This is my brother. He was good athlete growing up, and a good student, but being an athlete was always his identity. My parents came to every meet and gave him a pass on things like chores and part time jobs because he was so serious about his sport. In late high school and college he got even more serious about his sport. He graduated from college with mediocre to dismal grades because he spent all of his time in the gym. After college he spent a couple of years living at home while training for the Olympics. He missed making the team by a couple of slots. He decided it was too rough on his body to try again so he retired.

He ended up in his mid twenties with no work history and having never explored any interests outside of sports. He was burned out enough (and devastated from losing his dream) that he opted not to work in his sport. Ten years later he's still stuck. He has no idea how to move his life forward. He has no idea who he is and no idea how to figure it out.

My sister appears to be a FTL but many people don’t realize she has schizophrenia, which had its onset in her second year of college. She managed to graduate but went from one poorly- paying job to another. She lived on her own for a few years and ended up declaring bankruptcy since she made it work on credit cards. Now in her late 50s, she is on disability and living with my 90 year old mother. You would think she is normal but if you talk to her for a while, the delusions emerge. Do not assume a FTL is due to bad parenting.

Anonymous wrote:FTL kids/adults I know, it's from the parents (particularly the mom) actually wanting and needing the kid(s) around. Codependence, that is shared and taught to the kids their whole lives. It sounds nice, wanting and needing your kids around, but it isn't. It's like being a prisoner in a gilded cage. The kid never gets to experience the exhilaration of independence, adulting, self-confidence, autonomy. These are all things you should want for your kids no matter how much fun they are to hang around with well into their 20s and 30s. Don't turn your kid into someone who is scared to have their own actual life.

Well said, pp.

My BIL talks about his adult children being successfully launched and how other people’s children are “bums”
living at home. Yet he and his wife had huge bar mitzvahs for them, paid for their cars, college and graduate school, are currently subsidizing their apartments, and will be paying for their large weddings. They also used their business contacts to get them their internships and interviews for their current jobs. Guess this “launching” is more like catapulting.

FTL kids/adults I know, it's from the parents (particularly the mom) actually wanting and needing the kid(s) around. Codependence, that is shared and taught to the kids their whole lives. It sounds nice, wanting and needing your kids around, but it isn't. It's like being a prisoner in a gilded cage. The kid never gets to experience the exhilaration of independence, adulting, self-confidence, autonomy. These are all things you should want for your kids no matter how much fun they are to hang around with well into their 20s and 30s. Don't turn your kid into someone who is scared to have their own actual life.

Anonymous wrote:I think there would be more FTLs living at home if their parents didn’t fully pay for their college (and grad school) subsidize their first apartment/condo and other living expenses, buy them a car, find them their first and subsequent jobs, bankroll their wedding, etc. Many singles appear to be living independently but are not at all.

Yep. I know one of these. Mom got kid his first and only ever real job and bought his condo.

Anonymous wrote:I think there would be more FTLs living at home if their parents didn’t fully pay for their college (and grad school) subsidize their first apartment/condo and other living expenses, buy them a car, find them their first and subsequent jobs, bankroll their wedding, etc. Many singles appear to be living independently but are not at all.

This.

I think there would be more FTLs living at home if their parents didn’t fully pay for their college (and grad school) subsidize their first apartment/condo and other living expenses, buy them a car, find them their first and subsequent jobs, bankroll their wedding, etc. Many singles appear to be living independently but are not at all.

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.

I know tons of parents like that and one of their kid fail to launch most leave to get away and rarely return.

My friend from high school. In retrospect it is obvious that he had HFA, but in our small rural school district, it wasn't really a thing and his parents compensated for him and were not willing to acknowledge that there was a problem. He always had amazing grades and test scores, and few obvious stims or attention-getting behaviors, but he just could not do the social interaction required for even a very science-y job. Too bad, it is such a waste.

Best friend from college FTLed. Undiagnosed depression and Peter Pan syndrome. Moved home from college and never moved out until sent to work for relatives abroad. Over 40, academically brilliant and critical of others, but completely unmotivated to thrive on their own.

Anonymous wrote:

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

+2

Anonymous wrote:Now properly terrified to having my toddlers still with me into midlife, thanks to another thread. I’ve never met a failure to launch(FTL) in the wild. Anybody have any insight into how to avoid this particular parenting pitfall?

Mental illness and unaddressed learning disabilities. That’s what I see among the three cases in my family.

And there’s a cultural/SES component. In DH’s working class family, you were out at 18 unless you were a senior in HS and even then, you had a mostly FT job and paid rent. His mom just couldn’t support dead weight. She was still working FT in a factory at 68. No hard feelings. It was the norm in their area.

I know a lot of people at work with failure to launch kids in their 20s.

It's a long path of disempowering the kids and doing everything for them. As others said, intervening at every turn. Handling everything for them. Not giving them enough independence. Kids should slowly develop their own judgment through trial and error. They should continually be encouraged to spread their wings a bit, screw things up and feel the consequences and try again. They then gain confidence and hopefully become mostly independent adults. Some parents don't allow that to happen because of their own fear/anxiety/need to be needed.

We have two FTL folks in my family. Both male.

1. Depression/low self esteem- I think that what a lot of helicopter parents don’t realize is that when you constantly step in to do stuff for your children you are also communicating that you don’t think they can do it for themselves.
2. Coddling- if you try and shield your children from every disappointment then even small setbacks will feel insurmountable to them.
3. Not holding children to any standards and not requiring them to take ownership of their own actions.