<p>CGM, since my son has been entirely self-supporting, and living on his own, since age 20, I don’t need your slippery-slope “until he’s 30” argument. As long as he is moving around and using my home address as his “permanent” mailing address, I’ll open mail that comes here and tell him about it. I do that because I’m a nice person. If a letter from a creditor came here addressed to my ex-husband, who is in his 50’s, I’d do the same. I’m not going to play trivial little games over “responsibility” and “teaching lessons”; I’ve forgotten a few bills and incurred a few late charges in my lifetime as well. I can see from the return address on the envelope that its a bill – if the situation were reversed I would want to know about it. I’m not paying the bill for him - I’m just letting him know it has arrived.</p>
<p>I find it amazing all the parents here who have perfect children who don’t need any help whatsoever. Except that then I see the same parents posting in other threads all in a panic over some incident or another involving their kid. </p>
<p>I used to be a lawyer and I sometimes got calls in the middle of night from perfect parents of perfect children who needed my advice after their perfect child had been arrested. Sometimes things were kind of messed up because the perfect parents of the perfect children only found out about the arrests well after the fact, when they received a notice to appear in court in the mail (despite the fact that these perfect kids always told their parents everything).</p>
<p>Everyone is always so smug and self-righteous until the day that their perfect kid runs into some sort of problem that isn’t so easy to deal with. (Of course, then it is always someone else’s fault – the smug, self-righteous parents of perfect kids who do no wrong don’t seem able to comprehend the idea that it is o.k. for kids to be less-than-perfect, and o.k. for their less-than-perfect parents to help out on an ad hoc basis.).</p>
<p>Maybe because of my legal background I’m a lot more skeptical. I heard every excuse and every story in the book from my clients, and I figured that my offspring were human, too, and likely to make mistakes and follow that up with excuses and rationalizations. And I also figure that they don’t always know everything or even know to anticipate certain problems or issues. So I give my kids a lot of freedom but I also keep my eyes open for potential problems.</p>