Dear Sugar,
My twenty-year-old daughter returned home from university after suffering a bout of depression in late May. She is doing better on medication (but stopped going to counseling because she “didn’t feel like it”) and is attending our local community college taking dance and make-up classes (yes, the kind you wear). She really enjoys watching TV and eating our food all day. Her classes start later in the afternoon.
She will be twenty-one in February. How long do we have to let her live here? She won’t help around the house without being asked and I’m tired of it. She is trying to pursue a modeling career but I don’t see that panning out anytime soon. She has been the underachiever all her life. Graduating private school with a 1.98 GPA, leaving university with a 1.8, but testing exceptional on intelligence screening!!
We feel we have been patient while she has gotten healthy but we see no improved motivation in her. She still sleeps until noon and won’t work unless it’s a job she “loves” (so she won’t take “just any job”). Our other two children are largely successful young adults, completing college and attaining work (even in this economy!!). When she does earn some money she buys herself boots! Two hundred dollar boots!! If we push, she cries depression; if we say nothing we feel taken advantage of.
How long should we give her and what should our expectations be? We are at a loss for how to motivate her. Maybe I’m expecting too much?
Help us attain our empty nest!!
M and D
Dear M and D,
I’m old school. I believe adults shouldn’t mooch off their parents unless they have an extremely good reason to do so (illness, disability, genuine financial emergency). You helped your daughter during her time of need and now that she’s stabilized there doesn’t appear to be a reason you must provide her with free room and board unless you want to. She certainly should get a job—and she will once you stop paying her way, whether she “loves” that job or not. I advise the three of you to have a discussion in which you inform your daughter that you expect her to become financially independent in the coming months and then map out a plan to do so. The changes you hope for aren’t likely going to happen overnight, but there are things you can do to make your situation more tenable in the short-term. Namely, your daughter should be contributing to the household as an equal, adult member, in the form of cleaning, cooking and other duties. Since she isn’t taking to such responsibilities on her own, you’re going to have to be explicit about your expectations. Make a list of the tasks you’d like her to do. Stick it on the fridge. Expect her to follow through.
Though your letter is seething with your sense of powerlessness, I encourage you to grasp the notion that this is a fairly straightforward affair. It’s called setting limits. In order to set limits successfully one must see the situation for what it is, discern what one wants and is willing to give, and then respectfully communicate those things to the involved parties. Setting limits is a lot like defining personal boundaries, which I’ve discussed in previous columns. Limits are not punishments, but rather lucid and respectful expressions of our needs and desires and capabilities. They allow us to be rational about situations that would otherwise make us froth at the mouth with fury. When we fail to set healthy limits we become bitter, angry, tiny-hearted people capable of composing letters such as the one you wrote to me.
So let’s talk about that, sweet peas.
You have reason to want to throttle your daughter, but it isn’t around her spoiled little neck that you need to get a grip. I understand why you’re frustrated. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of. You’ve raised a woman who—at least at this fairly typical, self-absorbed, post-adolescent moment—believes herself entitled to take from you without giving back. But dear ones, do you see your words? They are so fucking ugly. Your every vowel and consonant and double exclamation point disparages your daughter. She is your blessing, your obligation, your privilege, your great fortune, your light, but you don’t have a kind word to say about her. You characterize her as pathetic, lazy, selfish, dumb (though measurably smart), and unmotivated. You belittle her interests, scoff at her aspirations, and negatively compare her to her “largely successful” siblings.
Which leads me to wonder if you are part of the problem. What if your daughter is reluctant to leave the nest because some unconscious and primal part of her doesn’t want to go until she can get you—primal people who should love the fuck out of her—to love her better? Would she become more independent if you were cheering rather than jeering from the sidelines? Do you really think that snidely mocking her educational and career interests makes her more likely to become the “largely successful” woman you hope she’ll be?
You’re mad because it seems that your daughter is ruling the roost, but what you’re failing to see is that it’s the two of you who have the power. So buck the fuck up. Come out of your passive aggressive corner and duke it out with integrity. State your needs and wishes to your daughter about your living arrangements and financial commitments and then love the shit out of who she is, not whoever the hell you hoped she’d be.
There are very few people we get to love as profoundly as you get to love your daughter. Don’t squander it. In your rage and disappointment, you’ve lost the thread. The sacred thread that connects you to her. The one that has nothing to do with real estate or modeling careers panning out or two hundred dollar boots.
Find it and hold it and follow it as if the entire meaning of your life depends on doing so. Because it does.
Yours,
Sugar
59 responses
So glad you’re back, Sugar!
Dear Sugar: This column really hit home for me. As the child of a similar home, I cringed as I read the letter. I was fascinated and relieved to see you deal with both sides of the issue. Thank you for once again acknowledging a complex situation and beautifully dealing with all sides of it.
Dear M and D:
I hope your daughter can find a way out of her depression and support herself. I also hope that her leaving the nest won’t mean that she leaves permanently. Please understand that I speak from experience: I don’t go home for holidays, and I refuse to speak to my parents unless serious medical illness is involved. I have chosen others as my family as a result of being raised surrounded by an attitude much like yours. I also run a successful business (despite being an underachiever the whole time I lived with my parents) and am a happier and healthier person since I chose myself over my family.
Please, don’t force your daughter to make that choice as well.
“…some unconscious and primal part of her doesn’t want to go until she can get you—primal people who should love the fuck out of her—to love her better?”
Holy crap. *sniffle*
wow. at first, when I read Sugar’s third paragraph, I was taken aback by how *confrontational* Sugar was towards M&D, maybe even hostile?
But then I waited 15 minutes, came back, and re-read everything, and you know, Sugar is especially blunt this week, but I think she’s made some keen observations here. It’s impossible to capture the entirety of a relationship in a letter, and Sugar can only go by what’s in the letter. I personally found the criticism hard to read, especially the first time, but when I re-read this, the love and strength of the last two paragraphs shone brighter than the blunt message that preceded.
Glad to see you back in the new year, Sugar!
Dayum. E-e-e-viscerated.
When I was the exact same age, I did the exact same thing (minus the aspirations of becoming a model). I just fell apart in college and was sent home after a feeble suicide attempt. It took a good 9 months to get used to the medications and to feel remotely human again, during which my parents and little sister (who was in high school at the time) took care of my needs like a child, too afraid of what might happen if they dared to ask what I planned to do.
I, too, did weird things like buy really expensive crap and dabble in odd art lessons, things I didn’t normally do. I think I was still depressed during that whole time, it was just more subtle; whatever it was, I wasn’t thinking clearly and wasn’t 100% there to be honest.
I don’t know why I’m sharing this, but if I somehow found out my parents resented me this much, I would have jumped off the nearest bridge. No one on this planet wants to feel like that big a burden. So Sugar, you are so right in telling the letter writer to love like a mama again.
Wow. Hitting the nail on the head is an understatement. We all want and need to be loved, don’t we? And we all figure out ways to ask for, without really asking for, what we need. I wonder if M & D need her there to have something to complain about, or, to feel needed.
Thanks you Sugar. I had this visceral reaction when I read “Despite testing for exceptional intelligence!!” What does that even mean? And why two exclamation points?
You give the best advice on the planet. Those other literary website advice columnists aren’t even close. Accept no imitation!
M & D
Your daughter sounds a lot like me at 20. I dropped out of a decent 4 year university (flunked out really) due to depression and an eating disorder. Today, at 35, I have a degree from a top tier school, am a published writer, and self employed making 6 figures. By any stretch, you’d probably consider me a success. But more importantly I’m happy.
My relationship with my parents, however, is strained. They were not very understanding of my problems, though sure, they allowed me to live at home while I was going through them. They compared me to my other siblings (who have sort of lost their way– I’m the only one who is really doing well these days) and I was made to feel like the “dumb” “lost” “superficial” one because I didn’t know what I wanted out of life/who I was.
My point is this: she’s 20. she’s been through depression which is not a simple problem.
Yes, you should require her to get a job of some kind and contribute to the household. But don’t judge her too harshly. You may “gain” a “successful” daughter, but lose one that wants to spend signifcant time with you when she gets there.
A message from Ruth Stone…
“Marcia”
This distance between us
which stretches and shrinks,
as the breathing trees,
exhaling their oxygen,
lift and sigh with the weight of the world,
clasped by the molten center.
