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Losing adult child
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<blockquote data-quote="Kalahou" data-source="post: 668714" data-attributes="member: 19617"><p>Thank you Feelingsad, Childofmine and Terry, Thanks you so much for your time and effort to respond with caring and concern.</p><p></p><p>What a relief to have shared this dilemma, and not feel so alone with it. I think my son does have a low self-esteem and is very likely depressed (and probably has had depression for a long time - years) With this coming to the forefront of my thinking now, I will ask him to see a doctor for an evaluation. Fortunately, he just recently got health insurance, because it was required by Obamacare. I don’t know if he will seek medical help on his own or not. I don’t think I can force him to go to the doctor and seek help or medication for depression.</p><p></p><p>I know he will not be responsible to live on his own for a long time, if ever. He has no earning ability (no education or significant work experience). When he leaves, I’m assuming he will either be couch surfing around wherever a so-called “friend” will let him, or sleeping in a car. He has also been known to ride the bus all night for a safe place to sleep. Before his marriage, he lived with roommates, who took care of all the bills after collecting his share of the $.</p><p></p><p>I am wondering now that if there is a concern about likely depression, then I may contribute to more difficulty by making him vacate his room here, instead of supporting him in possible recovery. But I don’t want to waver on my decision for him to leave.Unfortunately, I worry that he will continue to be depressed no matter what I do. HE is the one who has to make the commitment to ask himself why he is depressed? unmotivated? And seek ways to improve his state of mind. Even when his children are at my house for the visitation with their father, he continues his sleeping all day and is not a good role model for them.</p><p></p><p>Childofmine, there is much about your situation that resounds with similarity to my own adult son, who is just draining our psyche and spirit because he is a lost soul, has made poor choices, with excuses and bad planning, and yet I still (at times) still feel a responsibility to save him. I’ve finally reached such a point of weariness. I do not want to estrange from him, but that may indeed be the consequence of my taking a stand to stop enabling him and making him leave his room at our house., My son is not overtly abusive, but is just so disinterested in us and is doing nothing to try to get himself on track, and he only comes around to us if he has a need for help and safety, such as needs a place to sleep, food, money, childcare, etc.</p><p></p><p>In looking back, I now see son’s past behavior was that he was a compliant child, although not very communicative. He appeared to be a good student in high school, with good grades, but did not complete college and stopped going after failing so many classes (no doubt because of non-attendance and not completing work). He has really never held a long-term job. Perhaps because of these traits, my eyes were blinded in a way to see that he was different even from toddler days (never so, so happy / not smiling so much), that he was never a go-getter, that he (as I now see it) depended on others to do for him, and just followed directions laid out for him. He was often forgetful, frequently losing items, not attending to take care of things, not planning even way back then, nor ever seeing urgency about matters, sometimes fearful, most always hesitant and procrastinating.</p><p></p><p>So I’m seeing much of what frustrates me no end now as being his life’s pattern from a child. And I wonder if these kinds of people can now or ever overcome their basic temperament / nature. It seems it will require so much effort on his part -- effort he is not disciplined to exert and does not have the personality for. And I wonder if it is right to just “throw away” these types of AC and not want them anymore -- just because they are so different from the normal societal expectations. If your son or mine was another non-related person, they would just not be in our circle of friends, and it would be so easy to avoid them entirely. But (at least re: my own son), I know there is no one else in the world who cares about him either. It is very sad to know no one else cares about him or what happens if he goes down the tubes.</p><p></p><p>But it is too wearying and draining to continue breaking our own without seeing improvement in his attitude to at least try to make it better. Sometimes. I feel I want to escape. Your responses here are helping me to build my resolve to make him leave our home when I return home next month, and stop enabling him. Thank you again for your replies. It is life-saving at this time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kalahou, post: 668714, member: 19617"] Thank you Feelingsad, Childofmine and Terry, Thanks you so much for your time and effort to respond with caring and concern. What a relief to have shared this dilemma, and not feel so alone with it. I think my son does have a low self-esteem and is very likely depressed (and probably has had depression for a long time - years) With this coming to the forefront of my thinking now, I will ask him to see a doctor for an evaluation. Fortunately, he just recently got health insurance, because it was required by Obamacare. I don’t know if he will seek medical help on his own or not. I don’t think I can force him to go to the doctor and seek help or medication for depression. I know he will not be responsible to live on his own for a long time, if ever. He has no earning ability (no education or significant work experience). When he leaves, I’m assuming he will either be couch surfing around wherever a so-called “friend” will let him, or sleeping in a car. He has also been known to ride the bus all night for a safe place to sleep. Before his marriage, he lived with roommates, who took care of all the bills after collecting his share of the $. I am wondering now that if there is a concern about likely depression, then I may contribute to more difficulty by making him vacate his room here, instead of supporting him in possible recovery. But I don’t want to waver on my decision for him to leave.Unfortunately, I worry that he will continue to be depressed no matter what I do. HE is the one who has to make the commitment to ask himself why he is depressed? unmotivated? And seek ways to improve his state of mind. Even when his children are at my house for the visitation with their father, he continues his sleeping all day and is not a good role model for them. Childofmine, there is much about your situation that resounds with similarity to my own adult son, who is just draining our psyche and spirit because he is a lost soul, has made poor choices, with excuses and bad planning, and yet I still (at times) still feel a responsibility to save him. I’ve finally reached such a point of weariness. I do not want to estrange from him, but that may indeed be the consequence of my taking a stand to stop enabling him and making him leave his room at our house., My son is not overtly abusive, but is just so disinterested in us and is doing nothing to try to get himself on track, and he only comes around to us if he has a need for help and safety, such as needs a place to sleep, food, money, childcare, etc. In looking back, I now see son’s past behavior was that he was a compliant child, although not very communicative. He appeared to be a good student in high school, with good grades, but did not complete college and stopped going after failing so many classes (no doubt because of non-attendance and not completing work). He has really never held a long-term job. Perhaps because of these traits, my eyes were blinded in a way to see that he was different even from toddler days (never so, so happy / not smiling so much), that he was never a go-getter, that he (as I now see it) depended on others to do for him, and just followed directions laid out for him. He was often forgetful, frequently losing items, not attending to take care of things, not planning even way back then, nor ever seeing urgency about matters, sometimes fearful, most always hesitant and procrastinating. So I’m seeing much of what frustrates me no end now as being his life’s pattern from a child. And I wonder if these kinds of people can now or ever overcome their basic temperament / nature. It seems it will require so much effort on his part -- effort he is not disciplined to exert and does not have the personality for. And I wonder if it is right to just “throw away” these types of AC and not want them anymore -- just because they are so different from the normal societal expectations. If your son or mine was another non-related person, they would just not be in our circle of friends, and it would be so easy to avoid them entirely. But (at least re: my own son), I know there is no one else in the world who cares about him either. It is very sad to know no one else cares about him or what happens if he goes down the tubes. But it is too wearying and draining to continue breaking our own without seeing improvement in his attitude to at least try to make it better. Sometimes. I feel I want to escape. Your responses here are helping me to build my resolve to make him leave our home when I return home next month, and stop enabling him. Thank you again for your replies. It is life-saving at this time. [/QUOTE]
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