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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're really online talking $#it about a woman taking care of her son with mental health issues the best she can? You have no idea about their darkest moments. You are a POS, OP.

+1
OP, you are not a good friend to talk about her like this. Or to think about her in this way. If my friend was struggling I would seek to understand where and how I could help. That's what friends do.

[Anonymous]

This makes me really sad. I know a family with an adult child with serious mental health issues that make it so he can't work. The adult child is in their 40s now and still has trouble leaving the house. The mother is an angel and still taking care of her child. They tried everything over the years and I mean everything. Some mental health issues are that difficult to overcome. I'm not sure what I'd do in her shoes but the poor woman has not had any sort of life for decades and before her child became ill she had a very successful career.

[Anonymous]

Therapist PP here. Two things:

1. I always tell my clients that "it's not your fault that you ended up with a Cluster B personality disorder, but it is your responsibility to resolve it." I am very careful to entirely place agency on my clients to resolve their issues.

2. The fact that you're cursing me out and becoming so angry at me over a post where you didn't even read the entire comment is, well, in clinical terms, a failure to effectively sublimate anger (which is common of many Axis 2 disorders).

Is it really any surprise that parents who are unwilling (and, in most cases, resent) admitting their fault in raising adult children with failure to launch issues end up with kids who similarly are unwilling and resentful of taking responsibility for their actions? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree here. I suspect, PP, that my post resonated too closely to your situation (maybe you have adult children of your own who are failure to launch, or maybe one of your siblings is a FTL case, or a close family friend...) and the intense anger and rage you're seething with over an anonymous poster whose comment you couldn't even be bothered to fully read is indicative of a sense of internal shame you've absorbed.



THIS ^^^^^^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh my..not all mental health issues are easily treatable. But, yea for you.

Per research conducted by Pew, the majority (over 50%) of young women who identify as democrat/ progressive are mentally ill, nationwide. That number has to be much higher in an area as blue as the DMV.

[Anonymous]

I cannot read this whole thread and i have no idea what direction it will go, but I feel the need to chime in.

Please have grace for people. My oldest has high functioning autism and may live with us for a long time. He's wonderful. He has a host of needs that you don't know about. He lives with us now and will after he graduates from college. Hopefully he will be able to manage a job after college, but there are so many things at play that you cannot fathom. We spent a small fortunate on early intervention, regular intervention, therapies etc and we are so proud of how far he has come. He is not a failure in any way.

Our daughter is doing quite well, but we have no idea what the future will hold. It would be fine if she decides to live with us to save money for a home or build up a nice savings. maybe life will throw grenades at her and she will need to regroup at home for a while. No idea, but she is an incredible person and no matter what her future holds she is not a failure. She is kind, empathetic and contributes to society.

[Anonymous]

I can't stand the phrase failure to launch, it's not accurate for everyone. My eldest was diagnosed with depression in HS and had a LD since K. He has slow processing, school was way too hard. He struggled so much that college was not in the cards and by the time he graduated his self esteem was so low he made many bad decisions. I welcome providing him with a safe place at home with us, he doesn't need to launch. He suffered 12 years of academic trauma and bullying from students because he was always in special classes. I hope he will heal one day and evolve. I imagine people who know me probably talk behind my back but they have no idea how MH plays out at home.

[Anonymous]

The person that needs help is OP. Busybody and judgmental B.

[Anonymous]

I have an 18 DS with a rare syndrome they comes with developmental delays, medical delays, and done mild behaviors. It is obvious he has lots of needs.

I am writing this bc many people are mentioning “don’t assume” and “you don’t know what you don’t know”. Although it’s been a hard journey for us I think kids (and there parents) with mental illness have a lot harder because they look “normal” and people are extremely judgmental, as we’ve seen on this thread. Or parents feel like they have to live up to the expectations as what other families in their UMC community are doing.

I grew up in Potomac and ended up going to a small school (and absolutely loved) where I knew no one from my overachieving high school would go. No one could believe I wasn’t going to Michigan or Harvard or UNC. The stress growing up here was unbelievable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Therapist PP here. Two things:

1. I always tell my clients that "it's not your fault that you ended up with a Cluster B personality disorder, but it is your responsibility to resolve it." I am very careful to entirely place agency on my clients to resolve their issues.

