Did you know that 27% of adults 18 and older are estranged from their family in some way?
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That means that one in four adult kids are not talking to their parents or an
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aunt or an uncle or something like that. There's some kind of rift.
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That just seems like a lot. So we suspect, (that's certainly has been the experience in our family,
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that we have people that are estranged from us or that maybe that we're estranged from) and that
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you do as well. And that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot. It's something that people
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kind of keep to themselves. It's like a little secret that we keep in the closet. But our hunch
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is that it's happening to more people than are talking about it. And so today we're going to talk
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about it. My name is Erik Orton. I'm Emily Orton and this is the, What Could Go Right? podcast
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where we talk about personal growth, family connection, and raising adult kids. So today we're
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going to talk about Double Return Parenting. If you've listened to some of our previous episodes,
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you've heard this term before. But it's actually a model. And we're not going to break down the
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five parts of the model right now. But I'll just say this that it this first part really speaks to
1:09 Our Daughter Engaged to the Wrong Guy
connecting with our kids because this is what it looks like to... I'm going to tell you a story.
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I'll just tell you a story. One of our daughters got engaged many years ago. She was young,
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had just moved out of the house, got engaged and came home told us about this guy. And we...what
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little we knew about him, we thought this was not a good idea and the more we knew about it the less
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we thought it was a good idea. And over a few months we had a series of probing conversations,
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trying to be helpful, and kept kind of getting pushed back. Is that how you characterize it?
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Yeah. We'd say, 'Oh, maybe you want to consider these things.' And they would not take the time
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to consider those things. And, yeah. And so it wasn't going very well. And the more we learned,
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the more concern we got. And finally we could tell that if we did not speak up this was going to end
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in a lot of heartache for both of them. And so on the phone, Emily and I, we said to our daughter,
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'I hope you know we love you. We also want you to know, in no uncertain terms, that we think this
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is the worst decision you've ever made in your life.' And it went quiet for a little bit and
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I thought maybe she'd hung up on us. She hadn't. But she said to us, 'Mom. Dad. I hear you. I know
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you love me. I just want you to know that I don't want to talk with you about this at all anymore.'
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And this is what it looks like to get kicked off of your adult kids Board of Advisors.
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You get stiff armed. Oh man. I guess...I guess that's what we get from raising an independent
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woman. She's thinking for herself and making her own choices. So had to respect that. Yeah. So
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we I don't feel like we became estranged from our daughter or her from us. We stayed close
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but we had really drawn down on what we call our Relationship Reservoir. And we were we were pretty
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close to empty. And it took a while. And I'll just tell you that she did not marry this guy. I won't
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go into all the details but it was something that really taxed our relationship. And I think that if
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if it hadn't gone that... It could have very easily turned into something where
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it could have been a long-term permanent rift in our relationship. And fortunately,
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it didn't but that's that's one example of what it can look like to be kicked off of your adult
3:39 Parents Fears / Adult Kid’s Fears
kids' Board of Advisors. You want...Or to be estranged. I think, as parents,
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I mean that's one of our greatest fears, right? Is that we're we're gonna cause some big problem,
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or we're going to lose connection with our kids, we're going to lose...they're not going to want
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us to be a part of their life, or that we're going to somehow mess up their life. And I just want to
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reassure everybody here that no parents has this totally figured out. But what we do want to do
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is share some of the good ideas. So, first of all just acknowledging the worry on the parents side
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when, as the child grows up and the parenting style changes and they become independent,
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our approach needs to change a little bit as well. And we need to respect that they are
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running their own life, you know, however good or bad a job we think they're they're doing of it.
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And so come from that perspective. But on the other side we have these adult kids. And we've
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talked to hundreds of young adults, many of them just out of the house for the first time.
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Especially when we were living in New York City, we had tons of opportunities to really
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counsel with young adults who were newly out of the house and navigating life on their own.
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And there's one young man that we talked to. He said he hadn't really been in touch
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with his parents for a while and he gave the explanation was like, 'They don't really add
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any value to my life.' And it sounds a little mercenary. It sounds a little transactional.
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But when someone...when you're in relationship with someone and they are always a drain
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and never a fill you want to spend less and less time with that person. It's like Erik was saying,
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we had really drawn down on our relationship with our daughter. And we had worked for decades to
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fill that up. And we had to get to work right away refilling the reservoir with memories, and trust,
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and encouragement. And I just think that's what we hear from other young people is just saying like,
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'Why do I want to be connected with my parents when they aren't encouraging
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me? They don't believe in me? They only have critical feedback for me? And they
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aren't really adding any value by example or in the words that they're sharing with me?" So
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that's something to think about on the other side of the equation. So one thing that has helped us
6:09 100-Year Life Map free tool
kind of get a lock on the big picture, the overall view of what it means to be a parent, is something
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that we call the 100 Year Life Map. We...I don't think that's what it was ever actually
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called. Emily, do you mind just sharing briefly how this came into our life? Yeah. When I...we
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were the parents of two young children (and we were pretty young ourselves when we started
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our family) and I remember one day going to my sister-in-law's house and up on her fridge she had
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this grid. And I don't remember how many squares she had in it but it was a representation of her
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life. And she had she was in a similar phase as me with young kids at home. And she had kind of
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highlighted the squares that represented the years that she believed her children would probably be
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at home. And when she predicted they would go to school, she kind of colored the square half that
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they're home half-time. And as you looked at the whole picture at once, there were just a couple
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of rows that were highlighted. There were these decades prior to marriage and children. And then
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there were these decades, more decades, afterwards when the children had grown. You know, left home
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presumably. And no guarantees. Different things come up. It doesn't always pan out that way.