How in this braided pattern
we dance in and out
of our bodies which dance in and out
themselves, never one thing or the other.
What is this that we are
so like the mist that changes to water;
this rocking tide that we remember
imperfectly in our separate skins.
Burdened with ourselves,
as we love one another,
how to escape the unyielding law of the universe,
the self and the Other;
imperfect love.
That the self, sometimes
in sleep, admits the loss, the grief, and accepts
the burden of loneliness; embracing
what we will not admit we long for
this separation of mother and daughter.
Remember that until you walk in ones shoes you don’t really know the truth.
“Thank you Sugar. I had this visceral reaction when I read “Despite testing for exceptional intelligence!!†What does that even mean? And why two exclamation points?”
Stephen Elliott.
The exclamation points are one way to express the deep frustration of dealing with a very bright child for 20 years and seeing her banging her head against everything that a parent thought could help. As a parent not knowing how to help, watching your child struggle with life, struggle to find herself, her friends, her lovers. Turning away what could have been hers for the taking. She asked me if there was something wrong with her when she was in 11th grade because she couldn’t keep her grades up above a D. The school offered to test her for various leaning disabilities, she opted to go for it. They found that she was of “exceptional intelligence.” She wasn’t impressed, but was relieved that the choice was in her hands as to what she was going to get out of high school. Which was to graduate from the same school as her sister, with her grandparents there to see. It was grand!
As parents we see things from one side and sometimes need help seeing the bigger picture. That’s why we write for help. We can’t do it alone but are forced to because nothing else is helping. I am thankful for the tough words, I take them with a large grain of salt, but I needed the help then. And appreciate the insight now.
Electrifying column, Sugar! I’m sizzling to the roots of my hair.
Dear Sugar: YOU GO GIRL! Dear M + D: Listen to Sugar.
Thank you for commenting, dear ouch/letter writer. I have all respect for you. I know it’s hard to be a mom. Keep on pushing, sweet pea.
I’ve watched my parents go through this with my sister for many years and I sympathize with the writer – the thing about limits is that you have to enforce them, and it’s not easy when your child is mentally unstable. I wish her the best of luck.
This daughter might be the family’s designated “fuck-up” and is caught in a system in which if she’s not the problem, the actual problems might have to be addressed. The proverbial “black sheep” is usually not happy to have act out in such a way, but the system demands that s/he do so. Otherwise, the system explodes.
Like: Problem? What problem? If only __________ would get his/her act together, everything would be great!
But if _______ gets his/her act together, everybody else falls apart because they have to look at their own shit. So, everybody else keeps _________ trapped in black sheepdom.
Systems like equilibrium, even if it’s killing one member of the system. Systems strain to keep things the same. If black sheep tries to change, System usually does its best to thwart that change.
Read Minuchin if you want more on this.
System has to allow this young woman to change. Sugar is bang on: Mom needs to look at what the family dynamic is doing to keep her daughter enmeshed in this self-destructive behavior. I’m not mother-blaming. I’m just sayin, is all.
Good luck to all, it’s a tough row to hoe.
Dear Sugar… Thank whatever its Thursday and there is you and your column and I can read. Fuck ya… xo.
Thanks, Sugar. Everything is looking much brighter these days!
I love the replies. Gives me a lot to think about and good perspectives from others.
Ouch/Letter-Writer: I certainly agree with Sugar that specific expectations should be vocalized. Not “You should help out more” or other more vague things, but a non-agressive (passive or otherwise) “I need [for ex.] the garbage taken out.”
Also, on the depression front: even if she’s not on the brink of suicide, what “seems to be doing well” looks like to you may not feel that way on the inside. Obviously, I don’t know your daughter, but it’s a long, complex process, even with medication. I suspect that perhaps not feeling like going to therapy might have something to do with the therapist telling her things she didn’t want to hear.
Or maybe that particular therapist wasn’t a good fit, and maybe she needs to see someone else. Hard to say.
Anyway, my abbreviated thoughts on the matter.
Sugar you don’t need me to tell you how insightful you are. And it’s great to see both the original poster and kids from the other side of the fence writing.
I’ve been in a similar situation with my 19 year old son who lives with me. He opted to travel around and goof off for a year after graduating, using my house as a home base. When he decided he needed to find a job, he attacked it with less than my idea of dedication. It has been frustrating to watch because it seems that he could easily make better choices that would help him succeed.
And I’ve enabled his behavior by having low expectations of what he needs to do to help around the house. He’s living rent free with me, and he is willing to do whatever I ask if I ask it. On his schedule.
But the bottom line is I love him. I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing by accommodating his slacker lifestyle but I am doing the best I can. I did procure a part time job for him at my workplace and that has helped his self esteem which I think was suffering over his inability to find work in this shrinking job market.
Also, I like him so it is easy to let him hang around. He’s a nice kid, never deliberately mean or thoughtless. He likes me too and that’s worth a lot to me. In a lot of ways he’s very mature and kind and perceptive and good. He’s just a slacker and to be honest, he inherited a lot of traits from me, traits which I’ve worked to overcome.
So I can be forgiving of his slow path to adulthood because I have helped create that path. And I could choose to push him out of the nest by laying down some firm expectations for his own good. I probably should do that. But mostly, I want him to know he always has a home and that I love him no matter what his job status is.
I don’t know if this side of the story offers any illumination but it’s hard to read you, Sugar, without wanting to participate in the conversation.
Also your next t-shirt should say “buck the fuck up”.
M & D,
I can empathize with your situation, but I identify with your daughter. I was once like her, a lot like her, minus the modeling and makeup. My relationship with my parents has always been strained, but when I decided to move back home after college, after the relationship with my fiance fell apart, I lived off of my parents and suffered through my own depression. It took me awhile to come to terms with my life; where I was at, where I was going, where I had been. My parents were understanding at first, but it seemed like the more depressed I grew the more my parents resented that I was there. They never failed to remind me that I wasn’t making anything of my life, that they were disappointed in me, that I had *so much potential* but I wasn’t *living up to it*. Their comments only hurt and I slipped further into depression.
You might not realize this, but your daughter might be feeling just as upset and down and depressed about her behavior as you are. It’s a constant struggle to break out of that cycle; to feel useless and to think that you’re parents are disappointed in you. This probably exacerbates her depression; I know it did for me.
I agree with everything Sugar said. Tell her that you love her, tell her that while she may not be where she expected to, that you still love her just as much as you did before all of this happened. Don’t compare her to her siblings; I’ve always been compared to my siblings, to my cousins, and it always made me feel empty, like I wasn’t enough, like my parents didn’t care who I was, but did care who I wasn’t. Love her for who she is just as much as for who she isn’t. She may not be who you want her to be, but that doesn’t stop her from being your daughter.
Tough love, M & D, tough love. I wish you luck and I hope your daughter (and both of you) begin to realize that this will pass, that it will get better. It does get better.
I feel like you owe the letter writer an apology. S/he wrote to you honestly, and you responded with a barrage of clever language that has entertained your audience, but probably helped the letter-writer somewhat less, if at all. You do not blame the daughter, though she is an adult — fine — but why is it okay to blame the parent(s)? How much more helpful it would have been, how much more loving to your correspondent, who, after all, turned to you for help in his/her pain, to simply write, “Dear letter-writer, I think perhaps your daughter isn’t fully recovered from her depression yet. Have you explored this with her and her doctors?” And if you believe, as you obviously do, that the parent(s) are part of the problem, why call names? “Bitter,” “angry,” “tiny-hearted” — why write like that to a person who has come to you for help? Just as easily you could have written, “Perhaps you and she could go to counseling where all of you could have a safe place to talk about your expectations and disappointments.” And why drag out the f-bombs? They’re funny when you’re talking about trying to get your girlfriend off; we’re talking depression and a family’s long struggle.
Dear Sugar,
I, too, was a bit shocked by your blunt response, but, unlike the commenter above, I believe extreme bluntness was called for here. This is a very serious situation with long term implications for everyone involved. I’m a middle-aged woman, and I haven’t had a relationship with my mother since I left her house at 18. While she probably said far more harsh things to me than this mother does to her daughter, letting your child know that you think she’s not as “successful” as you think she should be is dangerously alienating. My mother is in very poor health now, and I’m trying to decide how to deal with what we all know is coming before it’s too late. I think you saw the same thing, among other things, at stake here, and, thus, wrote a blunt response.
