To despair at how helpless some people are

[ThankYouVeryMuch]

You see it on here all the time, poster says they’re in a difficult situation and lots of people respond with sensible advice and details of organisations they can call for help and there’s always a reason why they can’t ask for help.

I saw a job at a local hair salon advertised on Facebook, 1 person posted “interested” underneath so the salon owner responds with their contact details (that were in the ad) and asks for a cv and the person responds “I don’t have a cv, nevermind” or someone else put on my local Facebook group saying she was new to the area and asking if there were any new mums in the local area, so I responded that there was a lovely, free mum and baby group in her village the next day and I knew the organiser so if she wanted to go along I’d make sure she got a warm welcome, and the response was “I can’t go to a baby group, what if none of the other mums speak to me”

Some people just seem as if the world owes them something and they should get what they want without putting in any effort.

crunchy i s right that in the past everyone expected life to be pretty tough - a veil of tears etc; if you had a few good bits great but there was no expectation it would be easy or good. It's how we all handle the awful bits (and the awful bits will tend to apply to most of us at some time or other) that counts.

Kipling was good on a lot of this

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!"

The phoning up uni thing - yes it can be helicopter parenting but also the fees are so astronomical now it changes things. Kid getting in £27k of debt raises the stakes. Otherwise I agree that now in the age of Google a certain generation can't believe young people don't use it more for proper life stuff. It's infuriating.

They can, @kaytee87 , but they can still try to help themselves. The job applicant could have said "I'm dyslexic, so a CV is difficult- could I pop in and introduce myself some time?".

The baby group person could have said "I find baby groups a bit daunting... would there be anything that's a bit smaller?" or whatever. Not just give up at the first suggestion.

I love that Kipling poem but I always found it kind of tricky. Can anyone actually ever really do all those things, every time, without fail, and therefore be called a Man? Is that the point Kipling was making? That we'll never basically be perfect?

@ThePencil very easy to say, not as easy to do for some people.

I encounter needing help in various forms in my family. DMIL is controlling and manipulative but it comes in the form of helplessness. She levers others into doing things for her. Her sister did it as well. She pretends she can't do things or misses conversational queues to get her own way or it done for it. The Woe Is Me Show. Then dumps them until the next time.
DH has crippling anxiety & mental health issues. Yes, he genuinely needs help with things but wants anything uncomfortable done for him. Much of his issues were put in place by Mommy Dearest but that's a reason not an excuse. I refuse to do mnay things because I have to be his Carer but I'm his wife, not a mother to him.
Finally two DCs with anxiety and Aspergers/ADHD. I help them fill in forms and encourage them to sort things out for themselves but sometimes stepping in when they've tried but failed to deal with it and genuinely can't do anymore without melting down.
Three very different kinds of "needing" someone to step in across three generations.

Partly it's a sense of entitlement, partly a 'I don't want to learn because then I'll have to do it,' and partly laziness. Easier to get someone else to do a thing. Some people are so lacking in confidence they do need help and I've no problem with helping them. But I think for the most part the limp crowd need a firmly-planted boot up the backside.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are apparently incapable of entering a 6 digit code that is printed on the top of the receipt,in order to gain access to the toilet in the coffee that I frequent. They have to ask a member of staff to do it for them. My 11 year old DGD has been able to do this since she was 7 years old!

i s right that in the past everyone expected life to be pretty tough

It was. People literally starved, and died of horrible conditions.

But also, not even that far back, we didn't hear from the people who didn't get things done or didn't dare to leave house alone. They would have had to leave the house and meet people for others to know.

There are plenty of "helpless" adult professionals too!

One of my clients is a hospital consultant in his 50's - heaven knows how he manages his work as he is completely hopeless in all his accounting/tax dealings - when I tell him the date and amount of tax he has to pay 9 times out of 10 he pays the wrong amount - not dyslexia as it's not £59 instead of £95 - if I tell him to pay £425, he could well pay £2.50 or £1,250.00 - completely random. Every year I tell him the same things, every year he asks the same questions - just completely incapable of doing the simplest of things.

i think you have to take It sometimes and think people might not be able to do the things others find easy.
reaching out for a job or friendship group can be as hard as climbing a mountain too some.and then they have to completely back off.because they just cant manage to take it further.
but it has taken them huge bravery to do just that first step
of course there is others who are lazy cant be arsed etc.but I think we need to think on when just judging people and why they do things.its not always so black and white.t
there are people with many complex issues nowadays.you don't know whats going on behind people doors.

Yes totally. And I’m afraid a lot of kids who bring that attitude to their first jobs.

When I went round unis and polys (that dates me) we went off on our own. I remember being amazed at one lad who had his parents with him. Fast forward 10 years or so (so about 2002) young colleagues tell me perfectly normal to take parents "it's a big decision". It's been creeping up on us for a while.

