Failure to launch happens when kids hit adulthood, yet still are entirely dependent upon their parents and can’t be independent, successful people because of that.
If you had two kids in their 20s who were impacting your ability to enjoy your golden years while sucking you dry, how would you deal with that?
Would you kick them out of the house, knowing that would leave them homeless, or would you keep supporting them at the expense of your own dreams and stability?
This 42-year-old woman and her 44-year-old husband have been married for 22 years, and they have two sons who are 20 and 23.
She and her husband thought that once their kids graduated from high school, parenting would be a breeze, but shockingly, it became a nightmare for them.
“Both were always good kids; we weren’t without our challenges, but we had a lot of great memories, and they had good childhoods,” she explained.
Right now, her 23-year-old son is attempting to get a college degree after dropping out of his first major. Two years ago, he got fired from a wonderful job, and he has been unemployed ever since.
As for her youngest, he failed out of college in the first semester and has shown zero motivation. He did manage to secure a job, but after being laid off, she thinks that’s the end of that.
Her sons don’t contribute at all to their house; they refuse to leave their bedrooms, and they don’t have friends at all. They also have never dated, don’t have hobbies, and lack ambition.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
They constantly lie to her about trying to find jobs, because she is aware they’re not making an effort to do that. She cut her sons off the family phone plan, so they no longer have cell phones and can’t afford the cheapest plan, which is $20.
“Their behaviour is especially bewildering and quite frankly infuriating, because even though we had kids so young and had our share of trials, we worked really hard and emulated [a] work ethic to create a successful family business, and I grew my career,” she added.
“We always thought we were modelling good behaviour. Today we are struggling. My husband had a stroke several years ago, and we lost his business. He is working full-time but is making low pay and can’t find anything better despite constantly applying, so I am paying 80% of the household bills.”
“We are blowing through savings to live. We have cut all of our simple pleasures. We don’t have debt, thankfully. We paid for each of the kids’ college, only for them to just drop out. At this point, if our kids can’t contribute, we need to downsize to a one-bed apartment (we have been renting a large house for over 13 years).”
They don’t have many extended family members, so that means her sons will be left homeless and on the streets when she downsizes and can’t take them with her.
She would hate to kick her sons out of the house, given how cold the temperatures are currently, but she can no longer afford to support the two of them.
And her sons don’t care that she’s having a hard time providing for them. She has begged them to get jobs and pitch in, but they don’t listen to her.
Her husband feels hopeless and mad that they have ended up here. She’s scared that she’s simply enabling her sons to be losers, and while she loves them, she can’t keep living with them.
Kicking them out will certainly put a future relationship with them at risk, which weighs on her. But then again, they cost her and her husband their dream of retiring to a house in the country, and that’s never going to happen.
I think it’s time for her to give her kids a firm deadline on when they need to get jobs and start paying her rent, and then she can say that if they don’t make that happen by, like, March 1st, they’re on their own.
It’s time for her sons to learn how to sink or swim, because if she keeps on going the way that she has been, she and her husband could end up homeless.
What advice do you have for her?
You can read the original post below.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
