Well, since my oldest has ADHD and the executive function of a young teenager, I sure have been helping him with the paperwork! Add to that that college websites are often confusing or even flat out wrong, and I couldn’t just throw him in there on his own. He’d have probably dropped out because he’d have dropped an important ball and gotten so muddled he’d have given up. I helped him a ton at first, but he’s going into his junior year now and I only help a bit with a few things. Mostly, I’m the calendar/reminder for him to get going doing something (see ADHD/Executive function above.) I’ve told him that there are 3 things going forward that I will fuss, fuss, fuss at him about: signing up for the next semester’s classes, ordering his books on time, making payments to the college. Otherwise, if he drops a ball on something, I think he can handle the consequences without setting him back too badly. My youngest doesn’t have the ADHD/EF issues the oldest has, so I’m walking through the process with him now and keeping an eye out for how well he does things. I’m pretty sure that I can release him to doing things on his own much sooner than with the oldest. But I’m helping him for now. I do not want to be this hands on. Honestly, I’m just tired of having other people’s life be my responsibility and I want them to be able to handle their own stuff. But since there are so many pitfalls in the college process, I want to be sure things don’t fall through the cracks, so I stay somewhat involved. They’re too inexperienced to know how to handle some things and the consequences can be more than I want to handle. Because if they mess up something important, it affects me as well as them. Here’s an example of something that can mess with a young person if they’re figuring this stuff out on their own: My son has no idea that in the business world, it’s common to send someone an email and not hear back. After 3-4 days, it’s acceptable to send a follow up: “Hi—just following up on the below email.” My son would wait for weeks for a reply, thinking, “Well, I emailed them and I guess they’re busy and will get back to me later,” and he wouldn’t get answers. As an adult, I know that if you want to get your business done, you have to follow up. If someone doesn’t reply to an email, I will pester every few days until you do, sorry not sorry. A couple of months ago, he had an online appointment with someone at the college. He asked me to attend with him so that if I thought of something to say in the meeting, I was right there. We signed into Zoom. The time for the meeting came and went. One minute…two minutes…three mintues. I said, “We may need to call the lady.” He looked aghast. I said, “We’ll wait until 5 after. That’s an appropriate time to wait for a meeting on Zoom before you contact the person.” He didn’t believe me and was super stressed. At 8 after I finally had to force the issue, “SON. No one is this late to an online meeting. Something is wrong. Call Her.” He called. She was sitting in the meeting the same as we were, but somehow we were in wrong meetings. Now, why she didn’t call us is a question I don’t know the answer to, because she should have known better. But when someone is 5 minutes late to an online meeting, you call them and make sure they didn’t forget or are having tech difficulties or are sitting in the wrong room. My son would have never called her and apparently, she wasn’t going to call him, and then he’d have had the hassle of needlessly rescheduling the meeting. So, that’s the sort of stuff I help him stay on top of. I tell him how to remember things: “You wrote to X today. Put a note on your calendar 4 days from now to send a follow up email if you haven’t heard back by then.” Bottom line: I don’t fill out forms or write the emails or make the appointments for them, but I do help them figure out which forms to fill out and when they need to email someone and how to follow up and when they need to make the appointments. And I keep backing off more and more whenever I sense I can. (Except for picking classes, getting books, and paying bills. I will always double check those three things.)

When the kids were little, it was hard. So many days I would think, “Today is the day that when DH walks in the door, I will get my car keys and go ANYWHERE until 10:00 and then come home and go right to bed because I CANNOT TAKE ANOTHER SECOND OF THIS.” I never did that. I would make it through another day, but it was a number of years that I thought that thought every single day. Looking back, I should have gotten in that car at least once a week and taken the night off. Tthe point I’m trying to get to is that it ended. The years passed and things changed. Right now, I experience some of what you’re going through, but not with quite the same intensity or amount: the anxiety/depression in other family members, the neediness of young people who ought to be able to handle their own stuff, but can’t, the thinking for everyone else. (Oh my goodness, all the thinking for everyone else! No one ever asks me to do something and then follows up with me, checking in on me and making sure I’m doing what I need to do or checking whether I’m sad or depressed. It’s like no one has MY back. I get resentful about it sometimes.) But these years will pass, too. I do my best to live in the moment when I can, when the moments are good. And I also balance that with looking forward to the peace that I hope to have when these years have passed. Fingers crossed that the years ahead are peaceful and I don’t have to devote yet another couple of decades of my own life to others. Fingers crossed. You don’t really need advice, but I hope that you can start to find ways to make some changes to help lessen the load. Or just drive off once a week and get a coffee at McDonalds and read a book by yourself for 2 hours. Maybe that’s not doable, but when the boys got older and I finally did have some time to get out of the house alone once a week, it did wonders for me.

