Submitted by ThrowRAkadijah t3_zxya7r in relationship_advice
And by "disadvantaged" he means that our "authoritarian" computer restrictions we've imposed on him up until he was 18 due to repeated violations of such (2 hours a day, in the living room even if he paid for it himself, off by 6pm, no time extensions for anything other than homework, not even stuff like Khan Academy, use the time he's given instead of playing games and watching crap) ended up stunting his development to where he's not as smart nor experienced as others in his field of study in college (computer engineering) and still relies on us for his basic needs for the most part, which he resents and wishes he could have been independent and away from us the moment he turned 18 instead of having to "slowly repair the damage until he can find a way out" as he puts it.
I tried to explain to him that the reason he's in college is because of our best effort at parenting, we fed, clothed, bathed, educated, and provided shelter for him, we went by what doctors, pediatricians, psychiatrists, police departments, governmental bodies, and other professionals recommended and that it was in his best interest, and with evasion there would be discipline since he broke the rules and our trust and there would be consequences for such, and trust is earned, not granted, plus looking at a screen all day isn't good for him, but he didn't want to listen, telling us he "told us many times he hated it and we didn't listen" and that he "has a diet form of PTSD over it" now. I simply said if he's going to resent us for trying to do right by him then we should just pull our college funding for him since he clearly is ungrateful for our best efforts, but he told us if we did then that would destroy any future chance of reconciliation and he went to take a bath alone.
I really don't know, it's beginning to tear a rift between us and I'm unsure of what to do.
ETA: I’m getting a lot of negative feedback about me using “bathed alone,” and what I meant by that was he locked both his bedroom door and the bathroom door inside of it, so that he could be as alone as he could; our house layout has two children’s bedrooms connected to a bathroom in the middle with two closed doors on either side. Growing up, I oftentimes showered with my father or siblings so as to save water since we were relatively poor, and I guess that ended up coming out somehow. My son has indeed been cleaning himself by himself since he was 10 years old and it’s stayed that way.