The way my parents handled it was this: Either you work at school, you work at your job, or you help around here with the other work. If you’re staying more than two weeks, it is one of the above. Most of us figured that we’d rather be getting a degree or get paid to work than to work for free for Mom and Dad. I’m going to suggest that you and your wife get together and agree on implementing the following. If you’re going to make this stick, you need her on the same page with you. If your son can get his parents at cross-purposes, though, he can manipulate the situation to his liking. The second-best plan is better than the best, if the second-best is the one the parents can agree on.
Here is what I’d suggest that you and your wife do. You can ever role-play before you try it with your son:
Sit down with your son and ask him to be frank with you: what does he see as his current situation and what situation does he hope to reach? If his answer is not sustainable, encourage him to extend that out five and ten years. You don’t have to take everything he says at face value, but you do want to avoid going into this without knowing what his take on the situation is. Avoid reacting to what he says, because I wager he’s going to come up with some astonishingly self-centered or unrealistic view of his near future. If he has goals that you find contain some realism, then tell him that he, you, and your wife are going to need to think about how to make those happen. If his goals aren’t realistic, then you can say, “Well, I don’t think that is realistic, but let’s leave that for another conversation, so you have some time to pencil out how you’re going to do that.” If he says “I don’t know”, then say, “OK, well, work on that. We’d like to help you get where you want to be, but where that is has to be up to you.”
Then, be frank with him: He is now an adult in your house, and this means he has one of three choices, if he wants to keep getting free room and board: full time school (with good grades) or full time work, with a reasonable amount of household work that takes his other work in mind, or else a balance of his own paid work and working at your house as adults do when they are getting free room and board from someone who has a job. I do not just mean routine work. If he’s working no hours for himself or anyone else, he needs to be putting in serious hours for you. This is a man entering his physical prime with eight hours a day on his hands. Do you need rooms painted? The attic sorted? Maintenance work done? Do your parents’ houses need work or maintenance? Would your wife like the yard re-done? Do you need help with childcare? Eldercare? Volunteer time for your other kids’ schools? Volunteer work with the organization of his choice?
When he can’t live with any of those options, then he needs to become the master of his own house…an end which you can point out will inevitably happen, one way or another, because his parents are not going to live forever and certainly can’t support him forever. Your joint goal ought to be to accomplish that with no hard feelings and in a way that fits his long-term goals.
It will take more work at first, because he will undoubtedly have to be trained to do some of this, but if he does not have a job, he is going to have to pick up the domestic work for those of you who do. It will become his job to do the yard work, to do a certain amount of the laundry, to learn to shop, to plan and prepare meals, and so on. Be specific about what jobs are his and what the consequences will be if he doesn’t keep up with his work. Be specific about how he ought to handle it if he has problems.
Now, about the friends…getting stuff is no substitute for getting a life. You can tell your son that they are getting fish, but his parents want to make him into a fisherman. The latter is incomparable better. Your son is going to be miles ahead. He may not agree, but that is the house he was born into. He may as well make the best of it.
If he picks up on the work load that you and your wife are managing alone, then you probably will have more time and money to spend time with him. If he even takes some of the sibling care off of your hands, he’ll have a better relationship with his younger siblings. That would be great! He won’t be around for your family to enjoy forever! If he gets even a part-time job, he’ll have more spending money. But if he hangs around home doing nothing for four or five years, he is going to find himself a poor prospect for finding a wife or supporting a family, getting a house of his own where he can make his own rules, or getting a job where he has the dignity of being someone who works hard and can manage himself. He’s going to find his younger brothers and sisters going out into the world, making their way, and leaving him behind, because they knew what they wanted from life and did what they had to do to get it, and he didn’t.
He may wind up having to learn the hard way, like the Prodigal Son. If it happened to the father in the Lord’s story, then it could happen to you. Don’t take it personally. Don’t try to protect him from his choices. Do try to give him a middle way between getting a job in this hard economy and getting out. If he’s willing to exert himself and work on acting like an adult, keep him around. Expect that will take some time, and try to be a coach about it…not just correcting faults, but expecting that progress will be gradual, expecting that he needs you to also look for things to encourage him about and cheer him on about. We are talking about five times as many positive interactions as negative or corrective ones. He’s going to need that from you, his father, if he is going to succeed.
Oh, and let him know very clearly that whatever mistakes he made in the past are water under the bridge. He’ll have to face the consequences of the wrecks that are going to make his car insurance more expensive, that kind of thing, but it is time for all of you to move on what he can do today.
If it all possible, let him keep the cell phone. You may need to switch him to a less-expensive version, but if he’s out driving around even doing your shopping, he needs that. There are no public telephones in the world any more, and it is no longer safe to be out in the world without a reliable communications device.
PS If he learns to cook for your family, he’s only going to know how to cook for 8-10 people per meal. Make sure he learns how to cook for one or two, as well. That’s very important if he’s going to have food he likes at a price he can live with, when he moves out. It would be good if you or your wife would also teach him other basics of living as well as possible on a budget: selecting clothes and so on. Invaluable!!
This going to be hard, but look at the bright side: Get the system right with him, and the rest of the kids will pass onto their own lives much more easily than this one did!!
