GURL. You need to lay down the law with your son. He is going to end up a failure to launch who will either end up single or divorced, because women nowadays don’t tolerate male helplessness.

Here is what you do:

1. Drive him to school on Sunday, but he has no car the rest of the semester. You don’t get him the new key. You don’t drive his car to him in a month. He’s gonna walk everywhere the next few weeks.

2. He has to figure out the key situation himself. If he doesn’t know what to do, he can ask Google or ChatGPT.

3. He’s broke? Okay, he signs a document that he will reimburse you for the key and the gas spent driving him back to school.

4. The summer job is non-negotiable. Give him a deadline to find one, and if he doesn’t, no car this summer (I’m assuming you paid for it?). No phone, no WiFi, no groceries, nothing that you pay for.

You need to make a man out of this boy. Plenty of guys are fully self sufficient at age 19.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I'd be annoyed, as I was when my husband lost the car key and needed to be bailed out at significant inconvenience and an annoyingly high cost. It's messing up your time together!

For the sake of my sanity and family relationships, I think I'd try to make the annoyance at the situation rather than the person. I'd want to hear from the family members some contrition that they realize they messed up. And then it'd be time to get into problem solving mode. I'd hope the college kid could do s little research and come up with a couple proposals how to work things out.

If they just dumped it all on me, like "here mom, solve this problem, I'm going out now with my friends," yeah, I'd be upset, and hope that I'd be able to keep my cool while conveying that that's not okay.

Oh it falls on us bc there is no solution: either he takes our nicer car (which tbh I do not want him driving so I’m upset about that) and mails the keys to his car (a mom type car he has on purpose bc it’s not cool) so we drive that one, or we drive him in nice car and then he has no car there but that means a really tiring Sunday and dh and I are very tired already bc this week was crazy. Then we pick him up in a month. Either way sucks.

Can his roommate mail the key to your house and he misses a few days of school until it arrives?
What about a train/bus/uber that he pays for?

If you guys were on vacation and had taken your nicer car and he was home alone right now, ask him what he would do.

He has no money, literally just $50 (he has spent it all despite working hard until this year but that’s another story) His roommate is not there now he’s also on break. This is a big mess and we have all been looking for the keys on and off for hours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I'd be annoyed, as I was when my husband lost the car key and needed to be bailed out at significant inconvenience and an annoyingly high cost. It's messing up your time together!

For the sake of my sanity and family relationships, I think I'd try to make the annoyance at the situation rather than the person. I'd want to hear from the family members some contrition that they realize they messed up. And then it'd be time to get into problem solving mode. I'd hope the college kid could do s little research and come up with a couple proposals how to work things out.

If they just dumped it all on me, like "here mom, solve this problem, I'm going out now with my friends," yeah, I'd be upset, and hope that I'd be able to keep my cool while conveying that that's not okay.

Oh it falls on us bc there is no solution: either he takes our nicer car (which tbh I do not want him driving so I’m upset about that) and mails the keys to his car (a mom type car he has on purpose bc it’s not cool) so we drive that one, or we drive him in nice car and then he has no car there but that means a really tiring Sunday and dh and I are very tired already bc this week was crazy. Then we pick him up in a month. Either way sucks.

Can his roommate mail the key to your house and he misses a few days of school until it arrives?
What about a train/bus/uber that he pays for?

If you guys were on vacation and had taken your nicer car and he was home alone right now, ask him what he would do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you have a spare car key? That seems odd.

We do, it’s in his dorm. So that means driving him 10 hours round trip on sunday

No ma’am. A 10 hour round trip for you is not an option. Get the fob replaced on Monday morning and he can miss class on Monday while he drives himself back. Alternatively, he can retrace his steps this weekend and locate his lost keys. He’s the one who needs to suffer the consequences.

They told us a whole week. He cannot miss an entire week at the end of the term when it’s exam time. We have been looking everywhere and he’s gone back everywhere. He has no clue where it is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you have a spare car key? That seems odd.

