooses the dinner-time discussion; any world event, idea or philosophy that interests them.
6. Weekends off! No time constraints from Friday night to Monday morning.
7. Space is the final frontier. Give them some.
8. Trips – they’re great! But give them one day off for every 3 days spent as a family.
9. Rethink the pod. Have them choose ways to change the look of their room that reflects the best of their positive interests.
10. 10 minutes a day – 5 days a week – some sort of mindful meditation.

You will end up with a teenager walking up around 11:00 am, five days a week, which, as most of you know, is pretty good for the summer.

One More Thing: 
Giving people the time to discover their own interests and to pursue them for self-growth is an opportunity that few people take the time to do “until they retire”. The best inspiration you can be to your teenager is to go after something that is personally rewarding for yourself. The more challenging, the better…… and let them see you sweat.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Schizophrenia in Teens and Young Adults

Schizophrenia in Teens and Young Adults is often a kept secret by the families dealing with a young adult with Schizophrenia.

So many people feel shame when given a mental health diagnoses. I am here to tell you some of my most outstanding clients are young adults with mental health diagnoses. Mental Health diagnoses including Schizophrenia in teens and young adults.

Very often these young adults suffered in their early years with “voices” that they could control. At some point those voices became more and more challenging. What happens in a great deal of the people I see is that at some point, the young person couldn’t handle the voices anymore. They seek a way out and often chose to use some sorts of drugs to escape how they felt.

What happened then?

The voices had an effect they hadn’t expected. It disinhibited them and the “voices” had the upper hand. These young teens soon to be diagnosed with Schizophrenia had an “event”. They then ended up being hospitalized.

If they were lucky, they ended up with a great Psychiatrist who knew their meds. That psychiatrist took the time to find the right medications for this young person. For the first time in a long time, these young people feel that the voices no longer have a grip on them.

Voices? I don’t hear no voices!

One of my clients who had been through that whole process (we only work with people dealing with mental illness once things are stabilized) preferred we didn’t call it “voices”. He call it either controlled thought or uncontrolled thought. For him, Schizophrenia in teens and young adults was about control over these thoughts. They are still there but he has control now.

What then for Schizophrenia in Teens and Young Adults

The world is their oyster. Once they realize that we are not limited by labels, they are free to work with our Mentors for Young Adults and pick goals and long term things they wish to do. The have no limitations but we do find that we have to build up their abilities to work in the mainstream world more slowly and cautiously. Schizophrenia in teens and young adults is no longer a stop sign to success.

You are not your labels.

If find those given diagnoses with Schizophrenia in Teens and Young Adults incredibly compassionate and understanding of others with issues. They tend to have more patience to help others and the ones I have had the honor to work with are a credit to their communities.

If your child is in serious mental health crisis, please look into it immediately. This link is a good staring place. Click here.  When things are more settled, life coaching can be a great addition to a complete program.

 Check out Ken Rabow’s blogs on mentoring young adults. Click here

Know a young adult in need of mentoring? Click here

Interested in training to be a professional mentor for young adults? Click here.

Asperger Syndrome in Teens – Dealing with Rage and Anxiety

Asperger Syndrome in teens is often the perfect age for life coaching young adults with Autism.
Dealing with rage and anxiety can be truly surpassed in ways that neither the young person nor the family can imagine.

Case Study – Stephen – Aspergers Syndrome in Teens: Anger.
So, it was time for my Zoom session with Stephen. Stephen prefers to call himself Autistic and before the DSMV, he would have been labeled Asperger’s Syndrome but if he was happy, I was happy. But right now, Stephen was not happy.

You would have thought he would have been. Instead of a Florida vacation, as a reward for doing great in school in marks, class participation and interactions, his mom had given him the dream vacation of his choice. 8 hours a day of D&D.

Situational Challenges of Asperger Syndrome in Teens:
Unbeknownst to Stephen’s mom, there was a kid in his group that Stephen called an “ass-hat” who constantly annoyed Stephen and another kid from the moment they got their until the moment they left. Furthermore, instead of the nice drive in Mom’s Audi, they were going home by subway. (Wait it gets better). The subway cars were stopped and everyone had to leave due to a jumper on the tracks. (Wait it gets better).

Now after waiting for the bus or the streetcar for 30 minutes, both come at the same time and they are full of p—–off people, lots of sounds, smells etc., Stephen and Mom get home one minute before the Skype session with me is about to start….

The Chat with Ken Rabow
Skype does its little Skyp-ee tune. Stephen is not on the screen. It is Stephen’s mom. Behind her is Stephen screaming: “I don’t want to do it! I’m f***ing fed up” (etc). (I have not heard what had gone on at this point.) Stephen’s mom says the we shouldn’t have the Skype session because Stephen is in his ‘out of control fit” phase.

(guess how it turned out)
to be continued soon!

