I think having him live alone would be worth a shot. You don’t have much to lose., I bet you can find a semi-remote mobile home rental on a month-to-month basis where internet would be available. Stock it with lots of easy to cook pantry foods like ramen and canned chili. Have all the bills go to you. If it doesn’t work out, oh well, at least he knows what it’s really like. The only financial downside is if he trashes the place, but that cost would be limited if it was a mobile home.
I’m sorry you are going through this.
Just wanted to mention that your poor insurance might not, in itself, prevent you from getting some family therapy. There are some therapists who have generous sliding scales or do a little pro bono work; it’s worth calling around.
I just wanted to add another suggestion, a strong one.
@solost, please consider finding a therapist for yourself. Not family therapy or joint therapy with your son, but therapy for you and you alone.
You are dealing with a whole lot of manipulation, psychological abuse and gaslighting and it really helps to have someone to help you keep everything in perspective, someone to continually remind you that you are not the problem.
For me, what made it hard was the months ….even years, where everything worked, when he seemed to be getting better. The time he actually managed to go to school and get a GED. The time he went on a long vacation with friends. The time he had a girlfriend for a couple of months.
You think you’ve turned the corner then it all falls apart again, and you’re back where you started, or worse. It’s that cycle of hope, it eats you up inside.
Solost, sorry to hear what you’re going through. Have you found any support groups – either online or in real life – consisting of parents who are going through something similar? At the very least, there are various Facebook groups where parents with challenging children can compare notes.
Some of these groups will promote a particular approach to the problem. (One intervention model I know the basics of – it may or may not be right for your situation, I just mention it as one example – is described at livesinthebalance.org).
It seems like he can’t function autonomously but wants space - lots of it. Maybe buy him a small tiny home out in the country? I mean if you can afford it. I know some might say that it’s coddling him but if he can’t function on his own, he can’t. But maybe with the right setup, he could semi-function. Of course money - yours - doesn’t just grow on trees. Maybe this work from home thing might be right up his alley, with the right work and right company.
There’ve been a few responses like this, and I’m not saying it’s 100% wrong, but we have put our foot down on many occasions for important stuff, and he will eventually comply. Like insisting he go to high school (he was pushing K-12 online learning, no freakin’ way); Going to vocational school for computer networking; gettign a job; making him give the job more of a chance when he was about to quit after 4 days because it was ‘too hard’. All these were exhausting emotional battles, but we stood our ground.
But his meltdowns when things go wrong I don;t see as his manipulation, more an inability to deal with change or disappointments. Like the computer he just bought. He’s an adult, he bought a new computer with his own hard-earned money. Fine. Then something goes wrong with it and he has a tantrum. The tantrum isn’t a ploy to manipulate or get anything from us, it’s just him acting out. It’s more about him losing control of himself than trying to gain control of us. I guess an argument could be made that we’re letting him have meltdowns by not giving him harsher consequences when he does.
He wants to buy a plot of land. He actually found some land in another state he wanted to buy. He wouldn’t last one night on his own. I have a friend who has a cabin on a few acres in the woods-- if he hadn’t gotten that job this summer I was planning to take him up there, leave him some food and getting a motel in the nearest town. One or two days of being on his own would have disabused him of the ‘cabin in the woods’ idea once and for all, I think.
Finding a support group is a really interesting idea- I hadn’t considered that. Thanks too for everyone suggesting I should get therapy for myself, and suggesting ways to do it. This I have considered.
I KNOW!! This is so true. Even these days, there are long stretches of days or weeks where his routine goes smoothly and he is at a tolerably annoying baseline, and we get complacent.
Solost, I wish I had useful advice for you, but all I can offer is sympathy. People in this thread either “get it” or don’t get it to varying degrees. Those advocating tough love mean well, but I can say from personal experience that outsiders don’t always understand the situation. Telling your son to “shape up or ship out” and then following through sounds good, but you’ve known your son all his life and seem to have a good handle on the situation. I believe you when you express the reasons why that will not work.
There were periods of my son’s childhood where I feared he would grow up with the kind of problems your older son has. The “meltdown” description is all too familiar. (My family was lucky - he did outgrow most of his problems and while he’s never going to be typical, he’s productive, independent and happy.) Well-meaning people would fault our parenting style, or even if they avoided blaming us they seemed to think that being strict enough would fix his problems. That was absolutely not the case; he clearly was born with a structural/chemical something that makes his brain different from most people’s. That sounds like the case with your son as well.
