They are adults, but they live like children. They return to their parents and live in their old rooms

On June 1, 2018, one of the hottest days of the year, Michael Rotondo moves out of his parents’ home in Syracuse, New York. It’s a big deal to me, many will think: every day, all over the world, children move away from their parents. Finally, adulthood and independence – many people think, packing clothes and books into cardboard boxes, and are looking forward to the prospect of having their own nest. But not Michael Rotondo.

He perceived parents’ appeals as “vindictive attacks”

A thirty-year-old man leaves his family home only because the court ordered him to do so. Since Michael had “temporarily” moved back into the family home eight years earlier without feeling obliged to pay any fees, Christina and Mark Rotonda had continually encouraged their son to move out. They insisted that he find a job and an apartment, and even gave him some money for a fresh start, but Michael turned a deaf ear to their pleas. He saw his parents’ appeals as “vindictive attacks” and himself as a victim. After all, he had recently lost the right to see his eight-year-old son, and fighting to get him back was like a full-time job. The demand to move out and become financially independent was really untimely. Michael didn’t seem to notice the connection between the deprivation of his right to visit his child and his not particularly responsible lifestyle.

They retreat to their childhood rooms

Failure-to-launch-Syndrome – loosely translated: nester syndrome – this is how journalists usually describe the tendency to delay or even the refusal to move out of the family home among representatives of the millennial generation. In Japan alone, it is estimated that there are over a million socially alienated people, mostly men, so-called hikikomori, who retreat to their childhood rooms from the challenges of this world.

They are adults, but they live like children. They return to their parents and live in their old rooms Znak Publishing House/Press materials

This inhibition of development and the resulting progressive isolation are facilitated by many factors: difficult socio-economic conditions in the form of expensive apartments and the unavailability of well-paid jobs can scare even motivated individuals and for some time take away their willingness to act. People tormented by social phobias, fear of the future and failure, or depression find it difficult to enter increasingly less predictable environments and persevere in them.

Hikikomori is found not only in Japan but all over the world. We should not ignore the social or family factors that are part of this phenomenon. Adult children who felt warm and cozy in the family home have always existed in all social classes, regardless of social conditions.

Behind this problem there may also be hidden obligations imposed by parents: there are parents who, for purely selfish reasons, tie their children together and do not support separation from them according to their age. A number of tactics intended to prevent a child from separating from its parents are used unconsciously by the latter and are often unnoticeable to an untrained observer. For example, parents may send children unspoken messages such as: “Please don’t leave me!”, “If you leave us, I will get sick!”, “If you leave us, our marriage/family will fall apart!”. Difficulties in separating The consequences that may result from this are obvious. Who would choose to leave their parents with a light heart if separation would involve guilt?

What is the reason for the reluctance to take the next development step?

In addition to the obligations imposed by parents, children’s unconscious emotional motives also contribute to difficulties in separation. Someone who clearly has no intention of growing up and refuses to become independent announces not only to his parents, but also to the whole world: “Something has gone wrong here! My parents aren’t as cool as people think. If it were otherwise, I wouldn’t be such a loser.”

Reluctance to take the next developmental step may be caused by various types of fears and aggression, and often both. Refusing to face the demands of life or failing to meet them and forcing parents to confront their consequences every day is a kind of revenge meted out to parents by the adult child for all their previous neglect. What’s more, living in the family home as adults or remaining financially dependent on their parents imposes constant responsibility on them. Looking at families like the Rotondas, one gets the impression that old accounts can never be settled, as if parents were forever indebted to their children to repay.

The question I would ask as a therapist in this situation is: what is the purpose of an adult child who refuses to leave the family home? Michael Rotondo is thirty years old, a college graduate, but has been unemployed for many years and has just lost access to his son. He probably feels powerless, paralyzed, abandoned to fate. We can speculate that refusing to move out of the family home is the only form of demonstration of strength he could afford. How many immature people feel that their parents (or their partner or the whole world) owe them something.

Behind Rotondo’s passive-aggressive display of power, there is presumably a great deal of aggression manifested in his immature, parasitic behavior. So I would ask him what he has to accuse his parents, or more precisely: what is the reason for his anger. How old was he when he first felt “kicked out” by his parents and begged for a little more time because he felt really overwhelmed? How much debt did his parents owe him when he was at an age when he really couldn’t take care of himself? take care of yourself?

Figuring out where the source of anger and disappointment is is the first step to healthy separation. In this way, there can be a link between the original hurt and the conflict, which today – decades later – is still hidden or transferred to another field.

We can pose several hypotheses: perhaps Michael felt that his younger sister received more attention and love from her parents than he did? Or maybe the parents were going through a difficult time in their marriage and had less time to show their son the care he needed? Perhaps they had been sacrificing themselves for him all his life, which meant that they were unable to set healthy boundaries for him and did not provide him with convincing motivation to take a step into adulthood? From Michael Rotonda’s perspective, there are likely many reasons to punish one’s parents, to become a burden to them regardless of the opinions of others. Someone like Michael Rotondo, who in adulthood openly refuses to take steps to separate himself from his parents, is often met with misunderstanding and contempt from those around him. “Finally grow up and take matters into your own hands” – would shout someone who would see in Michael’s situation only stagnation and resistance to acting in a mature way and the resulting failure in life. Meanwhile, behind such and similar behaviors there are often childhood wounds and significant development challenges that have not been met.

Let’s assume that at the age of three, Michael Rotondo did not receive enough support from his parents to overcome the childhood rebellion phase, because at that time his sister was born and his parents were overburdened with caring for both of them. So there is still this three-year-old, uncared for part of Michael that feels helpless and abandoned, and this is happening at a time when he should be expanding his autonomy more and more while experiencing security with his parents. This abandoned three-year-old Michael plays an important role to this day – like an element, he invades the now adult Michael as soon as a trigger occurs, as soon as “here and now” something reminds him of the situation at that time. It is enough for Michael to feel helpless (because, for example, he lost his job, his friend left him or he is not allowed to meet his son), the three-year-old sleeping in the adult wakes up and takes over. And then this three-year-old – in the body of an adult man – tells his parents and the world that everything is unfair, that it is him he is a victim of simply needing more of his parents’ time and care.

We become children again and most often we are not aware of it

An adult who behaves like a three-year-old generally does not make a particularly nice impression. However, when we realize that this adult, without realizing it, is dominated by the three-year-old, perhaps we will be able to muster compassion – both for this three-year-old part that constantly tries to break into the foreground in order to finally experience care, as well as for the adult, exposed to the mercy of his childish part, and helpless in the face of the developmental block he experiences.

The case of Michael Rotonda may seem extreme, but sometimes each of us becomes a hostage of our childish part, especially in a situation of conflict with other people, which triggers intense inner suffering in us. These may be parents, as well as a partner and even children. Conflict with friends or acquaintances can also cause an emotional state of emergency in us, when our mature, adult part is instantly replaced by the childlike part.

When we lose proper contact with our mature resources and instead return to younger versions of ourselves and feel and act from their perspective, we talk about regression. We become children again and most often we are not aware of it.