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.

Interested in becoming a mentor?

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.

How One Year of Mentoring Transforms a Young Adult’s Communication Challenges.

It can be difficult to know where to look for help when your child has uniquel communication challenges. To help young adults overcome challenges in their lives, such as barriers to good communication, MentoringYoungAdults.com was founded.

MentoringYoungAdults.com’s primary goal is to connect young people (ages 14-28) with adult mentors through individualized mentoring relationships. They empower young adults with life-changing skills by tackling issues such as anxiety, failure to launch, difficulties in school and the workplace, and difficulties with communication.

Our first step is to conduct a thorough evaluation of your child’s requirements and objectives. This will help the us choose the right mentor for your child. Online meetings once or twice a week give an encouraging setting in which to overcome communication issues and other life challenges.

Here’s what you can expect after one year of mentoring:

  1. Your child’s self-esteem will grow significantly as they learn to overcome challenges, which will in turn make it easier for them to communicate and form healthy relationships.
  2. Learning to listen is essential. Our mentees drastically improve their listening, processing, and response skills by using the tools they learn at MentoringYoungAdults.com.
  3. Advances in articulation, vocabulary, and tone, as well as other aspects of verbal and nonverbal communication. Body language, facial gestures, and eye contact will all feel natural and will be skills they use easily and naturally.
  4. Your child’s social life will benefit greatly from their increased comfort and ability to communicate with others.
  5. Resolving conflicts: Learning to hear and be heard, free of conflict, makes it easier to resolve conflicts and find win-win solutions.
  6. Independence: Your child will be more prepared for the challenges of life as their communication skills blossom and develop.

For young adults who are having trouble communicating, the year-long mentoring adventure with MentoringYoungAdults.com makes an enormous impact. Communication skills, self-confidence, and the ability to function independently can all be developed with the help of individualized mentoring in a nurturing setting. MentoringYoungAdults.com is an excellent way to make a long-lasting, positive difference in the lives of your child. Join us in our mentoring journey and witness the transformation.

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.

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.

Convincing Your Young Adult to Try Mentoring to Overcome Anxiety

Mentoring can be a powerful tool for young adults struggling with anxiety. In this article, we’ll explore how parents can encourage a young adult to try mentoring to overcome anxiety.

  1. Understand the benefits of mentoring

Before you can convince your young adult to try mentoring, it’s important to understand the benefits. Mentoring provides a supportive and non-judgmental environment where young adults can share their experiences and feelings. Our mentors offer guidance, resources, and strategies to help young adults manage their anxiety and improve their overall well-being. Additionally, mentoring can provide a sense of connection and belonging, which is important for young adults who may feel isolated or misunderstood.

  1. Start with a conversation not declaration. (What do you think…)

The first step in trying mentoring for your young adult is to have an open and honest conversation about their anxiety. Ask them how managing their anxiety feels to them on a day to day basis and let them know that you’re there to support them. Explain that mentoring can be a helpful resource to learn coping skills and gain support. Ask your child if they would be willing to try mentoring and answer any questions they may have.

  1. Research our mentoring program

Our mentoring program specializes in helping young adults with anxiety. Read our articles about how we work with anxiety and be sure to book a free consultation to talk with us . Our program offers flexible scheduling and occures online, making it easier for child to participate.

  1. Encourage your child to give it a try

Encourage your young adult to give mentoring a try for a few sessions or even one session. Remind them that it’s okay to feel nervous or hesitant at first, but that mentoring can be a positive step toward managing their anxiety. Offer to support them throughout the process, whether that means attending sessions with them or simply being available to talk.

  1. Be patient and supportive

It’s important to be patient and supportive throughout the mentoring process. Encourage your young adult to be open and honest with their mentor about their feelings and experiences. Celebrate their successes, no matter how small, and offer encouragement when they encounter challenges. Remember that mentoring is a process, and it may take time to see significant progress.

Mentoring can be a powerful resource for young adults struggling with anxiety. By understanding the benefits of mentoring, starting with a conversation, researching our mentoring program, encouraging your young adult to give it a try, and being patient and supportive throughout the process, parents can help their young adult take the first steps toward managing their anxiety and improving their overall well-being.

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.

