And yes, the son is being poorly behaved about it in some ways - but it's not comparable to what a father owes his children. If your adult brother says he'll take you on a trip for free, then somehow another sibling gets added to the trip, then he flakes out and ends up going by himself - annoying, but not the end of the world. He's an adult, he's not beholden to you, you're siblings. If your dad does it, that hurts, because he's your dad.

That's not what she said, she said this: "This is a person who, if told to turn left, will turn right just to show that he can't be told what to do. He is prideful and stubborn as all get out yet his external locus of control makes him the victim. " "But our son cares for no one but himself." "The condition of his heart is not generous, I can assure you. Opportunistic, yes." "He is one who shows zero humility or remorse. Ever." "He is showing himself to be one who happily spends other people's money, hoards his own, yet laments that he has none to spend. " "Thinking on what we see in our ds we feel that he is one who allows pride to win over common sense."

I'm hearing the complaint that he's willing to spend other people's money but hoards his own (as a character flaw). A. This is a very Dave Ramsey character trait, possibly if you listen to him that's where DS22 got it and 2. letting your 22 yo non-degreed son pay for your minor daughter's travel and lodging costs for a major trip is nothing if not willingness to spend other people's money. He did act in a jerky manner.

And it is true that on the whole I really don't belong here, and I guess this thread has me feeling it. I was happy to talk with people about the different ways we've had trouble with kids growing up and rejecting us, or becoming independent, and reflecting on ways we did the same thing to our parents; it's given me some perspective for (very mild) issues we're going through now in my family. But if I were explicit about the issues, I would absolutely not be able to talk to much of anyone about it, because the overwhelming response to me would be "you don't have the right to feel that way as your moral beliefs are backward and evil." I've gotten great book recs here before, listing the more mild of my criteria (which I still have to JAWM and still get blowback about); if I said what my actual criteria were there would be no recs, no discussion, just condemnation.

Of course, but if you don't want to debate about whether you're right, but want to talk about another aspect of the situation (the emotional effect of the conflict, in this case), you can't talk about the specifics because people will not be sympathetic to you or even be willing to talk to you about that aspect without castigating you about the thing they disagree with. (as you explicity said in an earlier post) which, I dunno, whatever It works if you're normalish (for this board)

and I'd assume, given the OP's history of posts, that she thinks divorce and a single-parent household would be worse for the kids than remaining unmedicated/undiagnosed for ADHD or ODD or whatever is going on. so she's trying to figure out ways to make it work without causing a divorce-worthy fuss, and she has gotten some help from posters here for that, although it is an uphill battle. OP, the problem with the babysitter is that your average babysitter is not equipped to deal with your kids because they have ADHD or ODD tendencies and are unmedicated. It's like when I have an emergency situation and want to leave all 7 kids with my mom. The oldest 3 are no big deal; the baby is a baby; the middle 3 boys (6, 4, and 3) are nearly impossible for her to handle.

I'm not sure if you've just not read the past several years' posts from the OP; her husband definitively does not want evals, diagnoses, or services for issues like ADHD or autism, etc. It wouldn't be like you going to get services without running it by your husband because you and your husband both agree on the basic need for services of this kind; if he were vehemently opposed to those services, doing it behind his back would cause serious marital strife, presumably.

I am unclear on the details; do you think he was resentful that he had to pay 2/3 of the lodging even though he was taking up 1/3 of the lodging space? That would irritate me.

I guess it's just that if you have fairly mainstream views, you have the privilege of being a completely open part of the community and can discuss things with people frankly. If you're not within certain bounds on various topics (for Scarlett, evidently, JW religious convictions) then either you can't talk at all about various topics or you have to be vague and hope for people to have experiences to which you can relate, even if the exact circumstances are different.

Right, and because JW religious laws and personal convictions are often fairly out of the norm in the USA today, I can see why she wanted advice or sympathy from people undergoing a similar situation from their perspective without talking about the specifics of the situation, because, as you just said, a thread started about a specific situation that many posters here disagree with would veer sharply into "you don't have a right to feel that way because your values aren't modern enough" territory.

I don't think Scarlett has to decide if being right is worth losing her relationship with her son; I think she has to decide, and has decided, whether doing right is worth losing the relationship. It's not like she's trying to prove something to him; she just has a moral/religious boundary she cannot cross. It might not be one any of us share, but that doesn't make it less real for her.

Yep, sounds right

marking

Well I dunno, I thought it was a helpful thread even without specifics. I myself do often start vague threads, or even if it's a specific one I leave a lot of stuff out. If I'm going to ask for book recs for my kids, for instance, I might say that I have a set of requirements, then list the ones I have that I think are at least marginally palatable to this board. Of course I'm not going to list it all because I want to be able to keep talking to people here even though we have disagreements, and some of my views are waaaaaaaaaaay to the right of the board, so I just leave those out and filter on my own later. It's not completely upfront but it does keep the thread from becoming an argument about a side issue that I don't really want to argue about when I'm asking for book recs, kwim?

