I have one son. He is NT. I had tons of rules about screens before he turned 17. At that point, I let him move his computer and phone into his room and no longer restricted him. The reason is that I wanted him to have a full year to practice with full access to screens while still living at home, where I could be his safety net. Did he abuse it? Probably. Did his community college grades go down? Absolutely. I would still do it again. He now has a great paying job...in computers.

I'll be over 65 when my youngest graduated from college. Hopefully, by then I'll have grandchildren to homeschool.

I'm shooting for 110. We will see if I make it.

I'm starting to get rid of some of my collected books and just go to the library every few days. I think it is a season. The pendulum is swinging for me.

We are in a city of about 115,000, so not small, but we live close to downtown. This morning, the girls walked to yoga class, then we walked to a restaurant for brunch. We walk to the library and to the dentist. I agree though that the climate of Texas and Florida make walking generally unpleasant.

I agree with you. One thing that stands out to me having taught many children, both neglected and highly privileged is how much children want a close relationship with their parents and how much they want and need to believe that their parents are good. The parent/child bond is very difficult to break. That doesn't mean that I would blame a parent whose child isn't speaking to them or even assume that they have done something wrong. This is why I said that I consider it appropriate, even desirable for young adults to pull away from their parents in order to establish their own adult identities. And yes, I'm old enough to consider mid-thirties still a young adult. Since this question really isn't about blame, let's assume that the mother has done everything as perfectly as humanly possible, and the daughter has other influence or a personality disorder or mental illness that is pulling her away from the relationship. The cause really doesn't matter. The mother has one very strong advantage, that parent/child bond. The only question becomes how can the mother act in the same directional force as the bond rather than against it. If closeness and not control is the goal, a supportive, accepting, non judgmental parent is much easier to return to. Be the rock. Be the love that never wavers. You still can't demand a relationship. That must be freely given, but you do tip the scales in your own favor.

Amen!

I think I must just be without conscience because no. Just no. I recycle because I choose to. I keep in touch with relatives that I enjoy. I do favors for the neighbors who I want relationship with but not with the ones who are a PITA. I'm sorry if someone has a child through victimization rather than through choice. But even that scenario doesn't obligate the child in my opinion. How can it be the child's duty to make up for that?

I don't even understand the concept of owing parents just because they raised you. I have free choice. I chose to have children. I chose to make sacrifices for them. How does my free will equal obligation on their part? I see here how some posters adore their own mothers. I see how they morn the mothers that have passed and miss them every day. I want to be the kind of person that my children want to be around. If I fail at that, obligation or a sense of guilt would be a pretty poor consolation prize.

I'm so sorry that happened! I just had my first experience with one of my kids being the mean girl. I was much more upset than the mom of the girl my daughter was mean to. She wrote an apology letter, and this summer we are reading The Hundred Dresses, The Little Princess, Raggedy Ann and any other books I can find to inspire her to become a heroine rather than a villain. As to why some girls act this way, I've been asking myself all week the same question.

Once I was avoiding my sister. She hadn't done anything, but I was going through a difficult time concerning something that was unrelated to her. I knew I couldn't talk to her without her knowing that something was wrong, but I also knew that her advice would not be what I needed during the crisis. She respected me enough to give me space. When I did tell her, later, she said,"I knew something was going on. I'm very relieved that you were not upset with me like I was afraid you might be." I go through this often with the alcoholic brother I raised. He goes MIA. I know this means he is not doing well. Sometimes he sees or talks to other siblings when he is avoiding me. The reason is because he is more ashamed of letting me down, more afraid of disappointing me. When he comes back, he always says, "I know I owe you an explaination." I always reply, "I know you don't owe me anything." I haven't seen my own son in almost a year now. It is such a Cat's-In-the-Cradle cliche. He is busy with his job and starting a business and being a grown up. He wants to visit soon, but I tell him that he is doing exactly what he needs to do and to never feel guilty about doing it. My oldest was in college across the country last year. I had been with her almost 24 hours a day for 20 years. It was not easy for me. Fall semester, she only texted me a couple of times, didn't call at all and didn't come home until Christmas. I gave her space. I was surprised that by Spring semester, she was texting to check in every morning and often several times a day. We can not force people to have relationships with us. We can not force people to share their feelings. There are some relationships that mean the world to me and that I want to protect at all cost so I give my loved ones the space to be their own people and permission to make their own choices. I can't control them, so I focus on what I can control, my own behavior and I try to be the kind of person they start to miss. I try to be the kind of person they want to come home to...in their own sweet time.

