Great video My parents/grandparents did a decent job with teaching me the day to day chores as a kid, However once i hit adolescence they fell short and started to assume i knew how to do things they never taught me. I left home around the age of 13 for complicated reasons and was invited to live with a friend and his family but i ended up dropping out of school. I started working once i was 16 and had to grow up fast, Especially when i found out at the age of 23 i was going to be a father. By this time I was renting my own place with my daughters mother but I had no drivers license or even a vehicle to transport my little family around in, i would walk or bus EVERYWHERE. I brought my first car by my self (cash) and drove it home without a license, I only recently got a full drivers license 8 years later and i don't really understand money, i have never owned a credit card so i buy everything in cash i have saved and i have no vehicle insurance. I guess my point is my daughter is now 8 years old and watching this video really reminds me to think about her future and to focus on the essential life skills needed to help her succeed as an adult. Thank you!
Thank you for this description of your experiences. I think there is much that parents can do to facilitate their child's future confidence and capacity, and that's what this video is trying to communicate. I think of a ramp traversing from infancy, where parents do almost everything for their child, to adulthood, where the offspring takes care of himself or herself. That ramp starts early and should continue throughout the childhood and adolescent years. I encourage parents to think of it as an extended apprenticeship to adulthood, in which skills and responsibilities are gradually taught and transferred to the young person.
We acknowledge in my family the importance of finding healthy adult role models outside the family to gain the last stage of launching. We call it "third adult care" But we work hard in the family to impart core skills. And its everyones job. I'm an auntie rather than a parent, but I reinforce the learning
As a childless oldster, it seems to me that teaching youngsters life skills would be fun and rewarding. My parents were well meaning, but they fell down in that department. I think they were shortchanged in that regard as children as well. Lots of absent fathers on both sides of the family going back into the 1800s. Sad, but we figured things out eventually...more or less!
As someone in this position (an adult with ADHD/Aspergers who has, since leaving university, completely gotten stuck in terms of developing independence, starting work etc) I'm struggling to find more specific resources focused on helping people like me who have a mind to improve and gain independence, rather than seemingly focusing on an adversarial relationship and teaching parents how to parent an un-cooperative adult child, rather than teaching an adult child with permissive but somewhat absent parents how to get themselves off the ground. There are obviously some simple goals in terms of developing basic skills, getting a job, moving out etc. but it seems there must be deeper psychological issues around depression, self image, anxiety and maladaptive avoidance that make beginning and following through on these goals difficult and that ought to be tackled first.
Practitioners, including those at my clinic, may see the young adult, the parent(s), or both. Some of our work with caregivers is to help them step back and avoid undermining their YA's independence by doing things that the YA has already shown they are able to do. This is also an issue in disability, chronic pain, and depression treatment. Family may inadvertently support the problem more than the YA out of concern. For the YA there are many aspects of support, depending on the specifics of the situation, and I have outlined some of these in other videos in the "Failure to Launch" playlist on this channel. You raise, as many do (and all notice), the issue of depression/anxiety in situations like this. The challenge here is that depressive or anxious symptoms are fairly natural consequences of the avoidant/withdrawn lifestyle. We expect them. They may be more a sign of the individual's normality than of any disorder. See CGP Grey's take on this - "7 Ways to Maximize Misery" - which is based on my book How to be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use. th-cam.com/video/LO1mTELoj6o/w-d-xo.html However, this raises the question of WHY the YA is withdrawing/avoiding, and the possibility that the anxiety and depression preceded and caused the withdrawal. For many YAs in this situation, this is clearly the case. Shouldn't we treat the underlying issues first? The distinction would be crucial to make if the treatments for depression/anxiety and for avoidant withdrawal were incompatible with one another, but it turns out they are not. In depression, the most evidence-based strategies involve lifestyle stabilization (sleep cycle, exercise, diet, substances, screen time), gradual behaviour activation, distress tolerance work, cognitive therapy, and social contact enhancement. For most forms of anxiety, much the same is undertaken, plus graduated exposure therapy with behavioural experiments. For delayed independence, all of the same strategies are recommended. There are usually (perhaps always) other issues as well - past difficult experiences, family issues, and so on - but these add to the core elements of therapy rather than substituting for them. The trap for parents, clinicians, and YAs is to get lost in an extensive (possibly years-long) investigation of underlying issues before commencing this core work. This leaves the problem in place and allows it to become more entrenched and more difficult to escape. One of the principles of this work is "If nothing changes, it's getting worse." In other words, the avoidant/withdrawn lifestyle is becoming more embedded in the individual's life, self-image, and habitual way of being. By focussing on past or hypothesized underlying issues to the exclusion of present-focussed change, or as a prerequisite to it (instead of working on both in parallel), we run the risk of supporting the withdrawal rather than the health of the YA. This is exactly the trap that parents and YAs themselves can fall into and that therapy is designed to help them escape.