How Mentoring Transforms the Life of a Young Adult with Social Anxiety: A One-Year Progress Report

If you’re a young adult struggling with social anxiety, you’re not alone. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, social anxiety disorder affects about 15 million adults in the United States. The good news is that there are many resources available to help you manage your anxiety and improve your quality of life. One of the most effective resources is mentoring.

Mentoring is a powerful tool for young adults with social anxiety. A mentor can provide guidance, support, and encouragement as you navigate the challenges of social anxiety. By working with a mentor, you can learn new skills, gain confidence, and develop a sense of belonging.

So, what can you expect from mentoring as a young adult with social anxiety? Let’s take a look at some of the benefits you can experience after one year of mentoring.

Improved Social Skills

Social anxiety can make it difficult to form and maintain relationships. You may feel nervous or self-conscious in social situations, and you may avoid socializing altogether. However, with the help of a mentor, you can learn new social skills and techniques to manage your anxiety. Over time, you may find that you’re more comfortable and confident in social situations, which can improve your relationships and overall quality of life.

Increased Self-Awareness

Mentoring can also help you become more self-aware. Your mentor can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your goals and values. With this knowledge, you can make more informed decisions about your future and develop a stronger sense of identity.

Greater Resilience

Living with social anxiety can be challenging, but with the support of a mentor, you can become more resilient. Your mentor can help you develop coping strategies for managing anxiety and overcoming obstacles. Over time, you may find that you’re better equipped to handle difficult situations and bounce back from setbacks.

Stronger Support Network

Mentoring can help you build a stronger support network. Your mentor can introduce you to new ways of meeting people that works for you and help you develop relationships with others who share your interests and values. By building a supportive community, you can feel more connected and less isolated, which can improve your mental health and well-being.

If you’re a young adult with social anxiety, mentoring can be a valuable resource for improving your quality of life. By working with a mentor, you can learn new skills, increase your self-awareness, develop resilience, and build a stronger support network. If you’re interested in mentoring, reach out to Mentoring Young Adults through the link below to learn more about how you can see if mentoring is the right way forward for you.

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

From Anxiety to Confidence: Parental Strategies for Helping Young Adults with Social Anxiety

Social anxiety can be a challenging condition for young adults, impacting their ability to make friends and engage in social activities. Although the best success is though a professional mentor who specialized in working with young adults, we want to offer some things you can try at home on your own. Here are three things parents can try at home to help their child with social anxiety, based on the insights from MentoringYoungAdults.com.

  1. Encourage Socializing: Parents can encourage their children to engage in social activities that align with their interests. This will help the child to feel more comfortable in social situations and make friends with similar interests.
    Challenge: This works best when a mentor has built the frame-work to be ready for this. Don’t get discouraged!
  2. Create a Safe Space: Parents can create a safe and supportive environment at home for their children to share their feelings and experiences. This can help to build trust and confidence, and help the child to feel more comfortable in social situations.
    Challenge: If you use a space like the dinner table to “interrogate” your child (you thought it was just asking how their day was… they perceive it as interrogation), you must find a safe space that is NEVER used for “interrogation”.
  3. Model Healthy Social Behavior: Parents can model healthy social behavior by demonstrating how to engage in social situations and maintain healthy relationships. We all learn best by example, and seeing healthy social behavior modeled by their parents can help them to develop these skills themselves. That also means eliminating confrontational dialogue in the face of home challenges and learning active listening to employ in ALL situations at home.

Remember, helping your child overcome social anxiety is a process that requires patience and persistence. By encouraging socializing, creating a safe space, and modeling healthy social behavior, parents can provide their children with the tools and support they need to build friendships and feel more comfortable in social situations. And if you feel that your child needs additional support, consider connecting them with an online mentor who can offer personalized guidance and encouragement. Together, you can help your child develop the skills and confidence they need to thrive socially and emotionally!

When you a ready to see if mentoring is the right step for your child, click here.

Making Connections: How Mentoring Can Help Young Adults Overcome Social Anxiety and Build Friendships

So many parents who want their child to try mentoring come up with the challenge of encouraging their young adult to try mentoring, especially when of the main issues is social anxiety and making friends. Here are some ways to suggest to your child why mentoring could be beneficial.

Highlight the positive impact that mentoring can have on social anxiety. Explain how mentoring provides a safe and supportive space to help them build confidence and self-esteem, as well as work on communication issues.

You can also point out that since it is online, it is an easy space to practice socializing in a controlled environment.