I think the most important thing here, though, is that the daughter (and probably also the family as a group) get into therapy. The daughter has very likely not overcome her bout of depression yet, and she needs help. In my experience, therapy is a must for those of us who suffer from chronic depression. I think this is doubly true when we are young. I don’t know whether being ‘forced’ into therapy would work, but somehow, some way, this young woman needs someone to talk to about what’s going on with her. I’m sure that she is aware that her mother resents her presence right now, and that she doesn’t take that lightly. She probably feels awful most of the time.
I know how debilitating depression is. But I also understand that depression is difficult to live with for the family of the depressed. It is hard to deal with their moods, with their self-absorption, their ‘laziness’. But it’s probably more difficult to watch them seemingly flounder, especially when they are your child and you know they have great ‘potential’. It’s really hard. Everyone should understand that. I beg, ouch, though, not to say and act in ways that make her daughter feel worthless. Ouch – that will doom your relationship AND cause your daughter a lifetime of self-doubt (and probably self-loathing).
I think you were right, Sugar, to try to jolt ouch out of her pattern of thinking. She wants an empty nest, and she is frustrated. But having your daughter live at home longer than you’d like is MINISCULE compared to having her never come home again once she leaves.
Sooo…if mom and dad set limits, and daughter still fails to “buck up” and pull her weight, are they then allowed to stop paying for her “make-up classes” and kick her out? Because I have a funny feeling that a note on the refrigerator asking her to take out the garbage isn’t going to do the trick…
My son dropped out of college after one semester because “it wasn’t for him”. He came back home and couldn’t find a job that met his exceptionally high standards so he basically spent his days playing X-Box and leaving a giant mess in his wake. Was he depressed? Maybe. I know I was. We clearly defined our expectations and he clearly ignored them. After a particularly nasty fight over his unwillingness to stop what he was doing (ie. nothing) and take out the trash my husband kicked him out. He moved into a shitty apartment with a friend. He got a job at McDonalds and ate ramen noodles pretty much every day because even a shitty apartment is expensive on a McDonalds salary. He rode his bike back and forth to work. After 3 months he asked us to give him another chance to live at home and try community college.
We let him move back with the understanding that he had one semester to convince us that he was a changed man. And for the most part, he is. He’s doing well in school. He picks up after himself. He’s still working part-time. He takes out the trash without being asked (most of the time). He knows that we view him as an adult with adult responsibilities and he now sees himself that way too. Everyone is happy with our living situation most of the time. It’s nice to have him around.
So, let’s not automatically assume that if mom and dad thrust their daughter out into the world for a healthy jolt of reality that she will NEVER come home again. Free food and clean laundry are incredibly motivating.
This column and the comments expose a very real juxtaposition in me right now. I completely empathize with the daughter. I think of myself in my early twenties and man, I was a mess. Chronic depression, failed marriage, suicide attempts, etc. I suppose my parents dealt with it as best they could, but there was certainly a constant element of disappointment and judgement. Now, 15 years later, I have small children and I worry about my own parenting abilities. Thinking about how my parents must have felt during my difficult times … terrifying now that I have children. I want to insure that my children *know* I love them beyond all knowing and at the same time be communicative, healthy, supportive and firm as they encounter life’s inevitable rocky paths. The bottom line: Parenting is f*cking hard.
man.
man oh man oh MAN.
hi, thanks for reminding me of my screwup years. i did essentially the same thing in college – screwed up big time, was expelled, had trouble digging back out – and it took my parents being tough on me to finally get back to a sense of normalcy.
my parents took a VERY tough approach, but it was the only options they felt they had left. they wrote up a restrictive contract, and we all signed it…and i was held to it. the options they gave me were painful in general because they required me to grow and change into an adult and contributing household member rather than letting me remain the mooching dependent. i still have a copy of it, if anyone in this situation is at the end of their sanity and want to read and adapt it to their specific needs. i can be contacted at the website listed.
tmd:
i didn’t say that if they kicked her out she would NEVER come home again. i said that if they say and act in ways that make her feel worthless, she may NEVER come home again. my mother didn’t kick me out. neither was her criticism because i wasn’t meeting my ‘potential.’ but she told me straight up that i was worthless (and that’s putting it mildly) all the time. if they don’t continue to let her know that they love and value her, they may lose her. that was my point. read my response again if you doubt it. please don’t put words in my mouth and make an argument against what i didn’t say.
I am not an under-achiever. I am an over achiever. I just got promoted to Director. I have friends. I am loved. I volunteer. I am kind to animals. I think I am an awesome daughter.
My mother could have written that letter about me at 20 but instead of bitching that I wasn’t responsible and didn’t pull my weight she would have instead bitched about how I wasn’t meeting her expectations of what her daughter was supposed to be. I didn’t wear makeup, I didn’t want to date any of the losers they kept finding for me (I didn’t ask for help; I didn’t want help; I was busy, and didn’t want to deal with a relationship).
My parents never had to ask me to move out, I moved out as soon as I could. I was eager to be an adult and stand on my own two feet. As soon as I did that, my parents freaked out, because – oh shit! it worked! – and they weren’t sure that they wanted that. They raised my younger siblings much differently.
I got older. I got married. I still wasn’t doing anything right. I moved far away, and then I really wasn’t doing anything right. I didn’t know when to call and what to say and there’s a whole laundry list here.
As Sugar oh-so-insightfully identified, the issue isn’t parents teaching their child to be an adult. You don’t write to Sugar on the Rumpus for that, you watch a couple of episodes of Dr. Phil to get information about contracts and accountability and growing up. You can buy a book. You can read a magazine article.
No, what Sugar identified was the bigger issue, the issue that all the other advice experts wouldn’t have seen or talked about, and that’s the issue about sending the daughter the message that she is unconditionally loved, that she is not worthless even if she is not meeting her parents’ expectations, that while there are ways to help her get her shit together they should be careful that they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, that they don’t focus on OUR DAUGHTER MUST BE THIS to the point that they forget that their daughter must also feel loved and supported and that she truly has a place to land, not just a place in name, but when you try to land there you only get to fall so far.
I wish I had a better relationship with my parents. But I am almost 50, and they are 70 and change, and no matter how much I call or come visit or try to figure out how to fix this, it never feels like home, I never feel welcome, I never feel their love or pride (if there is any of that). I feel it for my siblings.
It is sad. You don’t want that.
sugar – as a mother, i find myself comparing my younger daughter to my elder, inwardly and even sometimes outwardly in frustration. now that my elder daughter is living away from home, i can see more clearly and healing is occurring. thank you for that final kick in the ass. this column has resonated with me like none other. thank you thank you thank you.
falnfenix, I would love to read that contract you signed from your parents. I visited your site but could find no contact info. Maybe post here?
This is when the very large internet feels very small…could we all meet for coffee?
I love all the thoughts!!
Thank you!
I don’t think you should pretend to be more tough-love than you actually ARE, but you should make her do volunteer work or something similar in exchange for room and board. Maybe then she will understand how easy she has it.
Dancing Laughter:
It wasn’t my intention to put words in your mouth. And no one should ever make a another person feel worthless, particularly their own child. The message that M&D should be sending to their daughter is that she is so much better than worthless and that they have every confidence that she has what it takes to pull her life together find a way to be happy with her own particular brand of success. My point is that depressed or not, it just isn’t helpful for parents to allow their grown children to sit around watching Jersey Shore and wallowing in a pile of dirty dishes. Everyone is different and maybe what this girl needs is a new therapist and lots of gentle encouragement. But can we at least consider the possibility that what she needs is a major kick in the ass and the opportunity to see just how depressing life can be when you don’t have any money and your job sucks and no one is cleaning up after you. A brief stay in a crappy apartment was just enough to convince my son that a few basic chores and a little personal ambition are a very small price to pay for the opportunity to live rent-free in relatively nice digs.
