I've had my foundations rocked before. Thinking about you this morning. Many hugs. Holding you and your family in the light. Nan

Jenny, I think that is a great approach. Nice phrasing. It sounds helpful and respectful and it will be good training for when he has to coordinate with other people at work on a joint project. Hugs, Nan

Overheat. As in too hot. Living in New England, it is easy to have happen and my boys seem to have inherited my tendancy to not notice until their body suddenly tells them there is something very wrong. Just before they figure it out, they feel despersate, which makes them snap at people. Ditto with food. There was an uncomfortable period around 13 when they were insulted if I suggested adjusting clothing or eating something. Fortunately it was brief. Nan

I am so sorry, Lizzie. Holding you and your family in the light. Hugs, Nan

Yeah!!! Good for her!

: ) I thought of another thing that might be encouraging. It won't make the pushing any easier but it might make you feel better about pushing. My parents tell stories of when they were in college. My father's parents thought he was not well prepared for engineering school and filled out the application for a year of junior college and arranged for him to live with a cousin while he was going. Then they filled out the application for UVa and sent him there. He says he never would have gotten through engineering school if his roommate hadn't helped him. His roommate helped him apply for a job afterwards, too. He had a very successful career as an engineer, successful enough to retire at 55. He was the model of responsible adulthood. He just was a late bloomer. In those days, it was possible to do that for your child because you weren't considered an adult until you were 21. The college was in loco-parentis (sp?). My mother went to a small LAC. I have no idea how the application process went, but she had a dorm mother who was responsible for the girls in her dorm. The dorm mother made sure they all followed the rules. She tells the story of them bringing a dog that followed her roommate home up to their room and the dorm mother, who knew what they had done, calling up the stairs to them, "Girls, I'm sure you don't have a dog in your room, do you!" and them calling back, "Oh no, Mrs. --- "and then hastily sneaking him back out again. They sent their laundry home in boxes to be washed by their mothers and sent back. Very different expectations. I don't think they were any less grown up in the end than our students are. : ) Nan

Jenny - More people were answering while I was typing so I want to add something now. 19 is way young. : ) There is a reason why 21 used to be the age of majority. Your list of what he HAS accomplished is great! I think he's doing great! There are just some things that he isn't doing well. Unfortunately, one of them is various college applications, which could be interpreted as having extra meaning attached to it. And then, on top of that, he is 19 and behaving like a typical 19yo when it comes to knowing he needs mum's help and not wanting mum's help, a combination of annoyed and embarrassed. And school isn't his favourite thing and applications are definitely not fun and ... When he is older, needing help won't bother him as much and he will be much more gracious about it. When he is older, he won't need quite as much help, either. I think it is pretty common for 19yo's to have lots of help with that sort of thing. It just isn't talked about much because parents are hampered by privacy concerns. We are lucky that here, we can get away with discussing things more openly. : ) Nan

That sort of task was really hard for mine until they were about 25. Then something clicked and they started being able to do it. We decided that if we wanted them to have a degree, we were going to have to help, especially with that sort of task. Ours were really grown up about a lot of things, more grown up than lots of older adults. They just especially weren't grown up about that sort of thing. Our strategy was to help them through college and hope that by the time college ended, they would be better at that sort of thing. And they were. Not completely there, but better. Slowly, they have improved over time. We are really glad that we helped. I actually remember what that felt like. At first, whenever I thought about doing a task like that, I felt completely overcome by lethargy. Then I got old enough that the total lack of energy usually meant that there was either a piece of the task that I hadn't figured out, or a decision to be made that I wasn't ready to make. I am way better at that sort of thing, now. Another family member took a more hands-off, sink-or-swim approach and didn't understand why we hadn't done the same until one of theirs sank. At that point, I think they realized that some people learn to swim late and when that happens, providing a life preserver for awhile isn't such a bad idea. The young person started over, with a life jacket this time, and was much more successful, and needed it less and less every year. This person is waaay more intelligent than my sons, by the way. Everybody is different and every family is different. This might not be the right approach for everyone. Mine are old enough now for me to be able to see that for us, this was the right approach, though. Nan

