A parent discovers their college son took money from a house fund for living expenses. Instead of punishment, the advisor suggests asking why he did it and what he needs, turning moral judgment into a conversation that might actually get him to be honest.
I have a circumstance in my life right now with my son where he's in school, he's in college, and he's studying. And I've agreed to support him while he's in college. And I've made that agreement with the understanding he's going to support himself during the summer and take care of his financial needs outside of the school year. Well, I've come to find out that about a year and a half ago, he took money from an account set aside for him for buying a house or whatever that we've agreed he wouldn't touch. And he took an amount of money from it. Not a huge amount, but an amount of money to cover expenses that he hadn't figured out how to cover last summer. And because I'm still supporting him while he's in school for another year, there's not a lot of room to trim his budget or deal with this. But we've had a discussion about the violation, about the feeling of trust that was lacking in him, that he couldn't approach me, that, yes, I made a mistake, I didn't account for my expenses. I found myself really disappointed. This is the second time, but it was really disappointing. I really felt. I don't want to over dramatize it, but I felt sunken. I felt kind of like, how do I trust you? Which is what I expressed to him is, how do I. How do I know when I can trust you? How do I do this, and what do I do when I can't? I don't want to micromanage your life, but how do I intervene effectively and get the lesson or the truth of it across?
What you're asking is so universal. And how do I trust you? Is your ideal of what you consider trust to be, which is a very high standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility. And you might very well need to recognize that developmentally your son is quite immature and he might never in the rest of his life meet your standards of trust. And that in the despondency and in the despair, you might need to adjust for the fact that he might not be able to take care of himself at the level that you think that he can. And so as you go through your despondency and despair, you might be starting to realize, oh, that's right, he's in a culture, in the rock group that he's in, and in the environment that he's in, that everyone is either touching welfare or if they have a little bit of a free source of income, they're going to take it and that you're going to have to work within his development and you're going to have to give up some of your own ideals of how responsible you have been in your life. And so you're trying to ratchet it up so he can move one more step from where he is, but nowhere near where your ideals are. And so many good parents who were fortunate enough, let's say, to have been raised with more responsibility or easier sense of integrity, they might have a child where it's more challenging, particularly in the teenage years, but also sometimes 20s, 30s, 40s, or until they die. And so you need a step by step, more moderate response. And the key is, how much are you going to just convey to him, I'm really disappointed in you? And there's just a level of judgment versus a certain kind of lighter level of expression. So he doesn't feel blown out by your judgment. So you're conveying a lighter sense of disappointment. But you're also saying and asking him, what does he think about it? What does he feel about it? So you're putting him in the position more of being an active participant rather than you being the authority.
That's the evaluator in this case, because I only found out by asking him for a statement from the financial planner where the money is. He communicated to me that he felt really bad about it as he gave me the information and knew I would discover it anyway. And he said he's going to work hard to make up the difference. He has said all the right things. The question is, is that enough? And the question is, what tools do I have to give him the opportunity to learn more about that part of himself that says he's going to do something and then doesn't.
You keep asking him questions. You keep him thinking about it more and more. You keep the dialogue where you're asking him, well, what was his thought process exactly when he did it? Did he have any awareness of the fact that he was breaking the rules? Could he talk more about that? How often has he done that in his life? And you're really interested in the truth of his inner reality more than your moral standards. And you start to really be curious about what is this unique person's experience? How do they process the information rather than your morality and ideals being primary? And the paradox is the more you can surrender to where he is and get him to come out, the better chance there is that he'll come closer to what your morality is, because you're reaching a place where he's revealing more and more so he'll be saying, well, yeah, I thought about it, but I thought it wasn't that big a deal. Or I thought about it and I was really worried about it, but I just repressed it. Or I talked to my friends. And you get him to really reveal a lot of where he is, and then you start to learn what you're really dealing with, and your own feelings become secondary to the curiosity about his inner experience. That's the key.