I think that for some people in some religions, there's an area of morality where the Law (that is, the absolute religious requirements) may be either unclear or left up to the conscience of the follower. I'm not like 100% sure about Mormons, but the missionaries we had come visit us for a couple of months were pretty explicit about prayerful consideration of what is right in a certain situation, and I got the idea that while they adhered to the tenets of their religion, a lot was left up to this ongoing sort of conversation they were having with God. I don't know why religious requirement would be seen as a more valid constriction of behavior than conscience (that is to say, morality without religious requirement). Are you saying that non-religious people should just do whatever because there's no religious requirement for them to follow, so they have no excuse not to do whatever other people want them to do in any scenario? I mean it makes no sense.

She said specifically (I think) that she was fine with the DIL and their relationship. She didn't leave that truth out. I will admit that I am rarely entirely forthcoming on this board, because often I want support or advice for a situation that I know people have probably experienced in similar forms, but if I describe the exact situation or request, the thread will focus on that and how (bigoted, stupid, evil, crazy, fanatic, patriarchal, anti-woman, etc.) I am. So I can sympathize with Scarlett on this one.

Yes, it is harder then, definitely. But then again, that hard "no" is sometimes naturally reached at such a time, because it takes extremity to really get some generally good-natured people to their breaking point. Not all of life will be carefully prepared for and thought out, and that is okay; that's why you clean up after yourself instead of leaving an increasing pile of mess everywhere - so that you don't encroach gradually on the goodwill of the people you're living with.

And while I agree that very explicit and concrete requirements (do the dishes, walk the dog, etc.) are more effective and easier to handle than more vague ones (clean for an hour), I also think it's not a terrible life lesson to learn that if you skate by on someone's good will for a long time, doing the bare minimum and/or leaving a mess behind you, one day they might just say that's it, I've had ENOUGH and react in an unpredictable and unpleasant way.

It's hard when you reach "no," whether they're 7 or 17.

If the father in law wants to pay for it and your DD is happy to have one, I don't see the problem. A year is not that fast.

Well I'm still happy to validate her victimhood in this case, even though I personally have no qualms about going to a wedding regardless of venue. I also have no qualms about eating (wild) pork, attending a religious ceremony for another religion, attending the wedding of someone who is underage but not a child (17 is historically not exactly pre-adolescent and I was basically married at 16), celebrating a birthday or Thanksgiving, or going to a funeral wherever it is. None of that matters, though, because this isn't, for me, about whether Scarlett has the morally correct position - of course I don't think she does, I don't even believe in a concrete God, much less her religion's specific version of him! It's about whether she has the right to maintain a moral position she's always had, and how hard it is to do that when it causes conflict with and upsets your loved ones, and I can definitely sympathize with those things. When I told my mom we wouldn't let DD14 (then 5) eat birthday cake at another kid's party, she called me a fanatic and told me I was ruining DD's childhood. Then when she did take DD to a friend's birthday party, she lied to her and said the cake was dairy-free. It hurt, but we got over it eventually, sort of. I'm sure it caused her pain too, because these kinds of rifts between parent and child are painful. I don't have to be a Jehovah's Witness to feel badly for Scarlett anymore than she has to be a vegan to feel badly for me. Of course I feel bad for her son too, because he wasn't able to come to a compromise with his mom that would have allowed her to be at his wedding, and that has to hurt.

This one really gets me, and I'll try to explain why. I am not religious. I have strong, black and white moral convictions. Most of my FOO and extended family (and other people) don't respect them the way they'd respect religious requirements. somehow my conscience, or morality separate of religious belief, is not as worthy of respect as religious belief. If I tell people that my kids don't eat eggs or dairy out of conscience, they'll think I'm being picky or uppity or stupid and sometimes won't respect the boundary (will lie to my kids and tell them that something is dairy-free when it isn't, for example). If I tell them I'm Jewish and so the kids don't eat bacon, I somehow think the response will be different most of the time. It just drives me crazy. There's a real bias still against non-religious people.

This is possible, but jeez. I guess it's an effect of young adulthood.] My morals are as different from my mother's as you can get, most of the time. she eats factory farmed bacon and voted for Clinton. But I don't want nothing to do with her, even if we disagree really fundamentally about a lot of things and on rare occasion those disagreements manifest into logistical impasses or unkind words.

I'm with you in that I think there are a whole range of ways to handle this and I can't believe that they couldn't come to some compromise - and if they couldn't come to a compromise, having discussed it rationally you'd think there wouldn't be a ton of hard feelings. Like, my dad didn't want to come to my wedding as it wasn't legally official until a few weeks later. If he'd held out about it, I either A. wouldn't have held it against him or B. would have said, well, let's get the license first and then do the wedding or C. would have invited him to the official part 3 weeks later instead or D. a million other compromises

I'm pretty sure she said she was fine with them as a couple