>My son (24) is ostensibly an adult and at this point I can either
>castigate myself because, even though I tried countless times to tell
>him How To Do That or Not To Do That and even showed him Why You Don't
>Do That, he still Does That and winds up having problems.

At this point, I'm mainly just concerned with trying to get my children to survive to the ripe old age of 24. This is more difficult than the casual observer might expect, especially when one of the threats to their existence is my desire to defenestrate them; my son currently has a habit when toileting to yank his pants and underwear down and just start peeing as soon as the cloth clears the outflow nozzle. My housecleaning habits aren't great, but making me mop down the bathroom every. damn. day. isn't the way to improve it.

Also, for anyone who happens to be considering reproducing . . . try not to have twins if you can help it. I love both my children, and I'm honestly glad to have one of each, but they have this complex "mutual-support-but-also-antagonism" thing going on that's a never-ending source of headaches.

>Or... I can accept that Adulting is just something that you have to
>learn by doing. Which may be true. The alternative is that I fucked
>up, and so did my parents, and in hindsight, so did their parents, so
>on ad infinitum. I have no way to know which is objectively true, so
>I try to choose the option that leaves me feeling less like a
>dickhead.

My wife and I have more-or-less settled on "let's at least not fuck them up in the same way our parents fucked us up."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."