A.D.
Oh My!!!!! Your words speak volumes to me. First off, your son relies on your guilt. May even feed into it. STOP. His fathers absense has obviously left some serious issues that need to be resolved. NONE of them have to do with you. It is between him and his Dad. It is thier realtionship, not yours. So give up being your sons savior cuz Dad walked. You have done what you needed to do to get him raised, now you are done. At this point in time you are not doing him any favors doing ths.
He IS an adult and ADULTS are responsible for themselves. I personally would have made him get a job and pay his way when he thought it was o.k. to drop out of school...."Man enough to make that decision....man enough to stand as a man." What does this say about his future? I know this sounds pretty rough..So I would like to share my story.
My kid had ADD. Wanted to drop school. I ended up getting him into an alertnative school. I DID encourage him not to have a job during school...he struggled so much anyway. So...anyway he DID graduate. He had like a part time job. I charged him $200.00 a month rent. It's important for young people to understand tha value of money. But he was lazy too..... VERY!!!! One day I asked him to carry laundry downstairs. After a ignorant fight, I put him OUT of MY house for disrespect. It was HARD!!! It was winter. None of his friends really wanted to put up with him either. He in his car and stole food from the Dollar General store. After about 5 weeks he came to me and said he was gonna "grow up". He joined the Army. It taught him a lot about self respect and authority.
From the time my son came home until this day he is honest, respectable....honor's me as his mom, holds two jobs, has a nice car is looking into buying his first house and will be gatting married to his girlfriend in June. I might add that he turned 24 in Sept. So the moral of this story is....Don't give up..Just don't give IN!!!!!!!! Please believe me when I say he would respect you more for pushing him out of nest than to continue down this road.
I so wish you luck!!!! It IS hard (I know!!) Sounds like to me that you have a full plate as you are going into a transision into grandparent hood. I hope that you can find a way to balance the scales for yourself.
A.