THAT'S MEN:There may be light at the end of the tunnel, but lazy sons take their time turning into mature men, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
A RECENT column (Sometimes it’s better to empty the nest, August 25th) on lazy, rude and selfish young men who live with their parents brought anguished e-mails. All were from parents worrying about what the future holds for their lazy, etc sons.
I want to assure these parents that there is light at the end of this very stormy tunnel. I have come across many cases in which sons who were at war with their parents eventually called a ceasefire, grew close to the old folk – and even became model citizens.
All of this, I believe, has something to do with the maturing of the adolescent brain.
That maturing isn’t complete until around the mid-20s, so it isn’t surprising that adult children can still be in adolescent mode for some years after they have ceased to be teenagers.
Adolescents tend to misinterpret what their parents are at: concern is seen as anger and a simple question is taken as a deliberate insult. This may be due to the way their brains are wired up and not to any wilful contrariness on their part.
When their brains get sorted out in the mid-20s, the misinterpretations will, with any luck, cease. Parents will even begin to look and sound human again.
What are the implications of all this for parents who are going through the horrors with their late-teens or early-20s sons? Here are a few thoughts that might help:
First, prepare to ride out the storm. With a bit of luck all this obnoxious behaviour will end one day, but it won’t end tomorrow – so don’t wear yourself out trying to make it end tomorrow.
Second, control what you can control – namely your own behaviour. Are you going to run a pizza delivery service to his room or is food provided in the kitchen? Are you going to wash clothes that are on the floor or just those that are in a laundry basket? Are you going to supplement his income every time he blows all his dosh on drink and drugs? Are you going to pay to top up his mobile phone three times a month?
Third, keep the relationship in as good a shape as you can without getting walked on. What you want is to have a good relationship with your son when the storm ends in a few years. So try to maintain the relationship now although insisting on your own dignity at the same time (see above).
Fourth, try to keep the relationship between you and the other parent as good as possible. Things are bad enough without making each other miserable.
Accept that each of you is likely to have a different parenting style, and try to agree on the basics without expecting to be clones of each other.
Get out and have fun now and then, and for heaven’s sake don’t spend your fun time talking about Junior. If the parents are separated, the angry adolescent son may move back and forth between parents. So long as one of the parents isn’t a dope fiend with criminal tendencies, this can provide a blessed relief to the other parent. This works best if both parents can talk to each other without fighting.
Fifth, how was it for you? Were you a pain in the neck to your parents at that age? If you were, then recalling it might bring some perspective to the situation. On the other hand, if you were a Goody Two Shoes, that probably won’t help. “Why can’t you/he/she be more like me?” is one of the most futile questions we ask as human beings.
Sixth, stay out of the bedroom. My personal belief is that parents should regard teenagers’ bedrooms as a lost cause until the said teenagers have actually grown up.
Parents should enter the bedroom only if they are confiscating stuff or checking for illicit drugs. And they should confiscate only one thing at a time – take everything and you’ve used up all your threats at once.
Seventh, don’t try emigrating to get away from him. He’ll only come and stay with you.
- Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, That's Men, the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas