I think there can be underlying desire by the parents to not let their child go. Let's not start from the point of the adult child's failure to launch, let's go back to early childhood. Did the parents give the child basic responsibilities such that they could learn to be responsible? Did they make sure their child learned the realities of cause and effect; if you don't make a deliberate effort, you can't expect any reward. Did they in fact reward their child when they did achieve something, especially when they did it on their own initiative?
Today, I see multitudes of children raised by helicopter parents. The child never gets the chance to sink or swim based on their own efforts. Their life has been arranged for them 24/7. Then they become an adult and are suddenly expected to be autonomous and self-sustaining. When the adult child fails to launch, take a look at the launch pad.
The more I read about 'Trump Accounts" for newborns, the more impressed I am at now being able to give tax exempt start to life & a child's financial prosperity, confidence & self sufficiency starting early. Here's one link, but there's plenty of info to look at : https://www.foxnews.com/video/6388427802112
I don't know if you remember me, I contextualized some questionable behavior by young women on a video you shared and posted about, I believe it was last year if I recall correctly. I appreciated the respectful dialogue we had back then so I hope you don't mind me sharing my perspective on this topic as a mom and grandmother.
While I disagree with you on some points, I understand and agree with your point of view of wanting our young adult children to be independent. I take no issue with that at all, independence should always be the goal when it's possible. However, I do take exception to the perception that this type of situation is an absolute.
Please allow me to explain. What I'm concerned about is how it's framed. Calling this laziness misses a massive part of the picture. We are seeing a wave of adults only now discovering they are neurodivergent because the old diagnostic rules were almost exclusively based on how autism and ADHD appear in young white boys. This is not an attempt to excuse behavior but to provide some context that may be missing from the conversation.
Bias in medicine is very real. I am a prime example of this.
I was not diagnosed with autism and ADHD until I was 54 years old after a right-hemisphere mild TIA which affected the part of my brain responsible for emotional processing. My inability to mask post-stroke has caused me a lot of interpersonal issues in my life. But I digress, I've always been a direct, analytical communicator, it's often misunderstood.
Two of my children were diagnosed young because they are male and white. For decades, the system simply did not have the criteria to see people like me. Girls and women were often overlooked because they were socialized to mask their traits. Or we were punished severely for our traits and masking became survival, as it was in my case. At the same time, as you are likely aware, Black and Brown children were often labeled with behavioral issues or conduct disorders including oppositional defiance disorder rather than being recognized as having a neurodevelopmental disability in need of support and accommodations.
As you may also be aware, diagnosis of neurodivergent conditions has been on the rise. It is not for the reasons often cited, but rather an adjustment in diagnostic criteria and the recognition of generations of us who were missed in childhood due to the bias that is still prevalent in medicine to this day. There are so many barriers for people like me it can be overwhelming and cause burnout.
The consequence of this systemic bias has created a generation of people who have spent their entire lives exhausted by trying to fit into a world not built for them. By the time these individuals reach their twenties or thirties, they are not failing to launch. They are in deep, debilitating burnout from a lifetime of being unsupported and misunderstood. Giving them tough love in this state is like asking someone with a broken leg to run a marathon to prove they are not lazy. It does not motivate them. It just causes more trauma. True respect means acknowledging that independence requires the right tools, inclusive understanding, and a clear look at these diagnostic gaps, not just a deadline.
My sons are 31, 32, and 35. The 35 year old is a Navy vet. With proper support all 3 are very successful, one even followed in my shoes into IT and now teaches cybersecurity to corporate employees for companies. I wanted to show you a perspective through the lens of compassion and empathy for invisible disabilities, when traits are so often characterized as moral failures or character flaws when they could possibly be a symptom of an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disability.
I often find your work thought-provoking. I hope we have an understanding that the issue is far more complex than a single Substack post or my comment can cover though.
I apologize for the length of this comment but please know I sincerely appreciate and value your time.
I both agree and disagree with you. Striving to conform to practices created by others, for others, is futile. But nobody has to conform. It's expected, the social pressure is huge, but still, no one ahs to conform. There are those who strive to conform, but still, no one has to conform.
The fault perhaps lies with others to an extent. But we are ultimately responsible for our own lives. Own it, and don't make excuses. Own your failures. Own your successes.