My husband and I love our kid to death and if we had thought he was sleeping on the streets or starving to death, I obviously would have gone and to fetch his slacker ass. But there was a point where as much as I loved him, I knew I didn’t want to spend the next X number of months or even years just being pissed off at him all the time because he was taking advantage of us and selling himself short.
ouch – shoot me an email at the same username here at gmail dot com and i’ll forward things your way.
Thank you, tmd! this is what we are struggling with. Can’t get her motivated. She is a darling child, but…she’s not a child any longer.
And the wait is excruciating.
“I don’t think you should pretend to be more tough-love than you actually ARE, but you should make her do volunteer work or something similar in exchange for room and board. Maybe then she will understand how easy she has it.”
We tried this in high school. Way past this point now. But, I’m willing to be patient for a bit more though it is very hard. You’re right, I’m not really a tough love person. I totally understand it and am willing to use it. I do have faith in her and I really do know that she can do this life stuff. I make sure to let her know I feel that way. We talk well and often.
Oh, and thanks to all you parents who are struggling or have struggled with this, I’m reminded to call my mom and thank her for being tough on me. I don’t think I would be where I am in my life if she hadn’t been there, forcing me out of my comfort zone of laziness.
Ouch, you hit the nail on the head: motivation. But it’s not that your daughter isn’t motivated to do anything, it’s that she isn’t motivated to do what you want her to do (or what she knows she “should” do). Maybe right now she’s motivated to not try new things because she’s afraid she might fail. Maybe she’s motivated to protect herself. Maybe she’s motivated to turn her brain off by watching tv because she’s overwhelmed by the depression.
Of course there’s a tiny chance that she’s motivated to bleed you dry, to get as much as she can out of you without having to give anything for it. This would make her a truly evil person, no? Stephen Elliott once said that there are very very few truly evil people in the world, and I think that’s probably right. It’s way more likely that this behavior is coming out of fear or depression.
You know what I do when I’m feeling depressed? I eat. I watch TV for hours. I buy things, sometimes expensive things, to make myself feel better. I hide in my house. The difference is that I am lucky enough to already have a solid job and a paycheck I can fall back on. It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time I was just like your daughter.
Ouch (!), bravo to you for reaching out and asking for help, and for taking the criticism so well. I want to recommend an outstanding parenting book: “Positive Discipline” by Jane Nelson. There are different versions for children of all ages (and I found it benefited some of my adult relationships too), but the original book says it all–namely that you should create a culture of mutual respect (rather than authoritarian), set your OWN limits as a way of setting limits for others, trust natural consequences to teach lessons, and deeply involve your child in the process of change (i.e. ask her to write that contract with you, rather than write it and ask her to sign it). Sure, she’s an adult and not a child, but boundaries, as mentioned above, benefit everyone. And power struggles are universal at all ages too. Nelson’s idea is to stop trying to control the things that aren’t yours to control. Basically, the book can teach you specific ways to set limits and still love the daylights out of your child.
Another child psychology expert I know often reminds me that as a parent my primary job is to make sure my children feel and know and trust that they are TREASURED. That part, at least, is simple, and a good foundation to inform everything else about parenting.
I loved Sugar’s advice in this column. I agree with her mostly. I have something to add though:
What about giving the daughter a choice about continuing to live at home and pay rent, do chores, etc, or moving out and getting her own apartment and doing the same?
I think it might be easier for her parents to work on accepting and loving her for who she is if they weren’t living together or getting their boundaries pushed on a regular basis when it comes to mooching and chores and stuff.
I think it’s time for them to shift into a more adult type of relationship with their kid– one that is less about being in control, and more about getting to know her as a fellow adult, a peer. By that I mean, a fellow adult who may have different interests and different ideas about what success means, but whose preferences should not be judged as less valuable than your own.
I think it’s a good idea to continue to be supportive on the health front, and also to let her know you’ll always be there to talk and help her troubleshoot problems, and maybe even to help pay for school if that’s your way. But the decision making power is now hers, and there’s nothing either of you can do about that.
While reading the original letter, Sugar’s response and the ensuing comments I have been hearing my mother’s voice in my head saying, “When you are grown up and are buying your own things, paying your own bills and living on your own you can do whatever you want, but as long as you are living under our roof you will follow our rules.” Needless to say, it was a refrain I heard repeatedly, whether in reference to my walking around the house in just socks or to how I hadn’t been completing my chores. I definitely got the message that the way to do what I wanted to do required my being independent. I also knew that my parents loved me and if I needed help they would be there for me, but that there would be a loss of my ability to follow only my own desires while I relied on them in order to regroup. They termed it “Being Part of a Family”. This was also completely separate from the “is she living up to her full potential” issue (which was ongoing and frustrating and continues to haunt me even though both of my parents are now gone).
My wife and I were forced to bring this same principle home with our foster daughter — a great kid who came to us in her senior year in high school. She was in serious risk of not graduating unless she worked hard to pull her grades out of the basement, and she agreed that she was willing to have us be strict with her in order to help her pass her classes. She put in the work and got her diploma and then enrolled in community college the next fall. Unfortunately, she had too many years of not learning good study skills to be successful on a college level. Add to that being 19 and wanting to be done with having her life run by the foster care system…she decided to emancipate. We agreed to let her stay with us and pay rent as long as she understood she was still a part of the family and needed to follow those expectations. When she, instead, wanted to make all her own decisions and not do her chores, etc. we sat her down and told her what needed to change if she was to remain with us. Nothing changed and we gave her a deadline to work out other living arrangements, which she didn’t take seriously but we enforced nonetheless. It was heart-wrenching because we love her and knew her history of being bounced around and that she didn’t have the same safety net as most other kids her age. We worried she’d be living under an overpass if she couldn’t get it together. She has survived, though, and we still keep up with her. She shows she respects and trusts us when she’ll tell us what she’s been up to and admits, without being flippant about it, that she’s drinking too much. We still worry about her, and grieve the opportunities should could have had if she’d stayed in our home. I still second-guess our actions a lot. Ultimately, though, we decided she needed us to be parents, not landlords.
sarah e:
which Minuchin book is the “black sheep”/system discussed? I am interested, because I do see that pattern a lot, in my family as well, and I’m interested in reading about it.
Oh, man. I was totally this kid. Excellent response, and equally excellent comments. I do have one thing to add:
Depression can be debilitating, yes. Fear of failure, and general directionlessness, ditto. The sure knowledge that you’re disappointing your parents? Absolutely paralyzing. One thing I haven’t seen mentioned specifically: Your own fears and anxieties about her present, her future, her ability to “do the whole life thing” — they bleed out, they fill that whole house like wood smoke, like microwaves, like too much air in a tire. Combine that with a desperate desire to please you, to do right, to do well — which I assure you she has, despite any appearances to the contrary — and it’s like … I can’t even articulate what it’s like. Like trying to breathe through foam rubber. Like war that no one’s officially declared. Maybe if you stay very small and quiet and hide, people will stop asking you to do things you don’t know how to do.
Mothers and daughters are ridiculously keyed in to each other’s emotionally undercurrents. Even when you try to bury the anxiety, put on the buck-up attitude and be all chipper, it’s still there, and she can still feel it. The best thing my mother could’ve done for me is provide an example of confidence and fearlessness. To convey that the expected path isn’t the only path. Stumbles along the way just divert you to new places. Not just give lip service to those trite messages, but really mean it. My mother said those things, but I didn’t get it. I only got her anxiety and frustration. If you’ve got a friend in a great city 500 miles away who can give your daughter a job, pack her up. Someone above suggested getting her to volunteer somewhere? Do it together.
It’s vital that she knows she’s loved, but the anxiety you’re radiating ought to come with more concrete explanations: you’re afraid you did a bad job, that you failed her, that whatever way you approach this worrisome stagnation now might be wrong. When you’re that age, you don’t see that your parents must cope with the same levels of doubt and uncertainly you have. Show her you’re trying your best, and sometimes you flounder too, but you keep on. That’s what life is. A series of flounders. You get used to it. The important thing is to just Start Doing Shit.
Anyway, just relax a little bit. Don’t skip the tough conversations and tough choices to keep a veneer of peace, but also don’t lose sight of the fact that your relationship trumps her eventual resume. She’s only 20, and she’s going to be fine. You both are. I floundered and stagnated a lot myself, and had a rather fraught relationship with my mom for much of my early 20s. At 38, I’ve left my beloved Los Angeles and much of my career behind to move in with her across the country, to have as much fun time together as we can — which might not be as much as we’d like, as she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer a year and a half ago. So I turned out fine, and we have a fantastic relationship, even if she sometimes doesn’t put the power tools back where they go.
