My son has completely lost his freaking mind.[long]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not really mundane or pointless, but not a rant either, as no matter how much I would like to lock the little idiot in a basement until he’s 50 I realize that would be counter-productive at this point.

Dearest son, what the hell is wrong with you? You are 16; why are you buying an engagement ring for your girlfriend? I realize you will both have your GEDs within the year. Whoopie crap. What kind of jobs are you going to get with those? If you would go back to the bloody damn Academy they would see that you get your diploma and pay for post-secondary Vo-Tech training. You know your stepfather and I are living paycheck to paycheck. We can’t help you out financially. We can barely help ourselves. Think your father will help? Actually, he might. But it’d be kind of awkward, considering you’re not speaking to him.

Let’s look at your employment options in this area with a GED. McDonalds. Taco Bell. One of the myriad gas stations spaced along the highway. Factory work. Oooh, maybe you can go work for the state mental hospital and be underpaid while criminally naughty psychopaths try to stab you with sharpened plastic spoons as doctors and nurses bleat, “Don’t hurt him!” at you. Ask your stepfather, it’s a barrel of laughs.

Godsdammit, boy, why did I bother fucking up so much if you’re not going to learn from my mistakes? At least you haven’t knocked her up. Yet. Be advised if you make me a grandmother before I’m 35 I will choke you. But you can still walk away. You can still go back to school and then get some post-secondary training and find a career, as opposed to a job, and move somewhere that’s not here, crappy little shithole that it is.

And the sucky part is you know all this. We’ve talked about all of it. Your grandmother has talked to you about it. Hell, my best friend has talked to you about it. Do you not remember what it was like, when I was a teenager and you were very small and I was struggling to get an education and make something - anything - of myself? You were in the 1st grade before I was able to be self-sufficient (well, not really self sufficient - that’s when I met your stepfather and the two of us together became selves-sufficient). And none of it has done or is likely to do a damn bit of good, because you’re as hardheaded and stubborn as, well, me. Why are you in such a damn hurry to grow up? You’ve got the whole rest of your life to be a grown up and only a couple more years to be a giddy child. Hardhead.

The boy turns 17 in December. I’ve got 8 months to try to make him see sense, or hope he breaks up with his girlfriend (fat chance, she’s actually very nice and I’d have no objections to the two of them being married if they were both 5 or 6 years older).

I should have never taught him how to talk.

2

I had a friend in highschool hwo bought his girlfriend an engagement thing when he was 16 and she was 15. (It was the teesiest, weeeeeensiest diamond you ever saw with a huge magnifying glass). Didn’t know they came that small. I think it was a flake that chipped off another diamond.

They knew they’d have to wait to get married, but that was okay. By then he’d have finsihed his apprenticeship and be career military.

That all petered out in about 4 months. So maybe you just need to wait until it falls apart on its own. You get a kid all excited and gung-ho about a new project, then after awhile it loses it’s coolness and reality sets in. Once the excitement of it all dies down maybe he’ll come to his sense.

I bet the more you nag him, the more entrenched he’ll be.

3

I’d simply make it clear to him that marriage is a serious institution and that under no circumstances will he and his new bride continue to enjoy the benefits of being a minor child. Mom won’t be doing his laundry or cooking nor will she be subsidizing their rent or their car payments, which means that they will NOT be living in your house. By entering into a marriage, they are declaring to the world that they are mature enough to support themselves and a family. And you’re looking forward to them proving it.

4

Your son might by so much in looooove that he wants to propose to his girfriend, but who says they want to have sex of want to have babies equally early?

Sit him down, and talk this marriage thing over as if you are taking him seriously. Stress the financial, practical and mundane aspects of marriage. How much work it is. How much it costs, and that he will have to come up with the money. That he will have to fill out tax-reforms. How much paperwork is involved in marriage. Stress babies, the noise, the cost of them, the dirty diapers, how his gf will lose her figure. Stress how marriage often kills young love. (Go ahead and stress the negative). He wants to show his girl and the world how much he loves her, and has a vague idea marriage is the way to do that. If he really gives serious thought about what it means to have a baby, that will probably ick him out of that idea.

Then when he begins to think that marriage is maybe not such a good idea, start
painting the alternative romantic ways to Romeo&Juliet his relationship. Suggest they exchange rings, tied-on bracelets that have to wear off, a “promise feast” or a private promise in a romantic setting.

