How to raise two “failure to launch” adult children?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with a kid with severe mental illness who struggles to maintain employment, can someone tell me how you "require" them to get a job?

When my kid got fired because delusions made him act in unexpected ways at work, or when he doesn't get hired in the first place because the executive functioning deficits that come with the medication he needs to keep hallucinations at bay were obvious in the interview, how do I just "require" a different outcome?

I can tell you how one of my relatives did it. UMC family, sent their kid to work in a supermarket. Like collecting carts in a parking lot. They felt it’s very important for him to know that everyone has to go to work and he is expected to work in whatever capacity he can. Lots of their friends were very surprised that they didn’t just pack his schedule with therapies. It seems to have worked as he went through a few mall jobs, ended up working in a jewelry store, showed a great aptitude with jewelry and is now training in jewelry repair and working for a smaller store.

Collecting carts is the kind of job my kid has been fired from.

[Anonymous]

It must feel good to be so sure you did everything right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with a kid with severe mental illness who struggles to maintain employment, can someone tell me how you "require" them to get a job?

When my kid got fired because delusions made him act in unexpected ways at work, or when he doesn't get hired in the first place because the executive functioning deficits that come with the medication he needs to keep hallucinations at bay were obvious in the interview, how do I just "require" a different outcome?

I can tell you how one of my relatives did it. UMC family, sent their kid to work in a supermarket. Like collecting carts in a parking lot. They felt it’s very important for him to know that everyone has to go to work and he is expected to work in whatever capacity he can. Lots of their friends were very surprised that they didn’t just pack his schedule with therapies. It seems to have worked as he went through a few mall jobs, ended up working in a jewelry store, showed a great aptitude with jewelry and is now training in jewelry repair and working for a smaller store.

PP here who did all of the applications for my kid. Collecting carts was one of the early jobs and led to better positions in the grocery store.

[Anonymous]

I’m a woman otherwise I could have been your friend’s son.

I also did well in school and college but never could figure out employment. My saving grace is that I was (am?) pretty and got asked out enough to notice my life was significantly easier with a boyfriend. It was like having a friend except they were happy to drive me around and do things for me. I got married at 26 and floundered in a few jobs before becoming a SAHM when I got pregnant at 30.

My son was recently diagnosed with autism and I recognize a lot of the same mannerisms in how I was as a child. At least he’ll be smart and attractive. I also can see that as long as I was on a defined track, I was fine, it was when I reached that first hurdle of adulthood of finding that career that I fell off and couldn’t really get back on. Hopefully, we can help my son navigate that better. And maybe he’ll meet a nice neurotypical girl who can help him navigate the social complexities of life.

One can hope.

[Anonymous]

Why don't some people understand that not every human being is exactly like you or your kid? Shockingly, different people have different problems, and your "solutions" didn't or won't work for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with a kid with severe mental illness who struggles to maintain employment, can someone tell me how you "require" them to get a job?

When my kid got fired because delusions made him act in unexpected ways at work, or when he doesn't get hired in the first place because the executive functioning deficits that come with the medication he needs to keep hallucinations at bay were obvious in the interview, how do I just "require" a different outcome?

I can tell you how one of my relatives did it. UMC family, sent their kid to work in a supermarket. Like collecting carts in a parking lot. They felt it’s very important for him to know that everyone has to go to work and he is expected to work in whatever capacity he can. Lots of their friends were very surprised that they didn’t just pack his schedule with therapies. It seems to have worked as he went through a few mall jobs, ended up working in a jewelry store, showed a great aptitude with jewelry and is now training in jewelry repair and working for a smaller store.

Collecting carts is the kind of job my kid has been fired from.

+1 My sibling has a mental disability and is terrified of people. Even when we got him jobs with no public facing role, he became paranoid of the boss, then coworkers and no matter what, always ends up in-patient within months of trying a new job.

[Anonymous]

Failure to launch and severe mental disabilities are two entirely different things. Don't assume you know which is happening in someone else's house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a woman otherwise I could have been your friend’s son.

I also did well in school and college but never could figure out employment. My saving grace is that I was (am?) pretty and got asked out enough to notice my life was significantly easier with a boyfriend. It was like having a friend except they were happy to drive me around and do things for me. I got married at 26 and floundered in a few jobs before becoming a SAHM when I got pregnant at 30.

