Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) was originally developed for parents of children and adolescents with anxiety and OCD. However, it has since been adapted to help families with adult children who are having difficulty achieving independence. Highly dependent adult children also referred to as failure to launch (FTL) individuals remain financially, functionally, emotionally or otherwise dependent on parents as evidenced by them working less than 10 hours per week, and/or not engaging in training or educational pursuits. SPACE-FTL is a parent based treatment designed to help parents learn skills to change the choices that their adult child faces on a daily basis. Specifically, parents learn how to use supportive language to acknowledge and validate their adult child’s distress. At the same time, parents learn skills to systematically reduce accommodation of their adult child’s distress in order to promote opportunities for their adult child to move towards increased independence. SPACE-FTL treatment typically occurs over the course of 6-12 months, however, there is variation in treatment length.