She's better!!! Gobbling down chicken and drinking lots. She is terribly gaunt and doesn't want to go up or down any stairs and sleeps a lot (probably the pain med) but she is feeling well enough to make giving her her pills hard. : ) She has to be on antibiotics for a month for an inflamed gall bladder, so we are going to have to come to some agreement about this. I am sooo relieved! No blocked ducts. Nothing wrong with her liver. Phew! Nan

I feel a bit stupid using red, but it will make answering easier. : ) I guess the good news is that most of this stuff we did by talking honestly about being a grownup, paying attention, listening, keeping communication open, trying to be nonjudgmental and respectful, and trying to be good and consistent people ourselves. I'm making it sound like we are a really talky family, but we aren't. Most of our conversation is weather, logistics, what we are looking at (look - a hummingbird), or telling stories. We tackled all this stuff as it arose, mostly. Things cropped up at different stages I'm also making it sound like things were idyllic and wonderful and we planned all this out ahead of time. It wasn't and we didn't. In hindsight, I can tell you what we did, and some of what we did was a planned approach to parenting that my husband and I talked about before we even had children, but most of the specifics were either family traditions or spontaneous decisions made on the spot without enough data. Prepare to make a lot of decisions blind, with not enough data. I found that exhausting. As our boys went through their early twenties, they compared how much help we were giving them with how much help their friends were being given, and they compared the outcomes. Some of their friends were completely on their own from the time they were about 16. They watched the mistakes they made because they had no one to help them avoid them. For example, take buying a car. You need one to get to work. It has to be reliable because if you don't show up, there are many more people who would like your job. it is hard to buy a good used car when you are an 18 yo and know nothing about cars, so you buy a new one. And discover you can't afford the payments. And ruin your credit. And lose the car. And you job. And your housing. And have to start over. Or you buy a lemon. It costs you a lot of money to fix and then something else breaks. And you can't afford to fix it. And you lose your job. And your housing. And have to start over. If you watch your friends do that, you are really grateful when Dad says you can have his old car. If the only people you know are people whose parents give them a brand new car for high school graduation, this doesn't work as well. Which brings us back to letting them do REAL things as a teenager. Because of the particular children we had and the area we live in, we had to go pretty extreme real for this to work. Sigh. I found that a lot of unhappy encounters could be avoided if I fed them enough and didn't let them overheat. This was tricky because when they got too hungry, they weren't hungry any more. I also found that everything was my fault, even when it wasn't. I had to stick up for myself, be the soft answer that turneth away wrath, not take things too personally, and be really good at forgiving and forgetting because they forgot really fast. Nan

Great example. If I did it too, I said sorry and confessed and we moved on. If I did but it was a stupid idea, I explained why and said sorry. If I didn't do it, I threw up my hands and said sorry. The distain told me I was being stupid, often rightly accused sometimes wrongly. We never discussed distain. We got plenty of it at times, sometimes, but we ignored it. It mostly went away. Mostly I either apologized or explained why I didn't need to. It still happens. Me to 26yo packing to go on his summer coop: Did you pack sunscreen? Him: I've done this before Mum. I know to pack sunscreen (waving bottle he just grabbed from counter). Me: I know but that one is just about empty. There is a new one in the bathroom. Him: Oh. Sorry. (At 26, the sarcasm only shows up when packing, which mine find super stressful. Fun, but stressful. ) Nan

