Maybe you’ve spent the last four years trying to get your kid through high school, and now everyone is asking where they’re going to college.
You’re thinking: Can we please just get through graduation first?
Maybe there were school absences, shutdowns, missing assignments, friendship problems, bullying, anxiety, ADHD, depression, physical health issues, school changes, or years when it seemed like one difficult thing followed another. It’s possible you tracked every deadline, found the missing assignments, arranged the tutors, and dragged them to the kitchen table to study. Perhaps they graduated early because they hated high school so much they just wanted out.
Whatever your version looked like, high school wasn’t easy. It was something your family survived. And now you’re supposed to decide what happens next.
For some families, college is the obvious next step. For yours, it might feel almost absurd. You just watched your young adult struggle with the structure and expectations of high school, where teachers knew them, you were nearby, and there were adults keeping track of what was happening. Sending them off to manage college independently doesn’t feel like the solution. But staying home indefinitely doesn’t feel like the solution either. So what do you do with a young adult who needs a break, needs to grow, and desperately needs something to go right?
When High School Has Taken Everything They’ve Got
Some young adults reach graduation excited about what’s next. Others arrive completely depleted. Maybe your kid struggled academically and barely made it through. Or they actually earned decent grades, but you know what it took behind the scenes to make those grades happen. There were tears, tutors, accommodations, reminders, late nights, arguments, missing assignments, extensions, and an enormous amount of parental involvement.
You may have spent years functioning as their external executive-functioning system and you knew what was due Friday. You remembered the test next week. And made the appointments, emailed the school, found the tutor, checked the portal, and knew when something was beginning to fall apart before your kid did.
For some students, the struggle wasn’t primarily academic. School itself became something they dreaded. They missed classes because they were exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, physically unwell, or simply couldn’t make themselves walk through the doors that day. Maybe there were periods when getting them to school felt like an accomplishment in itself.
By graduation, you aren’t looking at your kid thinking, “How do we keep this momentum going?” You’re thinking, “This kid needs a minute.” The question is what that minute should look like.
Maybe the Hardest Part Was Social
For some young adults, high school was painful because they never really found their people. Maybe there were rumours, bullying, rejection, friendship breakups, or years of feeling slightly outside the group. Perhaps they changed schools multiple times. Or they had one close friend. Maybe most of their meaningful friendships happened online.
Parents can underestimate how exhausting it is for a teenager to spend years walking into an environment where they don’t feel like they belong. Eventually, some young adults stop trying. Their world gets smaller. They come home and go to their room. Spend more time online because that’s where their friends are and where they feel comfortable. They stop joining things, trying things, or putting themselves into situations where they might be rejected again.
By the end of high school, you may not be worried about whether your kid has enough friends for the sake of popularity. You’re worried because they don’t seem to be participating very much in the world around them.
Maybe Your Kid Is Just…Stuck
Not every struggling young adult looks obviously distressed. Sometimes they just look stuck. Maybe your son spends hours gaming in a dark room. Most of his friends are online. He doesn’t play sports, isn’t involved in clubs, and doesn’t seem particularly interested in school, college, work, or much of anything else. He rarely leaves the house unless someone makes him.
You ask what he wants to do after high school and get some variation of “I don’t know.” You suggest something and the answer is no. You suggest something else and the answer is still no. Eventually, you stop suggesting things because every conversation becomes frustrating for everyone involved. What scares you isn’t necessarily that something terrible is happening. It’s that nothing is happening.
You look at this smart, funny, interesting person you love and wonder when they’re going to start participating in their own life. You don’t need them to know what career they want or where they’ll be in ten years. At this point, you’d just like to see them get excited about something.
Or Maybe Everything Overwhelms Them
Maybe your young adult is the opposite. They care enormously, but everything seems to overwhelm them. A normal amount of schoolwork becomes an enormous source of stress. Once they fall behind, the anxiety makes it harder to start, which puts them further behind, which makes everything feel even more impossible. They may be perfectionistic, afraid of getting something wrong, or so overwhelmed by everything they need to do that they do nothing at all.