Moreover, you can point out that these mentors are there for them and will work on whatever the wish to work on, effectively allowing them to be in charge of the process. Explain that a mentor can help them improve their communications skills, work on different forms of anxiety and help them deal with the outside world in a slow steady progress, based on what would feel comfortable to your child. The mentor is there to help your child discover their sense of purpose and direction.

It’s important to assure your young adult that mentoring is not a form of therapy, but rather something different that may benefit them in various aspects of their life. It is action-based. Additionally, emphasize that they have the power to choose their goals, and be in charge of the whole process.

Lastly, it may be helpful to offer your support and encouragement throughout the mentoring process. Reassure them that you believe in their ability to overcome their social anxiety and that you know it is scary to try new things but you believe it is worth a try and you know how hard it is to try new things. They just need to try (one session or four sessions), or an hour session on a video-call to see if this might be for them.

Remember to approach the topic with empathy, understanding, and an open mind.

When you a ready to see if mentoring is the right step for your child, click here.

Unlocking the Benefits of Mentoring for Young Adults with Autism: A Guide for Parents

As a parent of a young adult with autism, you may be wondering how you can best support your child as they navigate the challenges of adulthood. One valuable option to consider is mentoring. In this article, we will explore the benefits of mentoring for young adults with autism and provide guidance on how to help your child find the right mentor who can support them in their journey.

  1. Improved Social Skills

Young adults with autism may struggle with social skills and find it difficult to form meaningful relationships. Our mentors provide an opportunity for your child to practice these skills in a safe and supportive environment. We model appropriate social behavior, provides feedback on communication skills, and helps your child navigate social situations, free of judgment, allowing your child to become more confident and adept at building connections with others.

  1. Increased Self-Esteem and Confidence

Many young adults with autism struggle with low self-esteem and a lack of confidence in their abilities that do not come easily to them. By providing encouragement, support, and guidance, our mentors help your child build self-esteem and confidence. This can lead to increased independence and a greater sense of self-worth.

  1. Academic and Career Success

Young adults with autism have unique talents and strengths that may go unrecognized. By helping your child identify their strengths and interests, we provide guidance and support in pursuing academic and career goals specifically suited to your child. We also provide assistance with college applications, personal statements, resumes, and job interviews, which greatly increase your child’s chances of success.

  1. Improved Emotional Regulation

Young adults with autism may struggle with emotional regulation and experience intense emotions in response to stressful situations. Mentoring Young Adults helps your child develop coping strategies for managing stress and regulating emotions, leading to greater emotional stability and an improved ability to handle challenging situations.

  1. Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills

We provide an opportunity for your child to work through real-life problems and challenges. By encouraging them to think critically and problem-solve, we help them develop important life skills that will be valuable in every aspect of their life.

Finding a Mentor

If you believe mentoring could be a good fit for your child, the next step is to find a mentor who can provide the support and guidance they need. A mentor who works exclusively with young adults and specifically with young adults on the spectrum. Mentoring Young Adults has been doing so since 2015.

Conclusion

Mentoring can be a valuable experience for young adults with autism. By providing support, guidance, and encouragement, a mentor helps your child develop important life skills and achieve their academic and career goals. If you are interested in exploring mentoring as an option for your child, consider booking an appointment with us today. With the right mentor, your child can thrive and achieve their full potential.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Mentoring Young Adults with Depression: What to Expect After One Year of Mentoring

Mentoring can be an effective form of support for young adults with depression, as it provides them with a trusted adult who can offer guidance, encouragement, and emotional support. Over the course of a year, a mentee may experience a range of benefits, including:

  1. Increased self-esteem and confidence: A good mentor can help a young adult develop a positive self-image and belief in their abilities.
  2. Improved coping skills: Mentors can provide young adults with tools and strategies to help them manage their depression and handle life’s challenges.
  3. Greater sense of purpose: By working with a mentor, a young adult may develop a clearer understanding of their goals and values, and feel more motivated to pursue them.
  4. Expanded social network: A mentor can introduce a young adult to new people and opportunities, helping them build a supportive community.

It’s important to note that the outcomes of mentoring can vary depending on a variety of factors, including the quality of the mentor-mentee relationship, the mentee’s willingness to engage with the process, and the severity of the mentee’s depression. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, it may be helpful to seek the guidance of a mental health professional in addition to a mentor.