I had three. Keeping mine alive was a challenge. Their hearts were in the right place, and their morals, and they didn't have much trouble thinking straight or thinking before acting, but they were deeply angry about the state of the world, which produced some behavior which looked less than moral at times. They didn't have much trouble thinking straight or thinking before acting, but they were overly optimistic about the outcome of some of the things they did. We talked a lot about risk management: Super bad if it goes wrong + likely to go wrong = don't do it Super bad if it goes wrong + very unlikely to go wrong = don't do it Not too bad if it goes wrong + might very well go wrong = do it with caution if you are willing to live with the consequences Not too bad if it goes wrong + unlikely to go wrong = do it They had immature self discipline. This meant that to carry out a long-term plan, like completing a class, they often needed to borrow mine. This also meant that sometimes they were overcome by the temptation of doing something fun that they knew was a bad idea. Mine needed vast amounts of hard excersize in order to focus on school work and keep themselves from crawling out of their skin (their words). Like 4 hours of gymnastics most days. They had a deep need to be trained how to do adult things, preferably the things men usually do in our family rather than women (we cross over fine, just find traditional roles convenient), preferably by other adult men, not their mother. They also had a deep need for me and other members of the family (both male and female) to let them do those things for us. I am tiny and busy. This was very useful, as Dad got busier with his business and Grampa got older, but (big but) it required that they be trained to do things and this was the most tricky bit - I had to remember to call on them to do them rather than call on my husband or father to do them. They couldn't be the little things, either. Carrying in the groceries was a thrill when they were 5 but they know that I can do that myself, although it takes me longer. They needed to do things like take the chainsaw and cut up the big branch that was blocking our way out of the driveway, or build me a shelf, or figure out why the toaster oven isn't working, or drive to the store to pick up much needed medicine. They couldn't be made up things, either. I had to really need them. If some sort of emergency was involved, so much the better. Mine were snuggly little boys. I had to find an acceptably adult way to continue to provide the much needed body contact. Quick hugs didn't quite do it. Shoulder rubs and sitting shoulder to shoulder sharing a textbook on the sofa worked. So did horsing around in the water or on a swing. Although they were encouraged to do laundry and cook and clean, I told them that it was my job and I wasn't upset by having to pick up dead socks from the bathroom floor. Somehow, this seemed to help them to get their dead socks into the laundry basket themselves. I think maybe because moving the socks was something they were doing to help me, rather than something they were doing for themselves. It seemed both more and less optional that way. I tried really hard to respect them and to show respect for them, the way I would for any other adult member of our clan. If I wouldn't say it to another adult, I tried not to say it to them. (We aren't one of those blunt families.) Saving face was really important. Part of that respect was being tactful. Part of that respect was being honest. Part of it was taking their concerns seriously. If they asked if I had windshield wiper fluid in the car before a long trip, I didn't say of course - I am not stupid - I have been doing this a long time. Instead, I said good thought - I will check. We found we had to break being a grownup into small parts and separate them out from each other in order to keep anxiety down. Going to college does not equal moving out forever. Graduating from college does not equal moving out forever. Mine would have ensured that they never grew up if we hadn't. As I said in an earlier post, this meant that we had to make being grown up seem like a more-fun-than-school, staying-in-your-clan, being-helped-by-your-clan, contributing-to-your-clan, clan-is-forever thing rather than a you-take-care-of-yourself-all-by-yourself, you-know-how-to-do-all-adult-tasks, see-you-around-some-time, don't-forget-to-call-me-on-mother's-day thing. Their bodies are theirs. You can suggest sunscreen. You can suggest that they be at a certain place at a certain time. But the awful truth is that you can't make them. You either have to bribe them to do what you want, or they have to do it because they realize that it is in their own best interest, or they have to do it out of love. Love is by far the easiest way to go about doing that. That means you have to be worthy of love. Which means you can't lie. You can't lie about your own actions and motivations. You can't lie about other people. You can't lie about the state of the world. This is hard to do. Really hard to do. They are wired to spend these years testing your words and actions against their own experience. They see inconsistencies. They see them in other people, too, and you have to try to explain but not condone or excuse. Or you have to agree that whatever it is is wrong. And it isn't a mutual thing. They can and almost certainly will lie. You can't or you will start to lose them. Family meetings are good. Hard sometimes but good. We tried to find things that we could do together for fun as an adult family. That way, staying together as adults will be fun. It hurts when they outgrow things that you thought were fun, but I think it is important to try to find new things, since this is a new person you have here. There have to be good times as well as the bad. I was reduced to trying to have two good or at least neutral encounters for every bad one, during the worst times. Mine were great backseat drivers. Eventually, I figured out that they were practising driving in a super safe way and I moved them to the front seat and let them direct me. "Don't forget to put your turn signal on here." What wonderful practice! This applied to other things, too. Most of those seemingly know-it-all comments were practice. They have to do it out loud in order to get your input. I tried to make corrections tactful and say thank you if they were right. At some point, I had to explain that I was no longer indestructible. In fact, I was very fragile and they could break my ribs hugging me. I was super glad that I hadn't ever let them fight physically with each other or me, even in fun. Teenage boy anger is an awesome thing to behold. When mine were overcome by it, I was super glad that I could count on them not hurting me or each other. Mine were high strung enough to be scary sometimes. They also were high strung enough that we had to consciously and openly teach coping techniques for being scared about something. And we had to talk about our own struggles with that. The benefit of that was that they were really comforting when I was worried about something. They always had tried, but as teenagers, they were really effective and it was marvelous. The amount of support I got from them! I liked Regentrude's list. Nan ETA - At some point, the rules have to switch over to being rules that all adults in the household follow. I found it useful to point out which rules were kid rules and which were every-adult rules and which were husband-and-wife rules. How were they supposed to know that those adult rules I took for granted weren't just things that applied between Dad and Mum, but between all adults living together. There are some that only apply between my husband and I, that we have worked out for our comfort and which don't apply to other adults. And then there are ones that are universal in the clan.

