Expecting me to change my parenting 4 him

[Hairclip]

I have a son who is 25, he is an only child and me and his dad split up 7 years ago, my son lives with me. He works full time but has goten himself in a lot of debt with credit cards, store cards and loans so cant afford to rent or buy a place of his own.

I have been with my current partner for 3 years and up until recently he has been fine with my son but now he's starting to try and tell me what to do with him and thinks I pamper him.

I do help him out with money, I pay one of his monthly credit card bills to take the pressure off him a little and I know he could be a bit better with money but my partner is infuriated because my son has just spend £350 on an xbox when my partner said he couldve put that money on his card but it seems lately he's getting at him for every little thing.

He moans because I pack his bag for him when he goes to see his friends on a weekend (he once phoned me whilst he was there to complain that I didnt put enough boxer shorts in his bag lol). He also thinks its stupid that wheh my son comes home on a sunday he gives me his bag to sort out (just take the clothes out, wash them and put them away etc) but surely whilst our kids still live with us most of us would still do things for them?? Its not exactly hard to sort a bag out.

We had a huge row a few months ago because my son had gone for a night out and phoned at 2am to ask me to go and pick him up, DP expected me to say no and leave him stuck in the town centre with no money .

The last row erupted because my son had come home from work at 5:30 and waited until 10pm (until I come home from work) for me to cook his tea and my dp reckoned my son had starved himself rather than cook himself.

Yes he can be a bit lazy but at the end of the day he's a bloke! how do I help him see that he is still my son, no matter how old he is?

I don't think you are atroll my mother and mother in law are the same, you are not alone. however you are not helping your son he needs to be a man and take care of himself. My dp is 31 and his parents bought him a house which we live in, I hate the area but we will nver move as we only pay 120 a month and sometimes nothing every month, we nearly split up every summer as my student husband won't work and instead of running out and then he has to get a job his parents bring us money and buy us food decorate the house pay for holidays all very nice but that is not us living that is people giving us everything and it does NOT hlep him he is deptressed gets us in debt he knows that his parent wil come and save us. My 20 yr old brother does nothing, can barely get up to sign on and my parents let him smoke stuff in the house and lend him money for it my Dad can't tell him anything as my mom undermines him he is 20 and has no life and he is allowed to stay that way, don't let your son be liken this try and change for his sake

HC, one day you won't be there to bail him out. Sorry to be so brutal, but you won't. What will he do then? He has no life skills - I hate to think how he'll end up (probably his best scenario is to tie himself to some poor woman who'll end up complaining about him on here).

Yes unles you are leaving him a great inheritance to spend and wee down the drain....how will he cope once you are not there to look after him?

my dh is 31 and has only worked for about 5 years of his life this has been sustained by his parents trying to 'help' it does not help it means he never has to try and your son does not have to try to be a better person either and that is why he is depressed he feels worthless as he is, and you should not let him be worhtless, he needs to be forced to become somone who can look after himself, as for my husband I have manged to get him into 3rd year at uni with me but it is hard if I plan to move house or go to a far away uni it is impossible he can't leave the nest we have been given and stand on his own for us and life can be difficult.he ofetn suffers from feeling worthless and knows it is true.

my dh is 31 and has only worked for about 5 years of his life this has been sustained by his parents trying to 'help' it does not help it means he never has to try and your son does not have to try to be a better person either and that is why he is depressed he feels worthless as he is, and you should not let him be worhtless, he needs to be forced to become somone who can look after himself, as for my husband I have manged to get him into 3rd year at uni with me but it is hard if I plan to move house or go to a far away uni it is impossible he can't leave the nest we have been given and stand on his own for us and life can be difficult.he ofetn suffers from feeling worthless and knows it is true.

You are far too soft on your son, sorry, but you must lead a life of your own! Cant believe you are cooking his tea at 10pm when you get home from work! He should be cooking for himself.

As for the debts, I would not pay any of them. He has to pay them himself! Blimey, sorry but unbelievable.

If your son goes out for an evening in the city, thats up to him to get himself home, he knows that he can use you as a free taxi, so he spends all the money he has.

