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

Why do parents wait until their children are 18 and then can't get them help. Were their sons completely normal and just switched? No they ignored shit behaviour from there children but find it challenging now their little prince's and princesses are adults.

I think life at school, life at university and life in the "real world" can be such different experiences that it can muddy the waters.

At university I was fine, arrived not knowing anyone but was able to make knew friends and have positive experiences. It simply didn't occur to either myself or my parents that I'd be unable to do the same thing in the real world despite trying and really wanting to. Without the structure of living on a campus and being in education I didn't have the skills.

Yes, although adolescence can be challenging, I think the period in your early twenties between leaving full time education and establishing yourself in your first job can be very pressurised.

Up to that point, everything is theoretical in a way and you are perhaps still being financed by your parents. And you are suddenly faced in your twenties with the reality of confronting who you are and what you want to be. You need to find your first independent accommodation that you are responsible for, financially and practically, landing your first job is a big pressure, the onus is on you to establish yourself as an independent adult and extended family and friends are asking "so what's X doing now?". I think people underestimate how anxiety provoking that transition can be.

I'm so sorry to hear that but I genuinely don't understand what you mean. It's awful for young people whose first jobs are WFH - that make sit hard, but the rest of life is improving and opening up.

Can you not join some clubs, societies and sports teams which meet regularly just as they would on campus, and meet people that way? Allow more time for friendships to develop, but they will if you keep turning up.

Or go on under 30s adventure holidays and all hang out together and maybe contact people afterwards?

Are you still in touch with uni friends?

I’ve just watched a documentary where a young man killed his mother because she told him to get out of the house and get a job, he stabbed her in the back because ‘ how dare she expect me to get a job when I’m only playing on the computer all day, I can’t even be bothered to shower or brush my teeth, all my needs are catered for by the bank of mum and dad anyway’ crap attitude!

Things have obviously moved on now and I have a more conventional life with a house, husband, kids, friends etc. but what I remember is that nothing worked for me.

I couldn't replicate what worked at uni, the groups I tried had people from all over the county and were too spread out for me (I was bloody useless learning to drive). People turned up too sporadically or else it was a monthly thing anyway and I think to build rapport with people you need to hang out fairly frequently. Volunteering was mostly working on your own. I figured I was already spending loads of time on my own so this was the last thing I needed.

Having a base with large numbers of people your age centered around it is different to real life with a wide mix of ages, people spread out all over the place and with jobs and kids taking up time. Sometimes you can't find your people.

I've considered that I could be ND and suspect as I said before that there are subset of us who are at best less receptive to the traditional "put yourself out there" strategy that gets talked about. At worst I think for some this advice doesn't work at all.

Same has happened to my friend's brother. Still lives at his parent's house, they are in late 70s now and still do all his meals, washing etc. The brother is 52, gaming, gambling or sleeping, never goes out, never had a career. Just a couple of jobs after finishing university. He was treated as the golden child his whole childhood, had excellent private education and everything he desired and inheritance money from grandparents. His brother is 50 and was jealous of him growing up but has been very successful in life, great career, owns house (helped by spending inheritance wisely), married with kids etc. After reading a comment on here I am wondering if being held up as the golden child and shown off to be the one who will be amazing, felt a huge pressure and just clicked out of life. Where as my friend needed to prove himself and went on to be successful.

It sounds like he has your parents over a barrel.. any pressure from them to change or get a job and he threatens suicide. It's emotional blackmail/ abuse. The fact he refuses to take medication is very telling...he has zero interest in getting 'better', he'd rather punish your mum instead.

But where this is the case, you really HAVE to step up as a parent. DS has ASD, ADHD and physical disability. He was the kid at school no one ever wanted around. It broke me to witness but I kept at it, inviting people over to play who never returned the offer (but always accepted because i made bloody sure they had a good time), making him stick with a few clubs and socities for things I knew he liked and making him at least try a few others.

Now he is at uni, has loads of friends and a girlfriend. If he comes home and hangs around I will start all over again, getting him out into the world, volunteering , playing music, going to the gym etc. ND men may need heaps more support that NT men before they can launch successfully into society,. but it can be done. I know quite a few autistic men with jobs, wives, children, good lives. It just takes longer to prep them for the world.

The solution to this is actually building social networks, as in, actively making communities. We randomly sort of drop these vulnerable, excluded people into equally random groups who may be anything from cliquey to utterly disengaged with each other, then expect bonds and networks to happen by magic. It doesn’t work like that!

Firstly, lonely, disengaged, depressed people are likely to need pre-socialising, just as long-term unemployed need employability skills: medication for depression and anxiety, one-to-one mentoring, progressing to small groups that they get to know and trust, then larger groups when they’re ready.

Secondly, we need to look at ourselves as communities. Community in the Western world is utterly, absolutely shit, to the point of being non-existent. In a world where many of us barely know who our neighbours are, and where neighbourhoods turn into ghost towns by day, how is it such a surprise to find that social skills are difficult to come by? We need to think about how we, collectively, can come together to prevent such isolation. These stuck young people are symptoms of much deeper problems with Western suburban living.

I really agree with the need to pre-socialise. Given how there is often a genetic component to these things I bet a lot of these people have parents that don't have brilliant social skills either. Good enough to meet a partner but only just, you see it all the time on here, people who's partner is their best friend and who say they don't need anyone else.

