My son and I had a heated discussion last night. I really didn't want to get involved in the conversation, but he insisted. He wants to move out, get his own apartment.

He has about $1500 saved. He figures he can use $900 for the deposit and first month's rent. The rest for furniture. Fine. Assuming he can find someone to rent to him, that gets him into the apartment. Now how does he live month-to-month? He doesn't know if his job will continue past March. And even if it does, does he want to be "stuck" with it? He wouldn't be able to afford a place of his own with just his disability. He'd need a job to supplement it.

So, I'm thinking, wait a couple of months. See how the job goes. See if they offer him permanent work. I pointed out that just last Thursday he wanted to quit this job. He said that was before they said they were happy with him. Well, that's nice for this very moment in time. But sooner or later, someone will say something critical or he'll have a bad day or a bad call, and he'll want to quit again. He pointed out that if he had an apartment and bills he couldn't quit, so he'd find a way to work through it.

I feel a lot of anxiety, because my son has a history of asking my opinion, then doing what I suggest, and blaming me if it doesn't work out. So, I feel like it's a trap. If I say, "Ok, go ahead," and it doesn't work out, he'll blame me. He has done this many, many times. He simply cannot accept any "defeats." It's too hard on his ego, so he has to "blame" someone else - usually me.

I told him about this, and he denied doing it. I couldn't think of any examples, but I know he's done it. Last night when he was trying to force me to advise him, I just kept thinking, "This is how the trap is set. He says he just wants my opinion, then later he acts like I 'told' him to do whatever." I tried to explain that if I take someone else's advice and it doesn't work out, I'm still responsible for the outcome.

Then I told him that I'm afraid I'll end up having to come rescue him. The last two times he moved into his own apartment, he immediately stopped taking his meds and had episodes - that I had to step in and clean up - at my expense. Yes, he's older now and making better choices, but it's hard for me not to feel scared. When he moved from mhc housing to his own apartment in October 2009, he was doing great. Stable on medication. Working a parttime job. Going to school. As soon as he moved into his apartment, he stopped his meds and started drinking heavily. Two months later he's in a hospital 750 miles away completely psychotic. I couldn't get them to release him from a distance, and they were making noises like they were going to transfer him to a longer-term hospital, so I had to catch a train to that city and arrive at the hospital and announce I wasn't leaving without my son.

Then he moved in with some woman in Feb. 2010 and didn't take care of himself at all. By Nov. 2010, he'd lost 30 pounds and had given his car away to a stranger on a promise that the stranger would come back and pay him for it (he never did). At that point I think he realized he needed help, and he told me he was moving into my house. I don't think he slept at all for the first three days he was here. He was like a wraith wandering around here, interacting mostly with his alternate reality and telling me my dad's ghost was living in the basement. It took a lot of afford to get him to the place he is now. I don't want to go back, and I'm afraid if he moves out too soon, that's what will happen.

Why can't he at least wait two more months and see if the job's going to be permanent?

So we had a heated discussion. He said, "So if I move out, and it doesn't work out, it's my fault?" And I'm thinking, "My God, I could spend weeks peeling back the layers of that one comment."

First, why does he choose the word "fault"? Why is it always about blame with him? This just goes to the heart of his main problem IMO. He can't have a failure or mistake without feeling like he's totally worthless. His ego can't sustain even the tiniest failure. A caller at work asks to talk to his supervisor, and it's a mortal blow!

Second, yes, adults take responsibility for their actions! Yes! We all have to take calculated risks in life. There's no completely safe life. But, yes, we have to own the results of our actions.

Third, this is exactly what I mean when I say he asks my advice solely to set me up to take the blame if it doesn't work! Maybe not consciously, but on some level, he's already trying to set me up as the fall guy if things go south. His ego can't stand it, so he has to shift the blame to me. And I just get tired of it.

I told him once that I wasn't going to be responsible for the results of his actions anymore if he does something he's done before and he ends up in hot water. At the time he was saying he wants to go back to hanging out in bars and drinking. Fine. You want to drink and then get in your car and drive, it's your responsibility to make sure you're sober enough to pass the breathalyzer test at the side of the road when some cop pulls you over. And I'm not getting out of my bed at 2 am to see if I can scrape together $1000 to bond you out. Been there, done that, you're on your own.

And, frankly, I'm going to have to apply that to the 'move to your own apartment and quit taking your psych meds' scenario too. I'm not going to fish you out of whatever psych ward you end up in because you've done something that will predictably end up badly.

But when I say this, which I think is a reasonable stance, he hears, "You're on your own. I won't help you anymore." He doesn't seem to distinguish between 'getting into the same old hot water doing the same old silly things' and 'being supported by loved ones as you try new things and you meet new challenges.'

You know, he was exactly this same way when he was a kid. He'd write essays for school and have so many spelling and punctuation errors that the teacher would waste all her red ink correcting those. I'd tell him, "Why don't you make some different mistakes on the next essay? Spell all the words correctly, and the teacher can give you feedback on something else. Word choice, maybe. Or transitions. Or ideas. Or organization." If you keep making the same mistakes over and over, you never learn anything new. Of course, people get tired of helping you get out of the same old scrapes that you should have learned to stay out of long ago.