Why is he going out when he has debts to pay anyway?

actually if my son was 48 and phoned me to get him from town becuase he was pissed with no money i would tell him to get a taxi and i would give him the money when he got home - thats a safety thing.

i tell my son - hes 16 - 16 years old, hes going on holiday with girlfriend and parents i told him to always leave £20 somewhere safe so that no matter how pissed, stoned or plain lost he is he can get home.

i think the point your missing hairclip is this

your job as a mother is this - to bring up your son to be an active, social well adjusted member of society - its as simple as that.

when he was a toddler and he went to touch something hot - you said "no" he did it anyway - it hurt he didn't do it again.

if he is late for work there are consequences, ultimatley he will be fired. it is just not your job to make sure he can wake up in the morning - its his - he has a job.

i think i too would be mightliy pissed off if my son spent nearly 400 quid on a playstation or something when he is in a shitload of debt.

the guy isobviously not missing a social life becuase of it

at what stage are you going to stop babying him?

why cant he pack his own bag

can he use the washing machine

why doesnt he cook his own meals?

my kids cook their own meals when i am so shagged i can't be bothered - they are 12 & 16 for gods sake.

your son needs a life - now he is living at chez mums, lifes a breeze maid on tap 24-7
no bills to pay
fuck allt o contribute too

and no matter how fucked up he gets - your always going to bail him out.

this needs to stop

when are you you entitled to your life?

when is your partner entitled to his?

this is simply unfair to your partner and your son. you are doing him no favours - in fact you are cruely killing him with what you percieve to be kindness.

its not right that he is 25 and utterly dependent on you.

this lad needs a firm kick up the arse

my kick would be this " love you lots son, your very important to me - but lets face it your a fuck up. now. you have exactly 3 months to put things in order. after that i am no longer paying your credit card bills, washing your clothes, or cooking your tea unless i am cooking anyway. after 3 months you will pay me one third of your wages as board. if you dont like it then you can gladly fuck off with all my love.

you have exactly one year and then your out on your arse. job or no job you have one year to find a place you can rent and therefore save up for or buy and therefore save up for. i am not your crutch,i am not your mug, i am not your maid. i am your mother - As your mother i deserve to be treated with respect. i am not your door mat i am not your magic key to unluck every fucked up situation you get in.

3 months kid - 3 months then you pay your way.

1 year - out on your arse

love you muchly but please your a grown man - grow the fuck up"

I'm with the others.

Rather than paying his credit card because the poor lamb needs something to look forward to on pay day - if you wanted to really do something to help him out, you'd find an insolvency practitioner for him. Hell, save your money on the cards and PAY an insolvency practitioner to sort out an IVA (individual voluntary arrangement) for him. Then he can learn how to budget with the money he has left (am sure Microsoft produce budgeting software - called 'Money' possibly) and find somewhere else to live. Perhaps you could buy him a good cookbook (Delia's always quite foolproof, I find) and a couple of saucepans. An alarm clock, so he can get himself out of bed.

Then when it's a toss up between going out on the lash and putting money in the meter, hopefully he'll learn which way to throw his money.

In a way, you should be flattered that your partner feels he wants to change the way you relate to your son. At least it shows he wants a future with you - just not one in which your son is umbilically attached.

mumfor1standfinaltime: "Cant believe you are cooking his tea at 10pm when you get home from work! He should be cooking for himself."

Nooooo - he should be cooking HER tea when she gets in from work at that time!

I absolutely agree with Custardo on this, and what a way to put it .

Your DP doesn't want you to change the way you treat your son because he says so, he wants you to change the way you treat your son because your son is a lazy, good-for-nothing, money waster who will take you for every penny if you let him, and by the sounds of things that's just what you are letting him do.

I think you have two options.

1. you throw him out, as of tomorrow, tell him that you are no longer his keeper and that he's got himself into the situation, it is now up to him to get himself out again. Tell him he has 1 month to find somewhere to live, and to come to an arrangement with his creditors, but as of tomorrow, you are no longer going to wake him up in the morning, cook his tea, do his washing, etc.

If this option does not suit then the other option is:

2. tell him that as of this month, he will give you his pay cheque, that is all of it. He lives at home with you, so he doesn't need money of his own, after all, you provide his meals, place to stay etc, he is in massive amounts of debt so a social life is no longer an option. Then, every month he will give you his credit card bills, and you will sit down together and work out how much needs to be paid to the credit card companies in order to pay off his debts as quickly as possible, then he will sit with you and write out cheques to all the credit card companies, which he will put in suitably addressed envelopes, which you will then post. Any money left over after his bills are paid, you will keep as rent.

And then, when his debt has reached a sufficiently low level, he will move out.

If he wants to act like a child and spend money he hasn't got, then maybe you should treat him like one, and take away his freedoms, and when he's got his act together, you set him free into the big wide world to become independent.