Sometimes they shut down. Or they avoid completely. Sometimes they need to stay home because they genuinely feel like they cannot handle one more thing that day. You offer strategies and they get angry. Or you suggest making a schedule and they don’t want to hear it. You try to sit down together and make a plan, and suddenly everyone is upset.
Eventually, you start walking on eggshells around conversations about school and the future because you know how quickly they can spiral.
Maybe Life Has Just Been Hard
There doesn’t always have to be a diagnosis or a neat explanation for how you got here. There was a divorce, a death, a move, a physical health setback, a school change, a friendship implosion, or several difficult things happened in a row. Maybe your young adult never quite regained their footing afterward.
Sometimes nothing dramatic happened at all. Your kid simply seems to have a lower threshold for what they can manage in a given day. Things that seem relatively straightforward to you can overwhelm them quickly, and you’ve had to adjust your expectations over the years because pushing harder often made things worse rather than better.
Whatever the reason, you may feel like your kid just can’t catch a break. You’ve spent years thinking, They just need a win. By the time graduation arrives, your young adult is exhausted from struggling and you’re exhausted from trying to figure out how to help.
You’re Also Looking at Their Life Skills and Thinking, “We’re Not There Yet”
The academic piece may only be part of what’s worrying you. You still make their appointments. And remind them to take their medication. You know their schedule better than they do. As well as wake them up, remind them about deadlines, and step in when something starts falling apart.
You’re not entirely convinced they’ll do laundry until they literally have nothing left to wear. Cooking may consist largely of heating something up or ordering DoorDash. You aren’t sure what would happen if they had to manage groceries, money, transportation, appointments, medication, deadlines, schoolwork, roommates, meals, and a social life all at once.
Sometimes the dependence becomes most obvious in little moments. An adult asks your young adult a question about their own life, and they immediately look at you for the answer. What medications do you take? They look at Mom. What are you interested in? They look at Mom. What do you think you want to do next year? Again, they look at Mom.
You love being the person they can rely on. But you’re also starting to wonder how they learn to rely on themselves.
So You Start Looking for Alternatives After High School
At some point, you realize that sending them directly to college probably isn’t the answer, so you start searching. You look for alternatives to college after high school. You search for gap year programs, programs for young adults with ADHD, executive-functioning programs, programs for anxiety, life-skills programs, young-adult transition programs, and programs for kids who simply need more support before becoming independent.
Then you fall down the rabbit hole.
Some programs look incredibly clinical. Everything is about treatment, diagnoses, therapy, behaviors, interventions, and pathology. Others look rigid, intense, or even punitive. Your kid would take one look at the website and say absolutely not before you even finished explaining what it was. For some young adults, a therapeutic program is exactly the right choice. If a student needs clinical treatment, stabilization, or a higher level of care, finding appropriate professional support matters enormously. But maybe that’s not your kid.
They’re not in crisis.
They don’t need to be treated like a patient. They may already have a therapist they like. What they need is help growing up. They need confidence, community, responsibilities, life skills, structure, people who expect things from them, someone besides Mom helping them figure things out, and experiences that remind them they’re capable of doing hard things. Preferably, they need all of that somewhere that doesn’t feel like another punishment for struggling.
Then you find the opposite end of the gap-year world. There are backpacking trips, constant travel, hostels, huge groups, party trips, and programs built for highly independent young adults who are already confident, social, organized, and ready to navigate the world.
You look at those and think, That’s not my kid either. So where is the middle?
What If the Next Step Actually Looked Fun?
This is something parents sometimes underestimate. Your young adult may have spent years hearing about everything they need to work on: organization, motivation, executive functioning, anxiety, social skills, independence, time management, confidence, and basic life skills. Even when those concerns are completely valid, after a while the language itself can start to feel like one more reminder that they’re behind or that something about them needs fixing.
Now imagine presenting them with something completely different.