Do you live in a region where his idea of living in a shack is even remotely possible? My boyfriend’s daughter pretty much does do that, and it works for her. But we’re on the Big Island of Hawaii, and that makes things easier for many reasons. If you live somewhere where winters are cold, building inspectors are strict, there’s not enough rain for catchment, etc., then living off grid isn’t going to be doable. Under some circumstances though, it’s possible. (She is pretty fragile emotionally, but this is working for her.)
Sorry to hear this. No doubt it is not a lack of love and care from his parents. Rather you and your wife have gone above and beyond what many parents would do.
First of all my immediate reaction was that he has a computer addiction. I have no expertise in the field of therapy but that is what stands out first. Staring at a screen, living his days in an online world, video game addiction - to me if he is demonstrating anger and zombie like conduct then it is because what may have once been his escapism has become his world. I would look to get him off the screens and finding a new hobby to start off. Something that offers a difference in his daily habits. Something that he can feel is tangible. It can be something as simple as getting him to pick up a paint and brush I suppose. Something that he can feel free to express himself while at the same time is real as a work in progress.
My second reaction is perhaps what he needs is to get rid of some internal blockage that causes a fear of participatinh in the outside world. Perhaps not right away with a job but in volunteering. That way he can engage in the outside world, meet people, make friends, learn new skills but without the obligation of thinking this is his grind. Maybe by taking away a sense of burden if that is what he feels about mixing in the outside world either by being judged or anxiety then he will grow into himself.
The third reaction I have is what has been suggested by others and it is to lay down the law. You are paying for his lifestyle and as a result you can pull the plug on it if it is a burden on you. Other parents would have thrown him out by now.
Perhaps he needs an awakening above all and to do that requires to be let loose. Not specifically to be sent packing but even just being given some money and some basic supplies to look after himself on a short trip away. Where hehe is away from his normal habits and the mundane way of living. That way he may do some introspection being in a new environment and isolated.
I’m no expert, but from your description, it seems your son is on the spectrum for autism. Would he agree to be tested by a professional and see if this helps?
My brother grew-up in the same house as me but we took very different paths in life. He was always VERY dependent on my parents, and lived with them while he went to college and then grad school. Then, they moved while he was in grad school and basically left him behind. I tried to help him by giving him a place to crash in an area where jobs were abundant, but he never really clicked-into being a self-supporting adult. He flopped from job to job and living arrangement to living arrangement in his 20s, not being able to handle the pressure of, ya know, people asking him for things like stuff on the job, or rent. Finally, he was able to get the right diagnosis which enabled him to start receiving long term disability/SSI, which was like the golden ticket from Willy Wonka - he’d never have to work again. Granted, he was living poorly, but without the pressure of work. He made this work for him and altho having agoraphobic tendencies, he has been living on his own for many years.
Anyway, my point here is that if he is able to get a diagnosis of some disabling condition, he may be able to get various state-sponsored support (income, health insurance) for people who are unable to work, but are otherwise capable enough to live independently and not in a facility, and that could be enough for him to move into his own place and out of yours. What he does with his life is up to him at this point - it sounds like you have done the best you can and he will have to fledge in his own way from the nest.
I have no idea if this is useful at all, and I almost never talk about my family life on these boards, but when I was around 15 years old my Dad remarried to a woman who had two kids, I was one of three, so that made us a 5 kid family. This was not, unfortunately, a Brady Bunch situation. My step-sister from that marriage was a non-issue, the step-son was one year older than me, and was a nightmare.
I’m going to change his name to “Jerry” for the purposes of this story just to avoid details that could be searched online due to a unique first name and other things. Jerry was a smart kid, but wasn’t super motivated in school. Jerry had “rages” he would go into if he was pissed off. He also frequently was “unmotivated” to do things (like school work, chores etc.) My step-mother–who by the way I was very close with and loved until the day she died, was not equipped to handle him. My father worked so much he wasn’t around to deal with it, and to be honest he wasn’t a hands-on parent so he would not have dealt with it if he was around.