@ac – what a thoughtful, nicely worded comment you’ve posted. you’re a good communicator. i really enjoyed reading what you wrote.
Setting a contract would be great – if you have set boundaries the previous 20 years, at least sparingly. If my parents gave me a ‘contract’ at 20, I would have laughed their faces off and nearly immediately done something to break it.
The difference between my parents and falnfenix’s – i bet the latter parents set boundaries early and often that were respected. You can’t start setting strict boundaries at 16 years old and expect your kid to understand.
Besides, life is a marathon, as they say. Let your daughter set her own boundaries that fit into your grand plan to get her out of the house. Her idea of life success when forced into it and your large plan for her will not even be close. She will seem indifferent but inside is/will be fighting with all her might.
Basically I had similar issues of letting go of the parents and wanting to live easy. Once I started working, getting positive feedback, feeling useful and getting my parents encouragement – I really got the chance to hit a stride. Of course, bumps will come and you can’t totally underestimate how intense they may be. Setting limits is nice but only one part of a multi-part equation.
Dear Ouch/M & D,
As the younger sibling of a golden child, I fought most of my teenage and young adult life with the aspirations that my parents had for me, namely to be more like my sibling. I love and respect my sibling, but we are nothing alike. It took me years to stop trying to prove to my parents that I was not worthless just because I was different. (I never proved it, just gave up trying. And it has nearly ruined my relationship with my father.)
As a parent of a college student now, I realize the love behind my parents’ actions, but I also realize how much better my life would have been as a young adult if they had loved me enough to see me for who I was. I also realize that the hardest part of parenting is helping your child become the best of who he/she is, not of who you want him/her to be.
Good luck with your relationship and working out a solution. I’m sure you have your daughter’s best interest at heart, but please be sure they are her best interests, not ones you’ve chosen to impose on her.
That said, most adults have worked at jobs we did not love, some we’ve hated. And she does need to help out at home until she gets back on her feet. Love and respect are revolving doors.
The transition from teen to adult is a difficult one, and figuring out the purpose of your life, and the career you want to pursue, not to mention actually finding a position in your field in this economy, is daunting. These parents might suggest/offer, once the depression recedes, is career counseling. One of the best resources in this area (expensive, but worth it ~$700) is the Johnson-O’Connor Research Foundation. It is a former unit of General Electric, and the approach was developed to help make sure people with the right interests, proclivities and skills were placed in the right jobs. I took my daughters through this process (one at 25 but still in college, one at 19 and a sophomore) last year. Both found it very helpful in focusing them on career choices that are likely to place them on strong and successful paths. A cheaper resource is the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book, available for $20.
The other wisdom a friend offered me when my daughter was going through a similar time, you have to decide if you are going to build a loving, close relationship with your young adult son or daughter, or if you are going to work
to control them. Once I prioritized the relationship (with decent boundaries – stay safe, stay connected, show respect), and stopped making so much “mom-noise” in her ears, she could hear the beat of her own drummer and started to find her own best self.
Dear Ouch/M&D:
Depression is not a mindset or behavioral issue. It has nothing to do with how well one seems to be doing. It has nothing to do with success or mood.
I have struggled the Great Beast my entire life. I have always considered suicide as one last drastic method to escape the Monster that has ruled absolutely over nearly all aspects of my life at times. It’s not because of wanting to die… I’ve never even really told my family or friends about those thoughts because I’m afraid that they won’t understand my mentality with the situation. Suicide isn’t something I think about or want, but if the possibility was taken away, I would feel endlessly trapped between the Monster, medication, and myself.
To say that depression is a complex issue is the understatement of the year. After going through severely adverse medication reactions, dramatic lifestyle changes, and severe psychological sorting, I have finally been able to THINK outside of the constant haze of Depression. The last few months, I can’t say I’m happier or more content with life, but I know that my entire thought process has completely changed.
Its almost like being trapped in a dark room staring out at the world through a fish tank full of milky water.
I know that in the past I was selfish, ungrateful… it wasn’t because I wanted to be or it was a conscious choice. It was a defense mechanism, the Monster talking. Spending lots of money on unnecessary things is a cry for help with Depression: it is a signal that this small insignificant thing is something I can focus my mind on right now that might actually help me get through this day/week.
Spending a ridiculous amount of money on something to make one feel better is not unlike taking drugs or alcohol for the same reason. Many depressed people turn to addictive behaviors (including shopping & internet addictions, hoarding, the bond for love despite who or what it is to). This isn’t selfishness, it is a coping mechanism because almost nothing exists outside the Depression, outside of that fish tank.
More specifically to the problem:
I have also struggled through institutional education because of my exceptional intelligence. A lot of why I struggled so hard (and continue to struggle) is because the curriculum did not stimulate my needs (being geared towards a crowd rather than my own pace and interest), being severely alienated from positive social groups, and deeply rooted psychological issues that did not even register on my radar until my early twenties.
Depression keeps me from doing the things I want in many ways. It tells me how pointless things are until I can’t see any of the good possibilities as being actually achievable, strips my drive, sets all my hopes and ambitions on that one little thing… when that one thing falls through, everything comes crashing down like a house of cards. Every positive step I built towards falls apart until I can literally do nothing but pick up the pieces.
I can’t give you advice on what you should do financially. Set healthy boundaries, but make sure your emotions aren’t clouding the situation. Remember, you’re dealing with someone who has deep emotional and psychological issues and is more likely to take things very personally or shut down. Sugar has it right on.
But your relationship with your daughter won’t improve if you can’t set those boundaries and develop a positive relationship with her.
I too could not hold a job unless it was something that was stimulating. I want to write… but good luck being able to feed yourself at age 20 with that career.
Now, I’m in graphic design. I’ve held this job for over 6 months (which is rare for me), and I don’t take days off to Tame the Monster. In fact, I do everything I can to stay clear of patterns that allow me to slip back into that behavior. I go to work M-F 8-5. I still live with my mother, but because I’ve gotten a choke hold over Depression, I’m able to really appreciate the relationship we have. I help with bills; I still don’t see the point of doing chores to her specifications, but I do what I can to help and I stay out of her space. She stays out of mine. We’re really close, a lot like roommates.
I know that I had to do some things in order to get a grip over the Monster. I had to get out of my abusive relationship. I had to deal with the grief I never expressed when my much older brother died when I was 5. I had to come to terms with how I allowed the men I loved to make scars on my soul. I had to allow myself to take time to deal with these things on my own. Only then was I even remotely able to deal with the Depression, which is a different beast entirely.
I hope this helps you understand what depression is a little better. It isn’t just a shield, an excuse. I am an English major, and I didn’t even have words to describe everything that happens until this haze began to slowly settle.
I thought I’d bring you all up-to-date on our little adventure in parenting through the internet.
Said daughter is now about to turn twenty-one, she expects a dinner and celebration, which we are going to give (she is after all out daughter), she is spending her nights with “friends,” people we’ve never met, returning home between 2 and 4 am, she tells me she’s goes to class yet has not bought any books or supplies, she has informed us how much she smokes pot (often) and enjoys it. She excuses herself from the home, goes to “her” car and gets high, so she can sleep she says. She hasn’t found a job but insists she is “looking.” She was happy to sign the contract with one minor change…that we give her 2 months to find a job, not one. Well, it’s been two months and still no work. We inform her that places are hiring, Target, Home Depot, pizza place, etc.; not interested. We don’t know where she’s getting money from or whom. She won’t bring these so called friends around, even when we offer to buy dinner. But, their names keep changing from week to week so who knows!!
Let me also remind you that she is a dear, sweet, caring young woman. She loves her Nan and her pets. Is kind to the elderly and the helpless (but don’t ask her to volunteer). She takes care of the chickens when we are out of town. In other words I think she does have a conscience.
My next step is to place her clothes on the porch and lock the door behind her! What’d ya think?