I appreciate your perspective on personal responsibility. I agree that we all want to own our successes. However, my point is that responsibility and capability are not the same thing.
When you mention that no one has to conform, it overlooks the fact that for many neurodivergent people, conforming was the only way to access education, healthcare, or employment before we had the right diagnosis. It is absolutely not a choice, it is a survival tactic that eventually leads to a total system crash. I believe that there needs to be a better understanding of the power of ostracism and tactics used to exclude those who do not conform.
You cannot own your life effectively if you are working with a toolkit that was designed for someone else entirely. True individualism should include the right to have the correct tools for your specific brain and capabilities. Without those, we aren't talking about owning failures, we are talking about a system that failed to provide the necessary support for a launch to even be possible.
Your comment leaves absolutely no room for disabled people, tbh. Disability does not discriminate nor do you get to choose whether to be disabled or not. Many people are only temporarily abled. It is hard to pull oneself up by their bootstraps if they are wearing flip flops in a blizzard.
Again, I agree and disagree. A person who has had a leg amputated should be accommodated as well as practically possible. Still, the world can't be reconfigured based on his missing leg. The man will have do some of his own accommodating. If he views the world as a place that has failed him, he only hurts, and further limits, himself.
It's possible that I have Asperger's. I say 'possible', because I matured before people even tested for such things. I guess I could be tested now, but I really don't care to be. I am who I am, and I'm fine with that. But I did have to assess who I am, relative to the whole, determine that what millions of others want is not what I want, and head off in my own direction. I needed nobody else's consideration, I just needed to do it.
Consider also the basic differences between men and women. Expecting any boy to be more like a girl, or vice versa, is debilitating to both sexes. Many boys today feel like outcasts, just for being too much like a boy.
The latest opinion from the eggheads is that Asperger's is at one end of the autism spectrum. What spectrum? I don't give a crap about anybody's spectrum. To go looking for my place on a spectrum is to let other people define me. I define me. Period.
Your comment reveals that you view your own ability to navigate the world without accommodations as a moral victory. Good for you. You have no room in your worldview for the lived realities of disabled people. I am disabled so your desire is to erase me, yet here you are conversing with me.
We are used to being erased. We were the first in the gas chambers in Germany. They were tested on disabled undesirables first before being used on over 6 million others.
I hope you never need accommodations or assistive technology like glasses or a cane or a wheelchair in your senior years. I am reminding you that most people are only temporarily abled. Disability can strike at anytime.
Do as you wish. It's a free world. But rather than have a discussion, you are disengaging and blaming me for not sympathizing with you. Do you treat employers that way? Friends? Associates? If you don't do as much for others as you expect from them, there's your problem.
Look at yourself in the philosophical mirror. Why would anyone want to associate with you?
This really hit home. That line about enabling only benefitting the enabler is so true, we sugarcoat discomfort becuase it makes US feel better not them. I've seen friends finally get their act together only after their safety net dissapeared, sometimes the best support is stepping back completely.
I got a like on a comment I made along the lines of: "all these new college graduates who are consultants now" but menial work is frightening in it's way because the physical risks coupled with (what people seem to ignore or dismiss) is that co-workers can be source of risk too. My father was understanding as far as that went and knew if I quit a job it wasn't that it was too hard. I worked with one man who had seniority over me who's wife brought another man to the house when they were all out partying. My co-worker ended up kicked out of his own house. Of course he didn't tell me that right off but eventually I figured it out. Let's just say that he was looking to push my buttons a lot more than usual. I asked the shop owner for reassignment (we were construction plumbers) but he said no so I quit. (No, that wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to me.) I could get jobs fairly quickly but at that time I lived with my sister because people like John Papola want to help keep the game of musical chairs housing market going the way it has since the beginning of known history where (now I have actual evidence of this) there are ultra-wealthy old money uh... "traders" (let's call them) involved with the multi-family lower-income housing market and they wouldn't be involved in the business unless they made money! http://dadsavesamerica.net/https://johnpapola.org/
It's a tough situation. I had to give an ultimatum to my son 10 years ago. It worked. He is now fully employed and raising a family
I'm really happy to hear this.
Amen. “Handicapping them” is the truth.