40 years ago absolutely no one aged 25 lived with their parents. This is a sociological phenomenon, not a psychological problem. Works are worse . Prices higher. Look the statistics. Everywhere in the world people are staying with parents in larger proportions than ever. And it keeps rising. It will be the rule eventually
It’s a common idea that so-called “failure to launch” is all about whether people live in multigenerational households or on their own. But that really isn’t the issue. There is nothing wrong with multigenerational living. The issue is whether the young adult is able to function as an adult and contribute on an equal basis with the other adults in the home. The difficulty talked about here is that many young adults function at an extreme level of disability, not working, not training, fearful of leaving the home, spending most of the day in avoidant activity, lacking many basic life skills, their social skills eroding from disuse, and relying entirely on aging parents for food, finances, meal prep, household maintenance, and more. Some use the term “shut-ins.”
@@RandyPatersonjust 4 asking your opinion. Is it worse to be a shut in or a ghetto lost drug addict? Is it worse video gaming and under employment or going to bad neighborhoods and getting high with bad companies?
@@RandyPaterson no games man. I grew up in Mexico there’s a lot of crime. Being honest with you, I believe I suffered this “delayed transition to adulthood” and I’m now Living with my dad and have a rent. I’m contributing with services but I’m heavily underemployed. I have friends joining gangs that are in better economic situations than me. Mexico is in a really bad period man I wasn’t making jokes. I honestly believe I have this problem and honestly believe maybe being a shut in is worse than facing the world. In Canada Mexico whatever. Maybe it sounded like a joke but is my bad English. I apologize if it sounded like a joke or something
@@RandyPaterson I think this issue is worse in my country than in the USA or Canada, and a lot of people try to overcome this joining gangs selling drugs etc
Dude my mother died when I was 17. I own a house now and rent it. This “failure to launch” will be house owners and can rent their house eventually. You people talk like they’re eventually going homeless
Inheritance of parental wealth is indeed a possibility for many who are in this situation. But certainly not all. Many families rent and have scant savings; others have multiple offspring so the largest heritable asset, the family home, will be divided several ways; some parents have all savings eroded by the expense of caring for a housebound adult son or daughter, sometimes via reverse mortgages; and some parents feel that by the time of their death they have contributed sufficiently to their offspring's care and may not make them primary beneficiaries. Homelessness is a real possibility for many. The problem is deeper than that, however. Parents in this situation perform many functions over and above the provision of accommodation or funds. Many shut-in young adults have developed little ability to care for themselves - including cooking, cleaning, household maintenance, the ability to drive, and - most of all - financial self-management skills. It's tempting to think that a hikikomori young adult who inherits a house is set for life. In reality, their ability to manage the home and the inheritance - coupled, often, with cascading addictions - is such that the funds may be depleted quite quickly. In any case, the no-longer-so-young-adult will be faced with learning personal skills that would best have been developed during the teens or early twenties. Whether parents plan to leave their young adult with a nestegg or not, it's best they keep in mind that their role is not to infantilize their offspring but to prepare them for a life without parents. In a word, adultraising, not childraising.
@@RandyPaterson true. Maybe I lacked that. I have debts and adictions and my rent has been a confort zone so I can be under employed with extra money. You’re right I wasn’t raised properly in my early teens . 32 now living with my uncle and both in debts drugs and bad neighborhood. I can’t deny your right. New suscriber here. Hope you do series for 30+ adults struggling with adictions and low self esteem. You’re such a realist psychologist. Good channel man
Great video
My parents/grandparents did a decent job with teaching me the day to day chores as a kid, However once i hit adolescence they fell short and started to assume i knew how to do things they never taught me.
