Can't give an inch...
- Thread starter Lil
- Start date
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Remember that you will be responsible for damages, too. Having said that, I would ask whether your difficult child guilted you into looking for something for him, or whether he looked, found, and asked, in a responsible way, for you to do this for him.
In questions like these is sanity for parents.
Have I been manipulated?
Can I afford the rent / damages?
Most importantly: Does the difficult child have a plan, a coherent plan, to change things for himself?
If he doesn't, then the question is whether you can face the winter while he is homeless. Whether you can. difficult child daughter was homeless in thirty below temps. She had a thousand reasons why the shelter was not a good place. She would call crying, begging us to pay for a room for she and her "significant other."
And Lil, we almost did it.
She wanted the room in a hotel on the shores of the lake. Nice place. All we would have had to do was give our credit card number. (We were many states away from where difficult child daughter was homeless.) Neither husband nor I slept well that first night. In the morning, we began calling around for cheaper rooms. We'd decided we could not live with ourselves if we did not help her in this way. We began calling around, intending to rent for difficult child daughter for the months remaining until we came home. It turned out she had been blacklisted, even from the worst dives in the city. Had we provided a credit card, renting that room in our names for the three nights of the blizzard Lil...there is no telling what the damages might have been. We are very sure as many of the homeless community as could fit into the room would have been there, in that room we had paid for. And that means drugs and alcohol and police and wreckage.
***
Here are some other questions:
Is an experiment of this nature (renting him ~ and whoever else is homeless ~ a room) something that will enable me to sleep at night? (Then it may be worth it. Only you can know that.)
Can I wait a few more weeks? For the sake of my sanity, can I have this plan, this possible solution to the truly horrible situation my child has laid on my doorstep?
Time is so often on our side.
If we can wait, if we can allow the situation to unfold, if we can give the child the time to come up with his own solution that is the best resolution.
Easy for me to say, Lil. We paid, every time. Our children eventually overwhelmed even us.
I don't have any answers either, of course. But I can tell you that nothing we did seemed to help the kids. Our daughter and/or grands were home to live with us multiple times. Our son was home multiple times. We bought a trailer for him up on our back lot at one point.
When we would send him away, it would be with a car, a license, and money. The last time, it was a pretty crummy car and only $500. (Later, we would give him a truck because he had a plan and he asked and that time, it worked and really did
help him.)
It seems that when the kids are desperate enough to come up with a plan of their own, then that thing we agree to actually helps them. It seems that as long as we are willing to take responsibility for their irresponsible actions, then we continue to pay and pay and try harder and become more enmeshed and guilty.
It does spiral like that.
Cedar
One more thing: All your son has to do to come home, or to live in a dorm or apartment, is to do the right thing. To work a job and support himself, or to take advantage of your offer (which I am sure you made) to pay for his higher education.
It helps to look at it that way.
Education was a bargaining point for our son, too.
He broke us a couple of times over education...and he never did graduate college.
And he is like, uber bright.
.
Jabberwockey
Well-Known Member
He didnt ask, Lil just checks on this every once in a while so she can give him this information. She does this as her way of "helping" him out even though he ignores it. No, he has nothing resembling a plan although he will say he does. His version of a plan is "I'm gonna get a job and get my own place" but thats it. Nothing resembling details or actual planning involved. He actually said the other night that he is going to use his first check to get a place. I love him to death but he really has NO clue whatsoever what life on your own is like.
And the higher education is off the table since the last time he put us about seven thousand dollars in debt for absolutely nothing. He didnt attend a weeks worth of class over the course of the entire year. He goes to school again, its on his own dime.
Lil
Well-Known Member
Jabber's right...he hasn't asked. He had a plan, apparently, at one point, to get a place with a guy he met at the shelter (and J-1) and that must have fallen thorough since the guy (who was cold-cot) found a friend of J-1's who was willing to rent him a room. Our son has said he's checked all of his friends and every single one has said no. So, there you go. His only planning now is what Jabber said.
And yes, school is off the table. We spent more like 9-10 thousand on room and board and spending money...he got student loans for the rest and is now no longer student loan eligible, because of failing he has to pay for at least one full semester himself. Unless he was living alone and doing well, and maybe wanted to take one class... I'm not willing to give him a dime.
