Adult will not leave work or go to school

[Jupiter]

We have five kids. One is a paramedic, one lives in NYC and works and pays bills, two are entering college. The child directly in the middle is Julie. She was always the most responsible and studious. No more. She came home from college last November during her first semester and has refused to leave since. She doesn’t do chores. She doesn’t work at all. She won’t go to school. We’ve offered to move her to NYC or to other cool places with family for a fresh start. She refuses.
All she does is knit and lay around. She doesn’t go anywhere and doesn’t appear to be doing drugs.
assuming that depression is clearly involved we have had her in therapy for most of this time. Nothing has changed except that she appears to be doing less around the house. She will be twenty very soon. It’s been nearly a year.
I am getting pretty fed up. She appears to have no plans except to lay around working on the same blanket for like a year. We don’t really need another blanket. We DO need chores done and bills paid. It’s very frustrating to come home from work to a dirty house with a grown person just laying around all day.
I don’t know what to do.

 

[Moonstone]

I say school of hard knocks. Tell her that she needs to either pay rent/bills or help contribute to the household in other ways, or she needs to move out and figure things out for herself. If she wants to sell her crafts to earn money and earns enough to pay whatever your agreement that would allow her to follow her passion. If she doesn't want to pay then she should be doing sufficient chores to earn her keep.

It's your house and she either needs to respect that or figure something else out. She's an adult now and needs to make her own way. I do think you should have some sort of contract and give her a little time to figure out how to make good on it. I think a period of 3 months is more than fair especially if she already has crafts on hand to sell if that's the route she wants to take. Grocery stores are always hiring. It's not a glamorous job but it is a job.

Anyway, good luck! But I don't think enabling her behavior is going to help and you've already tried therapy. Sometimes people need to hit rock bottom before they realize they need to make a change.