I left home around the age of 13 for complicated reasons and was invited to live with a friend and his family but i ended up dropping out of school.
I started working once i was 16 and had to grow up fast, Especially when i found out at the age of 23 i was going to be a father.
By this time I was renting my own place with my daughters mother but I had no drivers license or even a vehicle to transport my little family around in, i would walk or bus EVERYWHERE.
I brought my first car by my self (cash) and drove it home without a license, I only recently got a full drivers license 8 years later and i don't really understand money, i have never owned a credit card so i buy everything in cash i have saved and i have no vehicle insurance.
I guess my point is my daughter is now 8 years old and watching this video really reminds me to think about her future and to focus on the essential life skills needed to help her succeed as an adult.
Thank you!
Thank you for this description of your experiences. I think there is much that parents can do to facilitate their child's future confidence and capacity, and that's what this video is trying to communicate. I think of a ramp traversing from infancy, where parents do almost everything for their child, to adulthood, where the offspring takes care of himself or herself. That ramp starts early and should continue throughout the childhood and adolescent years. I encourage parents to think of it as an extended apprenticeship to adulthood, in which skills and responsibilities are gradually taught and transferred to the young person.
We acknowledge in my family the importance of finding healthy adult role models outside the family to gain the last stage of launching. We call it "third adult care"
But we work hard in the family to impart core skills. And its everyones job. I'm an auntie rather than a parent, but I reinforce the learning
As a childless oldster, it seems to me that teaching youngsters life skills would be fun and rewarding. My parents were well meaning, but they fell down in that department. I think they were shortchanged in that regard as children as well. Lots of absent fathers on both sides of the family going back into the 1800s. Sad, but we figured things out eventually...more or less!
As someone in this position (an adult with ADHD/Aspergers who has, since leaving university, completely gotten stuck in terms of developing independence, starting work etc) I'm struggling to find more specific resources focused on helping people like me who have a mind to improve and gain independence, rather than seemingly focusing on an adversarial relationship and teaching parents how to parent an un-cooperative adult child, rather than teaching an adult child with permissive but somewhat absent parents how to get themselves off the ground.
There are obviously some simple goals in terms of developing basic skills, getting a job, moving out etc. but it seems there must be deeper psychological issues around depression, self image, anxiety and maladaptive avoidance that make beginning and following through on these goals difficult and that ought to be tackled first.
Practitioners, including those at my clinic, may see the young adult, the parent(s), or both. Some of our work with caregivers is to help them step back and avoid undermining their YA's independence by doing things that the YA has already shown they are able to do. This is also an issue in disability, chronic pain, and depression treatment. Family may inadvertently support the problem more than the YA out of concern.
For the YA there are many aspects of support, depending on the specifics of the situation, and I have outlined some of these in other videos in the "Failure to Launch" playlist on this channel.
You raise, as many do (and all notice), the issue of depression/anxiety in situations like this. The challenge here is that depressive or anxious symptoms are fairly natural consequences of the avoidant/withdrawn lifestyle. We expect them. They may be more a sign of the individual's normality than of any disorder. See CGP Grey's take on this - "7 Ways to Maximize Misery" - which is based on my book How to be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use. th-cam.com/video/LO1mTELoj6o/w-d-xo.html
However, this raises the question of WHY the YA is withdrawing/avoiding, and the possibility that the anxiety and depression preceded and caused the withdrawal. For many YAs in this situation, this is clearly the case. Shouldn't we treat the underlying issues first?
The distinction would be crucial to make if the treatments for depression/anxiety and for avoidant withdrawal were incompatible with one another, but it turns out they are not.
In depression, the most evidence-based strategies involve lifestyle stabilization (sleep cycle, exercise, diet, substances, screen time), gradual behaviour activation, distress tolerance work, cognitive therapy, and social contact enhancement. For most forms of anxiety, much the same is undertaken, plus graduated exposure therapy with behavioural experiments. For delayed independence, all of the same strategies are recommended. There are usually (perhaps always) other issues as well - past difficult experiences, family issues, and so on - but these add to the core elements of therapy rather than substituting for them.
The trap for parents, clinicians, and YAs is to get lost in an extensive (possibly years-long) investigation of underlying issues before commencing this core work. This leaves the problem in place and allows it to become more entrenched and more difficult to escape. One of the principles of this work is "If nothing changes, it's getting worse." In other words, the avoidant/withdrawn lifestyle is becoming more embedded in the individual's life, self-image, and habitual way of being.
