Doohickie

One thing I've had to learn is this: Our kids are not us. There are personality parallels- my older son is similar in temperament to me; my younger son is more like my wife. As a result, I have more friction with the older son, my wife and younger son sometimes get testy with each other. I get along better with my younger son and my wife gets on well with the older son. (Basically, opposites attract.)

So when my older son went away to college (like I did) I figured he could handle it (like I did) because he got straight A's in high school (like I did). If I'd gotten poor grades I would have expected to get chewed out. So that's what I did when my older son faltered. But... he isn't me. Although he and I are a lot alike, he has his mom's propensity for anxiety and even panic attacks. So when I gave him the tough love it started an avalanche of self-doubt and depression for him. It took him literally years to get over it and he's still not all the way yet. But for him, tough love turned out to be the absolute worst thing I could have given him.

Until it unfolded, though, there really wasn't any way to know. You act on your own experiences and up to when my son dropped out of college, he'd never failed at anything. I didn't know how he would react to tough love, or whether unconditional support would have been better for him. Funny thing about parenting- you get new things thrown at you. If you treat your kids like you at that age, you might think it's the right thing, but it's exactly the wrong thing.