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To be fair, of your laundry list of complaints about your kid, the only one that'd cause a normal landlord to evict him would be the late or non-payment of rent. If he were renting from someone other than his mother, he could be (non-destructive) messy and (off premises) stoned as much as he'd like. Mixing money/business and family is seldom a good idea.
It does sound like it's time for him to move out and on, but you sure picked a potentially acrimonious way of ensuring it happens. I mean, really, the sheriff? For not keeping the bathroom clean enough? Kind of absurd.
To be fair, of your laundry list of complaints about your kid, the only one that'd cause a normal landlord to evict him would be the late or non-payment of rent. If he were renting from someone other than his mother, he could be (non-destructive) messy and (off premises) stoned as much as he'd like. Mixing money/business and family is seldom a good idea.
It does sound like it's time for him to move out and on, but you sure picked a potentially acrimonious way of ensuring it happens. I mean, really, the sheriff? For not keeping the bathroom clean enough? Kind of absurd.
Yep. Sure, it seems like a great idea to start having your adult kid pay some rent to "learn" some responsibility. But the second that happens, that adult kid is now legally considered a tenant with all the legal rights that conveys. (Meaning, yes, tenant now has legal right to be as messy as he wants).
So, if OP wants her son out, she'll have to go through the formal eviction process under the rules of her state. As a legal adult, her son may even be a party to the actual lease, which would make eviction even tougher on OP.
I really have to question this “It’s much harder for kids now, than it was 30, 40, 50+ years ago ... “ belief.
I mean, is it really? Okay, so the cost of college tuition is actually a travesty but other than that; when I was turning 18, we were the first generation to have had parents with a 50% divorce rate. The crack cocaine epidemic was gaining speed along with the requisite violent crime & inner city gangs were moving into the suburbs. HIV was not confined to high-risk populations & there were no medications to mitigate its lethal potential. Death lurked in our blood supply & even dentist offices. Kids & housewives were dropping like flies. Remember Ryan White & the AIDS quilt? Minimum wage was $4.25/hr.
That’s the world MY generation inherited & the generation before me had Vietnam, the draft, the oil crisis, the farm crisis, no equal opportunity, no ADA for the disabled or IDEA for children with disabilities, etc ...
All that & our weed wasn’t even legal.
Today; the divorce rate has been dropping for over a decade. So has drug use & violent crime. There are repercussions for discriminating against women, minorities & the disabled, our military operations are fulfilled on a voluntary basis & there are therapeutic options for HIV. There are youth advocacy groups, LGBTQ advocates, Homeless advocacy groups, women in management, women in STEM advocacy groups, advocates for the mentally ill, etc ...
What, exactly; are people referring to when they say “it’s much harder now ...”?
A 19 year old is still a teenager. It's not surprising that he's lazy around the house.
If he moves out, he doesn't have to pay you rent anymore. It sounds like you were partially depending on him as a source of income since he had paid you rent (although not for the last 2 months).
I really have to question this “It’s much harder for kids now, than it was 30, 40, 50+ years ago ... “ belief.
I mean, is it really? Okay, so the cost of college tuition is actually a travesty but other than that; when I was turning 18, we were the first generation to have had parents with a 50% divorce rate. The crack cocaine epidemic was gaining speed along with the requisite violent crime & inner city gangs were moving into the suburbs. HIV was not confined to high-risk populations & there were no medications to mitigate its lethal potential. Death lurked in our blood supply & even dentist offices. Kids & housewives were dropping like flies. Remember Ryan White & the AIDS quilt? Minimum wage was $4.25/hr.
That’s the world MY generation inherited & the generation before me had Vietnam, the draft, the oil crisis, the farm crisis, no equal opportunity, no ADA for the disabled or IDEA for children with disabilities, etc ...
All that & our weed wasn’t even legal.
Today; the divorce rate has been dropping for over a decade. So has drug use & violent crime. There are repercussions for discriminating against women, minorities & the disabled, our military operations are fulfilled on a voluntary basis & there are therapeutic options for HIV. There are youth advocacy groups, LGBTQ advocates, Homeless advocacy groups, women in management, women in STEM advocacy groups, advocates for the mentally ill, etc ...
What, exactly; are people referring to when they say “it’s much harder now ...”?
It's not harder - kids are just coddled and pampered and treated like preschoolers well into their 30s! It wasn't that many generations ago that kids as young as 12, 13 years old were expected to go out and do a full day's hard dirty work to help support the family and a young man of 19 or 20 would have already been well out on his own and started a family. Kids today think they are entitled to not suffer any hardships. They think they have the right to move from their parent's house into an equal living situation somewhere else. They aren't willing to pay their dues, living with roommates (sometimes more than one), doing without tv, eating ramen noodles, and sitting on lawn furniture in their living room while they work two jobs just to have that. They'll love with mummy and daddy until they've saved up enough to buy their own nice home in their 30s and the parents, which brought this on themselves, don't have the backbone to force the kids to launch into adulthood. Previous generations didn't have the luxury of being able to support adult children that should have flown the coop 5-10 years earlier! Just look at some of the comments on here, acting like this lazy, unmotivated young adult is a confused 8-year-old!
Sorry you're going through this. Is his dad completely out of the picture? He doesn't seem to understand that your house is not a democracy where he gets a vote. If I were his dad his belongings would have been on the yard and his a$$ would have been on the street way before now. It sounds like he's addicted to pot and that will eventually result in him having no money then stealing from you. You've tried establishing boundaries and he blows those off, then plays the guilt card. Stick to your guns or he's going to keep running over you. It's going to be hard but sometimes that's what real love is. Can't believe he's got a girlfriend who would stick around after the way he's abusing you. I have a 57yo cousin who to this day still calls his mommy when he has money issues and has lived with her many times over the last 10 years with his wife and dogs. You're not alone.......
He's gamey and manipulative. Allowing him to slide on the "rules" just encourages his pathologies.
If he's making more than you are, or could if he weren't a lazy slug, he can find his own place to turn into a dump. This will not get better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blktoptrvl
IMO it refreshing to see someone who is actively parenting - even if that means giving a push out of the nest - instead of complaining after letting their "child" stay in the house 15-20 years beyond their scheduled launch date.
I once knew a single mother with 4 kids and she warned them just after the divorce that at age 18 they were on their own.
They didn't take it seriously till the first one was booted out on his 18th birth day. Magically the rest of them actually took her seriously and began making real plans to work and find them self place when the time grew close .
In the wild the bird parents will dismantle the nest so the fledgling knows it's fly or die.
Often times we as parents do no favors being the safety net , each case needs to be weighed on it's own merit of course.
He's gamey and manipulative. Allowing him to slide on the "rules" just encourages his pathologies.
If he's making more than you are, or could if he weren't a lazy slug, he can find his own place to turn into a dump. This will not get better.
The problem is that OP is trying to force arbitrary "rules" as his mother. However, again, the second OP started charging her son rent, the relationship legally turned from mother-son into landlord-tenant (or more specifically tenant-subletter). It's possible being that he's a legal adult, that the landlord of the property forced him to be a party to the actual lease. In which case, the relationship would actually be roommate-roommate, and the OP would have a very difficult time getting him out at all. If he's just considered a subletter, OP needs to go through her state's official eviction process. However, as a tenant he has no legal obligation to "keep his room clean."
I really have to question this “It’s much harder for kids now, than it was 30, 40, 50+ years ago ... “ belief.
What, exactly; are people referring to when they say “it’s much harder now ...”?