Parenting a Young Adult with Depression: 3 Expert Tips from Master Level Mentor Ken Rabow

Parenting a young adult with depression can be a difficult and emotionally challenging experience. As a parent, it’s important to understand the unique needs of your child and to provide them with the support and guidance they need to manage their symptoms and maintain their mental health. Here are some expert tips to help you support your child through their journey:

  1. Educate yourself about depression: The first step to supporting your child is to educate yourself about depression. Learn about the symptoms, causes, and treatment options available. This will help you understand what your child is going through and give you the tools you need to provide effective support.
  2. Encourage your child to seek professional help: While parents can provide a lot of support, it’s important for young adults with depression to seek professional help. Encourage your child to speak with a mental health professional who can provide them with the right diagnosis and treatment plan. A therapist or psychiatrist who specializes in treating depression in young adults can be especially helpful.
  3. Create a supportive environment: Creating a supportive environment at home is crucial for young adults with depression. Make sure your child feels loved and supported, and encourage them to talk about their feelings and experiences. Help them establish healthy habits, such as regular exercise and a nutritious diet, and make sure they get enough sleep. Encourage them to participate in activities they enjoy and to spend time with friends and family.
  4. Consider hiring a mentor: While parents can provide a lot of support, it can be helpful to have an outside perspective and additional guidance. A mentor can provide your child with the support and guidance they need to navigate the challenges of depression and develop the skills they need to thrive. Mentors can help young adults set goals, establish healthy habits, and develop the coping skills they need to manage their symptoms.

As a parent, it’s important to be supportive and understanding of your child’s needs. By educating yourself about depression, encouraging your child to seek professional help, and creating a supportive environment at home, you can help your child manage their symptoms and live a fulfilling life. If you feel that your child could benefit from additional support, consider hiring a mentor who can provide them with the guidance and skills they need to thrive.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

“Working as a Team: How Mentoring Can Help Parents Support Young Adults with Depression”

As a parent, it can be extremely difficult to watch your young adult child struggle with depression. It can be challenging to know how to best support them, especially if you are also juggling work and other responsibilities. One way to help your child deal with depression is by working as a team with a mentor.

Mentoring is a powerful tool that can provide your young adult child with additional support, guidance, and perspective during their challenging times. Our mentors have experience and expertise in a mentoring young adults and help their mentees grow on all levels.

Working as a team with a mentor means that you, as a parent, have the added support of someone who has experience dealing with similar challenges and can offer a fresh perspective on your child’s situation.
As your child finds their own way towards success, you join the team as a part-time member.

To create a successful mentee-mentor-parent team requires working with a mentor who specializes in working with young adults dealing with mental health issues.

Once you have found a mentor for your child, it is important to establish a clear communication plan between you, your child, and the mentor. This could include regular check-ins or meetings to discuss your child’s progress, challenges, and goals.

It is also essential to set clear expectations for what you hope to achieve by working as a team with a mentor. This could include specific goals for your child’s mental health, such as improving their mood, reducing their anxiety, or increasing their sense of purpose and motivation.

Working as a team with a mentor can be particularly helpful for young adults because it provides them with a trusted adult outside of their immediate family who can offer support and guidance. It can also be helpful for parents because it provides them with an additional resource for helping their child without feeling overwhelmed or burnt out.

In conclusion, if you are a parent with a young adult child dealing with depression, consider working as a team with a mentor. This approach can provide your child with additional support and guidance, while also giving you the added support and resources you need to help your child navigate this challenging time. With the right mentor, communication plan, and clear goals, working as a team can be a powerful way to support your young adult child’s mental health and well-being.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

How to Help Convince Your Child to Try Mentoring to Rise Above Depression and find Success.

While depression can be challenging to manage, mentoring can provide young adults with a supportive and non-judgmental environment to talk about their feelings, set goals, and develop skills to manage their challenges. If you’re a parent struggling to help your child with depression, here are some tips on how to convince them to try mentoring.

  1. Understand the Benefits of Mentoring

Mentoring can provide young adults with a positive, non-judgmental role model who can offer guidance, support, and encouragement. A mentor can help young adults build self-confidence, set goals, and develop coping strategies to manage their depression.

Research has also shown that mentoring can have a positive impact on mental health outcomes. A study published in the Journal of Primary Prevention found that mentoring can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in young adults. Other research has found that mentoring can improve academic and career outcomes, and increase self-esteem.