2. The fact that you're cursing me out and becoming so angry at me over a post where you didn't even read the entire comment is, well, in clinical terms, a failure to effectively sublimate anger (which is common of many Axis 2 disorders).

Is it really any surprise that parents who are unwilling (and, in most cases, resent) admitting their fault in raising adult children with failure to launch issues end up with kids who similarly are unwilling and resentful of taking responsibility for their actions? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree here. I suspect, PP, that my post resonated too closely to your situation (maybe you have adult children of your own who are failure to launch, or maybe one of your siblings is a FTL case, or a close family friend...) and the intense anger and rage you're seething with over an anonymous poster whose comment you couldn't even be bothered to fully read is indicative of a sense of internal shame you've absorbed.

I'm saving this phrase to be used at some appropriate time in the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Bingo!

“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.”


My mother would have allowed me not to launch and used to ask me to return home because it was “one way she could help me.”

She did a lot of mental sabotaging but I became very stubborn and ignored her efforts to keep me close.

No, thanks! Thank god I got out of there!

[/


Fascinating!! Know 50+ adults in the DMV who fit this bill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Bingo!

“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.”


My mother would have allowed me not to launch and used to ask me to return home because it was “one way she could help me.”

She did a lot of mental sabotaging but I became very stubborn and ignored her efforts to keep me close.

No, thanks! Thank god I got out of there!

[/


Fascinating!! Know 50+ adults in the DMV who fit this bill.

My father was incredibly abusive and violent. My mother responded by being a full blown addict, unemployed in my teen years and for fifteen years thereafter. I “launched” at age 17. No financial assistance from anyone. Undergrad at a Top 10 school athletic scholarship, thereafter did a T10 law school. Really did well academically, about as good as one could do. My parents were uneducated with every vice and bad habit under the sun.

I suffered from depression and trauma. I won a national championship at the end of high school, and was so depressed and suicidal right thereafter I went into the stadium figuring out how to end it all. The West Point coach recruiting there saw me and with a heart of gold coaxed me back to the podium to accept my award. I made it out on dumb luck like this.

Again, lucky as can be. Yes, I was tough and competitive, but that came with the sport. It never ceased to amaze me the good people sent into my life. I was very sick and my medical care was the athletic trainer. A well known guy actually. He was good at orthopedic type injuries (I never was injured), but not so much with a severe infection. I went to the hospital- one of the best in the nation - student health was at the edge of campus with a long wait. A nurse practitioner agreed to see me (I couldn’t pay) and she diagnosed and treated the strep throat I picked up. But she also noted I was depressed. She saw I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and asked me to come to her office for ten minutes every week. No charge. No record of treatment for a scared kid on scholarship. She made me go from being miserable to feeling resilient. She also made me feel grateful. I didn’t drink or do drugs (no money for that and I was only so talented athletically). She made me realize I had terrific freedom, with no one setting conditions on me. I made my own decisions and while difficult liked the guy in the mirror. I collected lots of free Hardee’s chicken sandwich coupons and on travel for competitions felt like a million bucks eating those free sandwiches. Yes their was per diem but I was always hungry. It was freedom for me.

I write this because the so-called failure to launch types may be in situations where they don’t get enough freedom to actualize. I am not sure it is their “fault”. Who in the heck would recommend what I did? The insanity of it all. The freedom saved me. If young people could get some freedoms it could go a long way.

[Anonymous]

if your kid has special needs like autism or developmental delays, their not "failure to launch".

[Anonymous]

And btw graduation salutatorian and from a 4 yr university but not living alone with a career is not failure to launch. If that's the case then over %50 of the US is too.

[Anonymous]

Failure to launch is not a kid still living at home.

Family wealth is a thing. And it's a dam good thing.

[Anonymous]

It’s tough. I know several elderly people who have one or several completely independent children and one who has been dependent and at home. I am reluctant to place the blame solely on parents for their adult children’s behavior. Similarly, you can launch very well from a place of suboptimal parenting. My parents underhelped me to a degree I look back on and am horrified at now as a mom of young adults. I did fine bc I somehow managed to figure things out, with some luck involved.