Young men who get stuck doing nothing...

[Bunny890]

My younger brother is living at home with my parents and I know several other young men who also get 'stuck' at home - endlessly online, alienate friends, not able to even look for employment or engage with healthcare. I realise that there is a mental health element to this, but I can't help but feel frustrated - Mu

I know of a couple of daughters of friends who are like this. Don't work,make no attempt to find work despite being young,fit and able-bodied. Spend all day indoors on their computers or phones,and expect their parents to 'keep' them,as all their benefit money goes on what they want,rather than what they need.

Jordan Peterson addresses this issue frequently and has helped loads of men sort themselves out.

He says men need purpose in life.

www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jordan+peterson+on+men&&view=detail&mid=FE37D5A5F7EB5BD68439FE37D5A5F7EB5BD68439&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Djordan%2Bpeterson%2Bon%2Bmen%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

“Find men to support them” is exactly how I phrased it and how I meant it. There are many women who either don’t work or work reduced very hours and are supported by a partner but without kids. The same rarely happens in the reverse.

I didn’t ever mention stay at home mothers who are obviously looking after children.

It's got to be gaming addiction for some of them and rehabilitation and therapy should be encouraged like with any addiction... although I know its difficult if they're non compliant with seeking medical help. It's a difficult one.

Yeah, I've definitely come across stay at home partners or wives without kids who either stay home all the time (and see their job as cleaning, tidying, cooking, sorting bills out etc.) or work very, very part time for pocket money but leave the financial running of the house to their male partner.

"cleaning, tidying, cooking, sorting bills out etc." is a million miles away from spending all day in your bedroom gaming though, isn't it?

Doing the housework is an active contribution to the household, albeit it's easier with no children.

Quite a few employers don't want to take teenagers on before the age of 18 or 16 these days because of insurance purposes. It can be even harder for younger teens who want a paper round etc, but because of health and safety rules, insurance and child employment laws etc., a lot of employers are nervous about employing younger people, so they don't learn the value of work as early as we used to.

Exactly, if these gamers or pot smokers were actually doing things around the house like the women are expected to I don’t think we’d be getting threads like this would we.
They are more than welcome to start cooking for their mums and cleaning and generally not expecting someone else to do it but they choose not to.
The mums probably don’t have this expectation either but then also complain about their attitude etc and I highly doubt there is a man who comes home from work who sees his wife watching telly but hasn’t bothered to do dinner or whatever else unless she is distracted with kids and even then the expectation is still there.
A man attracted to a woman who is staying at home expects benefits of that too that’s how those arrangements work. It’s a mutual arrangement.
the mums of these boys aren’t getting any benefits here which is why the complaints start as the men’s attitudes become difficult to live with. I can’t see a working man putting up with that from a woman.
I can’t believe people still can’t/don’t want to see the difference.

This is literally describing my son. He dropped out of school just before A levels, due to overwhelming pressure, had a weed-induced psychotic episode for which he was sectioned and has not really left the house since, other than in a 'bubble' i.e. if his dad collects him in the car. So that's 4 years of a very insular and lonely life. He's completely financially dependent on me (although I don't give him money) and is moving further and further away towards any kind of independence and I'm at a complete loss as to what to do.

He won't engage with any kind of healthcare professionals, will hide in his room for the duration if I have friends over and will never answer the door. Other than that he's a lovely, clever and funny young man and it's such a bloody waste!

... my post above was in answer to the original OP but interestingly, having read some of the comments, he doesn't game (or smoke weed anymore), and is very tidy (much more so than I am) and is not involved at all in social media.

Lack of fitness must add to the problem

Can't you work with him on a plan to get his life back? Start with easy stuff, like just going for walks around the nbeighbourhood with you, making eye contact with neighborus etc amnd then build from that to volunteering, applying for a job locally, going back to college to complete his A levels etc, starting some sort of fitness programme or goal. It won;t get any easier for any of you if you don;t make it clear that nothing will change unless he (and you too probably) are prepared to do things that make you feel a bit uncomfortable or nervous, in order to create a better life for him.

Get him involved in everyday chores so he’s in a routine, also mowing the lawn, taking bins out where he might see other people, but still within comfort of home. Then next step answering phone or making phone calls. Small steps so he has some skills he can transfer.

Sorry but yr parents are enabling him. I am sure these problems didn't start suddenly when he reached 18. He is an adult, your parents are rewarding bad behaviour. Kick him out.

This happened to a friend's son, he is smart and funny but suffered with bullying as a teenager and then decided he didn't want to go to university but wasn't forced to get a job instead and it's been downhill since, I don't believe he will ever have an independent life now, it's sad and I'm secretly frustrated with my friend as she has enabled this situation.

Watch dr phil it's a family problem you can help but not enable. Infantalising yr grown up children is abuse. Parents help and enable to make themselves feel better not because it help the child.

"Watch Dr. Phil" is never good advice.

I wonder whether anyone who has had a sibling check out of active life will come on here and say “ my parents kicked him out and it was the making of him”. I suspect not, I think it’s very easy to say “ oh the parents are enabling”. It’s more complex than that, a lot of these ( mostly) men are non non neurotypical, many have a history of bullying at school and crippling social anxiety. Parents don’t toss them out mostly out of fear. Over the years, it’s true a kind of pathological caring sets in but I don’t believe that is the root of the problem, and in most cases suddenly turning it off alas won’t be enough to turn the situation around.

thing is though are we really willing to say that anyone who isn’t 100% neurotypical should be fully cared for by others?

Im the classic woman on the spectrum and maybe because of that i live a pretty normal life. I know for others it’s much more difficult but ‘oh maybe they’re not neurotypical so it’s fine actually’ seems like we’d be ruling a huge number of people effectively out of society and I’m really not sure that’s the best solution.

Perhaps the boy is agoraphobic.

There's a BBC Radio 4 programme on the original hikikomori here:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00b7lrg

It's from 2008 but Laurie Taylor's programmes are always worth listening to, if you like quiet academia.

An interesting point is that Japanese society doesn't have the same tolerance as, say, British society to taking a bit of time out to find yourself. The effect is that more young people (in Japan) simply withdraw and families often keep them hidden out of shame. There is no safety valve.

It would be interesting to know if this has become more of an issue in Western countries since this programme was made and whether pressure on young people has increased.

I don't recall the programme giving any indication on whether this was a male- only problem.

@cinema I don’t think anyone is saying it’s ok for non neurotypical people to be socially excluded, but sadly it’s probably a risk factor. I certainly hope that with more awareness of neurodiversity and better early years support society will be more tolerant of those who can struggle with everyday interactions.

See I strongly suspect than many who are ND, suffer from mental illness or a combination of the two are less likely to be successful at building social networks using the methods that get recommended. You know the joining a group/volunteering stuff that's always trotted out. When you're trying all these things in good faith and it's not working out for you people lose sympathy very quickly.

I saw it all the time with service users that had complicated MH issues, there would be a list as long as your arm of all the support groups and charities that had been tried and hadn't helped or that they'd been kicked out of. There didn't seem to be anything anyone could do apart from trying more of the same in the hope of a different result.

No idea what the answer is though.

I think the problem starts way before you get to the “kick them out or coddle them” phase.

If somebody has been brought up being explicitly told they can’t do anything by themselves and they need their parents to do everything for them, they probably won’t have the confidence to find a job and live successfully by themselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course there will be some people whose autism or severe mental illness prevents them from ever living independently, but the majority of the people like this who I knew do not fall into that category. They often went to university and coped just fine, then moved back home and never left.

Babysitter12. Society has been feminised,eh? Sod off back to the incel boards mate