  1. Frame Mentoring as an Opportunity

When discussing mentoring with your young adult, it’s important to frame it as an opportunity to try out rather than a commitment. Emphasize that mentoring offers an opportunity to help them set goals, rise above their challenges, and create success makers to build slow, steady micro-successes.

  1. Finding the Right Mentor

Not all mentors are created equal, and it’s important to find the right match for your young adult. Our mentors specialize in working with young adults with all sorts of challenges including depression.

When introducing your young adult to our mentoring program, try saying something like this:
I just spoke to a life coach named Ken Rabow, he is not a therapist, it is not talk therapy, it is action based and he works on whatever you feel you need help with. I think he could really help you find your own way.

I would like you to try it, and if you find (after one month) (after one hour) that it’s not for you, then we can look for something else together.

One of the things he mentioned, is that he asked me to stop having discussions with you on what you should and shouldn’t do, and let the mentor and you work on that together.

What do you think?

  1. Emphasize Confidentiality

Confidentiality is a crucial aspect of mentoring. Emphasize to your young adult that anything they share with their mentor will be kept confidential, unless there’s a risk of harm to themselves or others. This can help your child feel more comfortable sharing their feelings and concerns with their mentor.

  1. Provide Ongoing Support

Helping young adults rise above depression is only the beginning of what we do as mentors. We help our mentees find success in all aspects of their lives.

Conclusion

Mentoring can be a powerful tool for young adults with depression. By providing a supportive and a non-judgmental environment, we help young adults develop skills and strategies to manage their challenges and achieve their goals. If you’re a parent struggling to help your child with depression, consider suggesting mentoring as a valuable resource to support their mental health and well-being.

Remember to approach the topic of mentoring with empathy and understanding, and to listen to your young adult’s concerns and preferences. Mentoring young adults help them navigate life’s challenges and achieve their goals.

We are not our labels.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

ken.rabow@gmail.com

“Mastering ADD: Helping Young Adults Improve Focus and Achieve Their Goals”

At Mentoring Young Adults, we understand that Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) can present unique challenges for young adults. We believe that mastering ADD is all about understanding how our mentees process information and how they focus. By developing a personalized approach, we help our clients overcome these challenges and achieve their goals.

For many of our mentees, one of the most effective ways to manage ADD is by first learning to focus on things that interest them. We believe that by engaging in activities that they enjoy, our clients can improve their attention span and develop better focus. This is a critical step towards minimizing attention challenges and improving overall performance.

For some where focused attention training needs more, we help parents investigate the aspect of managing ADD through medication. For the mentees requiring more, we work with medical professionals through their parents to find the right medications and create daily routines to incorporate those meds. By doing so, we help our clients manage their ADD symptoms and improve their ability to focus and concentrate.

At Mentoring Young Adults, we understand that managing ADD can be a long and challenging process. Our mentors are committed to providing ongoing support to our clients, helping them overcome obstacles and achieve their goals. We believe that everyone deserves the chance to live a fulfilling and meaningful life, and we are dedicated to helping our mentees achieve just that.

Mastering ADD is all about understanding how our mentees process information and how they focus. By developing personalized plans that cater to each mentee’s unique needs, we help them overcome attention challenges and achieve their goals. Whether it’s through engaging in activities that interest them, building focus or medication management, our mentors are dedicated to providing ongoing support to help our mentees rise above their challenges and achieve their full potential.

Click here to book a free 15 minute consultation.

How Mentoring Can Help Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges

Mental health issues are increasingly common among young adults, with conditions such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar issues on the rise. These conditions can be difficult to explain to others, especially when there are no visible physical symptoms. At MentoringYoungAdults.com, we understand the challenges that mental health issues can pose for young adults and their families.

Our mentoring program is designed to support young adults with mental health issues, focusing on their strengths and challenges rather than just their labels. Through the medical health direction we receive, we work closely to ensure that our mentees are receiving the appropriate therapies and medications, and we provide additional support to help them manage their conditions and live fulfilling lives.

We also understand the importance of involving parents in the mentoring process, especially when it comes to supporting their child’s mental health. We work with parents to help them understand their child’s condition and how mentoring can help them rise above their labels and develop strategies for supporting our mentoring work at home. We also help parents work with what medical professionals proscribe to create routines and checkups to ensure that their child’s therapies and medications are supported by our mentoring program.