What if you went to Australia? What if you learned to surf, lived in a house with a group of people your age, had an internship, volunteered, explored a new country, cooked together, went on adventures, made friends, and had time to explore on your own? Suddenly, you’re not trying to convince your young adult to enroll in another program designed around their struggles. You’re talking about a life they might actually want.
The exciting part is that underneath all of that adventure, they’re practicing exactly the things you’ve been worried about. They have somewhere to be in the morning and other people are counting on them. They have to live with roommates, participate in the group, grocery shop, cook, clean, do their laundry, manage their free time, work through conflict, show up for an internship, make friends in person, try things they’re nervous about, and experience the natural consequences of their choices.
There are adults nearby to help when they get stuck, but Mom isn’t standing beside them doing it. That’s what the right gap year can do: make growing up feel like something they actually want to participate in.
Your Kid Doesn’t Need to “Find Their Passion”
We put far too much pressure on young adults to figure out what they’re passionate about. If your kid currently has no idea what they want to do with their life, that’s okay. For some young adults, the first goal isn’t finding their passion. It’s getting them interested in their own life again.
That means getting out into the world and doing things. Let them work somewhere and discover what it feels like to be useful. Let them volunteer, try something physical, meet adults who chose unconventional careers, and experience different kinds of workplaces. Maybe they discover they’re surprisingly good at talking to customers, working with animals, fixing things, cooking, organizing an event, helping younger kids, photography, business, or something neither they nor you had ever considered.
Purpose often comes after participation, not before it. You don’t necessarily sit in your bedroom and think your way into direction. Sometimes you have to get out into the world, try things, meet people, succeed at a few things, dislike a few things, and gradually start figuring out who you are and what kind of life you might want.
But Someone Still Needs to Make Them Think About the Future
Adventure alone isn’t enough. If your young adult spends several months traveling the world and comes home with great photos and great stories but still refuses to talk about what happens next, you’ve missed an enormous opportunity.
Many parents already know they cannot be the person leading this conversation anymore. You’ve tried asking whether they’ve thought about college, suggesting that you work on their resume together, or asking them to sit down and look at a few options. Somehow even the gentlest question about the future becomes an argument, gets met with “not now” or “I don’t know,” or results in your young adult avoiding you for the rest of the week. After years of wrestling them to the table to deal with schoolwork, deadlines, applications, and appointments, everyone is exhausted by the dynamic.
Sometimes the most helpful thing a gap year can provide is another adult who can sit beside your young adult and start that conversation without all of the history that exists between a parent and child. Instead of Mom asking for the fifteenth time whether the college application is finished, someone else can ask what they actually want next and help them think through the possibilities. Maybe the answer is college. Maybe it’s a different college, a job, an internship, vocational training, community college, entrepreneurship, or something nobody has considered yet. The point isn’t to steer them toward a predetermined answer. It’s to get them actively participating in the decision.
Turning an idea into action
Then comes the part that many young adults with executive-functioning challenges find even harder: turning an idea into action. If they want to go to college, they need to research schools, understand the deadlines, open the application, gather the documents, and submit it. If they want a job, they need a resume, references, applications, and perhaps interview practice. Having an idea about the future is one thing; learning how to break that idea into manageable steps and follow through is another important part of becoming independent.
Your young adult doesn’t need to return home knowing what they’re doing for the next 40 years. But after a purposeful gap year, it would be pretty incredible for them to come home able to say, “I don’t have everything figured out, but I know what I’m doing next.”
They Need a Breath of Fresh Air, but They Also Need to Grow
This is the middle ground some families are desperately searching for. Your kid may not need treatment, but they need more than tourism. They may not be ready for complete independence, but they’re desperate for more independence from you. Your young person needs support, but they don’t want to feel like they’re entering another environment organized around everything they’ve struggled with. They need something that looks exciting enough that they want to go, while being intentional enough that you know there’s a reason they’re going.
The right experience should offer genuine adventure and freedom while quietly requiring more from them. They should be expected to participate, contribute, communicate, solve problems, manage responsibilities, tolerate discomfort, live alongside other people, and start making decisions about their own future. There should be support when they need it, but the support shouldn’t become another person managing their life for them.
