LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships · Shari Jonas - Parenting Consultant, Educator and Author

#59: Modeling Resilience: Why Parents of Adult Children Must Learn to Manage Their Stress

·36 min·2 clips

Lack of resilience can look like shutdown, anxiety, burnout, irritability, and reacting instead of responding.

1. Launch: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships centers on Dr. Kate Lund’s discussion of modeling resilience for adult children. 2. Sherry Jonas hosts Kate Lund, a licensed clinical psychologist, author of Bounce and Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting, TEDx speaker, and resilience expert with more than two decades of clinical practice. 3. The episode asks what resilience is, how parents can manage stress, and how their behavior can help adult children become more confident and independent. 4. Lund traces her interest in resilience to childhood hydrocephalus, repeated hospital stays, and shunt revisions. 5. She explains that hydrocephalus means cerebral spinal fluid is not circulating properly and pressure can build up on the brain. 6. She says those experiences shaped her later choice to return for a doctorate and become a clinical psychologist after working in Washington, D.C. 7. Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting is presented as a roadmap for parents to optimize wellbeing and show up fully for their kids. 8. Lund defines resilience as a resilient lifestyle that integrates strategies and tools into everyday life. 9. She says resilience can be learned and developed, even if some people are wired with more of it from the start. 10. Signs of low resilience include shutting down, anxiety, burnout, irritability, reacting instead of responding, and losing sight of possibility. 11. Lund says parents who constantly buffer adult children from discomfort can take away agency. 12. She frames that pattern as a double-edged situation because the parent wants to help, but the adult child loses the sense of “that was hard, but I can do this.” 13. She links resilience to confidence by saying adult children internalize what is possible for them and notice small successes. 14. Lund emphasizes that these changes do not happen quickly and that parents should not expect a jump from point A to point Z. 15. For parents, she recommends modulating the stress response, and she highlights the relaxation response, a technique developed by a physician in Boston in the 1970s. 16. Her description of that method uses a soothing word or phrase, breathing, and repeated practice so the nervous system learns a calmer state. 17. She says the Surgeon General reported parental stress is at an all-time high about a year ago, which helped push her to write the book. 18. Lund also recommends authentic connection, such as shared meals, car rides, and letting adult children talk without immediate fixing. 19. The conversation stays practical and warm, with Sherry Jonas repeatedly reflecting back specific lines, family examples, and tools from the books. 20. Parents of adult children who want concrete stress-management tools would get the most from this episode, while listeners seeking a fast, theory-only discussion may skip it.

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