<p>momfromtexas,
A few off the cuff suggestions:</p>
<p>Immediately: Make an appointment with your son. Sit down and discuss the next few weeks and the expectations you each have. Ask him what he thinks he will be needing from you. Articulate what you think you will need/expect from him. Tell him that you are sensing some disrespect and resentfulness and ask if he is aware of it. Address it together. Most likely you both want to have a positive relationship during the last few months before college, and that is a two-way street.</p>
<p>Short-term: In addition, set up a standing weekly or bi-weekly appointment with him during which you go over the week’s expectations and schedule, handle any college paperwork, address the “business” of life, and review the previous week. This will cluster the tasks and with both of you motivated to move through the agenda quickly, chances are things will be done efficiently. Don’t bring up these odds and ends at any other time during the week. If he needs to read course catalogs or something like that prior to your meetings, then agree that it needs to be done.</p>
<p>Transition: He is in a grey area between the busy last few weeks of high school and a big family trip. If he is a kid who does well with a daily routine, such as the school day routine, club meetings, deadlines, etc., he may be feeling a little lost and isolated. After 2 weeks, it may be getting to him. Or, he may be itching to do something productive (hence the chicken dinner recipe) but has become slothful and can’t motivate himself. The chicken project is a good sign that he’s ramping up again.</p>
<p>It sounds like a negative pattern has started to develop over the last couple weeks that needs to be addressed right away. It sounds as if you want to reverse the pattern and start having some positive interaction. Possibly he is the source of all of the negativity, but chances are you are playing off each other a little bit.</p>
<p>Did you make the arrangements with the neighbor or did she work out her needs with him directly? If my mom handled the whole thing and I really didn’t want to do it, but felt that I had no choice, then I’d feel resentful too, even if there was some money in it for me.</p>
<p>Have any manual labor projects? Exercise and perspiration are good attitude-changers. Digging holes is always good, planting small shrubs, etc. Clipping branches. If he likes to cook, that could be awesome for everyone. You could offer to clean up after him. It’s creative and fun, you get to spend time together, etc.</p>
<p>Our mom-ish behavior: We moms tend to carry a to-do list in our head and are quick to release a barrage of things that need doing upon seeing a beloved young one lying on a couch watching TV, especially if we know the pet’s bowl is empty. If every time we encounter our son in the house, we are in his face with a request, that is a problem. We don’t want to be a source of annoyance, we just want stuff done. We don’t want our footsteps to be cause for him to cringe and brace himself for a list of chores. We need to deliver the list of chores in as few words as possible, at one time, not drip-drip-drip throughout the day. It is so hard to stifle! If you can bear to do this, to help stop the cycle, use some aggressive praise and positive observations for a couple of days. Let him hear you praise the chicken to the neighbor. Force yourself to even go so far as saying, “oh it’s so good to see you relaxing and watching some of the shows you didn’t have time to watch during the school year”. Really lay it on in the next couple of days and see what happens. Maybe he was accustomed to positive feedback from peers and teachers at school, and now is being bathed in negative feedback regarding his attitude and chores not happening.</p>
<p>He may just 100% be in a separation/transition phase. Maybe for seniors, they feel a sense of loss right around graduation time, while for parents, we feel it more accutely when they matriculate at college. I don’t know. I do know that when my son and I discussed this a couple of weeks ago, he was trying to accept that high school was over and there were things that he had wanted out of the hs experience that never came to be and now would never happen. For me, I was questioning whether I had created the kind of home life that I had wanted for my family, if I had been a good enough mother to him, etc. We were both tearing up. It’s an emotional time of year.</p>
<p>My kid will be working at home for the summer, and has another couple of weeks before graduation. Gradually he is turning his thoughts to the summer which seems so long and lays out so enticingly before him. Maybe with the long family trip that is planned, your son is realizing that the time he has right now is pretty much “it” when it comes to living at home. After the long trip, he’ll be off to school.</p>
<p>Lastly, I have heard from several parents that when it’s time for freshman year to begin, although it is bittersweet, the parents and the student are more than ready for some space and some separation. Whether it’s moodiness or attitude or issues with staying out at night, the parents report that it is “time”. Sure hope this is true! I’m counting on it!</p>
(I will admit there was one thing I <em>insisted</em> he do promptly, which needed some parental nagging: writing the thank-yous for the now-missing graduation checks. Too bad I didn’t insist that he deposit them quickly. Sigh.)</p>
I didn’t believe it, either, but your almost-launched ds will get a whole lot better after he’s launched. You just need a strategy to get through this summer. </p>