Have questions?    Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

While you are waiting, Stephen and I put together an article which ended up in the Huffington Post about his issues with people trying to “make things easy” on people with Autism. Its a great read and got great response. You can read it by clicking here. If you like it please click “like” and share it.

Interested in mentoring young adults? Click here.

ADD/ADHD in Teens and Young Adults – The Easy Diagnosis

Why is it that’s diagnoses for ADHD have gone up by multiples of a 100 in the past two generations?
There’s no question that it is easier to medicate a problem then it is to change a way of thinking.

Before I go on to share an alternative treatment that I’ve used with great success on a lot of teens and young adults who have been told that they have ADHD, let me say that for a certain percentage of people, medication can have a profoundly transformative effect.

Here’s the odd thing; 9 out of 10 people who come to me, claim to have some form of ADHD. What I often find are creative, inquisitive, multi-tasking minds, bereft of discipline.

How do we help young people who have been trained through the use of Internet, online chatting, texting, video walk watching, done all at the same time while gaming to not focus and supposedly “Multitask” to learn to focus?

We first have to understand is that the human mind is incapable of multitasking. What we do is, in effect, jump back-and-forth from one area of interest to the other virtually training our minds to be deficient in a linear attention span.

We have a natural ability to focus on things that grab our attention. But there is a natural ebb and flow to that ability. Filmmakers have used this ability and played with it through the use of tension and resolution. Just watch an Indiana Jones film for the brilliant use of tension and resolution (the calming scenes and the high-energy scenes) for how the push between these two forces to keep our interest.

In this art is the key to our own ability to enhance our attention to anything for longer and longer periods.

A Case Study

First Contact Email:

Ken: hi there. I am (name withheld)’s partner and we spoke back in the summer about my son “J”. “J” is still struggling and he has said that he would meet with you. Unfortunately, he will only be home from late today until the morning of the 27th. Is there a day you could meet with him before Christmas and then if that works, continue with Skype sessions when he returns to Queen’s?

“J” did very well in high school, getting straight A’s but always had attention problems. When he reached grade 10 he started smoking pot and his marks went downhill from there. He suffers from low self-esteem and never seems to finish what he starts. He takes on too many projects and then gives up when the going gets tough.

Now in University, he keeps having to let go of courses to not fail them. He started with five courses and is now left with two, of which he is getting a C- average.

First Session:

“J” and I met and there was a good connection. I noticed that as long as I changed gears (in ideas and themes) every six to ten minutes, “J” was focused and completely “there” for every part of the discussion. When I showed this to “J” he was extremely pleased with himself as he had completely bought into his inability to keep his attention on any one thing.

We created a study regimen in three 5 to 15 minute sessions with 15 minute breaks in-between.

Six weeks (12 sessions) later
The study regimen is at four 5-30 minute sessions with 5-15 minute breaks in-between.
“J” is generally keeping to 25 minutes of solid focus and his tests are coming back in the high 70’s, low 80’s and one 87.5!

We have also used visualization exercises as a way of getting control of his thinking process. Staring with a seven minute mp3 used 4 times a week and progressing to 12 minutes a day.

Finally, “J” has minimized his coffee intake and his chocolate intake (of his own choosing). In his particular case, this has seemed to have a very positive effect.

Tips for Teen School Failures Transformations

For the students suffering Teen School Failures:

So, your coping strategy to avoid teen school failures is you’ve been hoping and buying into “the dream” that somehow, by keeping your science book under your pillow, it will all seep in. Or maybe, they will have some information on the Peloponnesian wars on the Family Guy marathon. How about, “I study best under pressure”? Or that tried and true classic “French is easy! All you have to do is sound like Inspector Clouseau when you say “duz yor dogue bat“? (“He’s not mah dogue“).

Well, we know how this ends up. You’ve received your mid-term marks, some of them squeaked by and some of them looked like you had a chimp take the exam (and not that clever one from Rise of the Planet of the Apes).

You have two choices to deal with teen school failures:

Plan A: Continue to see your school future flushing down the proverbial toilet and say (to whomever you choose to blame) “well, if you believed in me more I’d do better,” or make a new plan. Let’s try Plan B, shall we?

Plan B is about knowing your strengths, knowing your limitations and building on micro-successes. Successes so small most people won’t notice, and you will get the time you need to believe in yourself without being overwhelmed.

Let’s face it, if you’re in this pickle, you are facing teen school failures, your study habits are probably non-existent

and your parents’ expectations are something like: since you have so little time left you should be spending every waking and sleeping moment studying till you can’t stand it, then sit and study some more.

But you know and I know that faced with that option you’re sure that your head will actually explode (like that guy in Scanners) and if you could have done that (minus the exploding head part) you would have already done that. So, that ain’t happening.

Here is how to build a last-ditch effort to save your exams and create better possibilities for the following terms.

