Two letters about troubled young people

[conuly]

1. My partner and her son moved in with me at the start of the pandemic three years ago. She was getting priced out of her place, and was desperate to stay in the local school district since her son has special needs. I have a fairly large two-bedroom condo. I’ll admit the three of us went a little stir-crazy during the pandemic since I work from home, but it worked out. I’m crazy about her son.

I’m not so crazy about her daughter, “Sally.” Sally is 20, and she only cares about herself. She moved out to live with her permissive father as a teen and continues to break her mother’s heart to this day. She only calls when she wants money and thinks her parents exist to fund her lifestyle. She refuses to get even a part-time job. Last year, she threw a screaming tantrum because her mother couldn’t afford the increase in rent at the new place she wanted to get with her boyfriend (my partner pays her rent). She called my partner horrible things and said worse about her half-brother. Sally has also failed to attend a single lecture at school, so her father has stopped paying for anything. Her roommates are refusing to renew the lease with her in May.

Of course, Sally comes crying to mommy about her money woes. My partner makes good money, but even with me paying the majority of the bills, she can’t afford to fund another household. Her son needs expensive therapy. So, she wants Sally to move in with us. I told her no. We’re still arguing about it. Can you help us break this impasse?

—No Sally

Dear No Sally,

Sally sounds like she has been absolutely awful towards her mother and like she needs to grow up and get her life in order. However, it also sounds like she has no place to go, and it’s hard to imagine that her mother would be okay with that. Though she is an adult, Sally’s mother is going to want to make sure that her child is safe and has a place to rest her head. You may want to consider allowing her to move in temporarily—say, three to six months maximum—while she finds somewhere else to live long-term.

It should also be a condition of her stay that she gets a job and devotes time to finding permanent housing. You can also require Sally to do household chores and earn her keep. Let your partner know that Sally is only welcome to come if she abides by these terms, and that she is not to stay any longer. This will be a big sacrifice for you, and I realize that you’ve already done a lot for your partner and her son. But I don’t think your partner will be okay as long as her daughter doesn’t have a place to live. Let Sally know that her place in your home is conditional, and that if she isn’t willing to do what is expected of her, she’ll have to leave.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/adults-living-with-parents-daughter-move-in-care-feeding.html

****************

2. Dear Annie: I have two step-grandchildren, a 16-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. My grandson is completely out of control and was recently expelled from high school for truancy and drug use. My granddaughter was recently caught vaping in the school bathroom and was expelled for a short period of time. There are days when she refuses to get up and go to school, and when she does, she often skips her classes.

My stepson-in-law and stepdaughter are at the end of their emotional "rope" on what to do with their kids. I resent the kids coming over to our home because of what they are putting their parents through. Any ideas on how to handle these two troubled teens? -- Heartbroken Grandparents

Dear Grandparents: It's common for kids this age to act out, but they can't rule the roost. They need to understand that their actions have real consequences. Discipline must start with your grandchildren's parents, and as long as they're teens living at home, they have to abide by the house and school rules, no ifs, ands or buts.

The way you're feeling -- frustrated and resentful -- makes sense considering the situation, but it might help your grandchildren to know they have you as a trusted adult figure in their lives at times they feel they can't turn to their parents. Attending family counseling would equally benefit the parents and children alike.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearannie/s-2839175

Comments

[conuly]

1. I have three entirely different and unrelated sets of thoughts about this letter.

The first is practical. LW should absolutely not, under any circumstances, allow Sally to move in. LW cannot enforce any rules against Sally, and will not find it easy to kick her out at the end of whatever arbitrary time limit is set up. This is a nonstarter. Sally needs to be told that this is not happening, in no uncertain terms. This advice is bad.

The second is... look, Sally sounds thoroughly awful. She also sounds unhappy - she can't hold down a job, she can't make it into class, she can't keep her friends - who'd be happy like this? Sally does not want to be like this. She sounds miserable, and at a pretty young age. Of course, I'm not the one who has to deal with her, but what I *would* suggest as an alternative to letting Sally move in is to continue to pay her rent on the condition that she goes to therapy. That might or might not help - therapy is one of those things that works if you're willing to do the work - but I honestly can't see how things can get worse for Sally with this deal.