I think there can be underlying desire by the parents to not let their child go. Let's not start from the point of the adult child's failure to launch, let's go back to early childhood. Did the parents give the child basic responsibilities such that they could learn to be responsible? Did they make sure their child learned the realities of cause and effect; if you don't make a deliberate effort, you can't expect any reward. Did they in fact reward their child when they did achieve something, especially when they did it on their own initiative?
Today, I see multitudes of children raised by helicopter parents. The child never gets the chance to sink or swim based on their own efforts. Their life has been arranged for them 24/7. Then they become an adult and are suddenly expected to be autonomous and self-sustaining. When the adult child fails to launch, take a look at the launch pad.
Bingo
The more I read about 'Trump Accounts" for newborns, the more impressed I am at now being able to give tax exempt start to life & a child's financial prosperity, confidence & self sufficiency starting early. Here's one link, but there's plenty of info to look at : https://www.foxnews.com/video/6388427802112
Hello Adam,
I don't know if you remember me, I contextualized some questionable behavior by young women on a video you shared and posted about, I believe it was last year if I recall correctly. I appreciated the respectful dialogue we had back then so I hope you don't mind me sharing my perspective on this topic as a mom and grandmother.
While I disagree with you on some points, I understand and agree with your point of view of wanting our young adult children to be independent. I take no issue with that at all, independence should always be the goal when it's possible. However, I do take exception to the perception that this type of situation is an absolute.
Please allow me to explain. What I'm concerned about is how it's framed. Calling this laziness misses a massive part of the picture. We are seeing a wave of adults only now discovering they are neurodivergent because the old diagnostic rules were almost exclusively based on how autism and ADHD appear in young white boys. This is not an attempt to excuse behavior but to provide some context that may be missing from the conversation.
Bias in medicine is very real. I am a prime example of this.
I was not diagnosed with autism and ADHD until I was 54 years old after a right-hemisphere mild TIA which affected the part of my brain responsible for emotional processing. My inability to mask post-stroke has caused me a lot of interpersonal issues in my life. But I digress, I've always been a direct, analytical communicator, it's often misunderstood.
Two of my children were diagnosed young because they are male and white. For decades, the system simply did not have the criteria to see people like me. Girls and women were often overlooked because they were socialized to mask their traits. Or we were punished severely for our traits and masking became survival, as it was in my case. At the same time, as you are likely aware, Black and Brown children were often labeled with behavioral issues or conduct disorders including oppositional defiance disorder rather than being recognized as having a neurodevelopmental disability in need of support and accommodations.
As you may also be aware, diagnosis of neurodivergent conditions has been on the rise. It is not for the reasons often cited, but rather an adjustment in diagnostic criteria and the recognition of generations of us who were missed in childhood due to the bias that is still prevalent in medicine to this day. There are so many barriers for people like me it can be overwhelming and cause burnout.
The consequence of this systemic bias has created a generation of people who have spent their entire lives exhausted by trying to fit into a world not built for them. By the time these individuals reach their twenties or thirties, they are not failing to launch. They are in deep, debilitating burnout from a lifetime of being unsupported and misunderstood. Giving them tough love in this state is like asking someone with a broken leg to run a marathon to prove they are not lazy. It does not motivate them. It just causes more trauma. True respect means acknowledging that independence requires the right tools, inclusive understanding, and a clear look at these diagnostic gaps, not just a deadline.
My sons are 31, 32, and 35. The 35 year old is a Navy vet. With proper support all 3 are very successful, one even followed in my shoes into IT and now teaches cybersecurity to corporate employees for companies. I wanted to show you a perspective through the lens of compassion and empathy for invisible disabilities, when traits are so often characterized as moral failures or character flaws when they could possibly be a symptom of an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disability.
I often find your work thought-provoking. I hope we have an understanding that the issue is far more complex than a single Substack post or my comment can cover though.
I apologize for the length of this comment but please know I sincerely appreciate and value your time.
Thank you.
Best to you, sir. (⊙‿⊙✿)
Pat
I both agree and disagree with you. Striving to conform to practices created by others, for others, is futile. But nobody has to conform. It's expected, the social pressure is huge, but still, no one ahs to conform. There are those who strive to conform, but still, no one has to conform.