Maybe a little hard rock, too? Metallica once played to an audience of literally 1.6 million people in Russia in a live concert. I never knew that until a few weeks ago. They might deserve a spot in your class. (One point six! Million! Yikes!) https://www.wearethepit.com/2023/04/that-time-metallica-played-a-free-concert-for-over-1-million-fans/ (ETA: I see now that there were some other bands at that same concert. So, feel free to include them, too, for a little hard rock section.) For a Metallica song, I’d pick Enter Sandman. Here’s a flash mob of 500 people in Central Europe all playing it together:

I had a homemade salsa recipe and something about it wasn’t working, it was just Too Much somehow. A friend of mine said, “It’s too acidic. Add a tsp of sugar.” I did and it was perfect. It certainly didn’t make it sweet in the slightest, but it cut the acidity. I have no idea how much they add to jars of it in the stores, but my homemade recipe only had a tsp in it.

This. The colleague doesn’t believe it either. It’s the sort of stuff you say at work to smooth things over and attempt to be a team player while you keep your fingers crossed that the change will in fact be good. If you were complaining about it too much, she just might not have wanted to go into a negative headspace over it and said “Change is always good” just to change the tone of the conversation.

Just chiming in with the others. As I was reading I was thinking, “Bringing up the past won’t be effective. You have to catch him in the act and respond to it going forward.” If you can start having your say going forward a lot of that unresolved anger will begin to diminish over the past. Kudos to printing out some of the scripting that you’ve been given. Practice it and start applying it. Catch him in the act and start addressing it then. People really do think you’re agreeing with them if you don’t speak up. My mother used to go on about how maybe there are aliens out there or on earth now. She would talk about “documentaries” that talk about “aliens among us”. I would just let her talk because she’s a playful person and I thought she was mostly being funny about the “aliens coming to get us.” Until I found out that she genuinely, ardently believes there are aliens here on earth. When she asked me, “Don’t you think they’re already here, too?” and I said, “Why, no! Of course not!” she was floored. She thought that my silence meant I agreed with her all along.I had been silent because her statements were so preposterous that I thought she was kidding around. If you don’t say something in the moment, you can look like you’re agreeing even if it’s ridiculous or “obvious” you couldn’t possibly agree (like aliens.) And like another PP said, the more people who make it clear that they don’t agree with him, the more others will stand up to him, too. Just say the canned phrases. That’s all you have to do.

Aha! You’re right. Good catch.

So, you meant it as gentle joshing? (to tease in a playful way). It just didn’t come across that way. The perils of words without tone or body language. As far as the laugh emoji, that’s often weaponized online. If someone wants to shut another person down online, they will use the laugh emoji to mock what the person said. It’s like putting a dunce cap on someone and then pointing and jeering at them. Even if you put it on your own posts, that laugh emoji has a subtext that can be misunderstood, esp since we can’t hear tone and read body language. I think anyone would have been wound up by your posts, whatever nations of origin the winder and windee were from. They were full of nonsense and when one bit of nonsense was corrected, you’d come up with a new bit of nonsense. Were you doing that on purpose just to be frustrating and contrary?

You don’t have to choose one or the other: personality vs showing up to work, doing what’s asked, etc. You can try to figure out what makes someone tick and also show up to work and do what’s asked. I have two coworkers who are like oil and water. They are both lovely people on their own, yet they just cannot seem to work well together. I’d love for them to take these tests to see if we could get some insight into why they seem to rub each other such a wrong way. They might gain some insight into ways to stop triggering each other. I’d love to know your personality type after reading this thread.

We used Life Print, like Lori mentioned above. But I had two sons going through it at the same time, so they had someone to work with. And their Dad is semi-fluent in ASL, so he also could sign with them. (I was kinda bad at it.) Also, I needed to be involved in planning and facilitating the boys use of the website. I don’t think it would work for an unmotivated teen to use alone. If I’d have had my teens using it alone, they would have blown it off. I’m just answering so that this gets bumped and maybe someone has a good idea for you.