I would take a different approach. My response is colored by the fact that I do not have contact with my own mother and I have told my own children that they do not owe me a relationship after they are grown. Lately, I've been thinking about how independent I was at 20 and how happy I was just to have my own adult life. I think it is really appropriate for adult children to want to break away. I don't blame them for that. I want to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for them to come back to me when they are ready. So I'm the OP's situation, I would email my child and say that I love her and I'm so proud of the adult she has become. If she needs space, it is hers without question. If she wants closeness, it is hers without explaination. Just know that mom is always here loving her and trusting her. It doesn't matter to me if she is being immature. That is kind of the definition of a young adult.

I get between 9 and 10 hours of sleep each night during the week and sometimes more on the weekend. Dh gets at least 7 hours a night and much more on the weekends. I feel like we do a great job eating healthy food and a good job getting enough sleep. The last piece of the good health habit puzzle I want to add is daily exercise for Dh. Next job and house, I'm shooting for a situation where he can walk to work each day. Then we should be immortal.

I understand what you mean, and it is actually helpful to me as I adjust my expectations about my 25th wedding anniversary tomorrow. My Dh isn't on the spectrum, but he is the parent who most resembles our child who is. I know he is completely devoted to our family and providing the us with the happiest life imaginable, but he isn't going to discuss the meaning of the universe with me like my girlfriends or my daughters will. Conversely, the thing that my kids miss most about my dad is the fact that nothing was as important as talking for hours about, well...the meaning of the universe. Since they were grandchildren, not his children, this enjoyment wasn't colored by his absolute lack of interest in earning money or providing for his family. I do think it is personality and not gender though. I know men who are the kind of best friend I'm imagining. I've even had men as best friends. One, from my childhood, still calls me when he feels like discussing the meaning of the universe. My point is that I specifically chose Dh because he expresses his love in the constant, practical way that was missing for me and that I wanted for my future children. It isn't fair for me to now find fault with him for being exactly who he has always been. I have a happy marriage, and I've long thought that has been helped by how close I am to my best friend and my adult daughters. But I moved across the country from my support system and it is hitting home that my older daughters will both be away at school in the fall. I don't think Dh is going to suddenly be able to pick up the slack. And he really shouldn't have to.

If someone might marry one of my kids someday, I'd get them used to getting money and presents from me right away. My nightmare is how some posters here say "My in laws are always buying us gifts." As if it is a problem. It is probably best that I scare those suitors off as soon as possible.

Ok. So this is a weird solution but before we changed my daughter's diet and she was raging for days at a time, I found something that helped during the meltdown. I'd get her on the couch or bed next to me. Sometimes this was half the battle. If she was flailing and trying to hurt me, I would keep repeating in a super upbeat voice. I just need you to sit with me for a minute. Sometimes I had to restrain her to keep her from hurting herself or me, but as soon as I felt her start to ease up a little, I'd take out the iPad. I would look at it instead of her and kind of talk to myself instead of her. I'd put on a show of something she had never seen but would find interesting. I'd just keep my voice happy and say things like, "I've never seen this." She would say, "It looks stupid." I wouldn't react. When something happened in the show, I might say, "I never realized that..." She would say, "Everybody knows that!" But she would get sucked into it, and even though her behavior had a physical cause, it gave her the distance from the current crisis to let go of it a little bit. And eventually, I'd be able to hug on her a little and tell her how much I loved being with her and watching shows and learning new things. She always had to save face, so power struggles were pointless, and as previous posters pointed out, she couldn't reason during the fit. But a few hours afterwards, I could talk to her about how it is my job to keep everybody safe and how we were going to work together to make things better. I guess I'm going down my own memory lane and remembering how helpless I felt. I agree that keeping an ABC journal would help. One day, my oldest pointed out that Dd had a fit every time we ordered pizza. That was the first step in actually solving the mystery.

Praying for you and yours. Always.

This! My husband is an engineer and his number one most valuable employee has a masters in Art History and a law degree.

