A
female
age
41-50,
*omWithGamerSon155823
writes:My 18-year-old son has recently got addicted to gaming. Well, it started when he was 16 and the pandemic began.WoW and Fortnite, he spent hours on them.We cut him off and blocked them at router level now and then while he was still a minor but he got angry and said "You fucking took away my friends, my life" and stood around angrily.We didn't ban video games entirely, just MMORPG ones online. If he wanted video games, well he had to ask us and run them via a CD-ROM, just to make it tougher for him.I guess running an old 2004-2007 video game from a CD-ROM and copies bought via ebay wasn't such a good strategy?The pandemic was a rough time for us.He could do schoolwork online but not game and was constantly ranting.Worse than usual teenage ranting about things, more like vitriol.Then 6 weeks after he turned 18, he packed his bags on us and left home.He dropped out of robotics class, which was virtual.He then took the advice of a gaming punk friend of his and decided to enroll in an independent study program for the last of his three required classes for high school graduation. However, the last I heard on that was that he had not completed his enrollment, so my brilliant, talented only child and son is now a high school dropout, frying chicken for a living.His first roommate decided he couldn't afford to live on his own, so he found another high school dropout to room with him. Rides his bike to his job. Doesn't tell us anything about what else he is doing. Recently he told his grandparents that he is sick of his job and wants to quit and start his own business but then gave up on the idea. Also tired of being a renter and wants to buy a house. Tired of riding his bike everywhere and wants to buy a car with his flaky roommate. Grandparents convinced him to come to a cousin's first communion (I did not want to attend) and he met with the friends of the family afterwards. These are all highly successful and highly educated country clubbers. Did he tell any of them the truth about his choices? Is he proud of his life? No, he fibbed and said he hadn't decided where to go to college yet. Didn't say he didn't bother to graduate from high school so college was not even an option.We have had little contact. He avoids his father and me. He won't return phone calls. He refuses to talk to me when I show up at his place of work and order my fast food. My in-laws are afraid of rocking the boat with him. They have never told him they disapprove of his decisions. They hide the truth from the extended family because they are embarrassed. They think the problem is his friends and I said he chose the friends because they are gamers, not the opposite. He dropped all of his non-gamer friends. The non-gamer friends are going to college. His grandma feels sorry for him because he has to work so hard. She worries about whether or not he has enough dishes and bed linens. She gave him advice about what kind of car to be looking for. She neglected to tell him he needed to learn to drive first. He refused to take a driver's training course at age 16 because he could just get his license at age 18. I let him drive around an empty parking lot at age 15 1/2 going 25 miles an hour one time, so he thinks driving is easy.A former friend of his from high school who we know well told us that she saw him in a hoagie shop, told me how our son looked unkempt and with bad skin and sounding ill.Moved into some shitty, low-rent apartment with guys who I don't know. Guys who seem to be high on speedballs and into Twitch and drinking often.My son's not even legal drinking age!My son seems very proud of being able to support his mediocre lifestyle with no help from us. He likes the idea of being independent. I know it is a poorly conceived plan (see, I didn't use the word "stupid" even though...). But it is also becoming clear that no one can tell him anything, especially me, his mother, that he doesn't already know. It's a hard line to watch and harder still to keep my mouth shut. 18 years of practice makes it hard to stop mothering. But I know him. He'll dig in his heels hard if he is attacked. The high school graduation ceremony for his former classmates is next week. I won't attend, but my husband is on the faculty so he has to. I'd just cry. I like to scrapbook and had prepurchased graduation type decorations a while back. Guess they'll just gather dust. Not only has he made bad decisions for his own life, but he has taken away my only ability to be a 'Senior Parent' and hang with my Senior parent friends and talk about grades, scholarships, college choices, empty nests. No Grad Night for my son. No all night party with friends. Wait, he already does that with his pixelated friends. I forgot. No alma mater. No high school reunion to attend. He can make changes and have a successful life, but he can't get the time back. He missed the boat on his Senior Year experience for the joy of raiding with pixels and building his characters to a level whatever. Not a smart choice (still didn't use the other S word).That whole thing mentioned above constantly worries me.I feel sad he'll never be with people in college, going to events, playing frisbee on the quad.Well, he can do it when he's older, but that brings its own problems doesn't it? Being a mature student?I know my son's an adult but I'm worried about him now.Before he got into gaming he never had an obsessive streak, would seem to be a calm kid who had some friends.But now he's lost all the friends he used to know. They don't like the new him.I'm not into gaming or up on jargon about it, but I'm wondering if me and my husband's attempt at stopping him during the pandemic was a total washout.Thing is, I'd read OLGANON (Online Gamers Anonymous) which gave me other people's stories but I wasn't sure how reliable it was for actual concrete advice.Incidentally, I do like gaming, but it's board game shops, only go now and then, but those suffered due to COVID where we live. But I was never like that to the level of my son's addiction.I'm worried for my son's future.I don't know exactly where he's living but feel the need to.All I know is he lives in some suburb of Chicago where we live. Technically, we live outside of it politically, but I won't split hairs, since Chicago is 10 minutes away.I feel angry and bitter over this.My son's an only child, and it feels like I'm mourning his death. OK, so he didn't actually die, but it feels like he did.My husband doesn't know how to help on this, despite working in IT.Video games never interested him; he was always into maintenance, webdesign or programming.About the only thing my husband and son had in common was a love of baseball, but my son quickly gave up on that for WoW.I tried to be the loving mom, but my son didn't seem to return the love; now I'm questioning if he was or is a narcissist.As a teenager, I was certainly never a mouthy little bitch but more like a geek who had few friends but it took until my mid-20s to find my footing and proper friendship. I think it was around aged 25-26.Mom and Dad always remember me as the quiet one amongst my sisters, only got two sisters.Now I'm really struggling to cope, me and my husband in an empty home.It's heartbreaking seeing our son's room, frozen in time, not knowing when/if he'll return.How can I ever relax and stop worrying?If you can help me, well, I'd really appreciate it.Am I really so wrong to have these worries as a parent, as my son's 18, so an adult, but still a teenager?Thank you for reading. Sorry for length of this.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, RitaBrown  +, writes (8 June 2022):
It's totally normal to have concerns and fears for your adult child but there's not much you can do about it...
He's an adult now and he can choose to live his life the way he sees fit. Even if other people think it's a mistake.
Leave the communication channels open but leave him to do his own thing. You actually sound a bit like a meddlesome parent who's disappointed that her child decided to fulfill his own dreams rather than hers.
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