We do, it’s in his dorm. So that means driving him 10 hours round trip on sunday

No ma’am. A 10 hour round trip for you is not an option. Get the fob replaced on Monday morning and he can miss class on Monday while he drives himself back. Alternatively, he can retrace his steps this weekend and locate his lost keys. He’s the one who needs to suffer the consequences.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please don't be like my mom. I could be perfect 90% of the time, but if I made a mistake she would act like it was the end of the world. She ruminated and made me feel like absolute crap over a mistake. It led to me not sharing anything with her. It's fine to be annoyed. It's fine to express that to your kids. But to let it ruin your time with them? To not be able to let go? That's not healthy for anyone.

How upset was your mom for how long? I have been upset for a couple hours. This is the last couple days of the visit and I’m sure we will do something tomorrow but unlike the situation with dd (which I was very nice about) this is going to have some consequences.

Depends. I left my sweatshirt on a plane once and she was annoyed the entire first day of our vacation and made it quite known. Even though she got over it, it definitely soured the trip from the start. I was in a car accident (not at fault) and she was annoyed for a couple days over the inconvenience of it all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would I be annoyed? Yes. Would I let it ruin the stuff we had planned, my kids' visit, and ruminate on it like you are? No.

You don't mention that your kids are usually careless, which means this was a one off thing. It happens, it's life.

So you would not be upset at all, like not for one evening? Maybe I am a weirdo. I am not someone who is going through yell but I am very upset bc it does mean a huge amount of added stress since it cannot be resolved tomorrow. I don’t like ds going to school in a nice sedan at all which is the easier route but also don’t know if we want to really drive him Sunday.

Upset? No, not really. I would say I would be annoyed by the inconvenience of it all but what's done is done. I would not continue to stew about it or continue posting on a forum with reasons why I'm still upset.

Why can't he miss school until the dealership can get him a new key fob and then drive himself back to school? He screwed up, he deals with the consequences instead of you fixing it while being all mad.

Anonymous wrote:Yes but also don’t make a bit deal of it and make him pay for the key.

He has absolutely no money now which is a bone of contention as he has not looked for summer jobs yet despite reminders. But the solution can’t actually be a new key bc no locksmith can do it in time anyway.

Honestly, I feel like I had been led to believe that I would drop them off at college and then miraculously morph into an empty nester when in reality our youngest is now 25 and it finally feels like we are empty nesters. Yeah, we had the COVID thing so people came home even after we moved them into dorms and jobs so there is that -- but I have recently been taking stock of things and honestly between aging parents and moving people into nursing homes and kids enduring stretches of unemployment, and switching jobs and careers and going back to grad school and breaking up with boyfriends and our being there and supportive for all of that, it feels like the lull only really hit about a year or so ago Prior to that, it all felt pretty hectic and stressful.

Anonymous wrote:Please don't be like my mom. I could be perfect 90% of the time, but if I made a mistake she would act like it was the end of the world. She ruminated and made me feel like absolute crap over a mistake. It led to me not sharing anything with her. It's fine to be annoyed. It's fine to express that to your kids. But to let it ruin your time with them? To not be able to let go? That's not healthy for anyone.

How upset was your mom for how long? I have been upset for a couple hours. This is the last couple days of the visit and I’m sure we will do something tomorrow but unlike the situation with dd (which I was very nice about) this is going to have some consequences.

Anonymous wrote:Would I be annoyed? Yes. Would I let it ruin the stuff we had planned, my kids' visit, and ruminate on it like you are? No.

You don't mention that your kids are usually careless, which means this was a one off thing. It happens, it's life.

So you would not be upset at all, like not for one evening? Maybe I am a weirdo. I am not someone who is going through yell but I am very upset bc it does mean a huge amount of added stress since it cannot be resolved tomorrow. I don’t like ds going to school in a nice sedan at all which is the easier route but also don’t know if we want to really drive him Sunday.

Please don't be like my mom. I could be perfect 90% of the time, but if I made a mistake she would act like it was the end of the world. She ruminated and made me feel like absolute crap over a mistake. It led to me not sharing anything with her. It's fine to be annoyed. It's fine to express that to your kids. But to let it ruin your time with them? To not be able to let go? That's not healthy for anyone.

Yes but also don’t make a bit deal of it and make him pay for the key.

Would I be annoyed? Yes. Would I let it ruin the stuff we had planned, my kids' visit, and ruminate on it like you are? No.

You don't mention that your kids are usually careless, which means this was a one off thing. It happens, it's life.