BusynMember
Well-Known Member
Seems like a trend.
37 was all signed up for college and went for one semester. To be fair, 37 has had bonafide mental illnesses. In this case he had anxiety and severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He felt as if he had to count every word his professor said, plus count his own breaths and he was frantic, a mess, and unable to learn. Yes, we got him help...he was on Disability for three years with this. He did comply and take his medication. He was not faking. But, all the same, he never did go back, even after he had pretty much licked it. There is always a reason, but college and higher learning, no matter how bright they are, does not seem to agree with them. I am not blaming my son for being mentally ill at a bad time. I am just making an observation.
I tend to be a logical realist...drives some people nuts
37 was all signed up for college and went for one semester. To be fair, 37 has had bonafide mental illnesses. In this case he had anxiety and severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He felt as if he had to count every word his professor said, plus count his own breaths and he was frantic, a mess, and unable to learn. Yes, we got him help...he was on Disability for three years with this. He did comply and take his medication. He was not faking. But, all the same, he never did go back, even after he had pretty much licked it. There is always a reason, but college and higher learning, no matter how bright they are, does not seem to agree with them. I am not blaming my son for being mentally ill at a bad time. I am just making an observation.
I tend to be a logical realist...drives some people nuts
Jabberwockey
Well-Known Member
And here's to hoping he does because he isnt coming home, not for quite a while. And it was two semesters. He went for a full year, August to May, and got no credits at all.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
It helped us, when it was time to decide to help or not help, to keep the end goal more in mind than the current crisis.
Keep the end goal in mind, not the current crisis.
How will it be possible to teach your son to choose a different lifestyle path than the one he is on today?
Giving in or giving money was easier, especially at first, because we were so focused on helping the difficult child out of what seemed a temporary thing. We excused so many things as bad judgment in someone young. As the kids got older, the fixes got more and more and more expensive. Back then, we still believed (I did ~ husband never did) that we had parented badly and our children were suffering for it.
I read those same feelings when a new mom or dad comes onto this site.
It took me so many years to acknowledge the part drug use played in what happened to our family.
Had I not found this site, I may never have acknowledged it.
Until this last episode with difficult child daughter, I refused to acknowledge the mental illness piece.
I continue to experience denial around that issue.
There is a thread in Watercooler about Christmas. That is how I felt about my kids ~ that same shiny magic in the air, that same happiness and sense of wonder we felt about Christmas when we were little kids, I felt around everything to do with my kids. Here is the clinker: When I see them?
I have to do some pretty fast dancing to wrap the picture I hold in my heart around the reality of the adult in front of me, sometimes. There was a thread, it may have been posted before you and Jabber arrived, discussing the way moms especially tend to superimpose the faces of our children as toddlers or teens over the faces of our adult difficult children.
Cedar
Keep the end goal in mind, not the current crisis.
How will it be possible to teach your son to choose a different lifestyle path than the one he is on today?
Giving in or giving money was easier, especially at first, because we were so focused on helping the difficult child out of what seemed a temporary thing. We excused so many things as bad judgment in someone young. As the kids got older, the fixes got more and more and more expensive. Back then, we still believed (I did ~ husband never did) that we had parented badly and our children were suffering for it.
I read those same feelings when a new mom or dad comes onto this site.
It took me so many years to acknowledge the part drug use played in what happened to our family.
Had I not found this site, I may never have acknowledged it.
Until this last episode with difficult child daughter, I refused to acknowledge the mental illness piece.
I continue to experience denial around that issue.
There is a thread in Watercooler about Christmas. That is how I felt about my kids ~ that same shiny magic in the air, that same happiness and sense of wonder we felt about Christmas when we were little kids, I felt around everything to do with my kids. Here is the clinker: When I see them?
I have to do some pretty fast dancing to wrap the picture I hold in my heart around the reality of the adult in front of me, sometimes. There was a thread, it may have been posted before you and Jabber arrived, discussing the way moms especially tend to superimpose the faces of our children as toddlers or teens over the faces of our adult difficult children.