Haven't RTFT, but I agree fully with what Claredelalune (I think) said about teaching and schools. I am a teacher as well - I try to make my children be a bit more independent, but it can be tricky. Without fail, every single lesson, a child will ask if they should write on the sheet or in their book they stopped asking "Should I write it in my book?" when I said in my best sarcastic voice "No, on the table!" They know I don't give a shit, as long as it's neat! Then there's the "Miss, my book is full!" which is now greeted with "That is a statement of fact, I am not sure what I am supposed to do with that information" (tbf, that's mainly because it's bloody rude, but it does make them rethink and reformulate it into a request for a new book). Today I sent a child to the library to do the homework which was due almost a week ago. He came back five minutes later "Miss I haven't got a pen." The no-pen thing is an ongoing issue. I had a chat with him as to why it was so difficult to bring in a pen. Apparently they don't have any in his house , so either his parents are too helpless to organise themselves and buy some pens (his dad works, and it is somewhere I imagine they have free pens, or at least plenty lying around, so it's not an affordability issue), or he is too helpless to remember he needs to bring pens to school. This child is not the oldest in the family, nor is he in year 7, so there really is no excuse. It really winds me up, because it will reflect badly on me if he messes up the assessment we are preparing for. Just very, very relieved I work in a sensible school that realises there are limits to what a teacher can do... And breathe...

I’m a probation officer. A mum once called me, concerned that her son wasn’t attending community service: I explained that he was in breach and could end up going to prison if he didn’t attend. She asked if she could do the work for him. 🙄

NCPuffin - Your scored through comment reminded me of a line from a film (cannot for the life if me remember which one) which always makes laugh if I'm reminded of it,where a boy is told to write 100 lines by his teacher. The boy says 'On paper,sir?' and the teacher replies 'No boy, embroider it round the lampshade!'.

I host international students. I take them to school on the first day then give them explicit instructions as to how to get the bus home. The vast majority manage brilliantly. One today - 16 - ringing me up hyper ventilating ringing daddy (overseas so why) making a right old fuss, crying that she is "lost". Parents have done everything for her to date and doesn't it show.

I think the Kipling poem Xenia posted is a bit daunting - as a PP said, for some people getting a job can be as hard as climbing a mountain - but that is not a reason to not even try. There is a real satisfaction is stretching your comfort zone to achieve something - anything - you previously thought was beyond your reach. Life is not easy, so I don't understand why some people think everything should be handed to them on a plate. How about this bit of Kipling:

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.

A lot of people are quite wet these days. I can't abide it. Particularly people over 40 who won't go somewhere "by themselves". Dear oh dear.

I've got a friend who has become increasingly helpless as she's got older. She does suffer with depression and I have been compassionate with her for years, but it does start to grind you down after a while as she just never learns from her experiences.

For example, she'll be on FB asking if anyone is able to take her shopping. Normally, this is in the middle of the day when most people are working. It will often be the second or third time she has asked in a week. Cue tearful rants about how no-one cares. I and others have tried suggesting that she orders her shopping online, but she just gets angry and comes up with an excuse. She'll say that she only wants a few things, or that she wants fresh stuff and doesn't trust the store shoppers to bring the best examples. The same thing happened when she needed to return a large electrical item to a shop. It was out of the question to call a taxi, pay the shop's delivery or hire a courier. She wanted someone to come in their car and take her, then carry this heavy thing about for her, in the middle of the day when most people are at work.

She hasn't always been like this. When I first met her, she had a responsible job that she loved and was good at. When she got an injury that meant she couldn't perform an important part of her job, her mother encouraged her to stay home with her instead of retrain or move departments. The mother helped her to exaggerate on DWP forms and generally connived at her not going back to work.

Her mother has since died and she now has nothing. She has diagnosed herself with ME/CFS/fibromyalgia (she varies between the three), and refuses most attempts to help with her depression and grief. I do not believe that she has a "real" diagnosis as the story she told about it makes no sense and is nothing like the experiences of others I know who have dealt with ME and similar.

This isn't a new phenomenon either. All of those Victorian and Edwardian invalid ladies suffering from nerves and neurasthenia were doing the same thing.

Kerala, yes I always wonder about people my age (40s)not being able to do really banal things like a zumba class "by themselves"

My kids went to independent prep, then independent senior school. All were interviewed by the senior school at 11/12 by themselves for two half hour sessions. When one of them went to an interview for the local high achieving sixth form I drove him there, and then was gobsmacked to be told I should sit in on the interview with him.

@Alonghardwinter - I bloody love that! Can't use it though, my kids wouldn't know what embroidery is (or a lampshade if I'm unlucky...)

Am liking the Kipling on the thread...

There are quite a few different issues on the thread. Some people genuinely have depression and other conditions which makes a lot of things hard for them. Others just need a kick up the backside and told to grow up and do stuff themselves. Some parenty baby their teenagers to far too old an age and never let them learn both to fail and pick themselves up after.

To the person saying you need to enter a six digit code to go to the loo WTF!! I am a highly educated articulate organised person BUT I am dyslexic and pin numbers are problematic - i.e. to get the numbers in the right way around. So yes I might well ask for assistance to access the facilities on those grounds! And if I had less general numeric skills, hell yes I would ask as well, why not. Why are you asking people to combat a secret code to use a loo?