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Parents of adult children

Wondering how to stop worrying about your grown child? Speak to others in our Parents of Adult Children forum.

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Original poster

Gaming, mental health of adult child slowly killing our marriage

29 replies

Followmedown · 16/03/2025 06:58

My adult son, nearly 20, was kicked out of his mother's house for aggressive behaviour a bit over 3 years ago when he was still at school. His attendance to school was terrible and he got a D in A levels in one subject. He nonetheless found a uni course which would take him but never attended. Since then he has basically stayed in his room and virtually never goes out at all.

He has been a gamer for years and now spends all night every night on the computer going to bed after my wife and I leave for work, about 0645 every day. I have been trying to get him counselling as he says he's depressed and self medicates with weed. He is very slow/ resistant to counselling (this is the 4th time we've tried to get him to go).

We are planning to move away as part of our retirement plan but I have no idea what he is going to do, where he will live, how he will survive.

My wife will not take him with us when we move and he shows no sign of coming out of this slump.

Any advice or thoughts very welcome, thanks for reading this far.

OP posts:

DamnedIfIDoDamnedIfIDont · 17/03/2025 12:21

andyouwillknowusbythetrailofdead · 17/03/2025 11:58

@DamnedIfIDoDamnedIfIDont OP has explained why that doesn't work in her case. The wifi is in her son's room.

The password change isnt done on the actual router but via website so there’s no reason she cant do that as a solution

LoyalMember · 18/03/2025 17:07

Followmedown · 16/03/2025 07:54

To be fair to him he's had some pretty bad experiences including death of a close friend while at school. The central problem is really getting him to accept help and make progress and when he doesnt it looks like he's perfectly comfortable where he is but I can't accept that. He's made no progress and is more isolated since his friends went off to uni. Until recently when he ran out of money he had been buying his own food and cooking for himself. He knows we're planning to move.

So what? Everybody has bad experiences. My dad died when I was 15, a friend died on the day of his funeral, and I was off for five days and then back to school. Stop making excuses for him.

Bingbopboomboomboombopbam · 18/03/2025 19:48

It’s probably a combination of poor MH, addiction (which won’t help his MH) and enabling.

It’s an easy life to stay holed up play pretending with no real responsibilities or consequences. It’s comfortable. He’s going to need to have all of this changed and it will be really hard for a while on you. Either that or he’ll need to sort himself out and sink or swim. It’s not realistic to enable this forever, for any of you.

I’ve had issues with my DD before as well, very resistant to keeping up with counselling and spent most of her time holed up in her bedroom blatantly lying about where the smell of weed was coming from. I’m not against weed, but not daily and absolutely not in my house.

It took months and months of us not getting along. I felt like a prison guard. Eventually things got better.

Mumofmarauders · 18/03/2025 21:06

AmandaHoldensLips · 16/03/2025 08:35

What would happen if you took some time out with him? Take him somewhere, just you and him, for a week say, no other distractions, and open a dialogue.

He needs to be given a firm hand to get him out of that rut.

Get rid of the weed. Tell him it's non negotiable. Get him into a programme.

He either does it your way or ends up presenting as homeless. You might even take him to the homeless shelter or housing chaos at the council office so that he gets a glimpse of what that future could look like.

He's hiding from his future and probably scared shitless because he has no idea how to be an adult and take responsibility for his own life.

There is also the option of him signing up to the armed forces where he will go into further training and not have to think for himself because it's all set out for them 24 hours a day.

Tell him he cannot avoid growing up. It happens to all of us.

You need to step up. Young men need a strong male mentor to set them straight. Better for it to come from you.

This is great advice, I think, firm but compassionate. We have a young male in my close family with similar addictions and I think something like this is probably what is needed.

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