Dear Jean:

Our son is in grade 10 at 18 years of age. He repeated grades 4 and 7 and was only given a social pass from grade 9 to 10. This is not a result of inability but of attitude. He hardly ever passes in assignments and is almost never prepared for tests and quizzes. We have turned our lives into parent/teacher/student sessions for many years. We are just tired of being the ones who organize him by finding out what the assignments are, when they're due and forcing him to complete them. We have tried every trick imaginable to encourage, cajole, and manipulate him into taking the responsibility for himself. When the teachers have had their fill they call us and the hell of homework invariably starts.

He has a few close friends, but doesn't seem to a member of the local pop group. He claims that no one at school likes him except his close friends. When pressed about why they don't like him, he tells us they think he smells bad. Hygene is an issue. It takes him approximately an hour to have a shower and about a week of pushing to get him to take one. Again, we believe his poor hygene and unwillingness to see reason about his classmates is part of the problem, but at this point, don't know what more to do to get an 18 year old to shower regularly.

We have imposed a curfew of 10 pm on weekdays and 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. That has been cut back to 9 pm weekdays so that he has an hour to do homework, which he never uses. He often disappears to his room and takes enormous amounts of time preparing.

It seems that his way of coping with things is to procrastinate so long that it's either too late to do what needs to be done, ie assignments, or that Mom and Dad blow a gasket and he finally takes the shower. The worst part is that when Mom and Dad finally blow the gasket then he gets mad at us and accuses us of calling him stupid.

He takes no responsiblity for his life. The school he attends works on a 4 day cycle and since September our son has made no effort to familiarize himself with the schedule. On any given day he claims to have no idea what day of the cycle it is, he claims not to know what his first class of any day is. He cannot even tell you how many math classes he has first period during the 4 day cycle. The last time we asked he gave us 5 different answers. We honestly do not know whether he is just pretending to be so out of touch or if he really is. Getting him up in the morning is a nightmare. He constantly complains about being too tired in the mornings. He has no trouble getting up when he has something to do that he wants to do, yet he complains that he lays awake for hours after going to bed at night when we confront him about getting up to go to school. The doctors can find no reason for his claimed inability to sleep. We are constantly battling over his lack of responsibility and he accuses us of calling him stupid when we try to explain what is expected of him. We know that by 18 it should not be our responsibility to get him up for school in the morning, but he would not go to school if we did not make sure he was out the door in the mornings. We believe that the morning hell sessions are just a symptom of something that is going on that we don't know to approach.

We have tried everything from rewards to punishments to making him take the responsibility which always ends up with him not attending school. There is no other school in the area that we can send him to.

We have an older son who has been diagnosed with ADHD and was a challenge all of his own during his school years. The boys don't get along as well as we would like them to, but Wally and the Beaver they are not, and we don't object to the sibling rivalry they share.

One other thing that may be of some signifigance but I am unable to control is the fact that both sets of grandparents showed favoritism towards the older son. I emphasize the word showed because last year was a particularly hard year as we lost both grandfathers. One grandmother died in 1992 and the other is terminally ill at the moment. I did speak to both sets of grandparents and expressed my concerns over their favoritism but I am afraid my words fell on deaf ears.

Hope you can help Jean.

Frustrated Mom and Dad

Jean responds:

Dear Frustrated Mom and Dad:

Usually, my stance toward parents with an 18-year-old is to encourage them to put the young person on his or her own recognizance, as it were...in other words, to withdraw all attempts to manage behavior and even insist, when things are out of control at home, that the young person find another place to live, and a way to support himself/herself, and set a deadline for doing so.

But your son's case sounds extreme. It sounds less like an issue of irresponsibility and defiance than an issue of falling back into a dependency he in fact never left. Poor parenting practices in the past may have encouraged or exacerbated a tendency in this direction (i.e., to remain dependent rather than developing into his own person), but my guess is that a huge contributor may be biological.

As your first son was diagnosed ADHD, I assume you have had this son checked out regarding that possible diagnosis -- if not, I would advise you to do that at once.

But it sounds more like depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, or a combination of both. I can't really tell without knowing more about the emotional tone of his reactions with you and others--the obsessive-compulsive is driven by unbearable anxiety, such that he cannot act for fear that something bad will happen. This is the person who has to spend hours bathing because he can't remember whether he washed his feet; he washes them; then he 'forgets' whether he has washed them and has to do it over, etc., etc.

However, the depressive option sounds more like what may be going on here....and/or some disturbance of thought.

In other words, what I'm saying is that his extreme passivity in the face of ANY stress/responsibility makes me think that he is crying out for help, albeit in a passive way. I highly encourage you to have him evaluated by a qualified child and adolescent psychiatrist (or an adult psychiatrist, if you know an excellent one) or by a clinical psychologist or social worker with a lot of experience in treating adolescents with emotional disorders.

Even if he is suffering from one mental/emotional disorder or another, which makes him unable to respond to reasonable life expectations, you will also have to pull back from saving his skin again and again. He cannot develop an understanding of his own self, his problems, and his needs, if you keep interposing yourself between him and his reality. Finding the balance between allowing him to experience the consequences of his own actions while supporting him in areas of real deficit will require the advise of a professional counselor.

I hope you will look seriously for a qualified clinician to help you; use our Directory of Clinicians at the web site, or if there's no one there, write me for a referral, or ask at your son's school.

The emergency is NOT the homework, failing school, etc. The emergency exists inside of your son. Get help for him.

Jean.

Disclaimer: Ms. Walbridge's response to your question is intended to be educational and informative. It is not a substitute for face to face consultation or psychotherapy with a mental health professional.

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