This is about a 3-4 minute read:I'm not trying to insult you but....have you been asleep all this time? Evidence suggests that rates of depression, self-harm and anxiety among young people are at unprecedented levels. " Youth unemployment is more than 13%, the cost of higher education is rapidly rising, a drought of affordable housing coupled with low pay is keeping many young people sealed under the parental roof and trapped in what one report called “suspended adulthood”. The ubiquity of the internet and social media, with its dark underbelly of hardcore pornography, body shaming and cyber-bullying, is encroaching on their well-being, while a relentless focus on academic high-achieving is turning up the pressure in the classroom." None of this was an issue 30,40,50+ years ago!
Look, the entire scope of life itself has taken a 360 degree turn. For example, kids in school today are indoctrinated with garbage and it's alarming. A child was sent home because he said "yes ma'am" to a teacher. Read the story here. A teen was suspended from school for saying "bless you" to another student after they sneezed. Read the story here. A teacher was fired for not calling a little girl a boy. Read about it here. These three stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Where am I going with this? Children today are being taught that "reality and truth" does not exist. As if cows can give birth to alligators! They are being indoctrinated with the lie that there is no order to anything. Then we have crazy adults i.e. parents who go along with this foolishness. There's been an amazing surge in transgender teens. I'm not surprised. You can read about it here. There are kids as young as ten being shot-up with hormones to prevent puberty because "they decided" that they want to be another gender which is impossible. A man CANNOT become a woman and a woman CANNOT become a man. And you're wondering "how is it harder now for kids than it was decades ago?" Never mind the useless parents. It's so bad that if they made a law that "parents must eat their first born" I GUARANTEE there will be people who will do it....!
What about the Internet. Kids decades ago couldn't virtually travel across the world at the click of a mouse. "If young people type in ‘self-harm’, they can either go to a Young Minds website where they will be offered help and support, or to a destructive group which is discussing how to self-harm and hide eating disorders." Teens today can hook-up with a stranger in a matter of minutes, and their parents will be non-the-wiser. Never mind all the pressures to "look a certain way." Don't mention selfies. Did they have those 30, 40, 50+ years ago? In another project they found that teens were spending less time with their friends in person and more time communicating electronically, with these trends accelerating after 2011. Something unheard of decades ago!
Never mind diet. "Environmental factors such as diets of American processed fast foods and the possibility of increased exposure to toxins and other challenges may increase the stress factors that contribute to depression." Decades ago food WASN'T filled with junk and genetically modified ingredients which DOES affect the body and children's growth. Then the first thing they want to do is give children drugs for behavior like ADHD when in many cases a change of diet will do or there's really no ADHD at all. For decades little boys who were robust were seen as just being boys. Not anymore. Today "there's something wrong with them." Unfortunately, the emasculation of boys and men is on the rise. They want to create a "gender-less" society and make two-mommys and two-daddys the "norm." No wonder kids today are bat-crazy.
"50% more teens suffered from major depression in 2015 versus just four years before. Suicide rate for teen girls is at its highest level since 1975. Twice as many children and teens are now hospitalized for self-harm or suicidal thoughts. More teens say that they are lonely and feel hopeless. Students today report they feel significantly more isolated, misunderstood, and emotionally sensitive or unstable than in decades past. Teens were also more likely to be narcissistic, have low self-control, and express feelings of worry, sadness, and dissatisfaction with life."
"Although self-reported symptoms would not be enough to diagnose mental illness in these populations, studies suggest that changes in students' responses over time suggest a real change in mental health levels. The authors are also quick to point out that increases in these symptoms may even be underestimated in recent years because of the increasing number of Americans on antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication." Basically, you've got parents producing children who are not mentally stable and literally still children themselves!
"Dr. Bruce Rabin, medical director of the Health Lifestyle Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that: beyond our society's focus on external goals, the stress level among parents in recent times has impacted the type of children they raise. Children today "lack meaningful, healthy role models," Rabin said."
I could go on for quite sometime; however, I just wanted to make a point. Teens and children in general are facing challenges like never before today and it's only getting worse. One reason is because many of the parents aren't any better! If you think that using the methods of decades ago to raise children today will work...you haven't done your homework...Good Luck!
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