The fault perhaps lies with others to an extent. But we are ultimately responsible for our own lives. Own it, and don't make excuses. Own your failures. Own your successes.
I appreciate your perspective on personal responsibility. I agree that we all want to own our successes. However, my point is that responsibility and capability are not the same thing.
When you mention that no one has to conform, it overlooks the fact that for many neurodivergent people, conforming was the only way to access education, healthcare, or employment before we had the right diagnosis. It is absolutely not a choice, it is a survival tactic that eventually leads to a total system crash. I believe that there needs to be a better understanding of the power of ostracism and tactics used to exclude those who do not conform.
You cannot own your life effectively if you are working with a toolkit that was designed for someone else entirely. True individualism should include the right to have the correct tools for your specific brain and capabilities. Without those, we aren't talking about owning failures, we are talking about a system that failed to provide the necessary support for a launch to even be possible.
Your comment leaves absolutely no room for disabled people, tbh. Disability does not discriminate nor do you get to choose whether to be disabled or not. Many people are only temporarily abled. It is hard to pull oneself up by their bootstraps if they are wearing flip flops in a blizzard.
Again, I agree and disagree. A person who has had a leg amputated should be accommodated as well as practically possible. Still, the world can't be reconfigured based on his missing leg. The man will have do some of his own accommodating. If he views the world as a place that has failed him, he only hurts, and further limits, himself.
It's possible that I have Asperger's. I say 'possible', because I matured before people even tested for such things. I guess I could be tested now, but I really don't care to be. I am who I am, and I'm fine with that. But I did have to assess who I am, relative to the whole, determine that what millions of others want is not what I want, and head off in my own direction. I needed nobody else's consideration, I just needed to do it.
Consider also the basic differences between men and women. Expecting any boy to be more like a girl, or vice versa, is debilitating to both sexes. Many boys today feel like outcasts, just for being too much like a boy.
The latest opinion from the eggheads is that Asperger's is at one end of the autism spectrum. What spectrum? I don't give a crap about anybody's spectrum. To go looking for my place on a spectrum is to let other people define me. I define me. Period.
Your comment reveals that you view your own ability to navigate the world without accommodations as a moral victory. Good for you. You have no room in your worldview for the lived realities of disabled people. I am disabled so your desire is to erase me, yet here you are conversing with me.
We are used to being erased. We were the first in the gas chambers in Germany. They were tested on disabled undesirables first before being used on over 6 million others.
I hope you never need accommodations or assistive technology like glasses or a cane or a wheelchair in your senior years. I am reminding you that most people are only temporarily abled. Disability can strike at anytime.
I'm disengaging from this thread now.
Enjoy.
Do as you wish. It's a free world. But rather than have a discussion, you are disengaging and blaming me for not sympathizing with you. Do you treat employers that way? Friends? Associates? If you don't do as much for others as you expect from them, there's your problem.
Look at yourself in the philosophical mirror. Why would anyone want to associate with you?
This really hit home. That line about enabling only benefitting the enabler is so true, we sugarcoat discomfort becuase it makes US feel better not them. I've seen friends finally get their act together only after their safety net dissapeared, sometimes the best support is stepping back completely.
I got a like on a comment I made along the lines of: "all these new college graduates who are consultants now" but menial work is frightening in it's way because the physical risks coupled with (what people seem to ignore or dismiss) is that co-workers can be source of risk too. My father was understanding as far as that went and knew if I quit a job it wasn't that it was too hard. I worked with one man who had seniority over me who's wife brought another man to the house when they were all out partying. My co-worker ended up kicked out of his own house. Of course he didn't tell me that right off but eventually I figured it out. Let's just say that he was looking to push my buttons a lot more than usual. I asked the shop owner for reassignment (we were construction plumbers) but he said no so I quit. (No, that wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to me.) I could get jobs fairly quickly but at that time I lived with my sister because people like John Papola want to help keep the game of musical chairs housing market going the way it has since the beginning of known history where (now I have actual evidence of this) there are ultra-wealthy old money uh... "traders" (let's call them) involved with the multi-family lower-income housing market and they wouldn't be involved in the business unless they made money! http://dadsavesamerica.net/ https://johnpapola.org/