Wonderful! Well, cold but wonderful! The rain held off. I managed to find great seats for the two walk-slowly-with-cane grandmothers. I managed to find my husband and sons after they parked cars and get them seats nearby. We managed to find youngest and tell him where we were. Two of the speakers were good. We managed to find all the other aunts and uncles immediately afterwards. It was all very celebratory. We had a great combined niece's-21st-birthday, mothers-day, youngest's-graduation party afterwards. A relative gave youngest a really nice small stainless steel fidget and after he'd managed to retrieve it from the rest of us, he spun it madly the rest of the party grin. How well he knows him! We got some great pictures of all three sons together, something that doesn't happen very often. Youngest very sweetly gave me his diploma as a mother's day present and said that anything that happens from now on is either bad luck or his fault, not mine. So sweet of him! Nan

All three of my boys were intrigued by the idea of trade school. We are only dealing with anxiety from being very high strung but I think the anxiety involved in a 4-year bachelors degree had something to do with that. I think my boys found trade school/tech school appealing because they like hands-on stuff, but also because it looked much, much more manageable than a 4 year degree leading to a nebulous future career. They also thought the shortness was appealing, something they had much more confidence that they could do. In the end, they all are (hopefully) going to have a 4-year STEM degree, but none of them, even youngest who agreed to go to engineering school right out of high school, were happy about 4 years of sitting in a classroom. Oldest, who refused to even consider going to college until he was 21 and his brother suggested a tech-type school, suffered through that 4-year degree only because it led to a concrete job at the end. And because he was tired of lugging giant cast iron boilers up basement stairs and nearly lost an eye when a pipe fitting exploded. His current job requires that he go to a trade school every year to either maintain or upgrade certificates. This year, he did 2 2-week stints at school that he was truly excited about (he is 30 now). One was a high voltage safety class, the other an advanced welding class. We got pictures and excited texts once the first week of classroom was over and he was into the second hands-on part. For him, this is the perfect structure - two weeks long, only one week in the classroom, then some really cool hands-on stuff. I think the idea of having a small business of some sort is a good one. Youngest has a friend who does that. He doesn't make a living at it, but he makes the equivalent of a part-time job, I think, and it is something he enjoys. I am not dealing with Asperger, though, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I am just very familiar with the school-hating-peter-pan thing. Anxiety was half the problem and an inborn wish to be working towards a specific, doable goal, preferably one that didn't require sitting still in a classroom, was the other half, in our case. Good luck! Nan PS - Youngest and middle one have worked as a tech for an engineering company. In youngest's case, it was internships during his engineering degree. In middle one's case, he began with a short internship and then started a small consulting business and worked for several companies at once, cobbling together a full time job out of it. He used contacts from the internship to do this. In both cases, their job was tinkering with things. They used the milling machine to mill parts for test fixtures, assembled parts to be tested, ran the 3-D printer (which required a bit of tinkering), and generally hung out in the lab/shop area doing small jobs. Another school-hating friend who under duress managed to get a 4-year degree (in something more like 6 years and involving 3 different colleges) and now works full time as a technician for a small start-up company. The trick is to work for a tiny company where you will get to do more things, rather than a big, established company where there is a large hierarchy and many employees and each person does a specific piece of a job for a long time.