Cedar
Lil
Well-Known Member
I'm trying, I really AM trying, to stay "hands off". If, when he gets a full paycheck, he is ready for apartment shopping, I'll be happy to help him look. (I'm actually pretty worried that because of his age and lack of credit and work history he will have a hard time getting anyone to lease to him. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it I guess.) Now if my stupid brain will just quit looking at the clock at 8:00 p.m. and wondering if he's getting ready for work or blowing it off.
: He takes his lunch and doesn't need to spend money or call us.) We are planning on a Subway gift card (Being nice for when he really hates the food there) and maybe a pair of winter boots, since he has a mile to walk to work and the snow is bound to show up eventually. He can't very well clean an office building while dripping ice water off his tennis shoes. (Goal: He keeps walking to work and doesn't call us just because it's snowing.) That's Christmas, along going to see The Hobbit and having some dinner. He has gone on about wanting to get us Christmas presents...he won't of course, he gets paid at the start of his shift Xmas eve and by the time he gets off it's Xmas day. But I don't care. I flatly told him not to. Even if he had money, I'd rather he not buy anything this year. It would just be a butt kiss anyway. Last year he kept saying he had...Hell, I'd even given him money! Only to find out Xmas morning that he had lied and bought us nothing. Worst. Christmas. Ever. I'll never expect anything again.
Yeah, yeah. I'm crazy to get him anything. If we're still in this position next year, I'll rethink it.
Did some shopping yesterday and got him a $8 book I know he wants to read along with a collapsible lunch box thing that you can put food in, comes with a fork, etc., since he has no way to take food from the shelter if it's pasta or something, for dinner. If he doesn't want it, I'll return it. It's not really a "Christmas" gift. (Goal
: He takes his lunch and doesn't need to spend money or call us.) We are planning on a Subway gift card (Being nice for when he really hates the food there) and maybe a pair of winter boots, since he has a mile to walk to work and the snow is bound to show up eventually. He can't very well clean an office building while dripping ice water off his tennis shoes. (Goal: He keeps walking to work and doesn't call us just because it's snowing.) That's Christmas, along going to see The Hobbit and having some dinner. He has gone on about wanting to get us Christmas presents...he won't of course, he gets paid at the start of his shift Xmas eve and by the time he gets off it's Xmas day. But I don't care. I flatly told him not to. Even if he had money, I'd rather he not buy anything this year. It would just be a butt kiss anyway. Last year he kept saying he had...Hell, I'd even given him money! Only to find out Xmas morning that he had lied and bought us nothing. Worst. Christmas. Ever. I'll never expect anything again.Yeah, yeah. I'm crazy to get him anything. If we're still in this position next year, I'll rethink it.
Personally I think that one of the biggest steps to take on the road to detachment is to first learn what "help" actually is and isn't. What we give our adult difficult child children is NOT, and I repeat NOT help. What we as parents of difficult child children think of as helping our kids is actually enabling our kids. Paraphrasing what someone else already said, if the "help" we are giving them is something they should be able to take care of themselves, it is NOT help. If the "help" we are giving makes us uncomfortable because we are doing something we know we shouldn't, it is NOT help. If the "help" we are giving them is getting them out of a mess of thier own creation (for example, our son asked for a ride to a court appearance for a criminal charge. He had no car because he decided buying drugs was more important than making his car payment), it is NOT help. Our actions do not help difficult child children. Our actions enable difficult child children. In fact, our actions actually hurt our adult difficult child children. Every time we rescue them from themselves, we are actually cheating them. We are robbing them of the experiences of adult life (at 32 years old my son can't even fill out a 1040-EZ and file his own taxes). So then who are we helping? Some of you might be angry at the answer-ourselves. Has anything any of you done for your difficult child (besides detachment) actually made the situation better for them long term? My guess is the answer is no. Over the summer it was one year since I first posted here. I was thinking about that one day and refelcting on what had happened over the last 12 months with our son. Well, 12 months later our son was exactly in the same place he was at when I made my first post here- a homeless, broke, and jobless junkie. All the help, all the money, all the turmoil, all the anguish, and all we got was another year older and a few hundred dollars poorer. Then I thought further back, back to when he was 15 and all this rotten behavior started. Here we are 17 years later and we have the 32 year old man-child. When I look at my son, I see a 15 year old boy trapped in the body of a grown man.