That balance is what we mean when we talk about a Supported Gap Year.
What a Supported Gap Year Looks Like at Rooted Life Adventures
At Rooted Life Adventures, students live together in a house rather than moving constantly from hostel to hostel. They get the exciting parts you’d hope for in a gap year—travel, adventure, surfing, hiking, new friends, volunteering, internships, and exploring another part of the world—but the experience is built around a consistent weekly rhythm.
There is one primary scheduled program activity each day, along with the normal responsibilities that come with living in a house and being part of a community. Students grocery shop, cook, clean, do laundry, manage their belongings, navigate roommates, participate in internships and volunteering, and learn how to manage their free time. They aren’t expected to do all of this perfectly. The point is that they get to practice.
Each group also has an on-site Wellness Coach who is a licensed therapist, but Rooted Life Adventures isn’t a therapeutic program. The coach isn’t there to turn everyday life into therapy or to manage students’ lives for them. They’re there to come alongside students when real life gets difficult and help them develop strategies for navigating it themselves.
If a student is overwhelmed, the goal isn’t simply to remove everything that’s overwhelming.
When they’re struggling with a roommate, the answer isn’t automatically for an adult to solve the conflict. If they forgot something, made a mistake, missed a deadline, or don’t know what to do next, those moments become opportunities to problem-solve. It’s an opportunity to take responsibility and figure out a better strategy for next time.
Over time, we want students to need less support, not more of it.
The Goal Isn’t to Come Home the Same
A young adult can travel the world for several months, see incredible places, make wonderful friends, and return home with fantastic stories. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you’re choosing a gap year because your young adult has spent the last few years struggling and isn’t ready for the next stage of adulthood, I would want more.
I’d want them to come home more prepared than when they left. To have practiced getting themselves places on time, managing a schedule, living with other people, cooking, cleaning, working, handling responsibilities, managing free time, asking for help, recovering after mistakes, and doing things they don’t necessarily feel like doing.
I would want them to have discovered things about themselves that they couldn’t discover sitting at home. Maybe they learn that they’re good at working with people. Maybe they discover that they love being outside, are much more social than they thought, enjoy working with their hands, are interested in business, or thrive when their days have a certain amount of structure.
Most importantly, I would want them to start seeing themselves as someone capable of managing their own life.
Maybe Your Kid Doesn’t Need Another Year Focused on What Went Wrong
After years of struggle, it can start to feel as though every conversation about your young adult is about what’s wrong. They aren’t organized enough. Not motivated enough. They aren’t independent enough. Too anxious, too avoidant, too dependent, too overwhelmed, too attached to their screens, or too unsure of themselves. Those concerns may be real, but they aren’t the whole person.
Maybe the next environment your kid enters shouldn’t focus primarily on what they can’t do. Maybe they need an environment where they have opportunities to discover what they can do.
They need to cook dinner and realize everyone liked it. To make a friend without you arranging anything. They need to show up to an internship and have someone tell them they did a great job. Complete the hike they were convinced they couldn’t do, navigate a disagreement, get somewhere on time, be useful to someone, and make a decision without looking at you for the answer.
Those experiences create something years of encouragement from parents sometimes can’t: evidence.
Evidence that they can make friends, that they can be responsible. Evidence that they can contribute and can handle discomfort. That they can recover when something goes wrong, and that they’re capable of more than they thought.
After enough of those experiences, the story can begin to change. Instead of being the kid who couldn’t handle high school, couldn’t make friends, couldn’t keep up, couldn’t get organized, or couldn’t figure out what they wanted, they begin accumulating a different set of experiences to draw from.
And perhaps that’s the bigger question underneath all of this. Maybe the goal isn’t simply figuring out what your kid should do after high school. Maybe it’s figuring out how to help them become excited about their own life again—and capable of taking responsibility for where it goes next.
This blog post was written by Austin Rogers, the Founder and Owner of Rooted Life Adventures. Read more from Austin here, or check out her bio.