Me and Jerry had a number of “fights” because he would get angry and start hitting me, or he would start trashing the house. Jerry was/is not a big guy–5’5" as an adult, I’m 6’5", even with the year age difference he couldn’t really hurt me, so for the sake of domestic tranquility I’d usually be left to wrestle him under control until he calmed down. Note I was 15-16 and not equipped to easily deal with this. If I got too rough, my stepmom would say I was “hurting him.” This continued on for a while, finally I’m like three weeks from moving out of the house as my time as a High Schooler / kid is ending, Jerry 19 at the time is still living in the house but isn’t gainfully employed, and has continued his old ways.
An incident happens where, for the first time in all of his rages, he punches my younger sister in the face as hard as he could. I snap–and for one of the few times in my life I essentially become so consumed in rage I have little memory of what happened next, all I know is I’m thankful my dad was there. He had to wrap his body around me from behind and fall backwards with all his weight to get me off Jerry, who I had beaten nearly to the point of death–he had to be hospitalized and spent multiple days in the hospital before being released. I was moved to my grandparents until I finished school, and then quite deliberately the family made sure Jerry and I didn’t interact much for a number of years. When I would come home for holidays while I was in school, I’d again, stay with my grandparents, I’d go to my dad’s house for dinner where Jerry and I would be civil (but basically not speak), and after dinner I’d leave.
Jerry ended up actually enlisting in the Air Force–he scored very well on his ASVAB and was going through some early computer programs they had there, again–he was actually a smart guy. For the first time in his life, it seemed like maybe he was turning it around, but he ended up being discharged over drug use, and was back to his old ways.
My Dad finally is able to convince my stepmom to get him out of the house at least, and he’s pushed into a rental property and my Dad got him a job through a friend that he was able to hold for a number of years. This was probably the closest to “stable” things ever got for Jerry, but he still needed constant infusions of cash, and frequently bail money–his crimes were almost always drug possession.
My stepmom continued to fund much of his life simply because in her mind, he was sick, and it was her obligation. Eventually Jerry marries for the first of four times. I won’t go into all the brutal details, but suffice to say–he has two biological children with his third wife, and all four wives and marriages go exactly the same way: He gets married, my parents helped subsidize setting them up in a house, after a period of time Jerry’s uncontrollable behavior surfaces and he starts beating his wife. Eventually to the point the police are called and he’s arrested, and then eventually the marriage ends. This script repeats four times in total, each time my parents incur significant expenses paying for setting Jerry up in a new house, paying his legal fees etc (he goes to prison, never for long, but multiple times.) They also send a lot of money to his third wife due to the two grandchildren he fathered with her.
By his early 40s Jerry has done a lot of much harder drugs and hasn’t worked in a number of years, he lives in a rented mobile home my dad basically has had to pay for few years at that point. This was in between his third and fourth marriage. He starts having heart issues from all of his drug uses, and has the first of three heart procedures. While he’s on disability and Medicaid etc at this point, my parents still have to step in a lot to help him. Occasionally he moves back in with them, and that always ends the same way–he has one of his fits, tears up the house, breaks something etc, and Dad will convince my stepmom it’s time for him to move back to his place.
Eventually my Dad passes on, so does my stepmom, the siblings collectively agree we won’t be continuing the familial “Jerrycare” system, and explicitly wash our hands of him. My Dad like most of my family was poor but had worked himself into upper middle-class level of wealth at his death, and left a small estate behind (something like $80k per child and a house), we don’t know what became of Jerry’s share but we’re sure it didn’t last long. Jerry’s story comes to an end some years later when he’s in his mid-50s, at this point I had not laid eyes on, or spoken to him, in over 12 years. However, the children of his fourth wife, who are at this point almost adults, allege that Jerry sexually assaulted them when they were young children. Obviously, there is no hard evidence of a crime that occurred many years prior, but the police arrive at his residence to question him about it. Jerry for whatever reason, casually admits that he did exactly what is alleged, and predictably ends up convicted of the crimes and goes to prison–during the sentencing the judge specifically calls out his egregious behavior in court, because Jerry had asserted that he essentially wasn’t “responsible” for what he did, but that the mother was responsible for “tempting him” with the children.
In what is probably a miscarriage of justice, he is paroled not nearly as many years later as you’d like to think, but is only out for around 45 days before violating his parole and being sent back to prison–last I checked (and I check a few times a year), he’s still there rotting away, my hope is he dies there.
