Ascending Adulthood
The journey to adulthood is not a straight path.
I chose the term Ascending Adulthood as a hopeful way to understand the years between adolescence and established adulthood.
Ascending adulthood is a positive term to describe a familiar developmental stage: the years when a young person gradually builds an adult life. For me, I generally consider the 20s, 30s, and occasionally into the 40’s, as the ascending adult phase.
It emphasizes movement, effort, and growth—even when the journey isn't straightforward and doesn't follow standard milestones of progression toward adulthood.
While “ascending adulthood” is not a formal diagnosis or universally recognized developmental stage, it offers me a perspective that can help families view this time with greater hope and understanding.
Why "ascending"?
Ascending adulthood adds a helpful visual: a young person is climbing toward increased agency, capacity, and responsibility. This climb may include pauses, detours, and returns to familiar territory, but none of these necessarily indicates that growth has halted.
Growth is directional but not linear. Progress can be genuine even when it appears inconsistent.
Independence develops through practice. Skills such as decision-making, self-advocacy, establishing routines, and recovering from mistakes are all acquired abilities.
Support and autonomy can coexist. Thoughtful support can create an environment where a young adult assumes more ownership of their journey.
Growth is directional but not linear. Progress can be genuine even when it appears inconsistent.
When Anxiety Gets in the Way
Describing the love and concern for your adult child as they cope with anxiety during this phase is challenging. It’s completely normal to want to step in and alleviate their distress. Seeing them struggle can be incredibly difficult, and your instinct is to protect them from pain. Anxiety is real - and it is powerful.
I’ll encourage you to consider a different perspective. While your support is invaluable, it’s also important to allow them the space to face their challenges. When you step in to solve their problems immediately—whether it’s making a phone call for them, managing their responsibilities, or offering constant reassurance—you may inadvertently prevent them from discovering their own strength and capability.
It’s okay to feel anxious about their well-being. Your support is essential, but allowing them to experience challenges in a safe, supportive environment can lead to greater personal growth and resilience.
Tending Growth can help you recognize and use those opportunities.
An ascending adult can experience fear and still be capable. They may feel uncertain but can still take the next step. They can feel uncomfortable and learn to navigate through that discomfort. Through coaching, parents can learn to acknowledge these feelings without allowing them to dictate their next course of action.
It's a new season of growing up.
Its a New Season for Parents, Too
Ascending adulthood isn't only a developmental transition for the young adult. It's a transition for the parent.
The role that once required you to protect, direct, organize, remind, and solve gradually asks for something different.
That shift can be surprisingly difficult - especially when your young adult is struggling.
You may need to tolerate more uncertainty.
Allow more room for mistakes.
Ask rather than tell.
Wait rather than rescue.
Trust strengths you aren't yet seeing consistently.
None of that means becoming uninvolved. It means learning a different way to be involved.
Creating Conditions for Growth
You cannot make your young adult become confident, independent, or ready.
But you can help create conditions in which those qualities have room to grow.
That may begin with changing something on your side of the relationship.
A different question.
A clearer boundary.
Less rescuing.
More curiosity.
More confidence in what your young adult may be capable of doing for themselves.
Greater confidence in yourself as a parent
Small changes matter.
And over time, those small changes can become a series of wins.
When Parent Coaching Can Help
If you're finding it hard to know when to help, when to step back, or how to respond when anxiety drives family decisions, parent coaching with Tending Growth can give you a place to work through those questions.
You don't have to wait for your young adult to participate. We focus on what you can influence - and on practical changes that support both connection and growth.
