What creates failure to launch kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Read dcum. Parents overly involved in every aspect of life. Kids not driving until they are 18. (Seriously! My kids were driving all over at 16). Parents choosing colleges. Parents calling their kids employers. Parents overly involved in high school. Parents calling college professors. My oldest is a college professor. He gets it every semester. Parents jumping in to solve every crisis. Parents loaning money to adult kids. Etc...

Failure to launch is usually the result of poor parenting.

This. Bad early childhood environments and attachment problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read dcum. Parents overly involved in every aspect of life. Kids not driving until they are 18. (Seriously! My kids were driving all over at 16). Parents choosing colleges. Parents calling their kids employers. Parents overly involved in high school. Parents calling college professors. My oldest is a college professor. He gets it every semester. Parents jumping in to solve every crisis. Parents loaning money to adult kids. Etc...

Failure to launch is usually the result of poor parenting.

This. Bad early childhood environments and attachment problems.

I doubt that's true, but I suppose you like easy answers.

[Anonymous]

Parents who do everything for kids

[Anonymous]

With mental health issues and disabilities it's common.

Apart from that it seems to be that kids are staying longer at home to try to save money, which I can see the benefit in that.

However that's where some parents treat them like adults, ie make their kids pay rent, do their own laundry, handle their own insurance etc. And then their are some who are coddling the kids, mainly boys, enabling them.

They say it's because they care but a large part of the problem is that these mom's are getting something from this type of co-dependent relationship. There are all the usual sayings "I am just trying to help", "I don't want him to stress", "we are so close, I have always done these things". They complain and whinge but continue to cook, clean, do the laundry and essentially keep their child a boy. They will even refer to them as boys, a girl would be called daughter, they wouldn't say my son, it's always my boy or my little boy.

There's a reason why there are so many issues with mothers cutting the cord. Again this doesn't seem to be as much a problem with fathers so it's something mothers are doing and creating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My brother was dangerously close to never launching, until he met and married a woman old enough to be his mother who took over raising him and got him out of our mom's house. This is just a sibling's perspective, but he was incredibly coddled by our mom (partially because he was targeted for abuse by our dad), and expectations were just very low for him. Both girls got straight A's, were presidents of clubs, played in band and sports, were in student government -- he just went to regular classes and played a couple of sports. He never had a job in high school (both of his sisters got jobs when they turned 15) and the excuse was always football, nevermind that all of our obligations added up to way more hours. When it's all said and done he wasn't really held to any particular standard - not for grades, not for extracurricular involvement, not for behavior, not for ambition. I don't know if it's because he was the only boy or because he was the youngest or because that's how they treated all of us but my sister and I had each other to compete with which gave us our own motivation. But I know it was ugly and led to him working at a pizza shop part time into his 30's, living rent free at our mom's house. Not a good look, and it's only luck that he was able to marry a decent woman who whipped him into shape.

Ha. Is this a description of my brother? Seriously, though, exactly right with the coddling and letting him off the hook from every expectation. Huge sense of entitlement is hard to overcome when you wake up and realize other people expect you to work for stuff.

[Anonymous]

For me it was undiagnosed adhd coupled with a controlling and coddling mother. I didn’t even know how to do laundry when I went away to college. There was a very clear message of “you can’t handle this, so I’ll do it.” You start to believe what you hear.

I’m different in that I have held jobs and achieved a high academic degree, I’m married with kids. I volunteer regularly and have a fulfilling social life. But I am unemployed and my parents support us a lot, more than they should. I struggled with anxiety and depression.

Empower your kids, oP. Tell them they can do anything and let them try. Get them help if they need it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mental illness and developmental disabilities probably pay a bigger role than "parenting failures". Going into the teen years with the idea that you can control the future isn't a good idea.

+1.

Mental illness is much more common than you think though.

[Anonymous]

I only know one person who failed to launch. He is 41, unemployed, and still lives with his parents. He took 10 years to finish college, then ten years to find a job, which he held for two years and then quit because he didn’t like working. It’s been 15 years since he went on a date.

In his case, I believe it’s a combination of his whole family’s mental illness, early childhood poverty, lack of role models growing up, and a bad peer group (all of them are low achievers). But who really knows for sure.

[Anonymous]

There is a great book I recommend to everyone called How To Raise An Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haimes (I think that is correct, apologies to her if it is not).
Starting to think about this when your child is a toddler is the right timing.
There is also a Ted Talk she did on this topic.

[Anonymous]

Childhood abuse, neglect and dysfunction can have a pretty significant impact. Some people run for it as soon as they can. Others get stuck in it and struggle to find a way out.

Mental illness plays a big role. Depression, severe anxiety, bipolar, psychotic disorders, substance use etc. all van significantly impact judgment, decision making, perceptions of self and others, motivation etc

And for sure, kids who have everything done for them...if they aren't internally drive to be independent. Then they have it made. They may also lack the skills they need as they didn't develop them growing up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a great book I recommend to everyone called How To Raise An Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haimes (I think that is correct, apologies to her if it is not).
Starting to think about this when your child is a toddler is the right timing.
There is also a Ted Talk she did on this topic.

+1 In addition, I'd recommend "The Self-Driven Child" by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson. You can see their discussion of it at Politics & Prose here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aWfBAqX7p4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For me it was undiagnosed adhd coupled with a controlling and coddling mother. I didn’t even know how to do laundry when I went away to college. There was a very clear message of “you can’t handle this, so I’ll do it.” You start to believe what you hear.

I’m different in that I have held jobs and achieved a high academic degree, I’m married with kids. I volunteer regularly and have a fulfilling social life. But I am unemployed and my parents support us a lot, more than they should. I struggled with anxiety and depression.

Empower your kids, oP. Tell them they can do anything and let them try. Get them help if they need it.

Thanks, PP. This is helpful.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mental illness and developmental disabilities probably pay a bigger role than "parenting failures". Going into the teen years with the idea that you can control the future isn't a good idea.

+1.

Mental illness is much more common than you think though.

+2 - I will add that much mental illness is untreated and/or unrecognized.

[Anonymous]

Mental illness.

One guy i know is so crazy smart, but struggles so much with his illness.

[Anonymous]

My BIL lived at home until he was 40. Then some poor girl married him and now she's supporting him! He still goes over to his mother's house and eats most of his meals. I'm not sure who does his laundry.

But in these situations, I think the mom is often extremely complicit. She needed to have someone there to listen to her, to eat her meals with, to give her structure to her day, even if it was only doing Junior's laundry and going to the supermarket to buy his favorite treats. He failed to launch I think in part because he felt guilty leaving her since she had no idea how to have an independent life outside of being someone's mommy.