Five simple steps to change your exam destiny and avoid teen school failures:

1) Do something you can hold yourself to.
You may catch yourself saying things out loud that you know you will never do (“OK, I won’t work today but tomorrow I’ll do twice as much!”) Try figuring out what you can actually do; Maybe two one-hour sessions with a 10 or 15 minute break in between. When you are working on something and you start to be really annoyed by it, go do something else for a while and come back to the offending subject later. It will seem less annoying.

2) Push it.
It is important to come back to it. You are teaching your inner-self that you can go further without the head exploding type of incident. Try adding 10 per cent more time each day until you get to a study time that is just too much. Then go back to the previous day’s study time. (Basically 10 per cent less.)

3) Poke into your “comfy time.”
At this point, you have figured out when you will do your study time each day and I’m guessing the rest of your home time is made up of all the stuff that drives your parents nuts. (Because you aren’t spending every moment studying.) Let’s call this time your “comfy time.”

Just a little suggestion:

Somewhere in the middle of that time, go back and work on one task, taking up either five minutes of time or one problem. Then you can go back to comfy time. This may not seem like much to an outsider, but it has so many benefits for you. First of all, if you can do this (tell yourself that it really will take just a little time and don’t let your inner id-self take over) you are beginning to take control of your future higher-character traits. Second, some part of your brain will believe that it has to stay on guard brain-wise, and will keep all the new info in your noggin’ with a bit more clarity. Third, there are benefits that no one can explain to you until you have done it — but it really helps.

4) Push some more.
On a given day, ask yourself the following: will an extra half-hour of gaming change my life? Because an extra half-hour of studying can.

5) Do it for yourself.
You are the main one who will benefit from this process. Do it to feel better about you.

Now, for the parents,

here’s the hard part for you: it is so easy, as you see the exams coming around again and seeing your child about to make the same mistakes as last time, to freak out and try to strong-arm them into study submission. This never works. Never!

It might work one time but there can be no follow-through, and what will happen when you aren’t there anymore to strong-arm them? Show them these five steps and then (here’s the hard part) let them make their choices. Right here, they have the keys to make differences that won’t be stellar, but will be incremental, self-empowering and permanent.

One last thing to the students:

Your job in life is to rise above the people that came before you. It’s OK to do that. The best way is by challenging yourself and the easiest way to do that is in micro-movements of success. Pretty soon, it will be your standard equipment.

You can do it!

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Communication: How to Con Your Parents into Listening to You

Okay. Lock the door. Pull down the shades (do you have shades?) and cozy up to a truth every teen knows: Parents never really listen! You know that, your friends know that, that guy with the crazy hair down the street says his parents listen but he’s home schooled. So here’s the big question: How can teens and young adults teach their parents how to listen?

But first, let’s look at some of the complaints teens have about their oblivious parents:

Teen: Mom, I’m taking the bus to school today.
Actual meaning: I made a huge dent in the side of the car last night.
Parent: That’s okay, dear; I could use the car for shopping this morning, anyway.
Complaint: Like, didn’t she get it? Oh, she will. She will.

Teen: Dad, can I stay at my friend’s house and play more video games?
Actual meaning: We’re too bloated on cheese doodles to move.
Parent: Well, as long as your friend’s parents are okay with it, I guess so.
Complaint: Like, I guess if his parents don’t know we’re pigging out, we’re fine. So, why does Dad mind I’m covered with cheese doodle paste… and so are the sofa cushions… and the carpet… and the dog ….

The thing is, most of the time teens are fine with not being listened to by their parents. But here’s the problem: What happens when you really need them to? You see, all your training in getting them to ignore you isn’t going to come in handy. You’re, like, the kid who yelled woof! Or barked, or something.

So, how do you get your parents to listen when you need them to?
Well, here’s the bad news. You can’t. They’re too old to change their ways and they only get smart again when you’re around 25. But here’s good news!. If you start to listen to them, they will start listening to you! I know, I know, it’s a lot of work, but let me tell you: it’s worth it.

Try this at home folks! Next time your parents are blathering on about something, pretend that it’s important.

Take mental notes of what they’re saying and see if you can make sense of it in your superior teen mind. Then say it back to them, to make sure you understood what they said, but in your own words. If they tell you that was exactly what they meant, then act like you care. Tell them how it would make you feel if that had happened to you. Try to imagine what it would be like.

Tell them it makes sense to feel the way they do (All the things you never hear). But now, get ready for the sick part: It actually feels really good to do this sort of listening. Only a teen could do it so well. But you never know, sometimes parents can learn new things before you are 25.

Also, if you try this listening thing out on friends, they actually start listening back. Whoah! Before you know it, you may find this stuff is habit forming. Listening and being listened to. It doesn’t suck!

Learning Challenges: Where Is Your Child in the Race?

