(Name changed for this post)
OP, I am your 16 year old son. Except, along the way I've morphed into a late 30-something woman.
When I was in my teens I was a really shy, lonely teenager. I recognised that I needed social activities outside school. So I begged my parents to let me go to a drama youth group? Id thought this would be ideal. They hummed and harred and made excuses. It was about 20 mins walk on a nearby housing estate (of the middle-class new build kind, in a respectable home counties small town).
In my GCSE year, I lost my dad, flunked my exams and went to nearby 6th form college, instead of school 6th form. I left most of my friends behind, and didn't really make new ones apart from class mates to chat to in lessons & the cafeteria.
My mum was uber-neurotic and ridiculously over protective. I wasn't allowed to go up to London, even though it was only an hour on the train. I didn't even really have a 'curfew' as such, as I couldn't get out under her restrictive criteria, such as not walking home after dark, even tea time in winter. A lift had to be with a parent, not a friend who'd passed their test.
I had no self-esteem or confidence to get a Saturday job and be financially independent with regard to teenager-y stuff like music, cinema tickets, going out socialing etc. She only gave me a tiny amount of pocket money (enough for a magazine/chocolate bar).
My mum had a driving license, but was too anxious and phobic about driving, so my freedom was severely curtailed in that regard. She sold my dad's car when he died as she wouldn't use it. I remember begging her to let me learn to drive and get a car we could share, but she was paranoid I'd crash, or be killed by a drunk driver. I think at the time the running costs for a small car were about £25 a week (early '90's). That felt so out of my league in the same way a £200,000 Porshe would seem to most of you reading.
My mum also belitted my interests as well, like that the local Amnesty International group would be full of dangerous lefties, or I shouldn't study Sociology, as "there's no such thing as society".
I ended up dropping out of college a few weeks before my A Levels, as I was so depressed and lonely I hadn't really done any work for them. I spent a year practically house bound with extreme social phobia and under the care of a mental health social worker, I couldn't even go and sign on, I was so terrified of the prospect.
Somehow, I got back into college the following year and did my A Levels and on to University. But the constant feeling of being belittled for my own values and interests has never left me. I am stuck in an extreme poverty mentality, that I am just not worth any wage, and even a minimum wage job seems so out of my league, because my mum didn't value my social life and psychological well being when I was younger. I've never held down a permanent job in my life? just drifted in and out of low paid office temping work & the like since uni. You can imagine how shit that makes me feel. I'm married now, but very little money of my own, just a few £ what I can make on Ebay etc now and then. I'm ok now, if a bit shy, in general social gatherings, but I'm so terrified of interviews and work situations that I'm like a rabbit in the headlights. I've been sacked on the spot in jobs for not getting basic tasks right due to anxiety. I'm effectively unemployable, I have a degree and am pleasant and personable, but I have no confidence or skills.
I'm sat here typing this in tears. Please, Sandy11? this is what over protective parenting does to the human psyche down the years . Please do not let your son become like me. If anything, you need to be pushing him out of the nest. Please give him a personal allowance to be able to go off and follow interests and do teenager-y things. What happened to me couldn't be any worse than if I had been an outgoing socialising teenager and got mugged/raped on the way home from a club or whatever.