My son was recently diagnosed with autism and I recognize a lot of the same mannerisms in how I was as a child. At least he’ll be smart and attractive. I also can see that as long as I was on a defined track, I was fine, it was when I reached that first hurdle of adulthood of finding that career that I fell off and couldn’t really get back on. Hopefully, we can help my son navigate that better. And maybe he’ll meet a nice neurotypical girl who can help him navigate the social complexities of life.

One can hope.

Go to the relationships forum. It's all neurotypical women talking about the disaster of marrying a man with autism or what not and it manifests completely once a child pops out.

I hope you won't encourage your kid to lie about their disabilities which seems like the MO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a woman otherwise I could have been your friend’s son.

I also did well in school and college but never could figure out employment. My saving grace is that I was (am?) pretty and got asked out enough to notice my life was significantly easier with a boyfriend. It was like having a friend except they were happy to drive me around and do things for me. I got married at 26 and floundered in a few jobs before becoming a SAHM when I got pregnant at 30.

My son was recently diagnosed with autism and I recognize a lot of the same mannerisms in how I was as a child. At least he’ll be smart and attractive. I also can see that as long as I was on a defined track, I was fine, it was when I reached that first hurdle of adulthood of finding that career that I fell off and couldn’t really get back on. Hopefully, we can help my son navigate that better. And maybe he’ll meet a nice neurotypical girl who can help him navigate the social complexities of life.

One can hope.

Go to the relationships forum. It's all neurotypical women talking about the disaster of marrying a man with autism or what not and it manifests completely once a child pops out.

I hope you won't encourage your kid to lie about their disabilities which seems like the MO.

Sigh. I would never suggest or even recommend lying. I don’t have a diagnosis but I have never lied or misled my husband.

I do think everyone has to take some responsibility first their own choices — even the choice to date someone with no executive function.

In my case, we dated one year while I was in college, then I worked 4 years of dead end jobs when he asked me to marry him. We moved in together and got married one year later. In that time, he planned all our vacations including one time when I forgot my passport was expired and he walked me through getting an emergency replacement. He saw that I was constantly paying late fees on my bills (and helped me set up auto payments.) He always drove me everywhere and handled insurance. Looking back on it, I see myself for the trainwreck that I was. Still, he chose to marry me, and he chose to have kids with me (all our children were planned.)

Anyone who acts surprised that the person who couldn’t pay bills on time and figure out how to get a passport, somehow struggles with executive function after having kids, is a bigger idiot than I was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a woman otherwise I could have been your friend’s son.

I also did well in school and college but never could figure out employment. My saving grace is that I was (am?) pretty and got asked out enough to notice my life was significantly easier with a boyfriend. It was like having a friend except they were happy to drive me around and do things for me. I got married at 26 and floundered in a few jobs before becoming a SAHM when I got pregnant at 30.

My son was recently diagnosed with autism and I recognize a lot of the same mannerisms in how I was as a child. At least he’ll be smart and attractive. I also can see that as long as I was on a defined track, I was fine, it was when I reached that first hurdle of adulthood of finding that career that I fell off and couldn’t really get back on. Hopefully, we can help my son navigate that better. And maybe he’ll meet a nice neurotypical girl who can help him navigate the social complexities of life.

One can hope.

Go to the relationships forum. It's all neurotypical women talking about the disaster of marrying a man with autism or what not and it manifests completely once a child pops out.

I hope you won't encourage your kid to lie about their disabilities which seems like the MO.

Sigh. I would never suggest or even recommend lying. I don’t have a diagnosis but I have never lied or misled my husband.

I do think everyone has to take some responsibility first their own choices — even the choice to date someone with no executive function.

In my case, we dated one year while I was in college, then I worked 4 years of dead end jobs when he asked me to marry him. We moved in together and got married one year later. In that time, he planned all our vacations including one time when I forgot my passport was expired and he walked me through getting an emergency replacement. He saw that I was constantly paying late fees on my bills (and helped me set up auto payments.) He always drove me everywhere and handled insurance. Looking back on it, I see myself for the trainwreck that I was. Still, he chose to marry me, and he chose to have kids with me (all our children were planned.)

Anyone who acts surprised that the person who couldn’t pay bills on time and figure out how to get a passport, somehow struggles with executive function after having kids, is a bigger idiot than I was.

I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about your autistic son.

There are tons of people who say their now male spouse was able to mask incredibly well, because they were able to direct their entire focus on SO during the dating phase. Once they landed the wife, the masking dropped and things started to gradually get worse. Then a kid came along and it turned into a disaster.