OK WOW. Honestly I found this site searching for “I wish my parents were fuck-ups”, because I thought I was such a fuck-up myself, that this would be the only way to justify it. Even so, I KNOW I am NOT a fuck-up — I have constant problems with depression, alcohol-dependance and eating disorders — BUT in so far, I do everything I have to do — I get excellent grades, and help around the house when I can. But lately my mother DOES NOT SEEM to get OFF MY BACK! It is extremely frustrating, because even though I have been to psychiatrists in the past, taken pills, etc, etc, depression is a thing I have to deal with EVERY SINGLE DAY, which makes it really hard to get out of bed, let alone even do anything productive.
The problem is, I don’t want to tell my mother I still suffer from this kind of thing, because she always thinks its her fault, or she wants to send me to therapy (which didn’t even work) or whatever… I dunno… I just dont know how to deal with it… but at least this post gave me moreless an idea of how my parents feel about me now. Wow. I must say it ain’t pretty. At all.
Ouch: While I fully understand that your situation as a parent might be different from my parents’ situation … I’m going to say this anyway: Stick. It. Out.
And 21-yr-old… you can read this, too.
My father is the world’s most wonderful, awesome, understanding, forgiving, patient person ever. EVER. And he’s STILL putting up with me screwing up. He’s been doing it since I was 18 – paying for my mistakes, slogging through my foibles, not losing his cookies at me when I called out of nowhere after months of radio silence asking for $2000. Yep – I did that. Right now, I’m 33, and I can say that it took until I was about 28 to really start making some progress. If he had not been as awesome as he has been, I would probably be homeless. Or possibly dead. And no, that’s not an exaggeration.
Stick it out, however you can manage. Why? Because the bottom line is, until your daughter wants to get better – TRULY wants to get better – she’s not going to. Depression isn’t rational. It isn’t sensible. It isn’t logical. And it doesn’t “go away,” despite medication or therapy or whatever. So she will need you every step of the way, and she will need you to love her. She will need you to not give up on her because she is not capable at this moment of really fighting for herself. She will need you to not give up on her, even while she is giving up on herself. Trust me when I say that everything you try to teach her and everything you try to tell her, while it may not manifest in “success” for the short term, she will take in and one day be able to use. When she is ready. When she manages to mentally make it through the haze of self-doubt, insecurity, self pity and all the other junk (which is what you’re seeing right now, in all that destructive behaviour), she will being to make strides that even she never thought would be possible. The monster – as another commenter aptly called it – will not be gone. But she will be learning how to tame it, and every day will bring new found confidence.
My dad made me cry over Christmas, when he came to visit me, telling me how proud he was of all the progress that I’ve made – how there are so many things about me that make me seem like different person, but how I’m not — I’m the person that he knew I could be, when I was strong enough to get there.
These things said – he did set boundaries for me. He did say that for he and my step mother to support me, they needed me to communicate with them (something I am awful at). But he was forgiving when I wasn’t great in the beginning, he worked with me to build the habits he wanted me to have. I knew he was frustrated with me. But because he forgave me, I could forgive him. And make no mistake – we’ve had it out, too. One of those major fights, in fact, was a turning point. It was over my 28th birthday, in fact, and it was the first time I’d told my parents EXACTLY what this depression is like for me, as well as the first time they’d really told me what it was like on the other side for them. You and your daughter may not be ready for that. I don’t know. But it’s a thing that I believe has to happen — I say that because the same has proven to be true for my step-brother, as well.
I know now how hard this has been for my dad. I will be grateful to him for the rest of my life – not just because he is my father, but because he has done more for me than I sometimes deserved. Without that, though, I never would have made it. I would have hit the bottom without the strength to get back up.
On a sadder note, as well – I haven’t spoken to my mother in almost 10 years. Much like my father has been inhumanly wonderful, she was likewise unhelpful. I had to choose – my own health and happiness, or having her in my life. After 10 years, I’m only a little bit sad to say that it was one of the best decisions I ever made, and the only other alternative I can see in these kinds of situations. I hope, for both you and your daughter’s sake, that it is not a choice she will have to face.
i red all articles and i,m afraid to tell you that i,m a mom of two wonderful children,25 and 33y.o. and was rejected by both.I,m a nurse-LVN,was working as a director of child’s camp,coach/teacher of PE…but both overweight and don’t take any my advice.They are “know all”and more than all.Very talented son,play B/B,UCLA football-player,has a scholarship,graduated UCLA/successful at job.Now ,he scream at me:”I DONT NEEDED YOUR PARENTING” after i bought him a new car when he was at High school.He trade it for 2001 Ford/total=$40k.+I paid off his credit card dept-$14k /dwnpt and escrow/ for his TWNHM after graduation-$16k…He dont trust me because i bought ones a pink T-shirt,given to my grandson 1-2 candy on sat-sunday ones in two wk…Bought Two scooters and he fall/He blame me…
Problem and misunderstanding with my daughter/33y.o…i let her go and live on her own when she was 30y.o= credit card dept+$13k… after 3 years living on her own her dept+26k /she did not pay me for rent or food but she will do shopping to the end…lost of the father…Lost of job…i was the one who was working two job,12hrx 6day,,,exausted…less time has to have with kids but almost was a lot of food…I,m in depression now…i can not do anything,stay in bed or on computer til i have to go to work..Just work distract me…no communication with both children… They make me accuse and cry always when i talk to them..they are not calling to me and i don’t want to ask for trust/respect from them… My all life and job-example of TRUST/DEDICATION…I distance myself now but its hurt very bad.They blame me
Wow. I found this article while glued to the computer, being this kid. I’m still not totally convinced my mother isn’t the submitter!
There’s not much I can say that other people haven’t already said, although I guess I can provide a slightly different take on the situation?
I have a very close relationship with my mom. She’s always tried to understand my problems with depression and anxiety (I’ve struggled with paranoia my whole life and have difficulty believing that everyone doesn’t hate me), and by now (age 20) understands how hard to push me without testing my limits. Usually giving me a day’s advance is good if something big needs doing (looking for a job, going shopping, yes these are actually big deals for me), otherwise I’m okay with hopping up to do minor chores a time or two. After a couple times I’ll get huffy, and then feel bad about getting huffy, and then get more huffy.
Due to my close relationship with my mom, we basically know how the other one is feeling all the time. She knows when I’m having a bad day, which I guess is good, but I end up knowing when she’s upset with me, or frustrated. When I was younger, we would get into fights about it, and it still hurts to think of her saying I was just lazy, or selfish, or not trying hard enough. Even now, I know that even when we’re just talking, or joking around, she always resents me a little for not turning out how she wanted. It ought to be motivating, but it just adds to the paralyzing stress and general inability to cope.
I’m much happier when I’m away from home, but I love, not to mention depend on my mother so much that I can’t ever see myself breaking contact with her.
Funnily enough, I do much better in stressful situations. I get much happier and more confident. I’ve always told my mom that when I have to do anything, I’ll be able to, I just never do anything if I don’t have to. I’m pretty sure if she kicked me out today, I’d be totally cured(?). The only reason I don’t make a move to get a job, get a driver’s license, move out, etc is because I’m too damn depressed to get up and do it. Also I have really high medical bills.
I have no advice. I have no answers. I can only tell you what I went through and how I’m getting out of it. I think the problem was the loss of structure and direction. I made it through college, but it was hard. I had one more year to go to get my masters, but I took a year out, which ended up stretching another 6 months longer. It was an architecture degree, but I no longer wanted to be an architect. I was a little lost, my confidence was shaken – It was simply easier to not think about the future. I think my mum must have talked to my brother – knowing that I’d listen to him and not her. A friend of his offered me a temp job in his office, I took it. I think that changed – I met lots of people, people my age who were working there at their first job, interns who were in university, people with stable jobs – all of whom inevitably asked me what I was going to be doing after this temp job ended. So I told them I was planning to get my masters, and I think the embarrassment of it all finally sunk in, and I got round to applying, more than a year after I should have. And I’m not there yet, my parents are still paying my school bills. I’m still fucking up along the way. But these days they’ve been amazingly supportive towards every small effort I’ve made to grow up and be independent. I have lunch with my mother every now and again. She normally initiates it, we go out, we talk, and each time hopefully we move a little closer towards understanding each other.
