Parents of Young Adults
I thought he’d be out of the house by now. She spends all her time alone in her room. I know they have struggled with anxiety and depression, should I just leave them be? But how will he ever get a job or be independent? We only hear from her when she needs money. Is this all our fault?
On one hand you know your child is struggling with mental health and you want to be loving and supportive. But on the other hand, you don’t want to put their mental health in charge of deciding whether they attend school, find a job, make friends, or leave the house. Its hard to know when support becomes a barrier to independence and responsibility. You may even feel frustrated and resentful because your kid’s needs look like manipulation. I want to help before it seems like the only option is no relationship at all.
I use a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Informed approach to help parents learn how to set healthy boundaries that express both love and confidence so that young adults can take responsibility for their own lives and become people their parents actually want to spend time with.
If we focus only on our child’s behavior (her external world) and neglect the reasons behind that behavior (her internal world), then we’ll concentrate only on the symptoms, not the cause that’s producing them. And if we consider only the symptoms, we’ll have to keep treating the symptoms over and over again.