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Seems there are baby boomers here (who could get a decent paying gig straight out of high school) have no idea what the current climate is for younger people. You can't walk downtown and get a job at the local factory anymore nor will you marry straight out of high school. There are a lot of younger people totally isolated and alienated from society due to the current economic and social climate.
Time to take him to vocational rehabilitation for a vocational evaluation. Have a full scale battery and assessment done on him to identify his barriers and aptitudes.
Attend all meetings with him. Have him sign release of info to talk to rehab counselor.
The counselor will present some options, have him pick one. And help him follow through. Let him know he is moving out at age 21.and you are helping him be ready for that. Look at options for living.
Help him, because it sounds like you have not done much. Most parents discuss what happens after high school every year starting at age 12....and make plans to help their child get in the military, go to college, start vocational training, get a job.... This conversation does not start at age 19.
It's actually "normal" to get addicted to internet or gaming that makes you to forget about far less appealing life outside. That's how perfectly normal people respond to stress and anxiety, games give you sense of "power" and let you to escape in a time warp. But since TS cut off internet and games (I suppose) and his son prefers hunkering down anyway, it's way outside of realm of "normal" or simply being lazy. Lazy people don't just hunker down in their rooms.
There is this big scary world outside and simple taking games away (hoping him to cope) could have well triggered some adverse processes in his brain.
Seems there are baby boomers here (who could get a decent paying gig straight out of high school) have no idea what the current climate is for younger people. You can't walk downtown and get a job at the local factory anymore nor will you marry straight out of high school. There are a lot of younger people totally isolated and alienated from society due to the current economic and social climate.
The following are still options to get a job immediately with no experience:
Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines/Coast Guard Recruiting Center
Labor Ready (they will give you a minimum wage temporary job that day, you just show up)
Roughneck in North Dakota
Truck driving job with Werner/Schneider/Swift- (you are indentured to them for a couple of years after training and they pay crap, but it's a foot in the door)
Becoming a functioning member of society will cure that. If he gets a job, he'll be too busy to be depressed.
True. Who wouldn't be depressed if they were at the prime of their life but had no friends, no job, and now no internet. I bet his depression lifts whenever he's starting up another on-line video games with his on-line gaming friends.
In my opinion, he's developed some very bad habits, he needs to learn some kind of balance -- video games are okay but he needs to limit his time on them. Going cold-turkey on an addiction can aggravate depression at least at first.
I don't know about throwing him out on the streets --- unless drugs are involved and then I would say do that in an instant.
Maybe he doesn't actually know how to go about finding a job? Since he has no friends outside his parents, he may not have the normal means to learn such things. Maybe he needs some step-by-step instructions.
Chances are this kid didn't get pushed into a job at age 15 or 16 when he should have been and now isn't sure where to start.
Seems there are baby boomers here (who could get a decent paying gig straight out of high school) have no idea what the current climate is for younger people. You can't walk downtown and get a job at the local factory anymore nor will you marry straight out of high school. There are a lot of younger people totally isolated and alienated from society due to the current economic and social climate.
My kids have had absolutely no trouble at all finding jobs --- it might be hard for those laid off who are over 40 but it's not at all difficult for kids to find jobs. Many of the jobs being created are unskilled, low wage kinds of jobs. If kids weren't so lazy today, we wouldn't have to bring in millions of unskilled foreign workers to do the work that needs to be done.
It's very important for kids to learn a work ethic. You can't expect a 19 year old to have much wisdom, it can seem more fun at the time to just play video games, but working for what you want and feeling productive are essential to 99.5% of people. Laying around never doing anything, having zero goals leads to depression, every day is exactly like the day before, the monotony will destroy the soul.
This is a sad story and reminds me of a now deceased friends son. He's in his thirties now and just got fired from his only part time job that he's ever had. His mother died leaving him a millionaire but he doesn't have any concept of how or what to do with that money. His elderly Aunt manages it for him. He sees her nearly every day because he has no life. He only had one girlfriend his entire life and that was in high school. I told his mother a long time ago that he was mentally ill. He never received help nor a diagnosis. I suspect that he's schizophrenic. Your son needs to see a professional and the sooner the better. Your wife needs to get a grip. All the fighting and frustration is just negative energy and not good for any one involved. It is what it is and this may be it for the rest of your son's life. Good or bad he is your flesh and blood and this may be something out of his control. My brother was the same way and lived off of my mother until the day she died. He went into the military after she passed and was kicked out in about a month. I have no idea where he is or if he's even still alive. There again is someone that needed professional help and never received it. Good luck to you but try to encourage your wife to understand that there may be an element of mental illness here. You can't punish someone for being sick.
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