My own parents are very introverted. During my formative teenage years I can probably count on one hand how many times I saw them socialise outside of the family. I think you really benefit from seeing behaviour modelled. There came a point in my late teens when they realised I had terrible social skills but it obviously wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't been so unsocial as a family.

My point of all that waffle is I suspect some parents will struggle to spot things going wrong and know how to help their kids with this.

Wider communities also have problems. As I've said when I was a working age adult I did not feel accepted by other adults and even felt judged. People who are already struggling with social isolation are not going to want to keep putting themselves in situations where this happens.

Sorry, to clarify, as a working age adult who lived with parents I felt excluded by other adults. I didn't once I was moved out. The transition was pretty much instant which really surprised me.

I really admire what you achieved. It's not easy.

Amazing @TomPinch . If my brother had had this input as a kid he’d be in a very different place. My cousin has 2 kids with ASD and she has taken a similar approach to you, intensive support, and with one at least it’s paying off.

Interesting points @WhatNoRaisins . We grew up abroad where we had a ready made community of other Europeans. No need to be particularly outgoing to gather friends. The skills gap was stark once we got back to England as teenagers. Retrospectively dad was probably on the autistic spectrum, our parents didn’t equip us for navigating English social life . I was ok but my brother struggled horribly.

See if this was something that all young people needed teaching we'd know how to do it, it would be like say potty training, there would be books and blogs for those who didn't know. You know very clearly that a person doesn't have that skill.

With social skills many do just seem to naturally pick them up even if their circumstances aren't the best. I suspect a lot of people assume everyone is like this and until you've got a teenager or an adult in a bad way socially on your hands you won't realise that they needed this approach.

@TheGander I suspect some of us do much better with a bit of structure. Never been part of an expat community but I can imagine it could act as a bit of a social base.

Sad 😔

Turn off the wifi. Send him to work as a jackaroo on a remote Australian sheep station for 3 months without internet or devices, or he’s kicked out of home. He’s addicted to gaming and internet and porn, and taking it out on your parents, expecting your mum to give up work, is destroying the family. There’s nothing wrong with him, he needs to get off the internet and get a life.

Agreed

Oh dear 😳

I think there are complex factors, which almost certainly vary according to each case. My youngest hardly leaves the house, but he has a number of mental illnesses, and the withdrawal from society started when he was a young teenager (unable to attend school and so on due to serious anxiety disorders).

Yet, I feel, as parent(s) (possibly usually the mother) we can enable this behaviour. The enabling is nothing to do with spoiling the young person, treating him/her like a golden child and so on. It is often because the young person is accessing no other help at all, and if they were not gaming, they would be hiding from the world, under the bedcovers, engaging in multiple rituals and so on. It is enabling because turning off the internet, not providing any resources and so on, does not work. The internet is often their primary coping mechanism, and unless we are prepared to watch the young person starve, we will provide food for them.

Furthermore, as a single parent (and whether we have partners or not, often we function as single parents in these cases), spending hours, and I mean hours, trying to get a young person to leave the house, even for the fifteen minutes it takes to sign on for benefits, is emotionally and mentally draining. Add to the mix the fact that the parent may work from home, and the situation becomes even more locked in.

The only positive so far, from my son's hermitage, is that he has access to the internet, and he has started to communicate with people who have a similar mental illnesses. He shares his communication with me, and it does seem to be helpful. I hope that through the positive responses he receives, and perhaps finding some online validation, he may start to recover. May be he will venture out one step at a time.

So, yes, there may be some people who cut themselves off and remain at home as a lifestyle choice. However, for many, I would guess there are complex mental health issues and possibly (undiagnosed) neurodiversity at play.

I apologise for the essay.

No need to apologise Purple and thank you for injecting some reality into the discussion. As I said earlier, I suspect no one is going to come on here and say “my parents threw my socially withdrawn brother onto the street and that was the making of him”. I strongly suspect those who advocate the” nuclear option” have not lived with the situation. So much easier to blame the parents.

No apology needed! What you've written is lived, valid, and valuable experience.

Anyone saying 'turn the Internet off' doesn't understand how 'the Internet' works and those suggesting 'kick him out' are clearly A, heartless B, inexperienced & C, Part of the problem.

People wouldn't feel safer hiding at home if there weren't so many Aholes out in the real world.

The time of turning off the internet has long passed. It's required for too much of day to day life.

I found it necessary for keeping in touch with people over distance, my social world would have been smaller without it.

I posted upthread about my step brother. For him, gentle attempts to encourage more independence have triggered a further breakdown in his mental health, including breaking up with his girlfriend of several years and taking a (small) overdose.

On the other hand, I have a cousin who got a bit stuck living back at home with his mum and dossing around after working abroad. She did eventually tell him in no uncertain terms that he had to move out and find a job and it was the making of him. Had a fairly crap job for several years that paid the bills, found something he was more interested in, and now has a career and is married with several kids. His relationship with his mum improved drastically shortly after he moved out.

I think the big difference between the two is that my cousin had the skills and experience to live independently. He just needed some help getting back on his feet. He was also willing to work in a job he didn't really enjoy and had the social skills to manage doing something mundane without falling out with his manager etc. My step brother however, had struggled from a much younger age and was never supported to become independent, even though I think this would have been totally possible.