There they are. At the starting line. The starting pistol cracks. All the children rush off and your child is last. Starting slow, unsure of him/herself and you don’t know if they will even make it. To make matters worse, you see all the other kids doing well and you ask: “why?”.

There is something to be said for just finishing the race. Start there. Walk along side of them. Cheer them on. Help only when you should and let them fall, stumble, get back up and keep going.

I work with teens and young adults that many have given up on or have dismissed. Each and every one of them has the potential for greatness. It may be in a small way or in a very big way. it is not for us to decide. It is for them to decide. My work and our work is keep them in the race and let them find their own footing.

Have faith. A good pillow to scream into. And find someone who believes in them, will make them work, call them on their bulls**t, and champion them. Someone outside the people they see on a daily basis. Don’t let statistics throw you off. Don’t let labels make you conform. Find someone who sees your child for what they can become and encourages them to strive to be their best.

The people I work with who are labeled with learning challenges have soared, once they have learned to focus on their strengths and create coping systems to rise above their challenges.

Anyone can succeed with some patience, determination and the right mentor.
You are not meant to have to do it all alone.
Find someone who helps you create a support team for both you and your child.
You both deserve it!

Teen Anxiety – Fear of Fear Itself

Teen Anxiety: So many young people come to me these days with different levels of fears.

The effect of these fears range from stopping them from succeeding all the way up to almost complete debilitation. Teen anxiety is rampant.

Teen anxiety = Fear. These are some of the fears I come across in troubled teens and young adults on a regular basis:

Fear of failure;
Fear of humiliation;
Fear of large crowds;
Fear of sleeping alone;
Fear of learning to drive;
Fear of life itself and basically fear of seeking new adventures.

The clients who come to me with teen anxiety have tried all sorts of things to overcome these fears:

Talk therapy, medication, CBT, hypnosis and all traditional and some non-traditional modalities.

My success rate in overcoming these fears is between 90 and 95%. It has very little to do with me or my process but it has everything to do with tapping into the inmate positive powers that rests within each and every person.

Daily Routines to overcome teen anxiety

I cannot deny that teaching some breathing techniques, some grounding techniques and some visualizations to create a “safe place” no matter where they are or what is happening is of great benefit, but the real transformation comes from taking whatever talents/strengths they have and starting a daily routine that involves doing the things that they have a connection to: (Writing, playing an instrument, dance, photography, Etc.).

Using something that they feel a connection to, we create a daily routine that helps them focus on the strength and power of doing something on a daily basis, rather than focusing on their fears. Each challenge is seen through the lens of how can we get back to their daily routine, free of judgment.

Rising Above Teen Anxiety

After a while, the client learns how to take any situation, analyze it and figure out a way through the challenges.

We then incorporate the strengths of current success to approach medium to minor fears, slowly building up the skills of: solid foundation, belief in oneself, good communication skills (Within and without), and “true grit”.

By focusing on what works, we teach these young people that you amplify what you focus on.

The fears are approached from every angle possible in their newfound confidence helps dissolve those fears.

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Life Coaching Young Adults Failing School

Young Adults Failing School? Why are parents the last to know?!?

It arrives. The phone call you’ve been dreading. It’s your child’s (pick a subject) teacher, or the vice-principal and they’re calling to tell you that your child sucks and that you are a bad parent. It’s all your fault, not theirs, and what are you going to do about it? Why are so many talented, capable young adults  failing school?

They don’t actually say that, but isn’t that what you’re hearing in your head when you get the call?

If you got that call or note, you are in very good company. There are so many people in the exact same situation that it is scary. It’s not about you.  Not about your child. Nor is it about the school. It’s about finding a new way because the old way obviously isn’t working.

Now there are a few anomalies where what wasn’t working may still work, but something extraordinary has to happen (abducted by aliens, a shining light speaking to you, you go into a cave and see Darth Vader), but for most situations, that scary voice of your vice-principal in your head is on the right track… just the wrong solution.

Here are the seven steps to bring long-term results and avoid young adults failing school.

Step 1: Let go of expectations.

Telling your child that they have to start working 73 hours a day may seem like commons sense to you for failing school, but if it worked they would have done it already.

Step 2: Divide and conquer.

Have your child look at all their coming exams, write out the dates and times and include what will be covered on the test and highlight all the problem parts. Write down the number of how many days are left until that exam. You may be able to change the trajectory of failing school to passing.

Step 3: Pick a number.

They know they’re failing school. You know they’re failing school. Ask them realistically how much time they are willing to study on a daily basis. Anything from one and a half hours to two hours a day is a great starting point. Tell them they can choose one day of the week to not study at all and suggest that they really think about which day would be best as their break day.

Step 4: Less is more-or-less

OK. This is not about studying for the right amount of time. This is about giving up on thinking it’s hopeless and starting to take control. Creating a daily schedule and “owning it” for them. If they do 15-20 minutes of each subject, that is probably 15 minutes more then they would have done. They are off to a really good start.