At MentoringYoungAdults.com, we believe that every young adult deserves the support and guidance they need to manage their mental health and thrive. With our mentoring program, we provide a safe and supportive environment for young adults to develop the skills and resilience they need to navigate the challenges of mental health issues.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

Empowering Young Adults with Depression: How Mentoring Can Help Navigate Life’s Challenges

Depression in young adults is a pervasive mental health condition that can make life feel overwhelming and unbearable. However, not all depression is the same, and it is essential to differentiate between clinical and situational depression to determine the most effective treatment plan.

Situational depression in young adults is a type of depression that results from life events or situations, such as a school failures, job loss, or the challenges that arise from not knowing a good way forward. Basically where life feels for them like a poop sandwich.

Our mentors provide guidance, support, and encouragement to young adults experiencing situational depression. They can help their mentees identify their strengths, develop coping mechanisms, and create positive routines that promote well-being. Mentors also help their mentees let go of negative self-speak and embrace positive self-speak. This is a slow process with two steps forward and one step back but the changes tend to be long-lasting and profound. These strategies can be highly effective in reducing symptoms of situational depression and promoting a more positive outlook on life.

However, when these feelings of depression do not change after all of these mentoring techniques, it can be a sign that the depression is more clinical than situational. This is often the time where we work with parents to engage the right medical professionals using the right modes for our mentees. Mentors can help ensure that their mentees receive the right treatment for their condition. This may include medication, therapy, or a combination of both. Mentors can also support their mentees by providing emotional support, encouragement, and practical assistance to be consistent with treatments throughout the process.

Mentors can work with medical professionals in a variety of ways. For instance, mentors can communicate with parents about their mentee’s improvements or issues with a given treatment plan. They can also help their mentees attend medical appointments and support them in adhering to their treatment plan.

Mentoring young adults can be a powerful tool in helping individuals experiencing situational depression. Mentors can provide emotional support, guidance, and practical assistance to help their mentees manage their symptoms and move towards a more positive outlook on life. However, it is important to remember that depression may require medical intervention in some cases. By working with parents and medical professionals, mentors can ensure that their mentees receive the right treatment for their condition and can provide ongoing support throughout the healing process, allowing us to get back to mentoring our mentees towards success in all aspects of their lives.

We are not our labels!

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation

Mentoring Young Adults with Anxiety: Strategies for Success

by Ken Rabow

Anxiety is a serious issue for many young adults, and it can take on many different forms. Body-based anxiety can manifest as physical symptoms like racing heart, sweating, or shaking. Mind-based anxiety may cause worry, fear, or self-doubt. Totem-based anxiety can arise from specific triggers like crowds, social situations, or public speaking. Time-based anxiety can stem from deadlines or time constraints, while distance-based anxiety may arise when being away from a safe space or person.

If your teen is struggling with anxiety, mentoring can be a powerful tool to help them find new ways to manage their anxiety and embrace life’s challenges. A mentor can provide a safe and judgment-free space for your teen to explore their anxiety challenges and develop new coping strategies. They can offer guidance and support as your teen learns to identify their triggers, manage their emotions, and build resilience.

Through mentoring, your teen can learn to look at their anxiety challenges in a new light, with a focus on growth and positive change. With the support of a mentor, your teen can learn to become calm and relaxed in the face of anxiety, and embrace the challenges of life with confidence and resilience. So if your teen is struggling with anxiety, consider the power of mentoring to help them overcome their fears and find a path towards success and happiness.

Here are some ways that mentoring can help young adults with anxiety:

  1. Identifying Triggers: A mentor can help your teen identify what triggers their anxiety, whether it’s certain situations, thoughts, or emotions. By recognizing these triggers, your teen can begin to develop coping strategies to manage their anxiety.
  2. Building Coping Strategies: Mentors can help your teen develop coping strategies that work for them, whether it’s deep breathing exercises, meditation, journaling, or other relaxation techniques. These strategies can be used to manage anxiety in the moment or prevent anxiety from escalating in the future.
  3. Developing Mindfulness: Mentors can teach your teen how to practice mindfulness, which involves being present in the moment and observing thoughts and emotions without judgment. By learning to be more mindful, your teen can better manage their anxiety and develop greater self-awareness.
  4. Encouraging Self-Care: Mentors can help your teen understand the importance of self-care, including getting enough sleep, exercise, and proper nutrition. These practices can help your teen feel better physically and emotionally, which can reduce anxiety.
  5. Providing Support: Above all, mentors can provide emotional support and encouragement to your teen as they navigate their anxiety. Mentors can help your teen feel heard, understood, and supported, which can be invaluable when dealing with anxiety.

