Reply to 18 year old in the house

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "18 year old in the house"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think I have a lot of the same parenting perspectives as your DH. Pot will soon be legal for 18 year olds and you can't stop a kid from having sex. He is enforcing boundaries around those decisions (no dealing, no overnights) so I wouldn't say he's permissive all, I think he's realistic but still has standards.

Now, on to what to do. Your step sons flouting of the rules had to do with his anger about his mom, his sense of entitlement, immaturity, and his level of respect toward you and his dad. The only thing that you can change is the last thing, the others will be his decision to deal with or not.

I would have father and son sit down for a heart to heart. No anger, just understanding on your husband's part about what it was like for him at 18 and how it must be for the son, given the poor relationship with the mom. The son probably feels like the dad got out and left him alone to deal with her. Dad should make an effort to listen and agree with the sons experience. Dad should also reiterate the rules and tell the son if he can't respect the no sleepover rule than you're going to check his room at night and call the girls parents if she's there. His choice. Come up with consequences for the other behaviors and enforce them.

This can be fixed but try it from the angle of connecting rather than punishing.

[/quote]

OP here. Can’t type much, as I’m on my phone now. But I really appreciate this.

Btw, for the past year, dss has been completely free to choose households each night, and he still goes there about 30% of the time. She is just classically “stricter” than his dad. But, I know they love each other.

This is a totally parenthetical question, but I find myself really pissed at the girlfriend as well. Maybe it’s unreasonable. We’ve hosted her for dinner, outings, paid for her prom. At least with DSS, my husband could have a real talk about sneaking around. But she also snuck into our house, while we were all there. It’s obviously not our place to “punish” her, but it feels really odd just to ignore that and sit down to dinner like nothing happened. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics