No Kids Allowed!

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My mind boggles. By the time kids are around 16 or so, they should have some empathy, loyalty, and appreciation for their parents. In an ideal world, the parents have enough financial security to keep supporting the kids and can finance their education after secondary school. But the world is not always ideal. I think any decent offspring (we are not really talking about children any more here) would be honored to help with rent and expenses if they are employed and still living under the parents roof. Even if they are not, and have moved out (thus aiding their parents financially by removing strain on the utility and food bills) if the offspring have good jobs and any family loyalty they will throw a little money to aid the people who sacrificed so much to bring them into the world.

I'm assuming a normal, non-abusive family here, mind you, and while I know abuse is far from rare, I still believe good families are plentiful.

 

From my experience this tactic will backfire. The abused person is punished for telling anyone what happened. She'll simply stop trusting the person she told -- there has been a change in behavior but only in the victim and the abuse will continue.

Sir Rechet -- your step-sons (son-in-law would be a man married to your daughter) simply need to live their own lives. You and your wife cannot choose their path and you cannot allow them to bring you down.

 

I'm sure it can backfire, but I've been privy to it working a charm too, so it can also succeed. That's why it needs to be done in the right way. People with the abuser mindset ("this is my world," "you are my property," etc.) need to have their spirit broken very convincingly, basically, and to subsequently be made to believe that it will be more dangerous for them to continue their abuse than to stop. This means the threat has to be real, and the initial lesson has to be severe enough to make a lasting impression.

(I'm aware that you're intimately familiar with this, T2, so sorry if it sounds like I'm telling you 'where the bear sh*t in the buckwheat.' I don't mean it that way, but I'm also not just talking out of my butt.)

I guess this is going pretty wide of the OT too ... sorry.

 

To address the issue of children with behavior problems I will be happy to put myself out there. My eldest son Jacob has autism, and his younger brother Cade has ADHD. In a lot of ways, Cade is harder to deal with at age 7 than Jacob was -- he's too smart for his own good, and has more recently developed anger problems that have ground his progress to a halt due to long-term verbal abuse he received at the hands of a long-term substitute teacher.

When he was 3 my eldest could not talk. He wasn't potty-trained until he was six. He is now starting 5th grade -- two years behind schedule, and that is only thanks to aggressive intervention on the part of his parents and the school system. This is a gauntlet we have (mostly) passed through. Jacob is conversational, he reads, writes, and can even beat his father at Super Smash Brothers Brawl every once in a while (no small feat). He appears normal, and is now better behaved than most kids his age are both in public and at home. That was not always the case. We used to cringe when we had to go out for anything. Jacob was unruly, unmanageable, and behaved poorly. People stared. And commented, quietly enough for you to think they were trying to be discrete, but just loudly enough that you would hear them anyway.

It apparently never occurred to these people that the unruly 5 year old with incredibly limited vocabulary could possibly have special needs -- that he could possibly be behaving poorly because he had no idea how he was supposed to behave, or that there was no real way to communicate those expectations. It is not a period of our life that I like to re-visit, and I prefer to see Jacob as he is now. He will likely graduate high school -- late, but at least he'll graduate, and he'll probably get state help to go to college. There is a light at the end of Jacob's tunnel, because we got lucky. You see, Jacob is only very lightly on the autism spectrum. He was diagnosed with PDD NOS, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified, which is also described as atypical autism. Jacob doesn't struggle with issues of empathy, but he does think literally -- he still struggles with figurative speech, sarcasm, and teasing. For a child with a full-blown spectrum disorder, like Asperger Syndrome, the gauntlet will take longer to pass through, and empathy will always be a struggle.

It is true that a lot of parents fail to do enough to keep their children in line, but there are often other explanations. Once you've passed through the gauntlet of parenting, you'll be a lot more understanding when you see a kid acting out at the grocery store. Heck, you might even find it amusing. I sure do! No, parents shouldn't be bringing small kids to adult movies. No, parents shouldn't be bringing small children to fancy dining establishments. But if you're complaining about kids making noise at the mall, a Family or Kids movie, or a restaurant that caters to families, you should probably consider re-evaluating your expectations. Kids have to be kids somewhere.