Overall, mentoring can be a powerful tool for young adults struggling with anxiety. By providing guidance, support, and practical strategies, mentors can help your teen manage their anxiety and develop greater resilience and self-confidence.

Click here to book a free 15 minute consultation to see if mentoring is right for your child.

COVID-19 MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT

Mental Health Support is sorely lacking these days for Millennials and Generation Z young adults (people in their teens, 20’s and early 30’s). For them, mental health issues pose a great challenge.

At MentoringYoungAdults.com we have been helping young adults with Mental Health issues since 2001 with issues such as: anxiety; depression; bi-polar disorder; schizophrenia; and situational related issues. Our success helping young adults comes from using a mentoring support system created by Ken Rabow.

In our regular mentoring work, many of our mentees talk about so many of their friends suffering from mental health issues with no one to talk to. With that in mind, we are now offering one of our greatest resources: Helena Mihelic-Rabow. A registered nurse with over 25 years experience in the mental health field as a psychiatric nurse.

Helena will be offering 30 minute and 60 minute consultations. She is here to help young adults suffering with mental health issues choose a path forward and provide a sympathetic ear.

Many young adults find that self-sabotage is a great challenge in dealing with their mental health issues. Our program can help diminish and eventually eliminate self-sabotage.

If you would like to take one our mental health consultations, click on the link below to book a time that is good for you.

Cost: $60 for 30 minutes. $100 for 60 minutes

Book 30 minute Consultation with Helena Mihelic-Rabow – Click Here

Book 60 minute Consultation with Helena Mihelic-Rabow – 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 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.

Mentoring Autistic Teens – Path to Greatness

A Families Story About Living with Autism:

In my work of mentoring autistic teens, I am struck with the level of trust, humility and indomitable spirit that I see in these families weekly on their paths to rising above others limitations of them. Mentoring autistic teens has been a truly transformative experience for me and it is such a pleasure to give the clients and the parents new tools to thrive in the world “out there”.

I would like to share one story with you from one of my clients and his mom’s perspective:

Mom’s Story:
I knew my son had a brilliance inside of him that was just waiting to come out … if we could just get past this “autism thing”. At 3 ½ years of age, Stephen was working with a speech pathologist to work on his receptive language skills. There was a set of blocks and a Winnie the Pooh figurine sitting side-by-side on the table.

Pathologist: “Okay Stephen, I want you to put the blocks in front of Winnie the Pooh”

Stephen turned Winnie a quarter turn, so that Winnie was no longer facing forward, but rather facing the blocks. From the sideways angle, the blocks were now in front of Winnie the Pooh on the table.

Wow!

Stephen:
I was seven years old when I got the diagnosis for autism and ADHD. At first I felt very angry at the person who made this diagnosis, because I thought they were saying something was wrong with me. We eventually learned to deal with the fact that I had Autism, and that I did have some problems.

The situation was looking very grim. That same year in late second grade, we used some ADHD medication to try to have me pay attention in class. The medication worked as intended, and I was able to pay attention to class, but the side effects were painful to my quality of life.

Mom: Some teachers “got” Stephen and some didn’t. The ones who “got” him had their hearts stolen by a little guy who filled their hearts with joy. We are truly grateful for the way that they connected with Stephen.

Stephen: The medication made it so that I would no longer feel hungry at the normal times when I should have a meal, and I began to get skinnier and skinnier until my ribs would show entirely, and I felt a significant lack of energy. Eventually the ADHD medication was dropped in favor of supplements as an alternative as I moved into the fourth grade. My body slowly but surely returned to its normal shape, and I was able to pay attention in class because of the supplements, which had a similar effect (such as the fish oil).

With all of these supplements, my academic level went up at almost at a superhuman rate. I was then able to move schools gradually until I got to where I am now.

Mom: A diagnosis is truly a double-edged sword. I tried, in the first few years to keep it a secret. But what I have learned is: don’t share this burden alone. Give others a chance to step up and help you lighten the load. Some won’t step up … they just don’t get it. But you would be amazed at how others do … including children.