I don’t want to make OP think that I’m trying to suggest your son turns out like Jerry, I think people with mental illness all have their own progression they are going to go through. But what I do know is that dealing with Jerry ruined, actually ruined, a good portion of my Dad and stepmom’s lives. I’m very fortunate that after High School he had no direct effect on my life. I also know that until the day she died (and I am glad she died before Jerry’s sexual crimes became known), she always would use the phrase “he’s sick” when his behavior was being discussed. I don’t actually deny that Jerry was and is sick, I think he does have some form of mental illness. But I also think there’s limits to any one human’s responsibility to their children.
This isn’t me saying “blacklist your son, kick him out of the house, never talk to him again”, but what I would advise to anyone in this situation–you need to figure out what your limit is, and you need to know that it doesn’t make you a bad person to have a limit. [Also to be clear, nothing you’ve mentioned about your son seems nearly as bad to me as Jerry’s behavior, so I’m not trying to compare your son to him, but mental illness can be very taxing to family even if the ill person is non-violent.] You do not deserve to have the rest of your life ruined by someone with a mental illness whose behavior can never be fixed. I think there’s still things to be done before you’re at that point, but that’s my one warning to anyone I know who is in a situation like this
My personal opinion would be that you start setting firm expectations with your son, tell him he will need to either be enrolled in an educational program (of any kind) or living on his own within x months (6 months sounds good to me), remind him of it weekly if he is not making progress along these lines. As it gets nearer to six months, start figuring out the process for having him legally removed from your home–he most likely will need to be evicted. You’ve saved money up for his schooling, if he isn’t going to use it, I would make him aware you will help set him up with a living situation, obviously it’s your discretion what you think is appropriate. You need to create an off-ramp for this situation. Your son is gainfully employed so can at least follow some semblance of rules, I think you should create a structured situation, where he has time to process and “comply” to get him out of the house (or enrolled in some kind of educational program), and then do what is necessary to follow through on that.
Thanks @medstar, that ship sailed years ago! Yes, he was evaluated more than once by a pediatric specialist when he was a child. Various “exceptions,” both high- and low-functioning, were diagnosed but neither of the specialists he saw wanted to officially diagnose him with Asperger’s, mostly because his “theory of mind” was much more developed than what they see in someone with that diagnosis.
He’s 23 now, performing well in a Ph.D. program, lives on his own thousands of miles away from his parents, supports himself, has a steady girlfriend, and is happy. He’s definitely not perfect, but I am almost ready to breathe a sigh of relief that he has made it to adulthood and is okay. (I’ll wait til he’s 26 or so to completely exhale; schizophrenia runs in my bio family and I know onset may not be until early 20s in young men. I do think he’s at a bit of a risk there.)
I’ve stayed out of this thread until now for various reasons, but I do have one request for those participating:
Would you all please not issue amateur diagnoses and prescriptions based on brief accounts of a complete stranger’s behavior?
I think there have been a few useful pieces of advice in this thread (especially from @CairoCarol ), but speaking as someone who had some very similar issues myself, I just don’t think remote diagnoses of “computer addiction” or “a blockage”, and advocating “tough love” measures are at all useful, and are in fact potentially dangerous.
Thank you.
As someone with OCD, I would like to chime in with two cents:
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It’s common for people with OCD to have a bit of a split nature, such that they have an intellectual side that is fully capable (such as your son’s tech and networking skills); indeed, maybe even ahead of peers, but an emotional side that lags far behind. Rather than criticizing your son for his emotional immaturity (which he well deserves but will just make him retreat and feel worse,) I suggest you point out to him: “You’re extremely capable and advanced when it comes to tech networking and computer stuff, why can’t your emotional maturity also rise to the level of matching your tech-skills maturity?”
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Many OCD people have a “public reason” for why they want or don’t want to do something, but then a private “real reason” why they do or don’t (which may be a reason that embarrasses them). For instance, an OCD person may say “I don’t like dogs” as a way of trying to avoid going to Susan’s house party, when the real reason is that he just hates Susan, period. There may be some hidden reason why your son is afraid of or doesn’t want to go to college, or do other things. To give personal examples, I used to be unwilling to watch my mom cook food because I couldn’t stand the sight of her doing any food prep because all I could think of was “You’re contaminating this, you’re contaminating that” and eventually after watching her cook I couldn’t eat the food. The only way I could eat her cooked food was to stay far away and never watch her cook it. But I didn’t want to reveal the reason because she would think I was being unreasonable-OCD again.Or the time that I couldn’t stand my church’s liquid hand soap because I knew people would be rinsing hands briefly and then leaving soap residue wherever they touched their hands next, but I wasn’t going to tell the church that and be thought of “there goes OCD Velocity again”, so I simply bought a bottle of foaming hand soap and brought it to church and secretly substituted it for the sticky liquid stuff without telling anyone. Whatever it may be, you may need to find out what your son’s “real reasons” are for things.