My son asked me sincerely, “So, why do older people not use new technology and stuff?” I told him because they’ve had to learn So Many Different things in their lifetime and they’re just DONE with learning yet another one. Just DONE. I’ve learned and forgotten more technology than he currently knows.

100% this. Before I got the job, it would have been impossible to help out the kids other than offering them to live with us rent free to pay off their loans after college. Our house is in need of repairs from so many years without money to make repairs. My husband’s car is 12 years old. We didn’t go on vacation. We pinched a lot of pennies. We didn’t spend money, yet we still didn’t have much. I would stress (stress!) over whether or not to make $20 purchases (and would usually decide not to). The only time I would buy semi-necessities (like a new coat or a semi-needed appliance or some Ikea furniture) was at Christmas, birthdays, and our anniversary. If it wasn’t a holiday, we didn’t buy things. We waited until the holiday rolled around. Sometimes I waited a few years to get an item, if I needed something else more when a holiday rolled around. There was nothing left over to save for college. Through all that, we did have $25,000 in a 529, but that was because a family member entered a convent and gave all her money away. She put $10,000 in a 529 for our kids and it grew to $25k. You do what you can with what you have. There is no shame or judgement if a family isn’t set up to pay for college and simply cannot save for it. I had friends through this who had two incomes and they easily saved up for their kids’ college education when I wasn’t able to put any money toward my kids’. I could easily have let jealousy get to me, but I put a tight lid on that. You do what you can with what you have and offer your kids what you can, whether it’s a lot or a little.

God blessed me two years ago with a job out of the blue (out of the blue!). It basically doubled our family income. I am using that salary to pay for my kids’ educations for them. They are each attending their first 2 years at the community college where my husband works, so those years are free except for fees and books (nominal.) The state school for their last 2 years offered $2000 per year, but nothing else. Like someone else said above, it’s not the tuition that’s expensive, it’s the room and board. But the college is an hour away, and it wouldn’t work for them to commute, so we’ll be paying for tuition (minus the $2k) and R&B. Rounding up, it’ll cost us about $25,000 per year, so it’ll be $100,000 for the two of them. The 529 we have will cover a quarter of that, so we’ll be paying $75,000 for them ($37,500 each.) Before the job, I told them that all I could offer was the $25,000 in the 529 and to live at home with us after they graduated rent free, to pay off their loans as soon as they could. I’m very grateful for that job and am happy to help them get started in life. It truly was a gift out of the blue. We can live on my husband’s salary, so mine can safely go to help the boys.

Hey! I’m the OP! It’s been 8 years and my son is still friends with his taller friends. He is 20 years old now, and will be 21 in Sept. He’s 5’7 and I don’t think he’ll grow anymore. He seems to be quietly resigned to his height. He’s not unusually short, but he’s certainly not tall. Just a couple of inches below average (American male average height is 5’9). He doesn’t talk about it much. But he has a full beard now and so that helps him not look more childish than his friends. A lot of them cannot grow such full beards, so that was a bit of a balm as they got older. He had the fully beard by 17. He went from being my hyper 12 year old into a very quiet and thoughtful young man. The hyper immaturity faded away. He’s still is a little leery about whether his friends really like him, but that’s some anxiety and uncertainty that a lot of people his age feel, mixed in with a hold-over from when he was 12 and they all started acting differently toward him. Raising kids is so tricky! I remember the agony of my son trailing behind his big friends and feeling left out. Some of that still holds over a bit to this day, with how he’s never quite felt like he fits in with the group. That still tugs at my heart. (Raising kids is tough on a mama’s heart!) He’s been attending the community college where my husband works (free education!), but this fall, he’s moving to the dorms at the nearest state college. He’s mathy and on our orientation visits there, he’s connected with two other mathy guys and is looking forward to meeting new people. His current friends aren’t very academic, but my son is, and I think he’ll thrive in this new location with a bunch of brainy math people that he can relate to in a new way. Now, my younger son! Ay yi yi! He’s 5’8 and 18 years old and can’t grow a beard and he Doesn’t Like It. His friends have beards and are tall and he feels like a little kid next to them. But, his personality is different from my oldest, so he fits in better with his group. He’s pretty smart and his friends say he’s the “smart one” of the group, so he feels looked up to for his brains if not his height/beard. He works out with our weight bench every day and is getting some nice muscles in his arms. He’s just soooo ready to be a burly man NOW. I tell him that I was the skinny, flat chested girl at his age, so I get the frustration. But that doesn’t really help much. He is impatient to look manly. In certain lights and certain angles, he sort of looks like Leonardo DiCaprio (if you squint) and I point out that all the girls loved Leonardo when he was all baby-looking in Titanic. So, it’s not necessarily a turnoff if he’s not sporting a full beard like his brother did at his age. This was a fun walk down memory lane!