Our actions (enabling) don't help our kids become fully realized adults. Our actions merely help us to sleep at night for a short time. Look, we all have these horrible thoughts: our homeless difficult child child freezing to death sleeping on a park bench, or found dead in an alley with a needle in their arm, or the victim of a drug deal gone bad, or............ As parents, we can't bear these images . We can't bear these things possibly happening to our children(and our kids know this and sometimes use this against us). Also, we can't bear the judgemental thoughts of what kind of people we must be if we turn our backs on our own offfspring, so we "help". We take action to enable, to quiet these voices and dispel these images of horrible things, even if only for one night. But all we are really doing is kicking the can down the road. They want us to be mommy and daddy indefinitely, and when we enable, we oblige.
While I don't consider myself a easy child, I was far from difficult child and I remember my mother telling me that letting go is one of the hardest things for a parent to do. But as parents, we MUST let go in order for our children to become fully realized adults. The only way to learn to be an adult is to be an adult-to learn from our mistakes, to live with the consequences of our actions, to solve problems, to be responsible and productive members of society. It's hard enough for good kids, but they tend to make it easier on us, because they want to be independent, fully realized adult members of society. But when the offspring is struggling to leave the nest and fly, it makes it so much harder to let go. If we don't "help" them then the horrible things we imagine happening might actually come true.
Childofmine
one day at a time
It is so very interesting...fascinating actually...that this is the case. As chaotic as difficult child's life appears to me, still, he is maintaining a place to live. He is driving a car back and forth to work. He is presumably putting gas in that car. He is working one job 48 hours a week and one job 25 hours a week. I haven't given him any assistance at all for two to three weeks, and he hasn't asked me for any. I don't know if his dad is or not.
All of the "help" in the world won't make it work if THEY don't make it work. And conversely, all of the "hands off" we can possibly stomach and muster is exactly what is needed...I think of it this way...to free some space and time so they can actually figure out what THEY want (not what we say they should want), and then start to make it happen.
Isn't that what being an adult is?
We get so confused by love with our adult difficult child kids. We love them, so....we help them, right? Wrong.
The best gift we can give is the gift of standing by, doing nothing, smiling and offering verbal encouragement that is sincere. It is very very hard to learn to do this, for we parents who have built lives on the foundation of enabling---not meaning to, of course---but somehow slipping and sliding into this "thing" that we do that absolutely does nothing to help anybody.
It takes years for many of us to see it, and then stlll longer to stop doing it, even once we decide we WANT to stop doing it. See the similarity with them.
Oh, we are not so different at all.
Once we see and believe that when we "help" we are actually crippling them, then we free up a space where something has a chance to change...if our difficult child wants it to change.
2much2recover
Well-Known Member
This is so true..............Bravo for saying it. I am sorry to hear that you son hasn't gotten any better. Why is it that the rest of us can learn from our own mistakes but somehow we figure the "only" way our difficult child child is going to "make it" is if we have are hands all over it trying to fix it? I agree with you, Scott, better said as let go and let God.
Childofmine
one day at a time
BusynMember
Well-Known Member
Many of our grown kids don't necessarily ever grow up, even if we back out.
But they have no chance at all if we wipe their noses. And the earlier we start forcing them to fend for themselves, without our help, the better the chances they will grow up one day. I have two difficult children and one grew up and other did not entirely grow up, but he knew darn well that if he had no job or got arrested or didn't pay his bills, he was not going to get any help from us. So he has a job, a house, a car and pays his child support, even though his thinking is often infantile.
I cringe when parents keep trying to help grown kids who are doing nothing with their lives. Or suddenly offering to pay for a car or a rental just because they got a job at Pizza Hut, that may or may not last. Or that they buy "necessities" that, if. of good quality, are usually sold for drugs. I get it because I did this for a while, but fortunately 37 got the cut off before he hit 25, which I think is a critical age. Most adult children are well on their way to their futures by then.
