My son, "Tom", is voluntarily homeless, living in a shelter. He has Army Resrve duty one weekend a month for which he gets paid approximately $200.00 monthly. He left our home permanently after a PROBABLE (according to his therapist) manipulative suicide "attempt," due to unrequited love over a girl nine months ago. However, prior to the attempt, the relationship between him and his dad and me had deteriorated to the point that he said we "were the worst parents ever" and that he cared nothing for us. (Although we are not religious and not overly strict, we have always had rules with consequences if the rules were broken. These rules were nothing we think were unusual -- one example being that he had to be home by 10 p.m. on school nights.) However, he rebelled in an extreme way; we are pacifist agnostics, and he joined a Fundamentalist Christian church and joined the Army Reserves when he was 17. He also, before he left our home, became a vegetarian and refused to eat anything I cooked or even have any meals or share any holidays with us, which hurt me very deeply. Although intelligent -- he scored in the 80th percentile on the ASVAB, the military equivalent of the SAT, he maintained only a high D average in high school. (Although he usually got A's and B's on tests, he refused to do any homework or required projects.) It was only through bribery on our part that he did manage to graduate from high school this past May. After high school, he underwent advanced Army training and earned more than $3, 000 over the summer, although he has blown all of it on electronics (laptops, video games, a Smartphone, a Kindle, etc.) Tom probably earned more than $6, 000 altogether in the past year, but he now has nothing left.
Because of this volatile relationship with us, including physical abuse of me when he was 15 (not since) because there were no hot dogs in the house (!) and zero respect of either my husband or me which has been expressed through verbal abuse and insults, my husband and I moved this summer while he was in Virginia and have not let Tom know where we are. We do, however, communicate through our cellphones and through e-mail; we provide transportation to his Drill location for him, and we give him food "care packages" when he requests them, but no cash. (He said he tried drugs for a few days, and he is also addicted to cigarettes, and we refuse to support these things.)
Anyway, yesterday we took him and one of his homeless friends out to dinner, and they both said that they LIKE being homeless, but he wants us to pay $7, 000 for a nine-month Christian program that includes room and board while training him to be "street minister". (I checked it out, and it does SEEM to be legitimate, BTW.) The main problem with this, though, in our view, is that Tom has a history of getting enthused about things and then quitting them. (The Army being the latest example of this -- he signed up for a six-year Reserve stint and was all gung-ho about it for a year, and now he says he doesn't care about it, although he still does a good job at his Drill weekends and seems proud of the praise he says his sergeants and fellow Reservists give him.) The problem with Tom is that he has never been truly motivated about doing anything for which there is not an immediate benefit (not uncommom with kids, I know, but this has been such a problem for him that it was the main theme of all the parent-teacher conferences I attended.)
So, my question is: Should we pay for the Christian program or not? We CAN afford it, although we are approaching retirement, which we won't be able to afford retirement if we continue to shell out thousands of dollars for our "adult" son; and we also don't want to be enablers for him to continue his rootless, non-productive, and -- in our opinion -- self-destructive lifestyle. On the other hand, though, we do not want to just abandon him or have him think that we are abandoing him. (BTW, we adopted him when he was four, after his single teenage birthmom had neglected him due to her cocaine addiction. This, of course, is the source of much of his confusion and anguish.)
Any advice from any professional or anyone who has gone through something similar with his or her own child would be appreciated.
Added (1). P.S.to Natalie: Thanks for your reply. However, the problems we were having occurred BEFORE the suicide attempt. Also, he had moved out of our home, staying with friends for which we paid $150.00 a week room and board, for five months before he left for Virginia. This was HIS choice; we didn't want him to leave and told him we didn't want him to leave. The only reason we did not -- and have not -- given him our address or home phone number is because we started getting calls from bill collectors for his bills to the tune of thousands of dollars. (In Colorado, at least, where we live, parents CAN be liable for the bills of their young adult children if they are still living at home. Also, it is very difficult to evict someone from a place of residence, even if that someone is a relative who is living in one's home and does not pay rent.) Finally, we have offered MANY times to co-sign (pay) for an apartment in his name, but he has refused. Again, he says he LIKES be
>>> Need advice regarding my adopted and now homeless 19-year-old son?