Ouch-
My son is autistic. There is a very real possibility that he’ll live with me the rest of his life. There are times when I’m devastated/angry about this but he is my son and I love him and there is no one I’d trust more to care for him. Mental illness is not really much different from Autism. When you have a child, you must accept the very real possibility that your child may be dependant upon you for life. It’s the risk you take when you have children. Illnesses, accidents. They happen and they change your expectations. Depression is a mental illness that modern medicine fails to treat very well. You have to change your expectations.
It’s been a while, but I suspect your situation is pretty much the same. If you’ll indulge me a bit, I’ll try to give you some perspective from someone who has been in your daughter’s shoes and advice from the other side as well.
While I absolutely agree with Sugar here about your attitude, I can also see that you’ve reached your rope’s end. You probably aren’t expecting your daughter to become a high level executive; employed and self-sufficient would please you. However, mental illness can crush even the simplest of expectations. I can imagine how frustrated you are now. However, you still presume that your daughter has more control over her behavoir than she does.
I can imagine how she feels. There is the overwhelming loom of the future for anyone at that age, but if you have a plan or some luck? You can surmount it, and you often do it without even realizing you’ve done it. If you don’t know what you want to do, if you don’t get lucky and fall into something amazing? Well, you are like most everyone else. But you’re too young and self-centered to see it. It’s paralyzing for many people even without depression to aggravate the situation.
No one wants to tell their high school friends they flunked out. That’s why she has new ones. No one wants to work at Target or similar for a career. Not when you’re 21, you have too much pride. That sort of job is only ‘okay’ in your mind if you’re in school too. You don’t see that as a respectable career, you see Target as further evidence of how hard you’ve failed.
Yes, it’s stupid. Anyone who has come out to the other side can see that. However at 21, and depressed? BLINDED. And you can’t make her see it. You can’t. Don’t try any more. Tough love doesn’t work on real depression. It just exacerbates it.
She curled up in the fetal on your couch from the depression, embarrassment and pressure of her failure until you insisted she stop it. I don’t blame you for saying something but know that this is probably what led her to staying out at all hours.
She found other ways to ‘treat’ herself. I don’t think she’s having as much fun as you think she is – and I’m nearly certain her depression is still in full swing. Smoking pot is a form of self-medication for your daughter. It helps numb her to the buzz in her head. Staying out all night, fickle friendships and the rest sound like partying and/or taking advantage of you but they are really just indicative of her inner turmoil.
No one wants to fail. Every 21-year-old has some misty vision of themselves at say, 30 or 40 where they’ve accomplished something and are self-sufficient. Hardly anyone knows how they’re going to get there. If you’re not depressed you find your way there, trial and error. If you are depressed, all you can think about is FAIL. FAIL. FAIL. You start telling yourself you need the mythical perfect job offer and why bother with anything else because it all leads to fail. Most frustratingly, you don’t even know what this mythical job offer would be.
The best thing to do is to find counseling that works for her. Imperative, actually. Medicine alone isn’t going to help. Even some counseling for you. You need to have a place to vent about your frustrations without feeling guilty about it. You have a right to be angry and you need an outlet for that anger. She feels it even when you’ve not said anything.
Second is get her into something that excites her. No matter how stupid and pointless it seems to everyone else, she needs a thing that makes her happy. That’s what she’s looking for in smoking and partying – happiness. If its make-up classes, beauty school, pottery class, whatever. You have to be excited about it for her too. No matter how much you want to tell her to stop faffing around, this is the place for your indulgence. She needs a reason to want to get up and get dressed.
Last, baby steps. Yes, she needs a job. When she’s been in therapy a bit, you’ll need to go with her to fill out applications, bring them home and fill them out. Yes, even at Target. (But if you know of something that is less offensive to a prideful 21 year old, that is preferable.) If the medication and therapy are working for her, the job will work too. Having a reason to get up and a place where you’re needed is instrumental to feeling less worthless. Idleness is like fertilizer for depression.
You may be arguing that she is an adult and needs to do these things on her own. However, she obviously can’t. Even trying to find a job seems overwhelming when you’re depressed. It’s not an excuse, it’s a mental illness.
Your child may need you forever. It’s not fair. It may make you angry and resentful but that’s what you signed up for when you had a child… even if you didn’t realise it. There is, of course, the other side of parenting wherein some parents cut their kids off – cut their losses. However, I think that should be reserved for kids who have stolen, are violent and abusive. I didn’t get the sense that your child falls into this category.
Extremely late to the party but I dearly hope ouch will read this, because it is a bit more of a perspective for them to look at.
Both I and my other half have mental health issues. His are depression-related, mine anxiety. We’re both self harmers and both total fuck ups. But our approach has been very different and I can see, from my side, a lot of things bouncing back between him and his mother.
Have no doubt, his mum loves him. LOVES HIM. Cares for him. Wants him to be happy and to have a good life. Unfortunately she has no idea how to make that work for a child with problems.
He was born with physical issues and the emotional fallout from those growing up, medication, years of surgery, permanent changes to how he does the most basic of things and the strain it put on his parents have certainly been a significant factor in his depression.
He’s unemployed. He was homeless when we met. In the same town his mum lived; he could have gone to her, but didn’t. The first time he was going to introduce me to her, he got so nervous that he got stinking drunk and then turned happy, forgetting why he got drunk in the first place. He was terrified when I reminded him why I needed him to drink that coffee and sober up. Terrified.
Once we started living together, he started to change for the better. VERY slowly. I provided constant, non-judgemental positive feedback and encouraged – but never demanded – that he do more. I praised his efforts and thanked him for everything and anything he did. I got members of my own family to tell him they were proud of how good he was taking care of me when he made a positive step. Within 2 years, he was the main caregiver in our household, handling all the housework except cooking and keeping our home lovely. He would wake me for work or my university course with a cuppa and a smile, would greet me when I came home and even started doing voluntary work a couple of days a week, hoping to pad out his CV so that he could get paid work. He would often come home from his voluntary place carrying something for me – a computer chair they were throwing out that would be good for my back, an electrical item donated to the shop that they weren’t authorised to sell to customers, little silly things he paid 50p for from the shop that he thought I’d find cute, and the look of pride on his face as he gave them to me was simply wonderful. He was CONTRIBUTING.
A few years ago, after we’d been living together a while and I’d been gently encouraging him to look and see what he might like to do longterm, he came to me with almost childlike excitement about a career he wanted, and he even knew the training course required for it and had researched all the different paths to find the best way to go around it. He was keen and eager. But the course was going to cost £3000. It was an online course, and it was something for which there is no university-based equivalent. He could study at his own pace, take the exams, possibly get an employer a year or so down the line to help fund the rest of it and be a freelance worker in a very high paying field. It was worth it, and I’d never seen him so enthusiastic or so consistently motivated.
So, we asked his mother if she could help. Because I was a student myself working part time and neither of us had anything like the sort of money needed for that course.
His mother is a lot like you, ouch. She didn’t believe he would do it. In front of him, not addressing him, she told ME he would probably give up a few months in, and what, did he think a job would just land in his lap? She insisted on “thinking about it” – a reasonable request which culminated in her saying she would be willing to instead fund a vaguely related but functionally useless university course in another part of the country which, since I was tied to my studies, would mean him not living with me any more and going to stay with an aunt for three years. And insisted she would not consider it until he got a paid job.
Under the weight of negativity, pressure and the scary expectation of leaving his main source of emotional and financial support (me), his whole demeanor changed. He stopped talking about the course when I asked about it, saying he was “thinking about it” or “looking at other ways to do it”. He didn’t do any housework that week, or the next. A mysterious and vague injury prevented him from continuing to do the voluntary work he’d started some months prior. In the end, he never did the course. It would have been the first useful qualification he’d ever got.
This was a pattern that I have continued to see. I see him make significant strides, improvements in himself. Things which for a normal person would never be considered success but for him are a real achievement. Then we tell his mother how well he is doing, or have a need for some support, whether large or small, and in the space of a single day she knocks him right back to where he started. She humbles him. She doesn’t mean to. In her eyes, he is objectively not successful, and if he is seen to be doing one or two things then he could clearly be doing more. She wants him to be REALISTIC, but what that amounts to is crushing his enthusiasm and reminding him that in her eyes, whether it be his poor health at birth, the fact that he will never use the toilet like a normal human or father children, his drug-based teenage coping mechanism, his teenage mood swings, his lack of career or his lack of a good ENOUGH career, he has and will always be a disappointment.