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But when we look at that grid, for us we decided to create one that was 100 squares and we would
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aim to live to be 100. And that means that the time that we have with our children at home was
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like a couple of decades out of the full 100 years. And that helped us realize it wasn't going
7:47 How to Use 100-Year Life Map
to last forever. And it also helped us realize how important this time together was but as our kids,
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three of them now, have moved out of the house. Like grown into adulthood and moved on with their
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life. We have been looking at the squares after those years and realizing there are so many more
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years decades even of parenting adult kids than we had parenting small children, young children,
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and teens. So we want to look into that. So what we're going to do –we'd love for you to go through
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this exercise for yourself. And so I'm going to talk you through what it is for...If you're
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listening, and then if you want to go into the show notes you can actually download a version of
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this and do it on paper, which I would recommend because it's pretty powerful to do it on paper.
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And you can put it up on your fridge if you want or you know post it somewhere. But I'm
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just going to talk you through it so that you can mentally do some of this really really basic math.
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So Emily indicated that we assume a hundred years partly because we're just ambitious and we want
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to live healthy and long but also it makes the math really easy. And so just imagine a
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grid that's 10 rows across or you know 10 columns that are 10 rows across so it's a 10 by 10 grid.
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The first number in the top left is going to be the number that's the year you were born.
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So whatever year that was imagine that in the top left corner. And then, the number in the bottom
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right is going to be a hundred years forward. So each row is going to be a decade. So I was
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born in 1974 and so the bottom number is going to be 2073. Those would be my 100 Years of lifespan.
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Whatever your number is I get the math will add up. If you have kids, then go through and
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just write down or write in the year that your first child was born. And if you have more than
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one child, go ahead and write down. You can write the year for each child. And you can also you can
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also just skip ahead and write down the year for the last child if you're through that, you know,
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if you're through the phase of having/ birthing kids, having kids come into your life. Then,
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just write the year that the last child entered your life. For us we said, 'Okay, now we're just
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going to add 18 to that number because we figure around 18, or shortly thereafter, our kids will
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kind of be launching out of the house. We know there's all kinds of variables. Our variable
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is our daughter, Lily, with Down Syndrome. But... Yeah. She'll probably kick us out.
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She's like, 'I want my own dang house.' Very independent. All right. So pick your last child
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and then do 18 years forward of that. Also pick your first child and do 18 years forward of that
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because that one after your first child is going to mark when your kids start leaving home. For us
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that was a really pivotal year because that meant that was the last year that we would have all of
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our kids under our roof full time. So we thought. Covid changed all that. But we thought you know,
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barring another you know, you know barring another barring another pandemic, chances are good that
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your kids will keep moving out. So, you know, when your kids start to leave home. And that's
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going to give you...you're going to be able to see the number of years between now and that year.
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Can I say something here? It's that even if your child doesn't leave your house, that is when...the
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time frame in which they become an adult and your relationship with them is going to shift. Yeah.
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Even if they're still at home, you're going to have different kinds of conversations,
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different kinds of expectations, and different place in their life. Yeah,
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it's true. It's going to shift no matter what as our as our kids grow older chronologically
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and kind of mature into adulthood. It'll shift whether they're living in our basement or a room
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down the hall or out somewhere in a dorm or on their own in their own house. It's gonna change.
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So we we're planning for that. But then you'll know this is when this is the year when our kids
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start to leave home and your your nest, as they call it, you know, is going to start to shrink.
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And then you jump to your last child and you'll see 18 years forward of that when the last child
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leaves. And it's just going to be you you and your spouse, whatever that looks like. And it's...on
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the, on the one hand, it can be encouraging to see how short of a time period that is.
