Adult Son AIBU?

[InstantDestiny]

My son is 22. He is high functioning ASC but he doesn’t really acknowledge this.

He came back home to live after completing his degree last August and we had a difficult period of readjustment (he’s lovely but he’s really fucking lazy).

He can’t get a job in his chosen field where we live so he really needs to save money to be able to move to a city where he can start his career.

He works 4 hours a day starting at 4pm (he pays me a small amount of rent). He gets up at about 2pm every day. Does his own washing but never folds it or puts it away, and hoards crockery in his room bringing it down and not even bothering to put it in the dishwasher.

Yesterday is the day the cleaner comes. I work 8/9 hour days and get up at 7am. Went downstairs and he hadn’t emptied the dishwasher and had dumped a load of cemented on food bowls by the sink meaning the cleaner wouldn’t be able to clean the kitchen (she will wash up but not keen on paying someone to wash up when I have a dishwasher). I went into his room
at 7am ish and pointed out that I was not happy. Then cleared up his shit myself and emptied the dishwasher before getting ready and leaving for work.

He got home from work last night and burst into the lounge and had a massive go at me for waking him early, I said if you cleaned up
after yourself then I wouldn’t have. He went up to his room and slammed the door. I went up, knocked on the door and told him that it’s unacceptable to speak to me like that in my own home and he needs to clean up after himself. He then proceeded to het really angry and started swearing at me and got quite aggressive. I then said you ate behaving like my ex (extremely abusive, not his dad) which obviously made him angrier, but his behaviour absolutely triggered me.

AIBU? If he cleaned up his own shit I wouldn’t have woken him at 7am.

Remind him the day before, don’t wake him up out of routine. Give him a set of rules and a timetable.

he is 22
he has left home and now returned
sleep issues are not being helped by him
diagnosis or not!
he has been through university so presumably knows about getting up in the morning, like normal people do every day

Simple easy solution- no food or drink upstairs full stop. Except maybe 1 water bottle.

So what if you woke him up , YANBU and the shouting and aggressiveness isn't on either.

No respect for you has he?

YANBU he sounds lazy and annoying to live with. If he had done what he was meant to do then you wouldn’t have needed to wake him up. Personally l would have made him do the dirty dishes before the cleaner got there. If he doesn’t like it, he can move out. Spoiler: lots of people he shares housing with won’t like his behaviour either

Beautifully put. You sound like an excellent parent!

Oh give yourself the day off. Yawn.

It’s entirely possible to be neuro diverse and badly behaved. To allow otherwise is incredibly patronising and disempowering.

Exactly! Surely this is the obvious answer. Why does he even have all the dirty dishes in his room to start with?

New house rule. No food or drinks other than water anywhere other than the kitchen/living room (or wherever works in your house). I think it is also reasonable to expect all dishes to immediately be taken care of by the person who used them, but maybe you can work towards that.

The comment wasn’t needed , which you know.

It is not acceptable under any circumstances for him to be aggressive to you. That needs to be a red line for you and him.

Tell him what is expected of him and stick to it. Implement your own rules. He needs his own set of crockery, does he have some from uni? He will be in charge of washing and maintaining them.

Don’t let him use your plates if he’s being
irresponsible, if he runs out of dishes it’s not
your problem.

He needs chores to do in the home or to contribute to the cleaner, your choice.
Being ND doesn’t mean he gets to shirk doing anything in the home.

Yanbu, I’d have been irritated too!

Going forwards, can you have a routine of reminding him of the day the cleaner is coming and that he needs to clear his stuff up?

On another topic, what career does he want to do? He’s not going to save up particularly quickly if he’s only working 4hr shifts and not getting out of bed until 2pm, if he’s serious about that plan what are his timescales/plans for making that happen?

I really think you should stop making sweeping statements about what diagnoses OP's son may or may not have. ASD isn't an excuse for behaving like this at all, and at 22 he should know better!!