I know, hunh? I was quite sure it was the end. Still not out of the woods but at least there is a nice, reasonable hope. Nan

Holding you and your family in the light. Lots of hugs. Nan

Thank you everyone. It is her gall bladder. They sent us home with 5 kinds of medication and said she will probably be ok when the inflammation goes down as long as the stones aren't blocking any ducts. So we are waiting on that. Could be bad but not cancer at least. And she is drinking. Still won't eat but drinking is good.

She is old. She spent the morning alternating sleeping with panting and shivering. She has been drinking but I can't get her to eat. When I took her to the vet's yesterday because she was weak and not eating, they did blood work, which came back with elevated liver enzymes. We go again later today. It might be something she ate at Sunday's graduation party or a tick byte I missed, or it might be the end. If it is the end, oldest, wants to know so he can fly home. He and the dog rescued each other all those years ago. I am hoping I don't mess that up, on top of everything else.

She is such an integral part of our family. : (

We have a lot of 100% natural clothing and we do a lot of drying wrack drying so yes, we iron clothes when we want to look unwrinkly. Everybody irons their own right before wearing unless they are in a hurry, when someone else does it for them. My husband's work shirts go to the cleaners. I worry about the chemicals. Nan Eta we iron the damask tablecloths for holidays but I can't imagine ironing sheets

I suppose I am, since I seldom use a recipe I haven't written or tweeked myself and mostly use no tecipe or one I have memorized, like bread, but the result is not what I would call magic. Way too simple for that. Nan

What about something like this? http://www.neit.edu/programs/associate-degree-programs I know absolutely nothing about the school, just grabbed a random tech school list. Some schools have certificate programs as well as associate degree programs. Those are just the job training classes without the general education classes. We would have been hard put to talk ours into going to college if they hadn't had a goal in mind and a hands-on college. Nan

We found in our family of late bloomers that we had to separate out the different parts of growing up and let our children tackle them one at a time. Put all together, it looked like more than they could handle, so they were unwilling to do any of the parts, thinking that once the did one part, like getting a "real" job, they would be expected to do the other things as well, like find their own place to live, feed themselves, not mess up their credit, deal with insurance, buy a car, save for retirement, have a family, ... Ours have done better tackling those items one at a time with lots of support. We also had to point out that their grandparents were still helping us manage, even though we are old enough to have adult children, that yes, there are people who have to figure it all out on their own, starting at 16, and there are people who want to do so, but there are also lots of adults who need lots of help managing adulthood and that is fine. We had to present adulthood as a more-fun-than-school, embedded-in-your-pack, contributing-to-your-pack, pack-is-forever type of thing rather than a bye-don't-forget-to-call-me-on-mother's-day, you-figure-it-all-out type of thing. Just in case that helps... Nan

My minimalist list would be: Cheap sleeping bag A few stacked camping pads Pillow and case Towel Toilet kit Shower curtain (or gym membership) Toilet paper Shampoo Bathroom sponges Mug Travel mug A few cloth napkins Bowl Spoon Teakettle (this way you can have a hot drink even if you haven't done the dishes) Kitchen towels Sponge Dish soap Saucepan Wooden spoon Paper towels Dustpan and brush Sandwich box Lamp Bulb Hangers Nice to have: Kitchen knife so you don't have to use your jackknife Frying pan Plate Knife Fork Cutting board Brownie pan Mixing bowl French press One of those pillows you lean back on I would tell them to keep any food and liquid containers they aquire and plastic bags to reuse. I would tell them to make breakfast and lunch and their coffee and find a cheap way to eat dinner, like the deli stuff at the grocery store part of the time. I would suggest acquiring some boxes at the grocery store to put clothes in or as book cases or whatever. My sons would go very minimalist and live on the floor, but they are used to living in tight quarters with minimal stuff. A beanbag chair, rollup futon, trash can, and milk crates would be an upgrade. Nan

If stress sets off a flare up, then perhaps stress reducing strategies for next year might be considered? Regular visits to the school counselor have helped my high strung college students feel better about things. Is there any way she can take a light class load, at least until she adjusts to college? I am so sorry you are facing this. Holding you and your family in the light. Nan