Nearly 20 year old DS: no aspirations / plans

[NationMcKinley]

Hi everyone, I know this topic has been done to death but DH and I could use some advice.

Our eldest son is nearly 20. He did very well academically and socially at primary school / the first couple of years of secondary. He’s bright but definitely doesn’t like to break a sweat and as soon as school got harder he basically stopped trying. He passed all his GCSEs with reasonable grades after doing absolutely no work but then dropped out of A Levels after a year, as again, he wasn’t willing to put in any effort. He took himself off to college to do a diploma - again, same thing - his tutors said he’s academically very able, could easily get a distinction but has made zero effort. He’s just about scraped a pass.

At home he’s also pretty lazy: does the bare minimum in terms of jobs around the house, has to be nagged at constantly which we hate doing. He doesn’t really have any hobbies except for going to the gym a few times a week. He likes spending time with his brothers and is a bit of a home bird. DH and I both work in demanding roles and we have 2 other children, one of whom has significant SEND.

This all sounds very negative! He’s a really lovely boy as well: he’s kind, has great communication skills and is fantastic with his SEND brother. He’s one of the few people that I’m happy to leave him with.

He also has a PT job and a pretty responsible one at that. He does well in this as it involves f2f contact with vulnerable people. The money is pretty good but it burns a hole in his pocket and apart from what we insist he saves in an account he can’t access (he blazed through every penny of his government trust fund thing before we could stop him so we’ve learned our lesson.

He’s our eldest so this “parenting” a new adult is very new to us. We want to support him and teach him how to adult but he can be quite resistant to this. He doesn’t want to go to uni but also doesn’t know what he wants to do long term. He’s not open to career planning / support either from us or the college which has offered loads of options.

The plan currently, is that he’ll take a year out, work pretty much FT in his current job and figure himself out. He will be paying nominal rent to us and we have said he must save. He’s passed his driving test and is agreeable to the saving as he wants to buy a car.

We’re in London so I’d much rather he stayed at home and saved as renting, even in a house share is ££££££. But I’m still anxious of “failure to launch” / him just not putting any effort in when things get a bit harder.

Any words of wisdom? Am I just being a bit dramatic? He is only 19 plus I do think that covid is possibly playing a part in all this as he was the first cohort who did GCSEs as normal / usual grade boundaries despite all the disruption to education.

Sorry this is a bit long but I have used paragraphs! Thanks for reading.

I don’t see the issue tbh. He’s young and doesn’t know what he wants to do yet… so he’s taking time out to save while he figures it out. That’s better than blowing £50,000 and all university funding he can get on a degree that ends up not being something he’s interested in.

Let him work for a bit and be an adult with a job who pays you rent, drives and explores who he is. Let him breathe a bit he’s probably feeling very pressured to know what to do with himself.

If he doesn’t know by next year suggest he looks into some of the more exciting temporary jobs for young people - ski seasons, a summer working at the beach, Camp America etc to broaden his horizons.

And remember that what he does now isn’t his only shot at a career! I’m on my third degree and a total pivot at 30 from media to healthcare 😂 life goes on

I absolutely agree with this.

Stop worrying about him. He is SO young and these days most that age have no clue what they want to do. They head to Uni, get into debt and don't use their degree because they find out its not what they want to do.

Let him do his job Full Time. If he enjoys it, what is the issue with that? Let him work, pay rent, save, and take time to figure out who he is and where his place is in the World. Let him just enjoy his life without the pressure to have all this stuff figured out.

His path in life will come to him, as he goes through it, he will change and grow and new opportunities will open up to him.

Relax OP. Just enjoy him being a young adult, living at home, earning and figuring stuff out.

Does he feel he has any desire to further go into a caring profession . There are so many roles there and as he is very involved with his brother it might be something he would be interested in expanding. Maybe start volunteering with an organization and get to know career options in the field .

I'm not really sure what the issue is here? He has a job, he is saving, he is spending time with his family. Let him enjoy being young and responsibility-free for a while. not everyone has their career plan figured out from the start. Much better than him going to uni because he thinks he ought to and getting in all that debt for no clear plan.