Scott, I can not disagree with one word you said. In the heartfelt hope that we are "helping" by making things easier for our grown kids, we are doing the exact opposite. Not one adult child ever quit drugs or got a good job or went back to school because WE gave them $200 for rent that they didn't use for rent (or maybe that they did use for rent). Our excuses for their behavior never changed them one wit. Our hot meals, letting them come home, and going easy on them because they are more "sensitive" than others did not help toughen them to prepare them for the world. The only adult children who have changed WANTED and NEEDED to change. The want is absolutely mandatory. The need is secondary, but it's very important. If they want to change and have figured out that the onus of the rest of their life is on them, that is further motivation.
I am amazed at how many grown children have never really worked. I'm amazed at how many of those grown children have access to cars. I'm amazed at how many of those grown children have their parents paying for cell phones, the internet, other fun things that they probably use for self-destruction. But we all have to walk our own path and learn at our own pace. Not all of us can let go. That makes us in a dance with our Peter Pan child and it can be a dance that dances all night and still could dance some more.
That's one reason I like Al-Anon. I'm not religious...spiritual, yes, but not religious. The part that hooked me was the letting go part and the help I sought out to do it. There is a lot of help out there for parents like us with struggling adult children. NAMI, Al-Anon, private therapy...anything is good. It is sooooooooooo important to see that WE can't do the work for our grown kids. And we also need to feel ok about enjoying our own lives even if our grown kids are struggling. After all, we are different people. The more we hover over them, the more power they feel they have over us and the more they try to stay in Peter Pan mode.
And that is just not good.
Scott, great post. One of the best I've read...at least in my opinion. It echoes how I feel in a way that only a man can say it Stick around.
But they have no chance at all if we wipe their noses. And the earlier we start forcing them to fend for themselves, without our help, the better the chances they will grow up one day. I have two difficult children and one grew up and other did not entirely grow up, but he knew darn well that if he had no job or got arrested or didn't pay his bills, he was not going to get any help from us. So he has a job, a house, a car and pays his child support, even though his thinking is often infantile.
I cringe when parents keep trying to help grown kids who are doing nothing with their lives. Or suddenly offering to pay for a car or a rental just because they got a job at Pizza Hut, that may or may not last. Or that they buy "necessities" that, if. of good quality, are usually sold for drugs. I get it because I did this for a while, but fortunately 37 got the cut off before he hit 25, which I think is a critical age. Most adult children are well on their way to their futures by then.
Scott, I can not disagree with one word you said. In the heartfelt hope that we are "helping" by making things easier for our grown kids, we are doing the exact opposite. Not one adult child ever quit drugs or got a good job or went back to school because WE gave them $200 for rent that they didn't use for rent (or maybe that they did use for rent). Our excuses for their behavior never changed them one wit. Our hot meals, letting them come home, and going easy on them because they are more "sensitive" than others did not help toughen them to prepare them for the world. The only adult children who have changed WANTED and NEEDED to change. The want is absolutely mandatory. The need is secondary, but it's very important. If they want to change and have figured out that the onus of the rest of their life is on them, that is further motivation.
I am amazed at how many grown children have never really worked. I'm amazed at how many of those grown children have access to cars. I'm amazed at how many of those grown children have their parents paying for cell phones, the internet, other fun things that they probably use for self-destruction. But we all have to walk our own path and learn at our own pace. Not all of us can let go. That makes us in a dance with our Peter Pan child and it can be a dance that dances all night and still could dance some more.
That's one reason I like Al-Anon. I'm not religious...spiritual, yes, but not religious. The part that hooked me was the letting go part and the help I sought out to do it. There is a lot of help out there for parents like us with struggling adult children. NAMI, Al-Anon, private therapy...anything is good. It is sooooooooooo important to see that WE can't do the work for our grown kids. And we also need to feel ok about enjoying our own lives even if our grown kids are struggling. After all, we are different people. The more we hover over them, the more power they feel they have over us and the more they try to stay in Peter Pan mode.
And that is just not good.
Scott, great post. One of the best I've read...at least in my opinion. It echoes how I feel in a way that only a man can say it
Stick around.