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What exactly is your son’s OCD about? Germs, people, rituals, phobias?
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To get him to go to college, it might help to point out that college is kind of like a halfway home - it offers the benefits of being such as place to sleep, food to eat, etc. while also still letting you get an education. So it’s like being home for 4 more years, if you can sell the plan to him that way.
The alternative, really, is to accept that pushing out a child who is unable to function in the world without help is a new development in history and not necessarily the right one.
Before, I don’t know maybe the mid-20th century, if you had a child like this then either you had them committed or you kept them at home and took care of them. Saying that, because someone is biologically 18 years old, they must leave the house, they must act like a proper adult, and they’re a horrible, awful person if they can’t achieve that isn’t necessarily reasonable if the evidence says they just aren’t ready for that and we don’t have the medical technology to actually correct the situation.
There is no law that you have to kick the guy out of your house. That’s just the social norm.
And, in theory, if you keep him at the house maybe you’re there to stop him from making a bad choice or harming himself. But also just as possible, because you’re there and you have expectations of him and you have emotions and a life, where things can change, you end up being the cause of him harming himself.
But ultimately those are the options. Either you kick him out or your resolve yourselves to being his nurses for an unknown number of future decades. The latter is a real option. People have done it throughout history and that’s just what it was. You give him food and he just quietly lives in your attic or wherever you slot him.
Addendum: I like the state support idea.
I’m presuming that the parent does understand the situation and can reasonably pick and choose what they feel is relevant and on-point.
As you say, I don’t know any of the relevant people and that does mean that I don’t know that my recommendations are relevant. Likewise, it means that I don’t know that they’re wrong. If I and everyone else assumes that we’re wrong then we will all just be quiet and the OP will have no chance to get any feedback. That’s not really to anyone’s advantage.
Yes, thanks @CairoCarol, I meant to say I really appreciated hearing your story about your son. It’s good to hear that success stories can come out of that kind of a situation.
So much of an outpouring of support it’s getting hard to answer everyone individaully, so I’m sorry if I don;t, but I really appreciate it and thanks everyone!
Totally the case with my son. He does this all the time. He’ll say something like he’s “too tired” to go somewhere or do something he needs to do when he really has anxiety about it.
All of the above. He also has fears about things he hears in the news, like the product shortages he fears are going to lead to a complete collapse of society. RE: his computer purchase that went nuclear yesterday, he wasn’t going to buy a new computer right away, but he feared the graphics card shortage was going to mean there will be no more soon.
Nope, he’s also extremely right-wing and thinks colleges are hotbeds of Commie sympathizers indoctrinating the young.
Oh, and this:
Great advice, you’re describing my son so well it’s like you know him. But, I’ve had conversations with him along those lines about a million times.
{{{solost}}}
Sending positive and supportive vibes your way.
I don’t feel comfortable speaking publicly about my experiences as a parent to a son with some similar issues, but if you want to pvt msg I’m always here.
Or, if you just want to vent, I’m also here.
Please take care of yourself.
His behavior sounds similar to my son’s at various points. At the risk of offending gdave, I will mention that my son is ASD. My advice is to negotiate with the son to get him to a doctor, and take it from there. I believe that your son needs a psychiatrist for a complete diagnosis, but a PCP is a good starting point.
As far as your son and the piece of land, it may help to ask him what it is about that idea that is attractive. Is it more control over his own life? Quiet? Something else? You could also suggest that he try it out before committing. Something like camping on his own for a few days, then a week - that sort of thing. I think you’re right that he will hate it.
I hope he gets it all figured out.
OP did ask for advice. And his account is all the information we have. My assumption was that he realizes he’s so close to the problem that he might not be able to see some important points, but is quite capable of determining which suggestions are not workable for his situation. Based on his responses, I’m right.