It's 50-to-1 of neurotypical wife with disaster non-neurotypical husband.

[Anonymous]

People generally respond to incentives. Of course there are exceptions - severe mental health issues like schizophrenia. But if too enabling an environment is provided to kids with somewhat typical mental health struggles - depression, anxiety etc. - then parents can encourage a "failure to thrive". I think OP's approach of providing therapy but insisting that they work is generally the right one. Of course, I don't envy anyone facing this situation. And I think the advice to take a step back and listen too - and engage with - our kids is right. We want them to be productive members of society. That doesn't mean that they have to be getting into top 25 schools and becoming management consultants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a woman otherwise I could have been your friend’s son.

I also did well in school and college but never could figure out employment. My saving grace is that I was (am?) pretty and got asked out enough to notice my life was significantly easier with a boyfriend. It was like having a friend except they were happy to drive me around and do things for me. I got married at 26 and floundered in a few jobs before becoming a SAHM when I got pregnant at 30.

My son was recently diagnosed with autism and I recognize a lot of the same mannerisms in how I was as a child. At least he’ll be smart and attractive. I also can see that as long as I was on a defined track, I was fine, it was when I reached that first hurdle of adulthood of finding that career that I fell off and couldn’t really get back on. Hopefully, we can help my son navigate that better. And maybe he’ll meet a nice neurotypical girl who can help him navigate the social complexities of life.

One can hope.

Go to the relationships forum. It's all neurotypical women talking about the disaster of marrying a man with autism or what not and it manifests completely once a child pops out.

I hope you won't encourage your kid to lie about their disabilities which seems like the MO.

Sigh. I would never suggest or even recommend lying. I don’t have a diagnosis but I have never lied or misled my husband.

I do think everyone has to take some responsibility first their own choices — even the choice to date someone with no executive function.

In my case, we dated one year while I was in college, then I worked 4 years of dead end jobs when he asked me to marry him. We moved in together and got married one year later. In that time, he planned all our vacations including one time when I forgot my passport was expired and he walked me through getting an emergency replacement. He saw that I was constantly paying late fees on my bills (and helped me set up auto payments.) He always drove me everywhere and handled insurance. Looking back on it, I see myself for the trainwreck that I was. Still, he chose to marry me, and he chose to have kids with me (all our children were planned.)

Anyone who acts surprised that the person who couldn’t pay bills on time and figure out how to get a passport, somehow struggles with executive function after having kids, is a bigger idiot than I was.

I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about your autistic son.

There are tons of people who say their now male spouse was able to mask incredibly well, because they were able to direct their entire focus on SO during the dating phase. Once they landed the wife, the masking dropped and things started to gradually get worse. Then a kid came along and it turned into a disaster.

It's 50-to-1 of neurotypical wife with disaster non-neurotypical husband.

My whole post was about how I could have been that failure to launch son if I hadn’t gotten married.

I believe that’s going to be similar for my child in many ways. Though for him, as a man, being attractive isn’t going to help much — it’s going to come down to getting a well paying job. And my husband and I are planning to be the ones to support him in that. Including talking about me scoring near perfect on every standardized test I ever took, and yet failing spectacularly professionally.

I also truly wonder about the women who say they had “no idea” about their husband’s executive function during dating. In my experience, I would see so many of my friends do so much for their boyfriends and pretend like it was nothing. Like they’ll take over communicating with his family, do his laundry with their own because “it’s just easier” and a million other little things. Then they’re shocked that the men who agreed that it was indeed “easier” for their girlfriends to do everything want that dynamic to continue after marriage and kids.

[Anonymous]

With a friend like you who needs enemies??

Imagine having so many good things in your life to be grateful for and instead you just want to sneer out. Someone is struggling

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll repost something I commented on the other failure to launch thread:

I am a therapist who specializes in "failure to launch" young adults. Most of the clients on my caseload have a Cluster B personality disorder (either BPD or NPD), or become very close to meeting diagnostic criteria for one of them. One of the key components to raising a failure to launch young adult is that they have very little sense of self and self-direction because their own desires, emotions, and wants have been railroaded by their parents during their childhood and adolescence.

