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Aging parents, never-never land children: What to do

Some of you might think the terrible twos were bad, but believe me, you don't know how good you had it. Now that those beautiful rosey cheeked cherubs are all grown up and you're approaching 50 or older, you will be taking on your never-never land children - they never seem to grow up, do they?

Full steam ahead, they can sink the boat, or start a mutiny, or help you get into situations you never dreamed possible while they were growing up.

It is almost hard to look at your once pretty little bunnies, with wrinkles worse than your own, baggy eyes, and hair in a rumple - your grown-up son calling you on the phone in the middle of the night waking you up to tell you in a drunken voice about some mundane situation that he is worried about. It's not that you don't care or anything, but the kid is drunk and is behaving like he's still mommy's little teenager.

Or your once lovely little daughter turning into a monster golddigger who is going to divorce her husband and take him for every cent he's got and she wants you to help her especially because he's beating her and abusing her. So you travel on a bus for 400 miles and leave everything at home unattended because your sweet little baby is bawling in the phone - "I think I'm going to lose my kids."

Then you get there thinking you have to defend your little one from the big monster and one day they are fighting in the other room and she yells, "stop hitting the dog." And he yells back at her and she comes rushing out and says we have to get out of here - he's beating the dog. So we get in the car with the kids and drive to the police station where she is supposed to fill out a complaint form on which she states "he hit the dog with a towel." After the clerk tries to get her to fill out the form with a logical explanation, she changes her mind and runs out of the police station ranting and raving.

You are beginning to wonder what is going on - she yelled as though he were viciously hitting the dog but then writes on the form that he hit the dog with a towel? A towel?

Doesn't sound that vicious to me. So you stay there for two months and the son-in-law begins calling you the "mother-in-law from hell" and you didn't do anything to him.

Well what do you do? You go back home to find an eviction notice on your door because you neglected your own obligations because you were busy helping out your daughter by defending the dog from being beaten with a towel.

My advice: Don't listen

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