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Should I get 18 year old out of jail?
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<blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 764988" data-attributes="member: 18958"><p>I get that way with decisions, too.</p><p></p><p>I think it's because of fear. I think I have an underlying script that life is dangerous and that if I don't do everything right I will fall off a narrow tightrope into peril. The way I have coped with this my whole life is to deny fear, deny danger, and just rush headlong into the unknown without thinking. For most of my life that worked. Now that I am old, it doesn't work so well.</p><p></p><p> You have made a deliberate and well-thought-out plan of your priorities about what is in your and your fiance's best interest. It' is hard enough to begin a new marriage. Young adults have another life challenge. How to begin to accept responsibility for themselves, and to no longer expect their parent to take the primary burden from them. Of course, this is harder with the adult children of single parents. When I met my partner my son was just 21. He took it hard. My son was always the one and only. There were many many years when I felt extreme guilt and distress for his suffering. I felt I was responsible to help him fix it. This attitude on my part was very damaging. I created the illusion for my son that I was responsible and that the more infantile he acted, the more I would and should step up and solve everything. He regressed and regressed. I could not bear the vulnerability of my son.</p><p></p><p>What I realized after many years was that it was my own vulnerability and fear I could not bear.</p><p></p><p>The point I am making here is that we need to get back into our own lives. You have your life under control. It's your sons lives that need attention. And they need their attention. Not yours. You are NOT saying your children can't live with you. You're saying their dogs can't. They have every opportunity to find short-term care for their animals and to find a place together or with other young people to live together with their dogs.</p><p></p><p>This is not a perfect world. We make it better through how we work to make it better. Crying for Mommy to fix it, will not work. Well, my son still does this at 35, so who am I to say?</p><p></p><p>So, back to what I wrote at the beginning. Did you have an early life like I did, which was not necessarily all that secure? We could never take anything for granted, that life would be secure or there would be support or backup. It was walking a tightrope. People with secure upbringings trust their decisions, they trust themselves and they trust life. They don't second guess well-made decisions. Your decisions about your housing are well thought out and make sense. At least I think so.</p><p></p><p>I don't know anything about you or your life, but maybe this is an opportunity to look a little bit at your operating system for life and to examine your relationships with your children, with that in mind. Your children, like mine, might have gotten the message that they could coerce you or manipulate you into feeling guilty and doubting yourself and in that way get the outcome they want. This is what happened with my son. But more importantly, it was my reaction. I felt that I was responsible to make him happy, to make his life good, to help him correct it. That I was responsible. I wasn't.</p><p></p><p>Maybe it doesn't apply to you, but it might.</p><p></p><p>By the way, at ages 21 and 24 it's time to emancipate from the nest, in my book. You're not telling them to go. They are choosing to go because you won't give them 100 % of what they want. So? Let them work for 100 % of what they want. It's not Mom's job.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Copabanana, post: 764988, member: 18958"] I get that way with decisions, too. I think it's because of fear. I think I have an underlying script that life is dangerous and that if I don't do everything right I will fall off a narrow tightrope into peril. The way I have coped with this my whole life is to deny fear, deny danger, and just rush headlong into the unknown without thinking. For most of my life that worked. Now that I am old, it doesn't work so well. You have made a deliberate and well-thought-out plan of your priorities about what is in your and your fiance's best interest. It' is hard enough to begin a new marriage. Young adults have another life challenge. How to begin to accept responsibility for themselves, and to no longer expect their parent to take the primary burden from them. Of course, this is harder with the adult children of single parents. When I met my partner my son was just 21. He took it hard. My son was always the one and only. There were many many years when I felt extreme guilt and distress for his suffering. I felt I was responsible to help him fix it. This attitude on my part was very damaging. I created the illusion for my son that I was responsible and that the more infantile he acted, the more I would and should step up and solve everything. He regressed and regressed. I could not bear the vulnerability of my son. What I realized after many years was that it was my own vulnerability and fear I could not bear. The point I am making here is that we need to get back into our own lives. You have your life under control. It's your sons lives that need attention. And they need their attention. Not yours. You are NOT saying your children can't live with you. You're saying their dogs can't. They have every opportunity to find short-term care for their animals and to find a place together or with other young people to live together with their dogs. This is not a perfect world. We make it better through how we work to make it better. Crying for Mommy to fix it, will not work. Well, my son still does this at 35, so who am I to say? So, back to what I wrote at the beginning. Did you have an early life like I did, which was not necessarily all that secure? We could never take anything for granted, that life would be secure or there would be support or backup. It was walking a tightrope. People with secure upbringings trust their decisions, they trust themselves and they trust life. They don't second guess well-made decisions. Your decisions about your housing are well thought out and make sense. At least I think so. I don't know anything about you or your life, but maybe this is an opportunity to look a little bit at your operating system for life and to examine your relationships with your children, with that in mind. Your children, like mine, might have gotten the message that they could coerce you or manipulate you into feeling guilty and doubting yourself and in that way get the outcome they want. This is what happened with my son. But more importantly, it was my reaction. I felt that I was responsible to make him happy, to make his life good, to help him correct it. That I was responsible. I wasn't. Maybe it doesn't apply to you, but it might. By the way, at ages 21 and 24 it's time to emancipate from the nest, in my book. You're not telling them to go. They are choosing to go because you won't give them 100 % of what they want. So? Let them work for 100 % of what they want. It's not Mom's job. [/QUOTE]
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Should I get 18 year old out of jail?
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