Please don’t make the same mistakes she has made. I understand your frustrations. I live with them myself every day dealing with the man I love. But I can tell you unequivocally that every single positive change I have seen in my other half has come about through me encouraging him, without pressure, reminding him that doing a little bit more is fairer on me but that I am pleased with what he DOES do, and being patient. And every single step backwards has come when too much pressure has been added too fast, and he has crumbled.
Parent/Adult kid relationships are like any others. A constant process of push and pull, probing and questioning, seeking and finding, negotiating and renegotiation.
I was the eldest. My mother is a bit of a narcissist and my father has rage problems and between them, I learned that I was not allowed to be angry, that my feelings didn’t matter, that I had to keep everyone happy all the time, that my sister was never at fault for anything and it was my job to protect and care for her, and that if anyone was to care for me, it was myself. Which is not to say that didn’t provide for me in all the ways that matter- I was fed and clothed and taken to the doctor and even loved.
But it was not conditional. Sure, there would be rare moments throughout my childhood when the catchphrase of “unconditional love” would drop from my mother’s lips, but at the times when it mattered- a bad grade (I soon learned to lie and hide my report cards when I started having trouble in high school), my shoplifting (I shoplifted once in eighth grade and they sent me to an unlicensed counselor whose house I had to hitchhike to get to since they’d neglected to make sure that I could actually get to her on my own after school), the time I came out as queer- those times I was never told or shown that I was loved without conditions.
So I found that love in my own life with friends who DO love me unconditionally, even when I fuck up, and now I am married and live thousands of miles away and have been supporting myself since I was eighteen on sometimes three jobs which is why I am finally getting my bachelor’s degree less than a year before my thirtieth birthday- and now my mom wants to pretend we have always been best friends and will always be best friends and I am so funny! And so smart! And let’s talk for hours!
And of course I love my mother but we are NOT best friends, in fact she knows very little about what my character is actually composed of, and I do not want to talk to her for hours and hours. Twenty-thirty minutes of polite small-talk once in a while is good enough for me.
All of this is to say, your kids that are successful (in your eyes)- are you close? Do you truly know them? Do you feel like they also have time for you in their busy lives? And what kind of relationship do you want with this child? Because this might be your chance to be close. Or not- you can make of this relationship what you will. The important thing is to SAY you love her unconditionally and then DO IT. Which is not to say never punish her! But treat her problems like something you are facing together: “it’s you and me against the world, sweetheart!” and give her a little space and most of all, don’t treat HER like the problem that needs fixing. Because SHE is not broken.
Resurrecting this thread, but I just wanted to add something from my own experience that hasn’t yet been covered. I was similar in a lot of ways to daughter in my youth, and my relationship to my parents was awful. I was also isolated from my older brother, who got along great with them, and I had no real friends. Basically, life sucked back then. I was also often pegged as a lazy underachiever who wasn’t “living up to her potential.” I struggled with loneliness, depression, been to lots of unhelpful therapy and a bunch of other crap but managed to get through college, somehow, and fast forward about 10 years later, and I was doing pretty well on my own (and a lot of that is because, frankly, I have been blessed with so much good luck and parents who gave me a debt-free education). Then, I heard a program on the radio where they were discussing adult ADHD, and how common it is for it to go undiagnosed. They described the symptoms, and I just clicked. I ran to the first shrink I could find, and this was the first time all of a sudden everything, and I mean EVERYTHING in my life made sense. It was a revelation, and I have come so far since then. My relationship with my parents has gotten better too, b/c now, at least to some degree, I understand why they didn’t understand me back then. I still struggle with things, but at least I can now understand what I’m up against.
I thought of this because much of your daughter’s inertia, self destruction, depression, etc behaviors could be explained by an undiagnosed learning disorder. I know she’s been tested, but the fact is that a lot of people whose job it is to ID this stuff don’t really know what they are doing, especially since ADHD looks so different in women. Also it’s very common for people w/ undiagnosed ADHD to become depressed. Then they get treated only for depression, but not the underlying cause of it. The other challenge is that treatment for depression is so very different from treatment w/ ADHD. Not just different medications, but also a very different approach to therapy. In depression, they are exploring emotional causes of the depression, like, “Why do you think you set yourself up to fail? What happened in your childhood to make that happen?” These questions can be very frustrating for someone who has been in fact been banging their head against the wall trying to do right, and can’t really figure out what’s going on. Therapy for ADHD is most effective when it’s less focused on emotional exploration and more a behaviorally focused approach to symptom management and structuring someone’s life to play to their strengths. I think this is true for all undiagnosed learning disabilities. I know this all might seem far-fetched, but I encourage you to read up a bit on it. Try Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, or Sari Solden’s book on women w/ ADHD. I may be way off, but given the stakes it’s something to look at. If she does have it, it would be a life changing revelation for her, and I think it’d be incredibly hard for her to heal without knowing.
One more thing. @Ray. Ray! Ray ray ray ray. This:
“Funnily enough, I do much better in stressful situations. I get much happier and more confident. I’ve always told my mom that when I have to do anything, I’ll be able to, I just never do anything if I don’t have to. I’m pretty sure if she kicked me out today, I’d be totally cured(?).”
This is CLASSIC ADHD behavior. Have you looked into this as a possibility? Again, I could be totally wrong about this and I am going off of very little here and I ain’t no doctor. BUT. ADHD isn’t actually about an attention deficit. It’s about badly regulated attention. When something grabs our interest, especially in a stressful situation, our minds zero in and focuses like lasers in ways that just don’t happen otherwise. It’s actually called “hyperfocus”. Google “adhd hyperfocus” and you’ll see what I mean. Our brains are wired to seek “high stimulation” activity, and that can mean anything that really grabs us, which can be gambling, cocaine, or less destructive more healthy things like running, sports, music, (and my personal favorite, caffeine.)
I hope this helps.
Depression does not cure itself, and is not reflective of bad parenting or low IQ. The first step I would take is to remove this young lady from the home. She is not thriving in this environment and is best served with a new start and new structured environment. Everyone needs a much deserved break in this house. This ill person needs a small army of caregivers, a “treatment team”; an exhausted depleted yet loving mother is not the treatment ticket.
Hopefully the parents and family can assist daughter in getting new digs, or as the mother mentioned other healthy siblings, then they also need to step in if they can contribute monetarily or with their skills, time or support. If no healthy adult in family can or will assist, then depressed or not, the ill daughter will have to pull self up by bootstraps and make other housing arrangements to the best of her ability, which don’t be surprised if this ends up being sleeping in car or on friends couches. Next the parents need to look at what their daughter is able to do “ability” and “skills”, not all the bad screw up stuff she is/was doing, which is just chaos associated with mental illness. Many people with depression are able to overcome and return to be productive, contributing citizens, develop skills, complete training/school and hold down jobs, are very aware of their symptoms, triggers, need for breaks, need for rx, exercise and therapy. Depression is ugly but it is treatable.
In her new environment she should have access to therapy and medication that is perhaps tied to her parents goals of assisting her transition to her new housing arrangement. No medication and no therapy, no rent contribution, but instead an application for SSI/SSDI can be provided. It is possible this young lady cannot stay stable and work at this time, and should be put on disability ssi/ssdi, perhaps living in structured group housing, the medication doctors and therapist will have to provide their medical evaluations if she needs monetary assistance/rx drugs/medical insurance.
This may be the most the parents can hope for AT THIS TIME as far as their daughter living independently outside of their home. If she can make significant progress with therapy and medication in new environment, then she may be able to make changes, learn new behaviors, adjust her thinking, obtain positive friendships, set goals, attend school/training, job counseling, and job placement programs to get herself off parental or govt assistance.
If the parents do not reclaim their peaceful home environment, family relationships may deteriorate further. Best luck in transitioning her to her new independent life in the most loving and respectable way in which anyone with depression or illness would like to be treated by others. Sally her forth with much confidence and inspiration for her future which includes her new job, new friends and always her loving family. Counseling and medication is not optional when it comes to treating Depression. It’s the only thing that works. Sick people are not always aware of what they need.
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