Over the years I've been writing a series kind of on the side. I write little short stories about all the characters when I'm stuck on other projects, starring a blue-collar family of six living in Illinois. Anyway, the mother's oldest son has just started college, and she discovers he's tried smoking pot while there, but she can't think of any way to punish him for this as he doesn't live with them anymore, is 18 and they aren't even paying for his college. I can't think of anything either... It can be both serious and humorous. Help me out a bit here It would have been easier if it wasn't already established that the son isn't easily embarrassed.
baby pictures on facebook ? dressing like a tart and going to visit him flirting with his friends, maybe getting arrested for having cannabis on her ? Plastering photos of drug addicts all round his dorm.
Writing a long-winded, lecturing post on his facebook wall that all his friends can see, then re-posting it if he deletes it. Calling his friends and telling them not to do drugs with him (she could look up their phone numbers on facebook, lots of people have theirs posted)
Seems like she doesn't really have any weapons against him, other than withholding her affection. When he comes home for Thanksgiving, she can ignore him, belittle him at the dinner table, etc. But here's the thing: She's his MOM, darnit, and I'm sure that after raising him from birth, she would know EXACTLY how to get under his skin. So it really depends on their characters and the relationship they have.
How about she pretends she's trying pot herself, and acts high in front of his friends, once your mother gets into something you probably never want to do it again.
Schedule an intervention? T'would be both serious & humorous I'd imagine. Probably make her seem like a relic, more than him an addict. Perhaps she could conspire with one of his siblings to make it seem as though they had taken his lead & the habit also - only to get caught up in a bad deal, arrested, ect. She tries to use this fictional misfortune to guilt trip him into quitting, only for him to find out somehow & make her look like an ass.
Maybe stooping down to his maturity and doing some kind of college pranks with his friends? Hey, she could be a cool mom.
That'd be good. She gets into pot and goades him into buying more while ridiculing him with comments such as, "Because, you know, I never tried to raise you to be better than this."
Maybe the mother used to do drugs herself? That could open up some interesting options, maybe the mom still knows a scary looking dealer that she can send her sons way.
You havn't said anything about the mother's personality. What motivates her to punish him? Is she concerned about his health? Or perhaps she's a strict authoritarian and sees his behaviour as a slight on her parenting? My mum found out I smoked weed when I was 18 and found it mildly amusing. She said I ought not to make a habit of it as I was liable to lose valuable brain cells. Any effort made to punish me would have been weird and vindictive considering I was at university and not under her control.
Yeah, I'm kind of curious as to why she would feel the need to 'punish' him as well. I think Lorddread's suggestion, or a variation of it, would be kind of a humorous way for her to show him that she thinks it's a bad idea and doesn't like that he's doing it, but any real attempt at an actual punishment, to me, would just seems silly, since he's an adult living on his own...
The need to punish him stems from the fact that she has problems with him moving out and growing up, but doesn't want to admit it to herself as she has always been very supportive and been the “cool parent”. (I wanted to make things a bit reverse in my story, as I feel like in sitcoms especially, that tv dads always get to be the person who is cool with everything and the mom always freaks out about everything.) This almost irrational fear of him growing up started after a conversation she had with him right before he moved out. It was quite a serious conversation, and when it was over she felt like she hadn't been talking with her son, but some grown man she had never met before. The first sign that she had trouble letting him go, was her finding new excuses to not leave when she drove him to his college (she lived in a motel close by and came over and cooked for him and his roommates). There have been a few other incidents after this, but her son has let it be for now, but I'm thinking they'll have to deal with it soon.
Is the smoking of the pot out of character for him ? Is he usually fairly sensible ? It maybe it feels like a betrayal of trust. She has trusted him to behave sensibly. I am a fairly open parent and I work basically on trust - I let them go because i know they will behave.
Well uh, if he's an adult, there's nothing she can really do to punish him. At least if you want to be realistic.
As a mother, my first reaction is to with hold the little motherly things I usually do though I know he is more than capable of doing himself. A lot of my co-students take their laundry home to mom. Id have her teaching him a lesson that hes old enough to do his own laundry or something to that effect. Moms always have little treats, favors for their kids no matter how grown up they become. And nows the time he learned to do it himself! Course, shell get over that anger and baby him again soon lol.
Have you ever watched that Michael Douglas movie called The Game? Something along those lines would be funny..
The first thing that came to mind was embarassment, mothers know everything, right? Even if your character is resistant to embarassment, he/she can't be immune. Let mother dig. Dirty underwear waved around in a crowd would do it for most people I think Then I think anger, even if she's just bluffing, most children have an almost instinctive fear of an angry mommy. And last but not least, tears always work. It's probably easy for a mom to guilt trip a child into doing something they dont want to do, even if its fake, it hits home hard. Meh heh heh.
My oldest son is a few years short of college but I know I do things for him he can do for himself. When he does something wrong, I always think I shouldnt do this or that for him, that Im not doing him any favors by doing it for him. Make sense? I dont know your mom character but I would never purposefully embarrass my son or cry to manipulate him. Parents also tend to use money as punishment or power over their adult children. Many parents pay for their childs car, insurance etc. Kids always need help from their parents on new territory, like maybe she does his taxes for him. "If hes big enough to be experimenting with drugs, hes big enough to learn how to do his own taxes!" lol And yes Id be upset if my son did this, though I dont know how Id even know he did if hes living independently. But this form of "punishment" is really just doing what we, as parents, think we shouldve been doing all along.
Maybe she could tell all the girls in his class/dorm that he's developed some sort of contagious rash as a result of smoking up. Nothing can cut a guy down better than absolutely no attention from the opposite sex.
