agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR HARRIETTE: My son has been rebellious and unreliable for years now, and it stresses me out to interact with him. He is 19 years old and leaving for his second year of college soon. I want to be a better parent, and I think I need to change my parenting strategy. I gave him too much freedom growing up, and now I want to find ways to discipline him, but it is difficult because he is older. What measures can I take? -- Too Late

DEAR TOO LATE: The best thing you can do is have a frank discussion with your son where you tell him what you think about his behavior and where you believe it is leading him. Apologize for being too lenient with him when he was younger. Point out specific behaviors you have witnessed that have not served him well, but also point out anything good and hopeful about him that you can muster.

Tell him what you want for him and his life, and recommend that he get focused so that he can accomplish his goals. Remind him that he is independent now. Make it clear that you want to help him in any way that you can, but now is the time for him to help himself.

https://www.uexpress.com/sense-and-sensitivity/2019/9/14/1#disqus-comments

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Given that she appears to think she can "discipline" a 19 year old man - one who is on track to graduate college at the usual time, by the way - I suspect that the issue is NOT that she gave him "too much freedom" growing up but, instead, that her metric for the appropriate amount of freedom/responsibility by age range is flawed and now that her son has experienced some measure of actual freedom he's pushing back against her more unreasonable dictums.

Oh, good Lord, shall we count the red flags? One...three...yeah, this will not end well.

As a nonparent I bet LW would dismiss my opinion, but you don't "discipline" a 19 year old. You advise him and when he comes back having done fucked up you give him a tube of Neosporin and help him dissect what went wrong.

Another non-parent would like to Upvote this answer...

Yup.

The only time a 19 year old is getting "disciplined" should be inappropriate for Mom.

*SNORK*

If this hadn't been about a son I would have thought my father wrote this letter.

The fact that they signed it "Too Late" makes me wonder. Like, LW, you are aware that if he's 19 and a college student he's not "rebellious", he's an adult doing his own thing, right?

What a parent of a college student and a 19 year old can do is (1) set rules that are to be obeyed for living at home and having tuition paid, and/or (2) attempt reconciliation, therapy, mediated conversations, etc., and/or (3) let the dude go his own way, and either he'll reconcile with you in a few years or he won't. He's nineteen. The bird has flown, yo.

LW completely skipped over describing just how their son is rebelling and being unreliable. Is he actually doing anything that would make a decent example of poor behavior, or is he just living his life? Given the lack of substance and the surplus of red flags in the five sentence letter, I'm leaning towards the latter.

Apologize for being too lenient with him when he was younger.

Oh gosh, yes, LW, DEFINITELY do this. *popcorn.gif*

Snnnnrk.

This is reminding me of LM Montgomery's "The Blue Castle", when the main character has kicked over the traces and escaped her abusive mother:

"You should have been stricter with her when she was young," said Uncle Benjamin.

"I don't see how I could have been," said Mrs. Frederick--truthfully enough.

LW gives no details? Is he just showing he's an adult and doing his own thing or is he booming music at 5am smoking weed?

I may be projecting (my parents called me "So rebellious" for reading fantasy books and for not reading my essays over the phone to them before I turned the work in) but I think if LW could cite something a reasonable person would find objectionable, like weed and 5 AM music blasting, they would. I think they have nothing to cite that would horrify anyone, and they know it, so they don't cite the actual behavior they want to control just for the sake of being controlling.