AIBU not to wake my 20-year-old for early shifts?

[itsmeitsyou]

DS 20 has a new job. It's full time in a factory and I am very happy for him as previous work has been mainly casual bar work.

He has struggled to get up for his shifts. He needs to be up by 5am to leave at 5.30am for public transport on a weekday for a 7am start. Weekend he starts at 6! Thankfully we have good transport links and he can get there.

Problem is one of us in the house is having to wake him. I don't want to get up at 4.30am on a weekend to get him up.

My sister (has no children) has called me selfish. As when she was asking about the new job I confessed I didn't know how he would manage the 6am starts on a Saturday. She said I need to get up and get him up, it's my duty as his parent!

YABU - help him get up on weekend
YANBU - he is 20 and needs to continue to learn natural consequences

If your sister feels so strongly then she can get him up. He’s an adult and can do it himself

By his age, I had had him was renting a house, doing 3 shifts in my local pub and attending an access course to teaching!
I know we are all different, I don't want him to fail, I also dont want to do everything so he just fails anyway at being an adult.

My sons in the same position
I dont think people realise how bad the job market is now
Hes had a few interviews and will literally work anywhere right now .

All the best for his applications

Not everyone wants and can go to university. What’s the point anyway when there are swathes of unemployed grads who can’t even get nmw jobs.

He's old enough to figure out a solution for himself, even if it involves multiple alarm clocks etc. Your sister could call him on a morning to wake him up if she's that concerned.

When I lived in a house share in my twenties, my almost 30 year old room mate expected me to keep knocking on his door on a morning to wake him up for work. I'm not sure how he wasn't too embarrassed to ask in the first place. I started work at different times each week, so I imagine he'd have still expected me to get up early to wake him up when I was on lates!

I can’t get over how many MNetters would get up to get their adult son up. Just how much molly coddling are some people doing, and for how long? At what age do you think he should be getting himself up? He’s an adult. With a job. He works out strategies to ensure he attends said job. And as for people saying they’d get him up and make him a tea and pack him a lunch…. I really hope you are joking. Jeezo.

Well done you but times have changed. The opportunities aren’t really there anymore. I do agree he should be getting up himself though.

Id do it for a couple of weeks to get him in the routine, but if he can't get up early for the day shifts, maybe he could do nights?

One of ours had a warehouse job like this recently and had to be at the station at 5am for 12hr shifts.
My husband was getting him up.
The situation only lasted a couple of weeks anyway. Hideous

That sounds completely different as you were a student and it was only on some days and it was paid. Presumably you did it for a finite time for a specific purpose.

OP must live really rurally for this to be the best he can get. It sounds soul-destroying! She still isn’t responsible for getting him up but I feel sorry for him.

Bitchy. At least he’s trying and has a job and is gaining experience in the workforce. Better than claiming benefits like an increasing number of young people now.

Someone really ought to have taught him how to make a sandwich by now...

Honestly how is he going to get through life at all, and hold down a job, if he can't get himself up in the morning?

The babying of grown adults here is insane. It's a parent's job to teach them to look after themselves, not to do everything for them at 20 years old!

So we wake my 20 year old up for work, but we are up getting ready for work.

Yes, yes they are 20. But they have issues where they cannot sleep, they are on medication from the doctor so they need the extra help...

If they were a typical 20 year old then I wouldn't and especially not if I didn't need need to be up! I like my sleep far too much!

If his aunt is so concerned SHE could call him every morning at 4:30?

Have you any udea how hard it is to get a job at the moment?
And what exactly is wrong in working in a factory anyway?

I spent years getting up at 5am for a 7am start with a 90 min bus journey. I hated it. Around a decade ago I was working in a gym and I had to get up at 4.30am for a 6am start -even though the gym was only a few miles away bus times weren't good. I don't sleep well if I know I have to be up early in the morning. My brain won't switch off.

He presumably didn't get up at 5am for school?

I agree.

This is why there are so many useless husbands around. And then people ask why its always the mum to blame and not the dad.

It's because it's the mums who can't let go and have failed to prepare their sons for adult life by still getting them up for work, ironing their clothes, making sure they shower, making them a hot drink of something and packing them a sandwich into their 20s...

My SS25 has always struggled to get up in the morning. He’s a police officer now and works shifts. He has to set 3 alarms.

i don’t think you should be getting him up. He needs to figure this out for himself.

He needs to learn to get up himself - I'd be re-framing it with your sister and children as them being rather selfish expecting you to do it and leave it there. Although I do get that maybe, given that you are waking him some days at present, it might be a process of seeing how it goes - stepping in a bit if things start to slip, then stepping back but the firm goal should obviously be that he gets himself up and out to work as every other working adult has to do. The alternative is that he finds a job that starts later (much easier if he has a good work record and a reference) or learn to drive and get a car.

I've spent most of my working life travelling for work on public transport and I don't live rurally. Sometimes you need to take work anywhere you can get it

At 20 surely he can sort this out himself. He's already winning by being able to live with you and he was self sufficient enough to get this job. I might be inclined to buy him a few alarm clocks to try out as a 'congrats on the new job' gift if you can afford that, but then it's up to him. My daughter gets up before me for school (she's 13) and I don't wake up to wake her up!

3 or 4 alarm clocks in different parts of the room will soon wake him up lol

Some people aren't interested in and don't have the capacity for a high flying professional career.

Lots of people work in factories and are quite happy doing so.

I get why this is a tough one and I think I might help for a short time rather than not at all (or forever). He might be regressing a little bit because he’s a bit scared of growing up, and that’s quite normal imo (as long as the solution you offer is temporary).

I would tell him I will do it for two weeks, and I’d look for an alarm that’s a bit louder or like PP said, vibrates. I had one as a teen that was one of the old fashioned hammer on the bells type and I left it on the opposite side of the room to my bed!

Hopefully that will make him feel supported during the transition. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.