About the School
The Empty Nest School helps parents whose children are becoming adults adjust to the reality that can’t be avoided: children, eventually, do become adults.
It’s a place for parents who want to keep their close connection with their child, but are not sure how to make that happen, now that their child’s an adult. The old, reliable ways of interacting just don’t seem to work any more, and worse, they can create situations that parents can’t explain or fix – ignored texts, unanswered phone calls, missed visits, arguments, rifts, disconnection, and rejection.
Here’s the good news: It’s not your fault that your child seems to be growing distant or disconnected – and it’s not their fault either! The courses we offer help parents see their child’s changes as normal and natural. As a result, parents are able to use the tools they learn from our courses to deepen and strengthen their connections with their child.
In today’s world, there are classes for everything: how to speak a second language, how to be a beekeeper, how to run a business, how to parent young children, how to parent teenagers – the list goes on and on. But there aren’t many classes on how to parent adults. There are webpages, books, and blogs – but no classes.
Part of the reason for this is people tend to see assume parenting as something that just “comes naturally,” and that parents of adults should be competent at it, since they’ve had 18 years of practice. But the reality is, parenting is a skill set, and when the situation changes, the skill set has to change too. Using old skills (parenting a child) in a new situation (parenting an adult) often creates the very problems we’re trying to avoid. And up until now, there have been no courses that teach a system for parenting adults.
The Empty Nest School provides the solution: courses that focus on how to parent adults, and how to adjust to the changes in your relationship with your child now that they are one.
About Adam
As an academic life coach, Adam G. Sanford works with adolescents and young adults to help them develop needed college skill sets. Along the way, he’s worked informally with a number of their parents, who are making the (reluctant) transition from “parent of a child” to “parent of an adult.”
Through these conversations, Adam has helped parents learn how to let their child become an adult. Along the way, he identified certain issues that always seem to come up for parents during this transition – things that get in the way of interacting successfully with their newly adult child. When he realized he could reach far more parents who need this help if he offered courses and coaching aimed at their specific needs, he launched The Empty Nest School.
Adam graduated from the University of California, Riverside, in 2012 with a Ph.D. in sociology. He has taught college for eleven years. He has two adult children.