I’ve Been Doing Too Much For Him.
After Dylan returned from college last spring, we all knew that something needed to change.
For Dylan, he preferred to never come home again. And he really, really tried to accomplish that. In four months of college, he barely spoke to us, almost never returned our texts, and complained whenever we called that he was “really busy.” We got the idea – and backed off.
We didn’t bother him, but he didn’t notice we were living our lives without him. Even now, he still hasn’t asked about our lives over the past four months. A lot has happened, but he knows nothing about any of it. He isn’t interested.
When we were making plans to pick him up from college, Dylan decided that he would rather put everything he owned in storage than to come home even for a few days, and instead drove with his girlfriend to Texas to spend three weeks with her family, vacationing.
Eventually, he came home.
In the meantime, I prepared. I didn’t want to spend another summer arguing over Dylan’s inability to get out of bed by noon, his dark and smelly room, his constantly being late – and making everyone else wait – even though his dinner was ice cold.
In fact, I didn’t want to argue with Dylan at all.
So I got a book called Failure To Launch: Why Your Twentysomething Hasn’t Grown Up … And What To Do About It. While Dylan has “launched” pretty darn well, he hasn’t taken charge of some aspects of his life, and I wanted to know what to do about that. Because what I’ve been doing has never – not ever – worked.
And sure enough, like most parenting books, I learned what I’ve been doing wrong to cause his persistent behavior. The gist is: I’ve been doing too much for him, “helping” when it’s no longer my time to help. If I do everything for him, he will never learn to do what he needs to do for himself.
It’s pretty much been the answer to everything since Dylan turned 12. I just keep re-learning it.
The best thing I learned in this book is that I am now more of a “consultant” than a “supervisor.” It’s not my job to tell Dylan what to do – he already knows. And he is doing a pretty great job, actually. His grades are great – all A’s and B’s – and he’s keeping himself healthy. He may have forgotten how to shave, but he is feeding himself and will probably work this summer. He’s careful with money, he’s careful with people, and he’s kind.
Somewhere along the way, though, he stopped thanking me for virtually everything. He thanks everyone else – he’s very polite – but he sees me as the enemy. It’s as if he needs to completely ignore me in order to “prove” that he’s an adult, instead of learning how to have an adult-to-adult relationship.
I assume that will come in time, if we try.
Meanwhile I am supposed to treat him not like “my child,” because he’s not a child, but more like a distant relative who’s come to visit. So every day I imagine that my cousin’s son, a delightful young man named Graham, has come to visit me for the summer. When I am deciding what to say to Dylan, I think: Would I say that to Graham?
The answer is almost always: No.
To be fair, Graham would not need any of the reminders I think Dylan needs. But for now, I remain a consultant, living with my distant relative.
And so far, we aren’t arguing about anything.