Two of my children chose on their own to keep their passions as hobbies rather than majors/jobs. My son said, "I'm just afraid that doing this for a living will make me hate the thing I love." My problem with parents trying to steer kids in the right direction is that things change. Job markets change. Demand changes. What is the hot career choice now may be a bust or a glutt in a couple of years. I try to make sure that my kids are flexible, creative thinkers with a solid foundation and amazing work ethics. That way they are ready for changes in the job market, changes in the economy, changes in their personal needs. These are the skills that will allow them to be sucessful and support themselves. In the past 18 months, my son has turned an entry level $10 an hour job into a salaried one where he makes twice what I made out of college as a first year teacher. He did it by always being the person who worked smarter and harder than anyone else on staff. But that isn't enough for him. He has also started another business selling Chinese junky junk in Mexico. I told him that this has been his talent since he was 10 years old and making gold coins buying and selling on Runescape. He is a person who cares about making money, so he is going to make sure he makes money. Dd on the other hand cares nothing about material goods. We are not worried about her applying to PhD programs in English because we know she has a low level of material needs and will be able to meet them even if she does not have a "high paying job". She took the money we gave her for Fall semester tuition and living expenses and made it last through the Spring semester as well and still had enough left over to pay summer school tuition for herself and her sister too. Why would I take a kid like that and push her into a high paying career where she would never be happy? In the end, my kids are all terribly practical. They have been given permission to know themselves, know what makes them happy and pursue those goals rather than their parents'.

There are 15 years between my oldest and youngest. 2 have already left home. A third leaves in the fall. The loss when big siblings grow up is the only drawback I've had with the big age spread. In the very best of situations it still hurts. For the kids in college, we make their tuition contingent on coming home for Christmas and Summer. One of my older kids left this morning to spend a couple of weeks on vacation and there were a few tears shed. I just stress that when we love people we can't hold them prisoner just because we don't want to be away from them. It is a hard lesson, but one worth learning.

My celiac kids can take a name brand z-pack but not the generic version. Any shampoo or lotion with vitamin E added causes sores because it is derived from wheat. They react almost every time we eat out, even ordering GF options because of cross contamination. They have been GF for years, but have recently gone grain and sugar free as well because every time they had a GF cookie or pizza they felt terrible afterwards. I don't completely understand it, but there is a theory that some people's bodies respond to rice and corn and oats as if they contain gluten even when they do not. We have one restaurant where the servers have named my kids' order "allergy salad". They seem extra careful about cross contamination so we either eat there or at home. I'm getting pretty good at cooking for them. I just made some killer coconut flour pancakes. It has taken me a few failures for every success though. It does get easier.

We have found that recruiters sometimes flat out lie to get a candidate to sign on so they can collect their money. In your position, I'd want Dh to interview with the second company as well, but in your position, I would probably not be able to talk my Dh into doing it. Once Dh got a call from someone wanting to hire him. It was with a major oil company. There were amazing benefits and a pension. The pay was $50,000 a year more than he was making. And he would be working for a friend. He wouldn't even call them back to discuss it much less interview. I was so frustrated with him. But a few months later, in 2008, the economy tanked and he asked me, "Now aren't you glad I'm not the last one hired at a new company?" And I was. My point is that I have come to trust Dh's instincts about his own job. I'm really sorry you are in such a tough spot. I wish he would interview with the other company, but in the end, I think he is probably right that a bird in hand is too good to let go of and in a few years he will be in a much stronger position to find something better. Some jobs really are just stepping stones, but the employers understand that too.

I would make an inquiry but start out emphasizing how much he is looking forward to the job thanking them for the offer however, he is confused by the inconsistency concerning the salary. It would be good here, to actually screen shot both numbers side by side. End by saying again how he is looking forward to the new job.

I promise that I don't blame everything on food reactions but..... This sounds so familiar to me. My 4th child would rage for hours at a time screaming that she wanted to die and I should hurt her because she hated me and she did NOT come out of my body. I'm not a newbie at this parenting thing but I was scared and afraid she would end up needing to be institutionalized. I posted here and veteran moms all said, "Yep, that sounds like food allergies." So we removed artificial coloring, flavoring, preservatives and grain from her diet and she became a completely different kid. One day, her friend was leaving on a week long vacation and stopped by at the last minute to ask if Dd could join them. We threw some clothes in a bag and off she went. As the car drove away, I realized that I had zero concerns about her behavior. I knew she would be able to adjust and adapt and be a good friend and a good guest. And she was. Just yesterday, that friend called me and said they had gone on a similar diet because of some autoimmune issues. She could not believe how her own daughter's behavior changed. She now has level emotions and can concentrate on one subject for hours instead of 10 minutes at a time. The downside is it is after 3:00 here and I just finished making almond flour pizza for lunch. Eating this way is labor intensive. I won't lie to you. However, I'm so happy that my daughter has gotten the chance to be the responsible, loving person she really is without the influence of allergies which literally made her want to die.

We love coffee and are fortunate to have local roasters to buy from. I've cut down to 1 large cup each morning and only green tea or water after that. We also buy several growlers of cold brew each week. Other family members have an iced coffee in the afternoon as well, but I only do that if I know I need to stay up late.