Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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By late August, the stores are full of laundry baskets, desk lamps and extra-long twin sheets.
My social media feeds fill with photographs of parents helping their children move into residence. Cars were packed to the windows. Mothers posed beside neatly made dorm-room beds. Dads assembled shelves and hung pictures. Young adults wore sweatshirts bearing the names of their new schools.
A year earlier, we had taken those pictures, too.
But in the fall my son’s boxes were still in our basement.
He was not going back to university. He had failed every course in his first year. He lost his confidence and any clear idea of what might come next.
As a psychotherapist and educator, I have spent years helping families understand anxiety, behaviour and resilience. I know that shame rarely creates meaningful change. I know that an overwhelmed nervous system needs safety before it can solve problems. I know that pressure can make a struggling person retreat even further.
As a mother, I seemed unable to remember any of that.
I reasoned if university was no longer the route, we simply needed to find another one.
Maybe college. Maybe a job. Maybe a different program at a different school.
I researched possibilities and presented ideas to him with an urgency that he didn’t share. I found application deadlines, job opportunities and courses that might match his interests. I was trying to be helpful.
Each time he said, “I don’t know,” I heard a lack of motivation. Sometimes, I heard ingratitude.
Mostly, I heard a clock ticking.
Making our cultural blend work at home
My son withdrew from family life. He escaped from how overwhelmed and ashamed he felt.
The summer hid some of the struggles but September made everything harder to ignore.
Everywhere we looked, other people were moving forward. They had plans, new roommates and first-day photographs. I found myself envying those problems. Back-to-school season can be painful when your child is no longer a child but is not moving toward adulthood in the way you expected. There is grief in watching the world celebrate beginnings while your own young adult cannot imagine one.
There is fear, too.
Parents begin to wonder whether a pause will become permanent. We worry that if we don’t act quickly, our kids will fall so far behind that they will never catch up. Their stillness creates an almost unbearable fear and urgency in us.
My fear was disguised as helpfulness.
I asked about applications. I sent him job postings. I reminded him of deadlines. I tried to keep my voice neutral, even when every “I don’t know” made me want to push harder.
The therapist in me understood that pressure could make an overwhelmed person withdraw.
The mother in me kept applying it anyway.
Eventually, I had to ask myself an uncomfortable question: Was I trying to help my son, or was I trying to relieve my own fear?
The answer was both.
It took me too long to understand that our son was not refusing to choose a future. He had stopped believing he could manage one.
I often tell my clients that hope is not a plan. Hope matters, but when a person feels stuck, hope needs a pathway. For our son, that pathway did not begin with choosing a career or enrolling in another program. It began with very ordinary acts. Wake up at a consistent time. Eat breakfast. Take a walk. Keep one commitment. Make a plan for tomorrow.
None of this looked like launching. The accomplishments were so small that I sometimes struggled to recognize them as progress. But ordinary acts matter when a person has lost faith in his own capacity.
Table for one, please. (And stop feeling sorry for me!)
I had to practice something, too: how to support my son without taking over.
Support meant helping him find professional care, breaking an overwhelming task into smaller steps or sitting nearby while he made a difficult phone call.
We tried to remain connected while gradually returning responsibility to him. We offered help, but we also expected contribution. We made room for the reality that he was struggling without pretending the situation could continue indefinitely.
I could say, “I understand that this is difficult,” and also say, “You still need to participate in our household.”
I could resist comparing him with friends who seemed to be thriving. This was harder than I would like to admit.
I have come to dislike the phrase “failure to launch.” It makes a developmental struggle sound like a character flaw. Sometimes what looks like laziness is anxiety. Sometimes it is shame, depression, trauma, physical or mental illness or the accumulated fear of failing again.
Understanding this does not mean parents must accept every behaviour. It means we address the behaviour without turning it into an identity.
There is a big difference between saying, “This situation cannot continue as it is,” and saying, “You are wasting your life.”
One invites participation. The other confirms a young person’s worst fear about himself.
Today, our son continues to build a future that does not look exactly like the one we once imagined for him.
Some launches begin with a packed car and a drive to campus.
Others begin quietly at the kitchen table, with a plan for tomorrow and someone who believes that a small beginning still counts.
Siobhan Chirico lives in Burlington, Ont.