Then become stern and tell him that whatever he does, he can’t have a tattoo, because it is “forever”. Your son will probably run off with his GF the same evening to get a bad tattoo with each others names. With any luck, one of them will chicken out of having the tattoo and they will break up over it. Worst case scenario, he expresses his Biggest Love In the History of Mankind in a bad tattoo he will have removed ten years later. That’s doable, no? :slight_smile:

5

Do you think his girlfriend will accept? Or, even if she does accept right away, will she maybe back out later? If you like the girl, and are on good speaking terms with her, I kind of wonder if you’d be better off appealing to her sense of what the future should bring, rather than his.

I’d also be wary of making him more entrenched in this course of action merely because you oppose it. Everyone is like that to some degree, but teenagers raise it to both an art AND a science.

Or, perhaps he and she would be open to treating this ring as a promise ring? Such a ring honors their love for one another and their intent to marry, but doesn’t make marriage right around the corner, the way an engagement ring does. Of course, that would be a tough sell if they don’t think of that themselves.

I don’t know. Tough situation.

6

I second this idea. If I had married the person I was “in love” with at his age, I would be miserable now, and I’m only 24! People change a LOT between the time they hit puberty to their mid-20s; young love often does not last in this change. Lots of really young marriages break up before the married couple hits 30, and often enough, the people entering these marriages are in no way financially ready for what they undertake. I don’t think he wants to be floundering financially for the next decade, and I’m sure you don’t want a young married couple living under your roof. Even if he isn’t convinced that marrying her is a bad idea right now, just try to make him understand that you think he needs a few more years under his belt before he goes through this phase of life.

She may be good for him, but at the same time, neither of them are likely to be mature enough to handle all the adult responsibilities that come with marriage. Let him gain some more skills that will help him get a decent career, and hopefully his girl will do the same. It’s just a lot easier to take on the adult responsibilities in steps.

7

I was one of those kids who wanted to get married at 18. We didn’t. We decided to wait until we were both out of college and then we were 22 and people still said we were too young but to us it was the next natural step. We’ve been married for almost seven years now. I’d encourage your son and his girlfriend to do what we did. They won’t lose anything by waiting a few years.

8

Just laugh every time he brings it up.

“Go Romeo…bwahahahaHAHAHAH!”

9

Or do the ultimate parent move- totally support it. Help plan the wedding, tell him you want to help pick out the flowers and appetizers. Being the uber-micromanaging-mom from hell. But throughout all of it, you are all for the idea!

Yeah, speaking as a 21 year old, the quickest way for parents to ruin your rebellious fun is to act like they not only don’t care, but support the idea. Jerks.

I, personally, can’t wait til I’m a grown up and can do it myself, actually.

10

He can’t possibly know who he wants to spend the rest of his life with at 16. That being said, having worked with troubled teens at an acute rehab, he most definitely THINKS he knows who he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

I’d sit down and have a reality chat with him. Heck the first girl I was with “in the biblical sense” I wanted to marry too. Oh boy, you betcha! But I knew better, or at least life and circumstance knew better. Eventually we parted ways when we started noticing other more enticing mates…The same thing will inevitably happen to them. But with that ring around your finger, it’s 10 times more difficult to do!

11

I was really hoping someone would tell me that locking him in a basement until he’s 50 isn’t such a bad idea after all.

The boy lives with my mother (long story short, when we bought our house in a town 20 miles north from where we used to live last fall, he didn’t want to switch schools; we tried it for a couple of weeks but me, him, his old principal, his new principal, and my Mom got together and decided it would be best for him to finish up at his old school, the school he’s now decided to quit going to :rolleyes: ). I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet, my mother told me about all this night before last.

I don’t know what to think. Hopefully I’ll know more after I talk to him. But getting him to open up is like pulling chicken teeth; it’s possible, but you end up exhausted and it pisses off the chicken.

They’ve been together several months; they met last summer when they were both volunteering at SERVE. She’s been bounced from foster home to foster home her entire life, which just sends up even more red flags for me; I think it would be better for her to get out and live her life on her own for a while, “find herself”, as it were, because her childhood, by all accounts, sucked.

I will talk with him, calmly, logically, and rationally. I will focus on everything the future might bring, both positive and negative. I will get to know her a little better and try to talk sense into her. Hopefully they will begin to understand that it would make a lot more sense for them to learn to live and work on their own before they get married and have to learn to live and work with someone else.