Don’t worry! My ds is also nearly 20. He cruised through GCSEs and A Levels, putting effort in only at the last minute, and got average-ish grades. He suddenly felt some disappointment in himself after the results and started to think about what he could do to improve his prospects. During his gap year he worked full time (a really useful experience ) and started looking into degrees. He applied to a few unis. Then he went abroad to do a ‘discipleship’ course and a very challenging mission trip, followed by some independent travel - he learned so much from this and developed massively. He’s now just finished his first year at uni, he’s done really well academically, he’s very focused career wise (did an internship over Easter, now planning to apply for a placement year), he’s doing a semester abroad next year and has really thrown himself into uni life. I think the gap year was absolutely key to all this - your ds is likely to change a lot over the next year. Maybe suggest something overseas , like others have said, towards the end of the year?

I have two DS both early twenties. I don't see you have a problem here (sorry if I misinterpret and I'm wrong). But your DS is doing some work, he's not sure what he wants to do (but it's pretty early for that I think), he looks after his brother well (fantastic), likes spending time with family members (great), he pays you some money and is saying he'll make some savings. He'll figure stuff out if you let him I think.

Honestly if I told you my story you'd think yourself blessed (light hearted comment but it's true!) I think lay off him, let him decide what he wants to do. Enjoy him being at home still. If he could cook a meal for everyone now and again that would be nice - that's what mine do.

Thank you, everyone SO much. All of your replies are super helpful and appreciated. I think you’re all completely right FWIW.

I absolutely DON’T want him to go to uni without a plan. I really don’t subscribe to the “must go into further education” belief. I think it’s the sheer directionless that worries me BUT I may be projecting as I knew what I wanted to do from the age of about 5 (not always great as I didn’t ever consider anything else, luckily I mostly love my job). It’s also the fact that he really doesn’t do anything much. Again, I’m probs projecting as I was always doing something - my youngest has severe-end ADHD, I’m fairly certain it’s from me….

@Nofeckingway - interesting you say that. I’m not sure I could see him in a clinical role, however, I do think he’d make an amazing paediatric OT. There’s such a shortage of OTs and they make a huge difference. I had my eyes really opened to the role of paed OTs when our youngest was being assessed for ASD and ADHD.

Ultimately, you’ve all put my mind at ease and reinforced what I think I knew deep down. I think the year out will be really beneficial to him and I just need to give him some breathing space so he can work out what he wants.

He needs to pull his weight around the house - I would not indulge him in this. He needs to choose a task and take responsibility for it - do not be slaves to lazy adult children doing nothing around the house - he is working PT there's no excuse! Nagging is a horrible word for asking a young man to contribute to living in a family.

Sounds like he's doing great to me. Was expecting to read that he's not working. All sounds healthy to me.

I really agree with this - this is the only 'issue' I can see from your description. You need to sit down and have a clear discussion/agreement on how you live together now he is an adult in terms of contributing to household tasks.

Could he not work his way up in his current job and that be his career? He could supervise others, then manage them? To me that sounds perfectly reasonable.

Not everyone has these strong passionate goals about their careers but it doesn't mean they're a failure.

I was going to suggest ADHD from your opening post the description is of someone with ADHD
Given your update on yourself and youngest having ADHD it wouldn’t be a huge surprise that he too has it.
Burning through money, gets along with younger people, lazy at home, even that he took a college course (starting hyper focus then got bored and couldn’t be bothered revising 9 months later. Combined give a description of someone with ADHD

He could try out hospitality agency type work for a while. You work in different places with different people every single day.

My Dd and ds (both adhd) do agency work like this. They can do as many or as few shifts as they want.
They talk to many many people from all walks of life.

In the same vein, has he thought about cabin crew? Different destinations, different people. No two flights are exactly the same.
Being in London means there is also a choice of airports to look at.

