HI A dad,
I know what you are saying about children living with the family. Even here in the community location where I live, there are many adult children (and their families) who still live with the parents in an amiable, working, and caring relationship. In these situations, the adult children can contribute to household expenses, help with household responsibilities, and the older grandparents can care for grandchildren, etc. This is a local, cultural custom among some ethnicity groups in the state where I live. These responsible, working and contributing adult children are not the difficult children we grieve about on this forum.
The difficult adult children discussed on this site are the ones who (for whatever reason) have not launched successfully to responsible adulthood. All parents wish and hope to see their children successfully grown into happy, accountable and successful adults, taking responsibility for their own lives. We have all poured our many years of loving and caring parenting into our hopes and dreams for our children to reach the full potential of their lives. But this has not happened for our difficult children discussed on this site.
The difficult children here on this forum may have substance abuse or mental health or attitude problems, are lazy, do not work at a steady job, do not contribute to the family, are often angry and abusive, are involved in troublesome legal or criminal matters. With all these problems, they increasingly rely and want dependence (if allowed) on the parents to enable them, which then causes the situation to spiral downward, not good for either side as seen in the resulting grief and pain expressed here.
In your country I’m sure that most of the adult children taking cultural responsibility for your elders are successful and helpful to the family’s situation. There are also surely some who fit the “difficult child” profile that are described on this site. Thank you for being here and sharing your perspective and wisdom. We appreciate all comfort, support, interest and assistance to know we are not alone and that we are going to be alright.
Take care, Kalahou