Step 5: Be their cheerleader, not their jailer.
Ask them what they have done in their studies for the past few days, if they are willing to share it. If they missed something, do not react! Just ask if they have figured out how to deal with the lost time or was it just a way to learn to do better from now on. Let them be in charge. The idea here is to let them see what a bit of regular daily self-discipline can do and learn from the outcome.

Step 6: Lather, rinse, repeat.

At the end of the first week, suggest that you both sit down and look at the results of the past week’s study program. Ask them if they would like to share how they are feeling about what they have accomplished. Suggest that they increase their study time by a small factor and see how that feels. Let them write out the new schedule and let them go at it.

Step 7: Young Adults Failing School – Review.

If it is too late for this year, suggest that the next time they do the same process, they begin earlier and include a two week review time. If there is time this year for even one day of review, have them plan to get through all the work with one day of review. Try it even if it is just for one course, and see what it brings them. When kids are asked to offer their opinion in a genuine way, two things happen: they feel empowered and they usually rise up to the opportunity.  You may learn something really good about your child that you never knew before!

What you are building in them is the faith to put down their toys

(whatever they may be) for a bit of time each day and build a steady practice of self-growth with the idea that it may serve them well. This is difficult for some people and if you got that phone call or note, your child is probably part of that very large club. The club of young adults failing school.

It isn’t really about the marks, the tests or even young adults failing school.

it’s about building character and belief in one’s self through a daily practice. This work, when mirrored back as being worthwhile, will last a lifetime and continue to grow. Focus on the accomplishments even if the outcome sucks and you will have turned a struggling student into someone who can consider taking a chance on success.

May the non-nagging force be with you.

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Know of young adults failing school who are in need of mentoring? Click here

Want to read more Ken Rabow articles mentoring young adults? Click here

To contact Ken for a Free 15 Minute Consultation Click here
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Preventing Self-Sabotage in Young Adults

Self-sabotage in young adults seems to be standard operating procedure these days.

Why are so many young people willing to self-sabotage every aspect of their potential future? Not participating in class, not doing the required studying, staying up late, sleeping most of the day away and missing more and more school. For quite a few, video gaming and/or substance abuse is another big factor. Self-sabotage in young adults is happening everywhere and it’s not from nature, it’s from all the things they see around themselves.

The most frustrating part of this is that these same people are very often gifted in some way and yet here they are ….. off the tracks.

Many teachers are doing great work in classrooms, helping all sorts of different learning styles but how can teachers know how to work with people who don’t show up to class, don’t submit their work completed and don’t seem to care? Living with self-sabotage in young adults is become the norm in classrooms everywhere and this creates a chasm between learning and fear of failure.

Could it be, that the keys to transforming self-sabotage in young adults are the same ones that have allowed mankind to thrive for millions of years?

Through evolution, we have been hard-wired to work as social tribes, offering our children the opportunity to learn from a wide range of elders.

Most young people today are able to thrive or at least get by in a nuclear or single parent family,

learning from their care-givers and finding other elders to learn from at school, sports, dance or music, etc. These young people grow through the ritual of daily tasks of homework, tests and projects. Graduation becomes their right of passage. But what if your child does not connect to such a system?

In dealing with self-sabotage in young adults you’ve tried it all;

traditional therapy, behavioral therapy, conditioned response, pharmaceuticals, begging, pleading, tough love and some of it worked for a while and some didn’t work at all.

It may seem hopeless sometimes, feeling that your child will never grow up and take responsibility but it has been my experience that some alternative approaches can make a world of difference. Once your child goes beyond their regular world filled with all the trappings that keep him/her where they are and finds a support system with a mentor who is non-judgmental, on their side and open to thinking “outside the box”, that child will become motivated to start the process of getting back on track.

Tips for transforming self-sabotage in young adults into success

1) Finding a professional Mentor for Young Adults

1) Find a mentor to work with your child, someone not from the immediate family, preferably at their office, on Skype or the phone and have the mentor ask the student these pertinent questions:
a) Are you happy with how things are going in your life?
b) Do you see your present way of being as a viable long term strategy?
c) If you could be doing anything with your life, what interests would you wish to take on?

2) Creating Daily Routines

2) The mentor and the student put together a daily routine based on the student’s interests i.e. Meditation; Yoga; Tai Chi; Weight Lifting; Biking; Jogging; Playing an Instrument (or singing); Reading; basically all the things we were told that have no real financial benefit. Start with two -twenty minute routines to be attempted 5 to 6 days a week. Slowly building up to as many routines that the student feels they can comfortably handle. (Five is a good final number) Make a weekly worksheet that divides the tasks into columns with room for the student to write the duration of each daily exercise (0-20). The goal of these exercises it to empower the student, these exercises are self-motivated without help from the family.

