My 20 year old, college student son has lost his mind and is being tempted by the devil! Please, pray for him.
I will be brief. He grew up Novus Ordo and in public schools. He has a really hard time with judging a persons character. Either he is blind, naturally, or he has been taught to be this way.
In any case, this weekend he drove 6 hours to bring his girlfriend home to meet us.
Oh, boy. What a mess this poor girl is. She, herself, needs prayers, so pray for her too.
Our son either kept a lot of information from us about her or she lied to him, but now we are the bad people for "judging" her.
She is generally not a good person, a liar, a deceiver, a game-player, but he is smitten by her.
Our attempts to reason with him have caused a rift in our family.
I don't care so much about that as for the safety and health of my son. He is very lost.
CathMom-
Don't be too critical of your son. I know two otherwise very intelligent (and mostly balanced :wink:) young men who went through situations like this. One was my brother. He had a girlfriend who lied more often than she told the truth. It was obvious even early on for almost everyone but him, but as it went on, it got really ridiculous. She even faked having terminal cancer ... shaved her head because "she'd lose it all anyway." That was just one of MANY things, but meanwhile, he was shopping engagement rings, literally!
What shook him out of the stupor was discovering her online messaging logs in which she had a whole new set of lies for what he understood to be her very good online (female) friend. As he knew the things she told her did not correspond with the things she told him, it opened his eyes enough to get rid of her.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of family and friends telling him that she was bad news, but none of their counsel was heeded. He was convinced that she just had a difficult life and lots of unfortunate situations, but was very well-meaning and good-hearted.
It seems to be pretty common for certain types of young men at that age to latch on to whatever comes their way.
Pray :pray: and beg him to at least not make any permanent decisions.
CathMom-
Don't be too critical of your son. I know two otherwise very intelligent (and mostly balanced :wink:) young men who went through situations like this. One was my brother. He had a girlfriend who lied more often than she told the truth. It was obvious even early on for almost everyone but him, but as it went on, it got really ridiculous. She even faked having terminal cancer ... shaved her head because "she'd lose it all anyway." That was just one of MANY things, but meanwhile, he was shopping engagement rings, literally!
What shook him out of the stupor was discovering her online messaging logs in which she had a whole new set of lies for what he understood to be her very good online (female) friend. As he knew the things she told her did not correspond with the things she told him, it opened his eyes enough to get rid of her.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of family and friends telling him that she was bad news, but none of their counsel was heeded. He was convinced that she just had a difficult life and lots of unfortunate situations, but was very well-meaning and good-hearted.
It seems to be pretty common for certain types of young men at that age to latch on to whatever comes their way.
Pray :pray: and beg him to at least not make any permanent decisions.
The only weapon that a family has to correct an adult child is to make it clear that they are loved, but that they are welcome only when their behavior has been corrected.
Quote from: JohnGreyThe only weapon that a family has to correct an adult child is to make it clear that they are loved, but that they are welcome only when their behavior has been corrected.
Have you ever seen that work? I've seen it attempted a few times (twice in Trad families) in similar situations involving a daughter rather than a son, but never successfully. It probably depends quite a bit on his personality type.
We more importantly addressed the issue that he seems to be attracted to these type of girls and that there is something rather disordered about that.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of family and friends telling him that she was bad news, but none of their counsel was heeded. He was convinced that she just had a difficult life and lots of unfortunate situations, but was very well-meaning and good-hearted.
I want to say thanks for all the prayers, suggestions, and advice. This is possibly anongoing situation, but I would like to share with you what we have done and the outcome. This may help parents in a similar situation.
Our son came home with this young girl who we immediately recognized to have a variety of issues. I won't go into it, because it would be unfair to this young girl and a sin on my part. But she had very many issues.
In the course of the weekend, our son lied to us at least once either intentionally or because of something she had him do or say. It was very alarming because our son has never lied to us before. We took this very, very seriously.
Also, I had a hard life during and after I graduated high school. I saw behaviors, attitudes, and actions of this young girl that were very familiar. I knew what was going on and why.
My husband is a mental health therapist. He counsels women like this all day, every day. They are currently incarcerated.
So every flag that could be flown was flying high.
We recognized it as a terrible danger to our son and KNEW we needed to act rather than do nothing.
So we confronted him upon his return to school. We sent him e-mails and called him. We spoke to him about our concerns and observations. We decided to get it all out in the open rather than keep our opinion to ourselves.
Our concern prompted our son to do some investigating on his own, and while he still does not completely believe everything we mentioned, he has decided to be more cautious.
I do not know what the outcome will be. However, we did tell him that this young girl would not be welcome at our home because under current circuмstances it would be scandalous to our other children. We left it at that.
We more importantly addressed the issue that he seems to be attracted to these type of girls and that there is something rather disordered about that. If that is the case, we suggested he take a look at that.
Also, he is in an honors program for economics. We asked him what other professionals might think of his character if he showed up at a business dinner with this young woman on his side. Crickets.
He has not cut off communication from us, as yet. He may. But it was a risk we felt we needed to take.
We continue to pray for him in this regard. But we were not afraid to take action.
Some times our young people, especially if they are Novus Ordo, just don't know that they should even be concerned about things. We felt this was his case.
As parents, we can only hope and pray for the best outcome. Please continue to keep our family in your prayers.