By focussing on past or hypothesized underlying issues to the exclusion of present-focussed change, or as a prerequisite to it (instead of working on both in parallel), we run the risk of supporting the withdrawal rather than the health of the YA. This is exactly the trap that parents and YAs themselves can fall into and that therapy is designed to help them escape.
I’m 51 and still trying to figure it out…no one taught me
Just turned 62 and I never learned to live within my means. Always counting on tomorrow to bailout today. I think I sound like the US government.
40 years ago absolutely no one aged 25 lived with their parents. This is a sociological phenomenon, not a psychological problem. Works are worse . Prices higher. Look the statistics. Everywhere in the world people are staying with parents in larger proportions than ever. And it keeps rising. It will be the rule eventually
It’s a common idea that so-called “failure to launch” is all about whether people live in multigenerational households or on their own. But that really isn’t the issue. There is nothing wrong with multigenerational living.
The issue is whether the young adult is able to function as an adult and contribute on an equal basis with the other adults in the home. The difficulty talked about here is that many young adults function at an extreme level of disability, not working, not training, fearful of leaving the home, spending most of the day in avoidant activity, lacking many basic life skills, their social skills eroding from disuse, and relying entirely on aging parents for food, finances, meal prep, household maintenance, and more. Some use the term “shut-ins.”
@@RandyPatersonjust 4 asking your opinion. Is it worse to be a shut in or a ghetto lost drug addict? Is it worse video gaming and under employment or going to bad neighborhoods and getting high with bad companies?
I think I recall playing this kind of game when I was eight. That was a while ago, and I no longer find it interesting.
@@RandyPaterson no games man. I grew up in Mexico there’s a lot of crime. Being honest with you, I believe I suffered this “delayed transition to adulthood” and I’m now Living with my dad and have a rent. I’m contributing with services but I’m heavily underemployed. I have friends joining gangs that are in better economic situations than me. Mexico is in a really bad period man I wasn’t making jokes. I honestly believe I have this problem and honestly believe maybe being a shut in is worse than facing the world. In Canada Mexico whatever. Maybe it sounded like a joke but is my bad English. I apologize if it sounded like a joke or something
@@RandyPaterson I think this issue is worse in my country than in the USA or Canada, and a lot of people try to overcome this joining gangs selling drugs etc
Dude my mother died when I was 17. I own a house now and rent it. This “failure to launch” will be house owners and can rent their house eventually. You people talk like they’re eventually going homeless
Inheritance of parental wealth is indeed a possibility for many who are in this situation. But certainly not all. Many families rent and have scant savings; others have multiple offspring so the largest heritable asset, the family home, will be divided several ways; some parents have all savings eroded by the expense of caring for a housebound adult son or daughter, sometimes via reverse mortgages; and some parents feel that by the time of their death they have contributed sufficiently to their offspring's care and may not make them primary beneficiaries. Homelessness is a real possibility for many.
The problem is deeper than that, however. Parents in this situation perform many functions over and above the provision of accommodation or funds. Many shut-in young adults have developed little ability to care for themselves - including cooking, cleaning, household maintenance, the ability to drive, and - most of all - financial self-management skills. It's tempting to think that a hikikomori young adult who inherits a house is set for life. In reality, their ability to manage the home and the inheritance - coupled, often, with cascading addictions - is such that the funds may be depleted quite quickly. In any case, the no-longer-so-young-adult will be faced with learning personal skills that would best have been developed during the teens or early twenties.
Whether parents plan to leave their young adult with a nestegg or not, it's best they keep in mind that their role is not to infantilize their offspring but to prepare them for a life without parents. In a word, adultraising, not childraising.
@@RandyPaterson true. Maybe I lacked that. I have debts and adictions and my rent has been a confort zone so I can be under employed with extra money. You’re right I wasn’t raised properly in my early teens . 32 now living with my uncle and both in debts drugs and bad neighborhood. I can’t deny your right. New suscriber here. Hope you do series for 30+ adults struggling with adictions and low self esteem. You’re such a realist psychologist. Good channel man
Lol Reddit
Mind dumbing slow explanation!
You’re right. TikTok is faster moving. Plus: puppies!