Meeting with your mentor twice a week for real change

3) Bi-weekly meetings discussing progress, looking at existing obstacles and exploring solutions to these obstacles in a non-judgmental way.

Creating Goals with Your Mentor

4) During these sessions the mentor asks: 
“If you could do anything at all with your life, without concern of how you would make it happen, what would you choose?”
With this answered (this can take some time) the mentor and the student go about finding ways to put their toes into the pond of these life purpose quests. It could be a 12 week workshop, a college class, a volunteer position or starting a small business. This time is used to help the student to bring his “daily work” training into these new situations and enhance his successful patterns accordingly.

I have heard many young people come to me stating that up until this time in their lives, their home has been their box of safety,

which they find wonderful and yet limiting… not a good long term strategy.
With this mentoring system, an important goal is to help these powerful people create the tools they need to feel safe going out into the world succesfully. Creating mini-boxes of safety for them to thrive in. Places where they can learn to be self-empowered. Without exception, students who go through the entire process choose self-empowerment over self-sabotage. They not only succeed but most often become examples of leadership in their chosen vocation.

Help your child go from self-sabotage in young adults to finding their inspiration and getting on track for a successful life.

Know a Millennial in need of mentoring? Click Here

Interested in training to be a professional mentor for young adults? Click here.

Check out Ken Rabow’s blogs on mentoring young adults. Click here

Video Game Addiction in Young Adults

Video game addiction;
Help! My kids eyes are glued to the screen! Well, if they really are glued to the screen, their sibling probably got crazy glue for the holidays. But, more than likely, they just disappeared into their rooms, coming out only occasionally, bleary-eyed, to grab some food and then return back to their cave. Welcome to the wonderful world of video game addiction.

How bad is incessant video game addiction?
I think it’s all about duration and intensity. When combined with multi-tasking (texting, BBMing, Facebooking, or watching a movie at the same time), I believe your child’s noggin is being trained to be three miles wide and one inch deep.

What do we do about video game addiction in young adults?
One of my clients calls it the cereal factor. He has noticed that during school time, his brain is crispy like new cereal that is ready to eat (mmmm, cereal). But when break time comes, the brain ends up looking and acting like cereal that has been in the milk or soy-based substitute way too long. We get mushy brain.

The holidays are one thing, now it’s school time!
In a previous article, I did make some suggestions on how to get your kids through the holidays mush-free (click here to see it), but now they are back in school and every moment that they are not at school, they are at their video games.

How do you approach this?
Find a mentor for young adults!
It could be a music teacher, it could be a neighbour, it could be a professional life coach for young adults (that’s what I do most of the week), but it should not be the child’s parent. Insight rarely comes easily from someone too close.

Seven steps for coming unglued from video game addiction.

1) Have the mentor help your teen look at their weekly schedule of classes.
2) Break it down with a scheduler (iCal or Google Calendar are good) and write out their whole week, including start and stop times for classes, transportation time, outside commitments (hockey, music lessons, etc.) and social time.
3) Include the amount of time (including start and stop times) presently spent doing homework.
4) Ask your teen to estimate the amount of time required for home study on each subject. Then ask what the teacher’s recommendation is and take both and meet them halfway.
5) Look at sleep prep time, sleep time (approximate) and waking time and include this as part of the schedule.
6) Take a look at the free time available for gaming. (It’s never enough, is it?)

The tricky part:
help determine how much increased time will be spent on school work and have the teen commit to it. This can be done one of three ways:

a) A weekly report in a chart where the student writes the daily work and the duration of practice.
b) A daily email to the mentor giving the same details
c) Texts after each section in a day is completed. E.g.: jst did 40 min math — my brain hurts ☹

The Result:
If your young adult really wants to do well, this should be enough to help them start to take control of the scheduling and get back on track. If not, when the first tests come in, go over the whole system and ask the young adult to figure out where they could have done more work or study more efficiently. Then implement step seven in reverse; going from c to b to a when appropriate.

The allure:
Video games have a magical quality to them. There is some good in them, no matter what you read about them and it probably will become a big part of most people’s future. We do want to live in the real world, however. Having gentle limits that are guided, but ultimately come from the teen, are the ones that will help them when they are out on their own.

A recent study found that older men were actually playing more video games then their younger counterparts.
Moderation and self-limits, these are the keys.

Now where’s my Angry Birds app?

Interested in mentoring young adults? Click here.

If your child is in serious mental health crisis, please look into it immediately. This link is a good staring place. Click here. When things are more settled, life coaching can be a great addition to a complete program.

Young Adults Failing at Life

How many incredibly talented young adults have we known who never seemed to get out of the starting gate  

Or  young adults who start new things brilliantly but never “go the distance”? Basically smart young adults failing at life.