 

OK, first of all, I don't see why Social Security Services is even involved. If they are 18, and they have decided to move out rather than pay rent to you guys, well good for them... but now they're on their own. If they chose to move out, then they presumably signed a lease, and unless you co-signed for them, that is their obligation - not yours.

Sadly, there are some things that can only be learned through direct experience, and your step-children moving out on their own may be one of those things. However, you mentioned that the OLDEST is now 18. That suggests that the other two aren't 18 yet. Where the heck do they live? You and your wife are still responsible for them, but that doesn't mean they have to live on their own. They could be like all other teens, and you know, live at home...

That is a very sensible approach. If you have a child that may not behave well when you go out, factor that into your choices of where you go. My son is very well behaved when we go out, but that doesn't mean that we take him to adult movies, or fancy restaurants or other places that aren't kid-friendly. He's not going to "get" an adult movie, and he rather go out for cheese burgers or chicken fingers than anything a fancy restaurant might serve anyway, so why bother?

Or, to use a real example for us, next month my nephew is getting married, and my wife and I are going - my son (who will be 4 by then), will be staying with my parents for the weekend and won't be going with us. That's the decision because I know Jack will have a blast that weekend with my parents, and that he won't have much fun at all going with us. It's a fancy wedding, and to expect Jack to ride in a car for four hours, go to a boring (for him) rehearsal dinner, sit through the wedding ceremony and dinner, and then maybe enjoy the dancing afterwards... well that's 2 days of work for a couple of hours of fun. Or, he can stay with my parents, go to a kids movie, go mini-golfing, and - weather permitting - perhaps go swimming. It's not a hard choice.

 

That's a bonus. If I thought Jack would have a good time at the wedding, I'd bring him along with us.

 

Why do you say that paying rent to live with your parents is a 'Swedish' thing? Does that really not happen everywhere? Surely, as soon as a child starts earning money, they should pay rent to their parents? I started paying rent to my parents when I got my first job. Not paying rent is just freeloading.

 

I'd say it's freeloading once you get a real job. I did not pay rent to my parents when I was in high school or college, even though I was working at least part time each year. That's because most of what I was earning was going to pay for my education (especially once I hit college). As it was, I borrowed money to go to school, but if I had been required to pay rent as well, I would have ended up borrowing more.

But I agree that if you're out of school and are working full time, there's no reason not to contribute something.

 

I pay rent to my parents right now. They had the room, could use the money, and I got a heck of a deal. It was win-win. That said, I'll be the sole occupant in a few months. I think my folks had an ulterior motive when they made the offer -- not that I'll be complaining about the extra room -- hell, I may just buy the place.

 

To clarify, the elder brothers are 18 and 20 years old, respectively. The 18-y is the princess, the oldest is "only" modestly lazy and feels slighted since his younger brother has pretty much always come first in priority and acts up due to that. Other than that, he's pretty reasonable and can be talked with in due time.

We did throw the princess out on the street for a bit over a month (he went to our common friend to stay there instead), and Social Security came to the conclusion that they're obliged by the law to pay for his rent. Not only that, even SS don't trust him enough with money to let him even SEE the rent on his very own account.

The rest of us (minus the two elder brothers) will move to a nearby city within a week, so the situation right now is more like a truce rather than open conflict. But no one sure feels comfortable here.

 

I'm glad your approach worked for your kids Marceror, because it didn't work for me. Then again my parents rarely ever practiced the lessons they were trying to teach, and it didn't help that I was able to spot their slip ups so easily. I was able to put up with it for most of my early-mid teens but after that it got so bad I finally lashed out. Looking back I guess I should have reacted earlier, but nobody ever told me that parenting was a two-way street. The years after that were some of the worst ones for me. Me and my parents have been more or less estranged ever since, though I've come to terms with the fact that they genuinely believed that what they were doing was for the best. I've not abandoned them and vice versa, but anything beyond polite conversation is awkward.

Btw I believe spanking can be good, as there are several cases where a verbal attack would hurt far more than a few well placed spanks, among other things. I guess the problem is when kids see the spanking as something more negative than a simple disciplining tool - if the parents fail to see this in their child, then what comes afterward is basically their fault.
I came dangerously close to being one of these children, luckily I grew up with the right people.