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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

this is very insightful, thank you. I definitely see some tendencies of this in myself. I also see that the mother-father dynamic OP sees can contribute to it: a father who isn’t “all there” in raising the kids (possibly a bit abusive) and a mom who overcompensates with the helicoptering.

My question for you though is - isn’t it true that some kids just are harder and do have mental illnesses? so it’s not necessarily these parents’ exclusive fault. They may have done fine with a less sensitive kid. [/quote]

PP here. Yes, some kids are more temperamentally sensitive than others. Parents are not all to blame, and a common scenario I see in my therapy practice is that my client (innately sensitive with heightened emotional reactions to everything) feels a lot of shame that their siblings are more successful than them (because they're less sensitive and responded better to this sort of intensive parenting).

But it's up to the parents to be emotionally attuned to their kids and recognize their own personalities and temperaments. Again, this goes back to the process of metallization -- are the parents emotionally tuned in to their kids enough to "mentalize" (aka distinguish) between them? Are they able to recognize that one kid is more temperamentally sensitive than the other, or have they been so busy using their kids as extensions of their own egos/images of success that they're not even able to recognize basic personality differences between their kids? Sadly, I see a lot of the latter in my practice.

When all you value your kids for is for their "deliverables" (how successful they are in school/sports) and reduce them to a set of numbers, as is often the case in wealthy areas, you lose sight of whatever emotional connection you had to your kids. [/quote]

NP, thank you. I wonder if there is anything you might consider reading. I’m home visiting my parents and things are particularly tense with my sibling with still lives with my parents at a much older age than anything posted.[/quote]

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