If as I suspect from your description, he has ADHD (even a mild form) then a full time job in one place with the same people every day might be good at first but like the college course, once the monotony sets in he will be back to square one and burning through any money he has managed to save just to give him the dopamine to get through another day at work.

Of course he may not know what he wants to do with his life but you are doing him no favours letting him only work part time. He is a healthy fit adult male, he should be working full time and paying a fair rent.
If he can't manage full time now he never will. Insist on it or he will go nowhere.

@FairKoala sounds like my dd3 (18) with adhd. Is adamant about going to university in September but I can see her student loan being burnt through very quickly. She actually has no idea what she'd like to do in the future and appears to have chosen universities randomly - she actually selected them one at a time not all at once - and apparently she has no idea why she chose 2 of them and doesn't want to go there!

At least he has a job! When he gets a girlfriend, he will figure himself out. At least that's what happened to my brother.

I don’t want to read all of these comments but I’ve just read your post and until you said you were in London I was convinced that it was my partner who posted. I don’t know if anyone else has already suggested this but it seems glaringly obvious to me that your older son is perhaps neurodivergent as well. The reason being is you’ve just described perfectly my 19 year old who also has AuDHD.

Academic until year 10 when GCSE’s pressure started, wheels fell off, was predicted 9s and scraped by with 5s with no revision. Went to college and dropped out after 1 term as wasn’t feeling it. Now works part time. Younger son is also AuDHD and was diagnosed first and it was only with their advice that we sought a diagnoses for our older son but even though there is significant difference in their needs, officially they both have the same diagnosis only the younger one we describe as having autism with a sprinkling of ADHD and the older one as having ADHD with a sprinkling of autism.

The child psychologist asked about other siblings during the assessment and when we spoke about him they reccomended having him assessed, telling us that there’s an 85% chance that at least one parent is and same with siblings.

My boys are so different you’d never consider them to have the same condition but since learning about the older son we have relaxed all expectations and now we just care about him getting by with his mental health in tact. As it happens he’s incredibly similar to your son, working, saving and driving, gym, friends and just loving life. That’s all that matters, truly 💕

I read this earlier and thought the same as most of the others here, he sounds fab and he's still very young, plenty of time to grow up a bit and work out what he wants to do.

You need to get rid of the disposable income. He shouldn’t have much if he is only working part time in a job with low qualifications. You
don’t have to charge him rent, but the amount he is required to save in that account he can’t access should reflect the reality of his life choices.

If he has money to burn you are subsidizing him too much. If he is broke every month, even with a comfortable home, he will likely soon realize that he wants to make a better life for himself.

Just wanted to add, both myself and my teenager have ASD. We do our ND children no favors by setting low expectations. Scaffold them, absolutely, but don’t let them wallow.

Having done a levels and GCSEs myself, I liked having my mum round to cook me good food at such a a crucial time in my life. After a levels- they need to step up

I went to uni, flunked out, ended up living with an abuser whilst working NMW jobs, and had to go to live with a parent again. I went to uni again later and started my career at thirty.

It's OK for him to take his time to decide his future. He should do more around the house though.

I graduated at 21...and then again at 30....and I've spent the last 3 years training in something completely different (although it was suggested by uni careers advice 28 years ago!). I'm 47. I suspect I have ADHD although I'm a girl so it looks different i think. In my work now i am up to about 5 different part-time jobs which I work pretty much flexibly, and it helps me hugely to not get bored.

All of which to say. He sounds lovely, and he will get there, but I agree that he needs to do more for himself in the house :-)

If your younger one has AuDHD then I’d def consider if your older one might too. His may not be as severe but as a teacher (with an AuDHDer myself) it sound possible.

I would investigate apprenticeships with him if he wants to take his current role further (quite a few NHS role/routes for this) as he’ll earn while he qualifies and get it paid for too.

I think if he is working full time in a job he enjoys and saving a sensible amount of money at 19 that is great. I like the way you’ve suggested he review after a year.

Having no aspirations is not necessarily a bad thing - these can cause stress if you can’t realise them. As long as he has something to do and is paying his way that is good. This may act as a springboard into something better paid in time.