And when all that fails, do you think it would be tacky for me to wear black to the wedding?

12

Great idea. Add to this the cost of insurance (and birth control) and baby doctor visits, that shit-outta-luck feeling when your car takes a dump and you have to figure out alternate transportation until you raise enough money you don’t have to fix it, etc.

13

It sounds to me like since he couldn’t rescue you, he’s gone and found himself someone he can rescue.

You’d think kids would learn from watching their parents struggle, and decide to do things differently – but it seems like, more often, they learn that that’s the way life is to be lived. So they repeat it.

Kids learn by example.

14

Speaking as a 21 year old, if your son is at all rational (which, well, given what he’s trying to do, seems sadly unlikely), try coming from the financial angle. What you were saying earlier abut the ability to find a CAREER, the idea of making something out of yourself when given the opportunity. DON’T try to actually break them up, in fact, try to keep the conversation away from the girl. He’s going to almost certainly accuse you of Hating his AMAZING GF!!1!one! and of trying to Break Them Up Because You Are Evil and Controlling. Steer the conversation away from the love angle, hell, support the IDEA of them staying together as much as possible, but as said above keep it in the area like finances that you know for sure he’ll have a difficult time with and you know for sure by living his life a different way he can do better in.

15

Okay, I can breathe again.

I spoke with the boy earlier and he assures me that he has no intention of getting married until he can have an open bar at the reception. Also, he has not proposed to the girl yet; he had to order the ring to get one in the correct size.

“So why not make it a promise ring?” I asked. “An engagement ring is what you give someone when you’re ready to set a definite date.”

This whole conversation occurred in between loud explosions, as he has somehow managed to obtain a quantity of fireworks and was busy blowing things up. Yes, I gave birth to Kelso.

“But we want to get married,” he said.

“What about jobs? A place to live? The fact that you are both entirely too young to even be thinking about this right now?”

“That’s why we’re waiting!”

Then he proceeded to change the subject by telling me about the new set of speakers he just bought for his car. This makes, I believe, the third set. Astronauts on the moon call the local police complaining about the noise.

“You know, if you get married you won’t be able to blow money on speakers like that,” I reminded him. I could hear him rolling his eyes over the phone.

“I know, that’s why I’m doing it now,” he patiently explained.

So. I guess as long as he doesn’t get her pregnant (a major fear of mine, considering he’s the same age I was when I had him, and I know what I went through and don’t want him going through it), we’re ok for the moment. I think 21 is still a bit young, but I’ve got five years to deal with it. He can still be my little boy for a while longer.

But someone tell me, please, when do they grow SENSE??

16

I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these reasons she’s in such a hurry to get married is because she’s aching for a stable family structure, and she thinks that getting married (and possibly having a baby of her own which she may expect will love her in a way that her own parents couldn’t) is the way to achieve that.

I think this is the approach I would take. He will just rebel further if he thinks you don’t take their “love” seriously, but he may actually reconsider if he gets a taste of what the real financial obligations facing him will be. Instead of just talking about the costs, I’d offer to help him start looking at apartments and figuring out how much money he will need to earn in order to afford a decent place. Maybe that will give him something to think about.

Edited to add: Aha, I see that he is waiting after all. Phew. :slight_smile: Glad to hear that the situation isn’t as dire as it first sounded.

17

Once they realize they don’t know anything.

The fastest way to make him realize this is to let him make his own mistakes. He tells you he is right, you say he is wrong but let him go on with his idea, he fucks up, you say I told you so. Eventually he’ll get it.

He’s on his way there if he goes through this marriage thing. Take comfort in knowing he will grow some sense after he fucks up. If he doesn’t, start looking for a good psychiatrist.

18

Go ahead and start handing him bills for everything you (or your mother) provide for him. Make sure that he understands that once he(they) are out on their own they become REAL expenses that HE will have to cover.

Breakfast (daily). $5.00
Lunch. $5.00
Supper. $10.00
Gas. (weekly) $20. No wait. $30
Insurance. (quarterly) $300
Rent. (monthly) Cha-ching!! $500

19

Don’t be rational with him. As others said, ignore it, or (as I said) laugh at him about it. Being rational just means that he comes up with answers to questions, which makes it all more realistic.

20

W. C. Fields was right.

Children should be placed in a barrel and fed through the bunghole until they turn 21, at which time you make the decision to let them out of the barrel or plug up the bunghole.