The third is that LW needs to seriously reconsider how these family dynamics are playing out, because it reads like LW is blaming Sally's "permissive" father for Sally's behavior, while LW's saintly partner gets none of the blame. Well, okay - but one of those two people has stopped supporting his adult daughter, and the other wants to make an even larger commitment to her. So which of these two is more of a pushover, really? And cycling back to my previous paragraph, if LW's grasp of the situation is so dependent on which of the two people they like more, is it possible that LW is misrepresenting Sally's behavior here? I genuinely have no idea, but I don't like how LW writes this letter.

2. LW2 calls these troubled teens, but I don't think that she really thinks they are troubled. Let me just say that if a child is unable to leave her bed to go to school, that sounds less like she is "refusing" to do this and more like she is suffering from a mental illness such as depression. And the same goes for the older child's use of drugs - this can mean a lot of things, but at the very least, I'd want to have the kid screened for mental illness.

Annie's advice is shallow and useless. Her first paragraph is entirely irrelevant and also wrong. Not only do the grandparents not have any say on how they're disciplined at home, but you cannot discipline your way out of mental health problems. And if nothing else is clear to me from this letter, it's that the trouble here is not that the children do not understand consequences, that they are "acting out" or "ruling the roost", but that they are, in fact, troubled teens. They need help. And again, that's easy enough for me to say, since I'm not the one who has to deal with them - but then again, LW doesn't have to deal with them on a daily basis either.

The second paragraph doesn't connect to the first in any meaningful way, and also doesn't provide anything useful for LW to actually do.

What LW asked for is advice on handling the kids. Well, LW can't put them into therapy, so actually, they can't do much. What LW also alluded to needing help with is their resentment of these teens for the trouble they're causing for their parents. And this is something they can get help with, probably through a support group of some sort.

Terrible, useless response.

[ysobel]

you cannot discipline your way out of mental health problems

PREACH

[cora]

I agree with you on the both the "No Sally" letter and the "Heartbroken Grandparents" letter.

Re: "No Sally" - Your advice sounds incredibly practical on the matter. My own thoughts are, "This may be the wake up call Sally needs to realize 'Huh...maybe letting my emotions control me isn't serving my needs very well.'" Mom doesn't have to let Sally linger/stay at rock bottom. Mom can save up the money she is currently spending on Sally to swoop in once Sally's lesson is learned.

Honestly, I really hope Sally just needs some good therapy to get her life on track and that Sally wants to do/be better.

Re: "Heartbroken Grandparents"

History is full of mentally ill individuals who self-medicated, which would account for truancy & drug usage. Being in school takes up a lot of energy. At the lowest expenditure of energy, it requires putting on a "neutral" face, looking like you are paying attention, and once you've gotten comfortable enough to maybe give actual focusing/paying attention a try - BAM. Time to migrate to the next classroom and repeat. It is exhausting.

Verses staying at home or going to a friends' house and getting high (I am assuming pot is the drug the grandparents are pearl clutching over - it's not really clear in the letter - it could just as easily be alcohol. I doubt it's anything "harder" than pot, unless this is a really bougie neighborhood and the kids get an allowance that allows them to afford harder drugs like crack, cocaine, heroine, etc.).

Daughter is likely skipping classes for the same reason - school requires energy. Daughter reads like textbook depression, to be honest. Not sure what is up with the son, unless depression presents differently in men.

Either way, I would suggest individual therapy for the kids and family therapy for the kids + parents. On the off chance both kids are depressed, there could be something further happening at home (maybe the parents don't have an idyllic marriage the grandparents think they do, maybe the parents aren't parenting in a way the kids need, or maybe everything is fine, it's just genetics, but home life can be tweaked to ensure everything can stabilize to meet the needs of the entire family unit).