Stephen: I am in a fairly mainstream school now. Most qualities of life that you would expect from perhaps an above average life have been fulfilled. I now have unlocked a higher piece of myself allowing me to write these articles that I share with others such as you.

Ken Rabow – A life coach specializing in mentoring teens: Although I hadn’t known it at the time, a standard test that Stephen would give potential mentor/therapists for Autistic kids was to talk about his complete feeling of betrayal by grownups and how they manipulated a basketball game with his fellow Asperger students vs. the local highest winning basketball team to let his team win.

Previous Mentors had told him to “get over it” whereas my response was “hey, let’s write an article about your feelings, shape them into a learning moment and see if HuffPo would publish it! They did ☺. This was a defining moment in Stephen believing his voice could and should be heard. To check out the article: click here.   Mentoring autistic teens is also about learning to really listen to what they are saying and meaning.

Stephen: The struggle with Autism has been quite the battle. Many tears were shed, many issues were fought, many goals were achieved, many hearts opened, many friends made and many lives changed.

Mom: I felt that it was always important to share how much he had grown with Stephen … especially on days when things weren’t going so well or when he was down on himself.

As someone mentoring autistic teens, here are some things that I would like to tell parents of children on the spectrum:

Try to not be totally devastated by the diagnosis. They are still the same lovable, adorable child that you had before and you can have the same dreams for them.

Don’t ever let other people put limits or ceilings on what your child can do. Trust your gut. Trust that inner brilliance that you see and work like hell to find people to help you pull it out. You can teach your child to behave in a neurotypical way.

Embrace your child’s differences and let yourself dream of the way that he or she might change the world.

Ken: Who better to share their thoughts then people who are living it? In mentoring autistic teens I have learned when to keep quiet and let them speak. I leave the last words of wisdom to my awesome client Stephen:

Stephen: So what is the moral of the story? I am talking to kids like me who have been given a diagnosis of Autism: You could say that where you are now is not necessarily where you will always be. My thought is that   nobody is only destined to one path.

I believe that the force of will is what determines success or failure, not fate, destiny or diagnosis. That most people on the autistic scale can reach the level that I have and perhaps even greater. They just need the right parenting, the right mentors, the right people in their lives and most importantly… persistence.

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation

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

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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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

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.

Mental Health Issues in Teens and Young Adults

Facts About Mental Health In Our Youth
According to the US mental health commission, in any given year, one in five people in the Untied States experiences a mental health problem or illness. Only one in four children or youth who experience a mental health problem or illness report that they have sought and received services and treatment.

The Big Question(s) for Parents
The world today is label-happy. Go see a specialist with a troubled child and end up with a fixed diagnosis that may or may not be helpful. It can be the start of true healing or it can become a self-fulfilling label that limits the child’s beliefs and capabilities by thinking that this is all that they are. How do we help our children when they are suffering from what seems to be a mental health problem without stigmatizing them, getting them the help they need and the support they deserve?

There is Too Much Misinformation Out There.
The biggest danger is false or partial information. There are a lot of misconceptions and stigmas about mental health issues. They include but are not limited to:
1) understanding the illness in terms of the impact on the child and the family
2) medications – side effects, benefits and long term use
3) available treatments
4) advocating for your child
5) helping the patient gain insight on their illness
6) helping the patient be part of the healing process
7) how psychiatric forms work (should they be necessary).

The Big Answer for Parents
The big answer is that there are no big answers. We have to look at each individual client as their own person, free of the labels that some professionals would like to box them into. By looking at the total individual, we can come to an out-of-the-box way of seeing them and choosing the proper methods of creating a good mental health strategy. Starting them on a road towards their own successful lives, aware of but not limited by their conditions. With our life empowerment coaching added, you will also have ongoing support on this journey.

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

Anxiety – The Quiet Demon

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 text.

It’s Victor (not his real name). An amazing guy. Brilliant. Funny. Some coping issues and he is texting  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 but each time is unique. Every person’s anxiety is different. 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 trying but nothing works.

We spent close to an hour on the phone. We had worked on breathing exercises in the past. We had also done some visualization exercises 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 and we determined that Victor should offer 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 victors 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 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.

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!

Click Here to Book a Free 15 Minute Consultation 

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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