A very common scenario in my therapy practice (in an UMC neighborhood not unsimilar to, say, Mclean or Bethesda in the DMV) is that the parents pushed their (temperamentally sensitive) kid to elite private schools or public schools in competitive, wealthy school districts so that their kid attends a T20 college. The innately sensitive kid is then pushed to a high-paying career path such as tech, medicine, or finance, and when they can't hack it, they move back home as a 22 year old (or a 26, or sometimes 30 year old), and the failure to launch spiral begins.

The parents usually alternate between intense pride and shame for their kid (this is called "splitting" by clinicians, and I see a lot of this black-and-white thinking on DCUM). On one hand, they are filled with intense pride that their kid is an elite college grad and feel as if it reflects on them as parents. OTOH, the parents have intense shame for their kid because he/she failed to live up to the high expectations that they placed on their kid.

But wait, you might be wondering, why weren't these parents able to pick up on the fact that their kids are characterologically more sensitive and thus not well-suited for a path of Harvard and then McKinsey? These parents are unable to notice their kid's sensitive nature because they lack emotional attunement (which, to be fair, many first-gen UMC people who had to "pull themselves by their bootstraps" are deficient in).

One of the first things I do as a therapist is to ask my clients to describe themselves, and ask my client's parents to describe their kid. Oftentimes I'll notice that both the failure to launch young adult and the parents are unable to provide an accurate, fully-fleshed out description of their kid to me because all parties lack the ability to "mentalize" -- in other words, be attuned to the emotional states of themselves and others.

It's actually quite sad when I ask parents to describe their adult child to me, and they'll say some version of "Oh, you know, she's smart and hard working." I'll ask if there are any other traits, and they'll just give me a blank stare. The parents are unable to mentalize any other personality traits besides "smart and conscientious."

And I really feel for these parents. It's difficult being in this situation. But I think even the most loyal and well-adjusted of children would admit that they would rather be understood than be loved but misunderstood.

This is some of the smartest stuff I have ever seen written here. TYVM.

I note that you are not using a word I would use to describe at least a few of the parents I have known in this situation: "narcissistic." Some of them have been covert narcissists, some have been overt.

Regardless, I can see why it would be strategic to avoid focusing on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll repost something I commented on the other failure to launch thread:

I am a therapist who specializes in "failure to launch" young adults. Most of the clients on my caseload have a Cluster B personality disorder (either BPD or NPD), or become very close to meeting diagnostic criteria for one of them. One of the key components to raising a failure to launch young adult is that they have very little sense of self and self-direction because their own desires, emotions, and wants have been railroaded by their parents during their childhood and adolescence.

A very common scenario in my therapy practice (in an UMC neighborhood not unsimilar to, say, Mclean or Bethesda in the DMV) is that the parents pushed their (temperamentally sensitive) kid to elite private schools or public schools in competitive, wealthy school districts so that their kid attends a T20 college. The innately sensitive kid is then pushed to a high-paying career path such as tech, medicine, or finance, and when they can't hack it, they move back home as a 22 year old (or a 26, or sometimes 30 year old), and the failure to launch spiral begins.

The parents usually alternate between intense pride and shame for their kid (this is called "splitting" by clinicians, and I see a lot of this black-and-white thinking on DCUM). On one hand, they are filled with intense pride that their kid is an elite college grad and feel as if it reflects on them as parents. OTOH, the parents have intense shame for their kid because he/she failed to live up to the high expectations that they placed on their kid.

But wait, you might be wondering, why weren't these parents able to pick up on the fact that their kids are characterologically more sensitive and thus not well-suited for a path of Harvard and then McKinsey? These parents are unable to notice their kid's sensitive nature because they lack emotional attunement (which, to be fair, many first-gen UMC people who had to "pull themselves by their bootstraps" are deficient in).

One of the first things I do as a therapist is to ask my clients to describe themselves, and ask my client's parents to describe their kid. Oftentimes I'll notice that both the failure to launch young adult and the parents are unable to provide an accurate, fully-fleshed out description of their kid to me because all parties lack the ability to "mentalize" -- in other words, be attuned to the emotional states of themselves and others.

It's actually quite sad when I ask parents to describe their adult child to me, and they'll say some version of "Oh, you know, she's smart and hard working." I'll ask if there are any other traits, and they'll just give me a blank stare. The parents are unable to mentalize any other personality traits besides "smart and conscientious."

And I really feel for these parents. It's difficult being in this situation. But I think even the most loyal and well-adjusted of children would admit that they would rather be understood than be loved but misunderstood.

I feel seen!