RZ - I agree! When my Mum worked full time hours, I had to cook tea for everyone from scratch, I was 12 years old!

hairclip he is obviously taking the piss out of you
If I was your dp i would be pissed off too
It is about time your ds started standing on his own 2 feet and dealt with his problems without relying on you all the time.

Hairclip,

My posting re my BIL hopefully acted as a warning to you because this is the situation you will one day face if it not addressed now.

I trust you read my posting re my BIL of 42 (nearly 43 now) who is still residing at home and does very little with his life. He hasn't even got a full time job. The only possession he has to his name is his car. Pays little to no rent either and in order for them (MIL and BIL) to eat lunch he takes her to the local garden centre. FIL stays at home and gets his own meal.

Mother and son are totally co-dependent on each other in order to function; they now go out together socially without her husband in tow. He has been sidelined.

I would argue that its too late for this pair to change but your son is 25 and he can. He needs a swift kick up the bum from you. It will be the best thing you have ever done for him.

And stop paying his credit card bill!!!. You are acting as his enabler. At heart he is not happy either and you are certainly no more respected for doing this.

You will stifle and infantalise him with kindness otherwise just as my MIL has done.

P.S I did not think you were a troll.

BIL was made redundant several years ago and since then he has had a succession of dead end jobs all of which have ending up with him being unemployed again. He now works one or two days a week.

D'you know what he spent his meagre redundancy money on - no, not a x-box. A flipping Cartier watch!!.

That and his car are his sole possessions to his name.

Please do not let your son end up like my BIL because it is both sad and painful (particularly for my DH) to see him like this. BIL is truly a pitiful specimen of a human being.

My MIL was in the situation where her youngest son , at 25 , was not going to leave the nest. He sis pay some rent, but the money he paid didn't even begin to civer his food bill, all his out goings were heavily subbed by MIL.

He was quite feckless and spent his money on booze and dope.

MIL wanted to move house and leave the area, for longstanding personal reasons. She gave him a years notice and then sold the house. Initialy he tried to 'rent' the house from her, but she stuck to her guns and he found a place to rent and moved out.

It was the total making of him. He is now a fantastic bloke, unrecognisable from the scrounger he once was. He and MIL have a great relationship

Read your original post but didn't reply.

I don't think your partner wants you to change your relationship with your son just becasue he says so. He can see that you are not helping your son really. I know you think you are but you are enabling him to abdicate responsibility for his life. That is not doing him any favours in the long term.

I see no problem with parents helping out adult children financially as a one off but to regularly pay one of his cards when he is obv living beyond him means sends him the message that you will always bail him out.

Love your comment abuot unpacking his bag (that you packed) - "it is not exactly hard to sort a bg out" EXACTLY!!! So why can't your son do it??!

You need to sit down with your son and have a frank discussion about being a grown-up.

Yes you love him but sometimes we need tough love.

Something Custy said made something occur to me. Something about it being your job as a mother to bring him up to be able to function as a man on his own.

This sounds very harsh, but if my DS is still living at home dependent on me at the age of 25 and still expecting me to treat him the way I did when he was 13, and I was still doing it, then I will have completely and utterly failed as a mother.

Hairclip, I think you need to sit down and have a long hard think

• are you scared your son won't love you, unless you do everything for him?
• do you honestly think he respects you?
• do you think your son is ever going to have a successful relationship with the opposite sex, with you supporting him so much?
• is your relationship going to survive?
• Would you let DP treat you like this?

I obviously can't answers these questions for you, but as a mother of a 20 year old son, I know sometimes it's hard not to see them as your wee boy, but they're big grown men and should be treated as such.

I hope you don't read all theses messages and not take anything on board, as you will be back on mumsnet in 20 years time with exactly the same problems!!

Goodluck hairclip.

Caligula I will expect more from my DS when he is 13 than that! He will be unpacking his own bags for a start! In fact I have a feeling I expect more from him now as a 4yo (eg put own clothes in laundry basket, set table, make own bed, put clean underwear away etc).

Hairclip - I agree with the general consensus on this thread. You have an unhealthy relationship with your DS which is not only impacting on your relationship with your DP but also impacting on your DS's ability to function as a responsible adult member of society.

I can't really add much more to what's already been said, but I think you are running a very big risk of losing your partner over this. I am amazed he's lasted this long without objecting. It is, after all, his home too and presumably he doesn't like running a hotel.

You don't come across as unintelligent - deep down you must know that the best thing we can do for our children is to raise them to be independent.

What exactly are you scared of ? Is this really about you believing he won't manage on his own, or is it that you don't want your "baby" to leave home, so you make everything as cushty as possible for him ?