I can't set goals for him because I don't make his choices for him.
I fully understand that parenting a teen usually involves rule testing, and responding appropriately to that. But accepting it doesn't make it easier.
My goal, for me, is to keep making myself available to my son as a resource, role model, and guide, and as someone who loves him as he is, not on condition that he be a certain way.
For the time being, with my limited bandwidth, that's about all I can do really.
A question for Betsey:
First, I absorbed your kind advice before I absorbed the obvious difficulty of what you went through, so I wanted to come back and sympathize that it had to be hard and you handled it in an outstanding way worth emulating.
But I am now wondering, how did you get there? Were you, right out of the box, asking why they selected another company so you could learn from it? Did you have some help or coaching, or work it through yourself? I want to know what's missing in me that I don't just know to act like that and do it.
Recognizing that I'm in the zone where I can apply what I'm learning these weeks and look as if I came out of the box knowing it too, I am not trying to be hard on myself. I'm just trying to understand how you got where you got with that issue.
In my case, I'm struggling a little. I know I want to keep my cool, but then I lose it a little anyway, in a semi-safe environment. Like here I am whining but what I say here isn't going to be my party line. I'm working on that.
So, who did you learn from?
Adinva 51, S20, S18 M24 total 6/15/11-12/1/12 From IDLY to H moving out 9/15/15-3/7/17 From negotiating SA to final D at age 50 5/8/17-now: New relationship with an old friend __ Happiness is a warm puppy.