The majority of the clients I work with on a weekly basis are young adults failing at life. They are clever, well spoken, considerate and fun to be around. They also really know how to play any system put in front of them and yet, here they are in my office through Skype, wanting to find a new way. This is a great starting point in their self-growth. At this point, I tell them they have a condition. Their ears practically perk up in alarm. I tell them they have “Norman Jean Syndrome”.

When people reflect on one of the 20th century’s most electric movie stars,

Marilyn Monroe, most focus on all of the things she had. She had fame, money, public adoration, success in the movie business, as well as people who cared for her. Yet each time she would have to leave her trailer to film another scene she would be paralyzed with fear.

She worked hard to be where she was but what she was most admired for was her looks and the way she “sparkled”. To her, these were things that had come easily. Things that come easy are often discounted by us as being without value. When people praise these easily obtained things, we end up feeling like imposters because no real work was done to achieve that praise.

But that praise is addictive, especially to young adults failing at life.

These young adults failing at life are constantly lapping up the easily won praise, shunning the hard work that would have to follow. Going from one project to the next, from one mentor to the next, drinking from the cup of quick praise and then running from the bitter taste of  “going the distance”. This becomes a way of being.
And so it was for Norman Jean, Marilyn Monroe’s real name and probably the person hiding in Marilyn’s trailer.

Norma Jean Syndrome is essentially the feeling many naturally talented people have when they are praised for their facility at doing new things. It feels so good that they end up staying in that “start-up state”. The fear of having to prove themselves and of being an impostor begins to rule their decisions. They end up living their lives in their own version of a trailer; their room, their home or their addictions.
At some point, these people must seek out someone who understands this phenomenon and can give them what they need to rise above the formidable walls of their trailers of safety.

It is the simplest of tasks to begin. 

Start with a daily set of exercises that are generative, something that adds to the quality of your life. It could be meditation, reading inspiring stories, walking, painting, music, sculpting or anything that would enrich your life. I suggest starting with three different daily tasks and working your way to five.

By working on these exercises daily and seeing what obstacles stop you from working on them, you will find ways to carry on. Then you will begin to have control of a part of your life that is there just for you, free from outside feedback. You will have gone through a side wall in that trailer and out to a less threatening world, free of fear.

It is these exercises that will liberate young adults failing at life.

Warning! Be on guard. A million “reasons” why you shouldn’t do them will come to you: “What’s the point?” “I want to be doing my life’s work now!” “This isn’t the real world!”  “What! Futurama’s on?” Your job is to put aside these reasons and do your daily work and slowly over a matter of weeks you will find your power. Within a matter of months, you will find your path and within a year you will begin your success.
Should you end up running away, remember, you can always start again.

No one ever said it would be easy but you will slowly get what you wanted and it will work out.

Interested in mentoring young adults who are failing at life? click here
For people with serious mental health issues, please check click here

How Do I Control My Teen’s Anger Issues?

So many parents and teens find themselves in constant conflict these days.

One of the first questions I get on a regular basis is how do I control my teen’s anger issues? Anger is a huge issue these days. Is it more than other generations? That’s really not the issue if you are around a child who has major anger issues.

As in most things, anger issues are multi-factorial.

Any one, two or three things may push it up the heat thermometer, but it is the aggregate of 7’s, 8’s and more that bring you into the sphere of danger.

So how do we go from: “No! You’re not listening to me!!!” (for the one hundredth time) to smashed walls, tv’s or worse?

It is all about communication. If neither side feels like they are getting their message across and both sides feels they know what the other is going to say and you’ve heard it all before, then you are in a mobius loop of mood. Your teen’s anger issues just seem to increase.

Four Steps for changing the dynamics from anger to communication and having a (sometimes) harmonious home:

Replacing your teen’s anger issues with better communication.

Take turns being the listener or the speaker. Whichever you begin with, do the whole process before changing sides.

1) Listen without interruption. Listen with intention. Avoid any non-verbal cues that are anything but supportive. Your goal is to hear the speaker as if you have never heard them before or know their history.

2) Repeat back what you have heard in your own words. Do not add commentary. Ask if what you heard is correct and let the speaker correct or change as they choose and repeat back again their changes.

3) Empathize on how they feel. This is not about right or wrong. This is about hearing them and their point of view. The truth is, the gap between parents and children has never been greater thanks to the breakneck pace of change the world has entered.

4) Validate. Let them know how it makes sense how they would feel like they do coming from their state of mind.

Implementing the process of transforming teen anger issues:

This process should take place in an unregular place (like a basement couch, some chairs in the hallway; some place that you guys have never, ever yelled in.
This process should be tried in calmer times, not when the proverbial poop hits the fan.
Expect it to take around 12 weeks to build the mutual listening skills.
Once it has taken hold, you can try a time out in a heated moment to try the system and if at first it doesn’t succeed, keep trying.

One final note (in case you hadn’t guessed)… in regards to this column’s title: you can’t control your teens anything but you can inspire them to communicate by letting both sides be open to listening.