[conuly]

I would be a lot less concerned with a suspension for drug use in the older boy, which, as you say, is probably "just" marijuana and possibly not even very much of it or very often, if it wasn't coupled with his younger sister showing much more worrisome symptoms at the same time.

LW is not at all clear with what "out of control" means here, and so I have disregarded that entirely.

[ethelmay]

I actually jumped straight to the conclusion that his drug use must be more serious, and am now wondering where I got that. I suppose because when I was in school pot use seemed to be winked at unless it was really blatant.

[cora]

I think you may have come to the conclusion the drug use may be more serious from the phrase "completely out of control." From my own lived experience (I am 37 now), that is often a dog whistle used by adults who do not want to actually communicate or compromise with anyone under the age of 18. They merely want to have their will/command obeyed.

I can also say from personal experience, there is a lot of "well good riddance to you" on both sides once the kid hits 18 and other adults are no longer rallying to the individual giving the "completely out of control" dog whistle, and all of a sudden, the former kid now has options available they didn't have when they were younger because the adults in their lives were not interested in communicating or trying to compromise. Suddenly, the other adults are now the ones communicating about options/choices available...because "you do this, and if you don't like it, sorry about you - suck it up and deal - I can call the cops and have them bring you right back to me" is no longer an option once a kid reaches the age of 18.

Also from my own experience, these are the kinds of adults who don't know how to compromise/communicate with kids, and they tend to weirdly choose the "let's escalate this situation" option. See: "I resent the kids coming over to our home because of what they are putting their parents through." It's weird to place the blame at the children's feet for a situation where there really is no reason to place blame (but if you are going to place blame, why would you blaming the individuals with the least amount of lived experience who equally have no idea how to navigate this??? Why would you expect a 13 and a 16 year old to have any idea of how to navigate whatever they are going through that is causing them to act out when their grown adult parents are just as lost? Super bizarre).

[ethelmay]

Oh, no, I totally agree about the dog-whistle and everything else you say. And lumping them together when the daughter didn't sound at all unusually "out of control" by any interpretation (I can't count the number of people I know whose kids have occasionally refused school, and yeah, generally it was a sign of depression) was another reason not to trust the narrative. Plus I don't think anyone has said yet that you can't be "expelled" for a short period - the daughter must have been suspended, no? Which doesn't sound nearly as bad.

[conuly]

I also got the impression that it's intended to be read as serious, but if this is the same school system that suspended his sister for vaping on school grounds, clearly they are stricter than that.

[ashbet]

Letting Sally under the LW's roof is a terrible idea -- there is absolutely no way that any deadlines or "house rules" can effectively be *enforced* once she's in . . . unless you go the legal-eviction route, which could cause a breakup with Sally's mother.

For the sake of LW's sanity and relationship, Sally cannot move in.

And, yeah, the advice in the second letter is terrible. Something is going on with those kids, and they need a mental-health intervention rather than "discipline."

[lilysea]

Yes, I read this, and thought

if Sally moves in,

1. it's going to be very hard to convince her mother to make Sally move out

2. depending on how long Sally lives there, and what state it is, Sally may be legally entitled to tenant protections which might make it very hard to evict her

[lethe1]

1. So why should Sally's mother pick up the pieces when her dad has stopped paying?

2. I am often surprised by how quickly therapy is suggested in this community. Is it an American thing, or perhaps an age thing?

I skipped so many classes in school (I started having migraines at 13 and used that as an excuse) and I turned out all right.

[minoanmiss]

For #2 -- It might be an American/particular stratum of American society thing, but one good possibility with therapy is working on an issue with a new person with a different insight, who has been trained to see some ways in which the human mind works that a family member may just not know.

My impression is that many European educational systems can be more forgiving than ones in the US often are, especially when it comes to high school and potentially attending college afterwards.

[lethe1]

That may be true.

It differs from school to school, but mine was a large comprehensive, and nobody cared much as long as I handed in my absentee notes.