worry that I’m encouraging a position that is “enabling” the young adult’s immaturity. This concern misunderstands the disabling influence of shame and the powerful need people have to direct it away from themselves. The need for parents to take more responsibility or show more empathy to an adult child is especially necessary in a highly individualistic culture like ours, where the myth of the meritocracy reads, “You have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t succeed in life.” When parents say, “Yes, we could see how you might be in a better place if we had done things differently,” it
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