Ken Rabow’s Update:

Well. Teen’s anger issues are still in the top five concerns of the parents we meet with for mentoring young adults.
The good news is that good communication, having all parties let go of the triggers and allowing a third part (your Mentor) to help rebuild healthy ways for the whole family to work together truly ward of young adults and teen’s anger issues. Do they disappear. Probably… when they have kids of their own 🙂
But your teen’s anger issues will seem like a distant memory and good communication will be the order of the day.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation

Failure to Launch in Young Adults

Do you know a young adult dealing with failure to launch.
Here you are. At your wit’s end. Not knowing how to get your child to succeed. You know they have potential but they seemed hell-bound to self-sabotage. More interested in self-gratification or wallowing in self-pity then to do something with their lives. What if there was a way to help them find their success in life.? To rise above failure to launch and to leave all their “shtick” behind them. There is! Life Coaching for young adults with failure to launch is a system that helps young adults from the ages of 12 to 28 create a new life of success for themselves.

To mentor young adults to succeed in life, we must first find some goals that the client chooses to learn the methods to turn their lives around. These will include: Determining goals, Daily Routines; Daily Reminders; a successful sleep-wake routine and learning to see their challenges and determine how to rise above them instead of ignoring them.

World Wide Youth Mentoring is an organization dedicated to mentoring young adults in all aspects of their lives.
Through  our companion website MentorsProfessionalWorkhop.com we  train people to mentor those young adults with failure to launch. We help  potential mentors use this proven program that Ken Rabow has designed and mastered.

Through our website MentoringYoungAdults.com we offer life coaching for both the young adult and parents. We help families create the tools for better communication. All of these supports are there for you to transform   a hopeless situation into a new succesful beginning. Clients learn to cope with their anxieties and vanquish them. They learn that keeping their word is better than humouring people. To let go of saying whatever is need to be said to get out of an uncomfortable moment and learn to deal with the consequences.

Life coaching young adults can succeed where therapy has not.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Mentoring Young Adults Can Help Your Child

To know why mentoring young adults may be the proper way out of the challenges many parents face these days, we must look at where so many families find themselves. There are so many parents of troubled teens and young adults who are at their wits end, not knowing how to deal with their children. Communication is an issue. Hygiene is an issue. Sleep is an issue. Video gaming and overuse of the Internet is an issue. Let’s face it, there’s a lot more of issues than anything else! Let’s look at why mentoring young adults may be the solution for your child.

Finding Success through Life Coaching Young Adults
People seek a life coach for teens and young adults when they come to a certain realization. It’s okay to have an outside party be there to create something more than medication or talk therapy may achieve. That something is a slow and steady concrete process. One that will bring hope back to your child. One of earning their own belief in themselves. To be successful and rise above challenges and failures. To learn that failures and mistakes are the route to their greatness. Most importantly, to learn the value in day-to-day simple disciplines. Disciplines based on things that they would enjoy doing, bringing a rightly earned self-confidence to them.

The Proven Method
My book “The Slacker’s Guide To Success” chronicles the entire 13 step process, but to put it in a nutshell: a young person needs to seek out a life coach that they are willing to trust and be open to trying new things with. They must then be willing to look at their goals and their challenges to succeeding and finally to start a daily chart of the small successes that will instill in them a sense of the possibility of succeeding in the real world.

How Some People Limit Struggling Teens and Young Adults
I meet so many young people that so many have said of them that they will never be able to succeed. Often, all the family and relatives were hoping for was for things to not get worse and yet these young people have soared and have found their greatness.

The ones who did not succeed, did not succeed because the expectations from their family and friends were for an immediate fix. The kind of profound inner changes I am speaking about in this article are slow and steady. But if all those concerned take the time, have the patience, determination and certitude to see this through, the rewards will be immeasurable.

Remember This:
Do not give up hope. Do not think that you are alone. Reach out for someone to help you and the changes will come. They may be slow but they will be astounding…  Ken Rabow

Update by Ken Rabow – Dec 2017
Here it is four years later and I find that in life coaching young adults, I am still finding so many teens and young adults with anxiety, sleep issues, communication challenges and more. The good news is that working with this system, mentoring young adults really does help these young people AND their families have successful lives where they can hope again for a great future.

What does it take? Find the right mentor to mentor young adults. Taking the time to let them learn the system, to create positive daily routines and grow as a young adult. To fall on their butts, dust themselves off and try again.

Mentoring young adults is not a fast solution but if it works for your child, it is a long lasting solution. Mentoring young adults can help them throughout their lives. It requires the same work to un-mess up someone as to help them find their greatness. Most parents come to us bereft of hope. They want to help their child not fail. As people mentoring young adults, we seek how to help them not only not fail but to soar to greatness. Each person has greatness in them. Sometimes a mentor is the best way forward.

To learn how to become a professional mentor for young adults, click here