Thank you! It’s a different world out there nowadays and I forget about all the delivery “to your door” services that exist.

Normally we don’t have to worry about fires, but the fires from Canada have been making our air bad here lately. But this is unusual and a first for us. We’ll see how things continue. He was going to take a pack of regular masks from the covid era, in case he gets sick with covid and doesn’t want to spread it to the roommate. The dorm my son is like this: there’s a shared kitchen counter with sink and drawers and cupboards above/below it. There’s a shared table that seats 4. There’s a shared couch and tv stand. There are two bathroom sinks with cupboard drawers, so each roommate has his own sink/cupboard/drawers. There’s a shared toilet and shower stall for the two of them. Then, they each have tiny little bedrooms with doors that has a bed, dresser, desk, and chair each. It’s larger than a lot of New York city apartments! But as I said earlier, he was very unhappy about leaving home, so we wanted to make this as easy for him as possible so we were able to get him the room with the most room and the fewest roommates. Space isn’t going to be a problem. In fact, it’s more likely the two of them will be rattling around in the space they have. But if one of the gets sick, then they could hole up in their rooms for the most part if necessary, and use masks in their communal areas. Then again, not sure what they do about food if they’re sick and have to schlep to the cafeteria to get it. Hmmm…what *do they do?? Hair dryer—that’s something to think about. My son also has long, thick, curly hair (can I admit that I’m a little bit jealous? I have fine, straight hair). I’ll ask him what he wants to do about that. Good idea about a jacket and umbrella. He won’t be able to just dash from the house to the car to get places. He’ll have to walk for 5 or 10 minutes to get from his dorm to various buildings. He might want an umbrella.

Whoops - hit enter before I finished replying Regarding cleaning supplies: That’s all I was getting for him, except it’ll be chlorox wipes for the sink and that spray stuff you can spray on the shower stall and walk away. I have told him that it’s up to him if he doesn’t want to clean. I certainly won’t care either way. Sometimes he likes things clean and tidies up a lot, and other times he just doesn’t care. He’ll have the stuff if he needs it, and if not then we’ll use it up over the summer when he brings it all back home. 🙂 Regarding things that turned out to be necessities: I kept waffling about medicines. I think I’ll add a few of those, especially cough syrup. It would be frustrating to be sick and try to sleep at night and then start coughing. Probably a few basic flu/cold things are a good idea. It’s a 2-hour round trip for us to get to him if he was feeling rotten and needed some OTC stuff and we all work full time. Sounds like it’ll be a good idea for him to have enough for a few days without having to rely on us to help out. Earplugs is a great idea. I had wondered about those as well. I use them a lot (at the movies, at church, at night), but I wasn’t sure if he would. They’re small enough to tuck away in one of those drawers. Food and kitchen: He can cook for himself, but I’m not sure he’ll want to mess with it. He likes to make mac and cheese in the microwave and maybe some sausages. I don’t really think he’ll do much more, since the school has a nice cafeteria and he can get 19 meals there a week. He’ll be on his own for 2 meals each week. . I wasn’t going to send paper plate because the waste makes me cringe a little, but was going to send only 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 spoons, fork, knives. I’d kicked around the idea of measuring cups and a cutting board/knife and now I’m wondering if that’s worth it. I have extras in the house, so I might send those. If he doesn’t use them by December, he can bring them back home. I’m not going to buy new ones for him. Like I said before, not only does he have more drawers in his kitchen at the college, but he has more cupboard space, too, so the stuff will be rattling around in all those cupboards. (This is my introverted son who is very shy and until a few months ago was deeply dreading leaving home for college, so we sprung for the roomiest, nicest dorm room they offer. Fortunately, he’s turned a corner and is actually looking forward to going. Relief!) He already has a fridge in his room at home that we inherited from a family member and he’ll take that with him. If his roommate has one, too, then either my son or the roommate can take one back home. He’s tried writing to the roommate to coordinate these things, but the roommate hasn’t written back, so we can’t assume anything either way. But, it won’t be a big deal to bring it back home. Same with the microwave. If they both have a fridge/microwave, we can figure out on moving in day who brings which back home. Linen/Laundry/Electronics sounds like what we’ve already planned. The dorm beds are XL. Thank you for all the suggestions! It’s very helpful!

