Echolette
Well-Known Member
difficult child has been out of rehab for a week now. He has been clean for two weeks. He picked up some day work as a laborer. He is paying for his own phone (and cigs and candy and transportation to work)
He goes to meetings twice a day. He's been enveloped by SO's boyfriend, who is an alcoholic with 10 years clean.
And he wants to live at home.(that was the punchline)
You'll be proud to hear that I said 'we can talk about that'
Then i let So know (in the past i would have kept that to myself..my house my kid my decision, right?)
difficult child is hard to have around. He has some sort of social dysfunction (sometimes labelled as Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Aspergers, or autism) that includes having no sense of when to talk and when to shut up. He always wants to play me a so g on iTunes. He'll ask me while I'm preparing a dinner for friends if 'capitalism by definition includes a free market economy' or some question better designed for sitting around with coffee and cigarettes and a beret.
None of this is bad...but it is exhausting.
his presence will strain my relatiinship with so an with my easy child teenagers, when i have custody of them.
I feel that he needs support if this new trend is going to stick.
I feel i probably shouldn't worry too much because it is likely he'll walk out the door in a week or two! (Cynical echo)
I don't know where he can live that would be supportive enough for his particular brand of crazy.
I don't know what to do.
As an aside, I've been deeply engaged in stopping the enabling codependency with so. He declared bankruptcy two years ago and has never really gotten on his feet..he can't seem to find a new path, or to re-engage with his old path to make a living. He lives with me now, and for a few months i paid his car loans and insurance. That stopped in march when i suddenly realized i was recreating a 47 year old difficult child, WHICH EVEN HE DIDN't want (right Cedar? I hear you nodding)
For a whole i was making suggestions, finding job retraining programs, offering to pay him to paint the house..and now..i am just standing back. I'm taking a course in mindful listening, so I try and be wholly present while he tries to sort things out.
But i am clear that i can't and won't support a healthy 47 year old man, no matter how loving and helpful and kind he is.
That sounds obvious but it is a big step for me.
Still..I'm on a bit of a seesaw..takes a lot of effort to not enable, and as i succeed with so i slip with difficult child...
That was a long digression,but it is what is in my head.
Back to the real issue, which is...i am not sure how to approach the answer to difficult child's question. And I'm not clear on what the target housing for my 20 year old with a functional score of 60 really is....
Echo
He goes to meetings twice a day. He's been enveloped by SO's boyfriend, who is an alcoholic with 10 years clean.
And he wants to live at home.(that was the punchline)
You'll be proud to hear that I said 'we can talk about that'
Then i let So know (in the past i would have kept that to myself..my house my kid my decision, right?)
difficult child is hard to have around. He has some sort of social dysfunction (sometimes labelled as Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Aspergers, or autism) that includes having no sense of when to talk and when to shut up. He always wants to play me a so g on iTunes. He'll ask me while I'm preparing a dinner for friends if 'capitalism by definition includes a free market economy' or some question better designed for sitting around with coffee and cigarettes and a beret.
None of this is bad...but it is exhausting.
his presence will strain my relatiinship with so an with my easy child teenagers, when i have custody of them.
I feel that he needs support if this new trend is going to stick.
I feel i probably shouldn't worry too much because it is likely he'll walk out the door in a week or two! (Cynical echo)
I don't know where he can live that would be supportive enough for his particular brand of crazy.
I don't know what to do.
As an aside, I've been deeply engaged in stopping the enabling codependency with so. He declared bankruptcy two years ago and has never really gotten on his feet..he can't seem to find a new path, or to re-engage with his old path to make a living. He lives with me now, and for a few months i paid his car loans and insurance. That stopped in march when i suddenly realized i was recreating a 47 year old difficult child, WHICH EVEN HE DIDN't want (right Cedar? I hear you nodding)
For a whole i was making suggestions, finding job retraining programs, offering to pay him to paint the house..and now..i am just standing back. I'm taking a course in mindful listening, so I try and be wholly present while he tries to sort things out.
But i am clear that i can't and won't support a healthy 47 year old man, no matter how loving and helpful and kind he is.
That sounds obvious but it is a big step for me.
Still..I'm on a bit of a seesaw..takes a lot of effort to not enable, and as i succeed with so i slip with difficult child...
That was a long digression,but it is what is in my head.
Back to the real issue, which is...i am not sure how to approach the answer to difficult child's question. And I'm not clear on what the target housing for my 20 year old with a functional score of 60 really is....
Echo