Please help; kid in trouble and I don't know how to handle it...
Well,
It's nearly 4am and I am sitting here wondering just when my 19-year-old son is going to roll in. He is home from school for the summer. I am really at a loss; I don't know how to handle this. I am still in the early stages of recovery from my codependent ways with my ex. Things are going well in that area but it took me half my life to figure it out......I don't want to make the same mistakes with this kid that I made with my husband.
I was getting ready to go to bed at 11pm when he walked out of his room, dressed up and smelling good. Said he was going to a club with some friends to dance....... Can anyone yell 'trigger' with me at the top of their lungs????
I don't believe he is drinking/drugging. Not yet anyway; but I know he has that tendency in him. He went through a period of drinking during his senior year in high school and on into his first semester in college. I didn't handle it well-yelled, shamed him, "how could you do this to me", etc. He did pull out of that rocky period basically on his own when he figured out he was about to lose his full scholarship and end up working at a fast food joint or something....
But he is SO much like his dad. He is wonderful and sweet and funny; and irresponsible, undependable, and lazy. I have to wake him up over and over to go to work and he often shows up late there. He doesn't follow through on things he says he will do. I have caught him in some lies lately, not big things but lies just the same. I didn't call him on them because I didn't trust myself to handle it well.
I have laid awake literally hundreds of nights in my life waiting for his father's headlights to come up the driveway and going off at him when he finally got here. We all know had that worked out.....
I am such a baby at this boundary thing; I didn't even realize what a boundary was until about a year ago. I know I need to set some with him, but how? He's living in my house right now, I'm feeding him, doing his laundry, etc. He doesn't do much of anything to help out. He will be leaving to go back to school in about 6 weeks (thank goodness), and then he will just have to sink or swim. But in the meantime, I know I need to do something.
Why do I feel so flippin paralyzed here?????