I did wonder what to get for a nightstand and then realized he has 3 wooden boxes that are designed to stack on top of each other (he’s currently using them side by side in a closet. So, he’s going to take those three stacking boxes and stack them so they can double as a nightstand and a bookshelf for stuff to be stuffed into. He has a ton of drawer space otherwise—desk drawers, dresser drawers, a set of three drawers under his bathroom sink (just for him alone), and a set of drawers in the kitchen. Honestly, he has more drawers in his bathroom/sink than we do at home. I told him that maybe he can live at home and the rest of us will move into the dorm.

I think the dad was being a bit of a jerk. Even if I was taken aback at being asked (and I would not be), I wouldn’t have been snarky about it. Sheesh. Sometimes people just say jerky things.

Does anyone have a list they kept of stuff their student took to a dorm? My son has a snazzy dorm that’s about the size of a small apartment but without a kitchen. He’ll have a counter and cabinets and kitchen sink, but he’ll be bringing his own tiny fridge and microwave. He’ll have a toilet/shower and two bathroom sinks, one of him and one for his roommate. I’m in the throes of trying to figure out useful things to bring. He doesn’t want to have to take lot, but he does need to have necessities. Was there any unexpected thing that your student realized was a must have? Or was there something your student took, thinking it was necessary, but turns out it wasn’t?

I don’t live near my mother and rarely see her (2500 apart.). Recently, though, during most interactions we have, she has been finding ways to try to make me feel bad and judged. We had what I thought was a lovely visit from my parents last August, but afterwards she said a number of hurtful things and now I think back on that visit and it’s negative memory for me. She totally ruined the memory with the things she said about it afterward. I wish I could help, but I’m still trying to sort out how to deal with this on my own. It’s easier for me because I’m so far apart. I’ve thought that if I live closer, I’d have to speak up when things bother me, but in the moment. My own mother could never handle a heart-to-heart without getting defensive. My plan, I think, would be to point out the behavior just enough that it’s uncomfortable in the hopes that my mother would want to avoid the discomfort and start treating me better, just for her own comfort. But for now, since we are so far apart and have absolutely no sway over each other’s lives, I do my best to let things go after a couple of days. But it can certainly take a few days to let these things go, so I understand stewing over it for days. I guess if it was me, I’d try to think of a mild statement to say ahead of time that can apply to any situation and then start using it. Like what someone wrote above like, “I don’t like it when you X.” “I don’t like it when speak in a rude tone.” “I don’t like it when you yell at a child.”

Adding my voice to the others in saying how very sorry I am for your loss.

I’m late to the game and have to post and run without reading all the replies, I’m sorry if this has been suggested: Can you dedicate an entire room to just storage? We knew a family who turned a small bedroom into the family closet. All the clothes for the entire family were in there on racks and in drawers and they also stored totes of belongings (like Christmas decor) in the room.

There’s a homeschool consignment store somewhat near me (a bit of a country drive away). They take current editions of things, so my more current stuff was taken there. I get a tiny portion of the sale from them. Things not current, I’d put on the pages of the FB pages of the homeschool groups I’m in and offer them for free. I just gave away a substantial amount of science equipment to a homeschool school near me. A group of parents run a “school” that meets a few times a week. Each parent takes on one of the subjects to teach it. They’re very serious about what they do, and I was able to give them a lot of science stuff that all their students can use for many years to come. I felt really good about that one, because I know it’ll get used over and over by many students. (Bunsen burner, microscope, beakers, etc, etc, etc.)

I’m re-reading a fantasy “trilogy” (the last book was so long, they had to publish it in 2 volumes) that I read about 25 years ago to see if I still like it. When I read it in my 20s I loved it. Turns out I still like it! 🙂 It’s been fun to re-read the story. I remember more of it than I thought I would and I’m enjoying re-discovering all the parts I forgot. It’s the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series by Tad Williams. The first book is “The Dragonbone Chair.” What made me want to re-read it is that I found out the author added more books to the series a few years ago, so I hope to finish up the first trilogy and then dive into the next set of books. I didn’t want to read the newest books without refreshing my memory of the originals and I’m so glad I did. It’s not deep reading, but I’m enjoying getting drawn into a good fantasy.