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Very well said Scott. Well done.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
hopeandjoy66
Member
For our difficult child, his mom just keeps up the enabling. She was getting better and then fell back into the old patterns along with difficult child. I do think she continues this because she knows deep down in her heart that even if she stops the enabling he will not step up to be the adult that he needs to be. If this is what she thinks I think it too. I have absolutely no faith that he will take care of things on his own. He just doesn't care enough. However, if he doesn't care why should I care more than him. EX has sworn to my husband that as long as she is alive he will never become homeless. (Her health is poor).So I guess the cycle continues. My husband has finally got it. "He is a grown man, difficult child" and he and his mom have robbed him of many opportunities to be successful on his own. He now looks for every opportunity for his son to learn lessons and do the life skill that a 31 year old should have...... ie... unplug his own toilet.
Some times we "Help" because we know that they will not be successful if left on their own. Who knows, he really has never been given that chance. He may surprise us. I doubt it, but in all fairness he hasn't had to because someone is there catching him.
Childofmine
one day at a time
Hope, I know how profoundly frustrating (despairing, annoying, back-breaking...) it is to finally "get it" about enabling, at least intellectually, which is how you "get it" at first, only to watch someone else continue the sick cycle.
After years in Al-Anon, I finally started to intellectually understand that my help, as Scott G. said so well above, wasn't help at all. In fact, it was a huge hindrance, and further, a huge roadblock and barrier for him to even start to figure out his own life. I had been enabling my son for years, but I couldn't see it.
Then, even after I "got it" intellectually, and was working hard on having a growing understanding of all of the ways I was not helping, and then praying for a way forward, because "if I don't do THAT anymore, what DO I DO?" also took up a lot of my time and energy. It has taken a whole whole lot of work and a lot of missteps, some of which continue today, but fewer and fewer, thankfully, still.
During this time of working on myself so hard, my ex-husband, difficult child's dad, continued to enable him mightily. One or two times, I tried to share what I was learning, but he was very caught up in his own guilt about being an alcoholic himself---recovering now---and also confused about what is said in AA about one alcoholic helping another, always. I could see how conflicted he was, and I didn't push after having one or two conversations about it.
Another thing I have learned is that when you say something more than once...you are trying to control the situation. And we all know trying to control people, places and things just does...not...work.
But that doesn't mean I didn't agonize over it. Here, I was doing this supremely hard thing in growing fits and starts, but my ex was continuing the helping damage. Ugh. It was hard, but it was one more thing I had to let go of, and realize that once again, I don't have the answers, I don't know what is right for other people to do, and maybe something good would come of it.
Humility. That is another important lesson I am continuing to learn. All of these lessons work together. All of them, and they come in bits and pieces, and in the midst of chaos and fear and pain and incredible sorrow.
Thankfully, they still come, if we are open to learning a new way of behaving, thinking and living. If we work at it. If we use tools every single day to change the neuron patterns in our own brains.
Today, my ex-husband has stopped much of his enabling. I have too. I use the word "much" deliberately. I am not perfect, nor will I ever be at this or anything else in my life.
My difficult child has been out of jail now for six months---will be six months Dec. 26. He has no new charges. He is on probation at the county level and state level. He is working the two jobs, paying for his own apartment. He is making progress. Often, like me, his progress is two steps forward and 10 back, and he continues to make what I believe are bad decisions for his own life, but again, I am reminded that it is HIS LIFE, not my life, and I have no magic or crystal ball to see his future.
I must continue to turn him (and his whole life) over to God/my Higher Power/whatever force is greater than myself, and trust that he is on his own life journey and I can't know the twists and turns that will and should take.
And I can look at my own boundaries with him and his life, and work to make sure they are healthy boundaries, and adjust them as need be, so that I can maintain my own sanity, my own peace, my own serenity, regardless of events and actions and statements he may make to me, or his girlfriend may make to me. It's just not my monkey, not my circus anymore.
I pray every day for continuing progress along this path, also realizing that I will and can relapse myself. I love my son very much and his life has so far turned out to be so incredibly different from what I ever dreamed of for him.
That's life.
