QUESTION: Our son is 34 years old and has only had one job since he left school, which he walked out of after six months. He has an IQ of 85, no self-confidence, and is basically frightened of life, spending all day in his room in self-imposed isolation, on antidepressants.
We don't know how to help him, and even talking to him is very difficult. I am now 75 and my wife is three years younger. His three brothers are making their own way and doing quite well. But what will happen to him when we are no longer around? Where can we get help?
Yours sincerely, Brian
ANSWER: There's a very interesting scientific principle that might help you look at your problem in a slightly different way. It's the Heisenberg Principle, which says, among other things, that “the act of observation affects the sub-atomic particle being observed”.
Now, I know your son isn't a sub-atomic particle, and this principle only applies to microscopic things, but I'm sure you get my gist. Which is that, when you take you and your wife out of the equation - when you've died - the circumstances for your son will change in a fundamental way. Your just being there affects the way he is. Now, it's true that, when you die, he might well throw up his hands and give up completely. Alternatively, he might, curiously, blossom in his own odd way, take over the house and start to make a life for himself. While there are parents around, children cannot help but feel slightly infantile, however much they love them. I feel it's only when your parents have died and you are in the firing line yourself that you really grow up.
Take you and your wife off the scene, and, assuming that nature abhors a vacuum - sorry if I sound like someone taking science GCSE - the situation will change. You haven't really taken into account, either, how your three sons will behave when you have died. While you're around, they, quite reasonably, wash their hands of their brother, thinking that, thank God, you're around to keep an eye on him so they can get on with their lives. But once you're not around, they may well spring into action. They'd be pretty grim brothers if they didn't. It might, actually, be worth consulting them now and asking what they plan to do about their brother once you've left the scene.
Although you can't force your son to visit a doctor or accept help from social services, it might be worth pushing for it a little harder than you have in the past. If you said how very worried you are about him and how you can't sleep at night for anxiety, it might press him into at least giving some kind of help a go, even if he didn't persist.
It is his fear that needs addressing, not his IQ, because IQ is not really a marker for leading a happy and fulfilled life.
The Independent