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And how it can also be discouraging to say, 'Oh, well. We've only got so many years left.' It can
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be poignant. It can be poignant. Some people, when they do this exercise with us get very
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tearful when realizing how little time they have left. But we want to be encouraging saying,
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like, 'We are still the parent for all of these decades, so let's plan
12:31 How 100-Year Life Map Changed Our Family
for what that's going to look like.' Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll say this, we did this. And that's
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one reason why we chose to move on a sailboat when we did because we knew that at a certain
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date or certain year, our kids would start to leave home. And we wanted to have this trip,
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this experience before that happened. And so, for anyone who's just with us...this is your first
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introduction to us, in 2014, we moved aboard a sailboat. And we lived on it for about a year
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with our five kids. They were ages 6 to 16. We bootstrapped it. We did not know what we
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were doing. And we chronicled our journey –mostly our emotional relationship journey– through that
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family dream in our book called, "Seven at Sea: Why a New York City Family Cast Off Convention
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for a Life-Changing Year on a Sailboat." So not to drop the whole thing in your lap right here
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but knowing, being fully aware of how much time we had together, and that that window was closing,
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impacted the decisions that we made about how we used our resources and especially our time.
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So that's why. That's how it impacted us doing this grid. Fast forward. Now,
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we have our two youngest at home and our youngest is...just got his driver's license. And now he's
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gone a lot. Yeah. A lot more. And so we really just have our youngest at home. But it's crazy
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to me to think that if I live to a hundred, I have more than half of my life ahead of me. And
13:57 Marriage and Your 100-Year Life Map
every person is going to be different. But if you look at your own grid, you're going to see,
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you know, depending on what age you had kids and all that, all the kinds of variables,
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chances are good that you're going to be a parent of adult kids for decades longer than
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you ever were a parent of young children. And so the bulk of our time as parents is going to be
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after our kids move out. In our case, hopefully 50 years. And they certainly weren't with us for
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50 years. 51. 51, yeah. Hopefully, 51 years, so... And we're going to dive into this in other podcast
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episodes about what to do about that time. What do you do with your future you know, with your
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life when your kids are out. What to do in your marriage so that when...because so many of us are
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just enmeshed and entrenched in raising the kids. And we've for...sometimes out of, you know, with
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the best of intentions, we end up neglecting our marriage. And we lose track of our relationship
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with our best friend. And so we're going to talk about that in other episodes. I think the Hundred
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Year grid actually really helped with that as well because it was very clear to us from early on,
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'Oh, most of the our life these kids aren't going to be here to kind of be the glue that keeps us
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together. Like, the project that we're working on together most of these years it's...they're
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all going to move out and it's going to be us.' And so that was also a helpful reminder.
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Here's one last thing that I want to share about this 100 year map or grid. It's this, once you
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know that, here's the mental exercise that we want you to do: we want you to imagine in your mind
15:35 Questions for Vision Lock
10 years in the future of...Wherever you are now, imagine that you've gotten back
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together with your whole family. It can be a reunion or some other type of situation but
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you're all together. It could be Christmas or holidays. You're all together. What does that
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relationship...what does that what does that gathering feel like? What do the relationships
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feel like? What kinds of conversations do you have? You know, what kind of
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food are you eating? Where are you physically? And when we, when we do workshops with people
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and we do...and we present, we invite everyone in that moment to write it down. And so, you know,
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not while you're driving if you're listening to this while you're driving. But at some point, you
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may want to just sit down and imagine and write out what that experience what that gathering would
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look like 10 years in the future. How old will each person be? You know, how old will you be?
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Well? Do you predict that they might have partners or children? And, like, just,
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you won't get it bang on the money. You...won't, you know, actually move forward 10 years and have
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it be identical to maybe what you imagined. But as you get really clear on this,
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you're gonna know what you're aiming for. What the relationships feel like. How you interact
16:49 WHAT vs. HOW
with each other. And that is the next step. Yeah. So this is what we call the WHAT. If
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you can just imagine what it...what your ideal situation would be, like, when we coach people
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and we do life design work, the HOW is a whole other part of it. And we always set that aside
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for a second. The very first thing you want to do is figure out the WHAT independent of
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constraints of time, money, you know, what have you. Even if some relationships are sour right
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now your ideal tenure in the future scenario can include those relationships being healed. Like,
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what is your ideal scenario? Yeah. So, anyway, I just invite you to, either in your mind or on
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paper, do this 100-year life map. Write out what you imagine you're 10 years, your your ideal dream
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family gathering 10 years in the future looks like. This is your WHAT. And we'll...in future
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episodes, we'll talk about how to encourage you to move towards that. But we just think this is
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an important topic and so happy to be talking about it today. Anything else you want to add?
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No, I think that covers it for today. Hey, thanks so much for listening. What could go right?
18:03 Schedule a Free Discovery Call
Hey, there. It's Erik. If you haven't already, you should really go sign up for one of our
18:08
free discovery calls. Have you ever asked the question, 'What if..?' Or 'Wouldn't it be cool...?
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If you're like me and a lot of people, you answer that question but kind of in
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a limited way. You don't really let yourself go there. And so what I love to do is get on
18:22
a call with you and help you get past some of your limiting thoughts, limiting beliefs,
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and answer that question as boldly and beautifully as your imagination
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will allow. They're fun. They're free. They're painless. All you got to do is
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go to theawesomefactory.nyc/discovery Pick a time slot that works with you. And we'll spend a few
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minutes and help you go to an amazing place and help you discover what's possible in your life.
