For parents, it’s natural to be concerned about their children’s welfare, even after they grow up and move out. However, one mom in Boston, Massachusetts, held a little too much anxiety about her 23-year-old son’s well-being. The man has been attending college and has been living in his own apartment since age 18. But for the past five years, his mother has repeatedly sent police to his home, school, and even workplace if he doesn’t respond to her texts quickly enough.
If the Boston 23-year-old didn’t respond to his mom for days or even a week out of the blue, then calling the police might be a warranted reaction. In this mother’s case, however, it would be “sometimes as little as 30 minutes” after which she would begin to panic, then send the police after him. “I’ve been very clear with her that this behavior is unacceptable,” he explained, even going as far as to “set a rule” with her, which gives him at least 48 hours to even a week to respond to messages.
Unfortunately, the worrisome mother has refused to respect her adult son’s boundaries and even threatened to file a missing person report if he doesn’t respond sooner to her. On top of this, she even recently moved into a home just eight minutes away from his house, despite him telling her that he wanted some distance between them. At this point, it wouldn’t be hard to understand why. Fed up with his mom’s madness, the son took to r/legaladvice to ask if there was anything he could do to keep his excessively intrusive parent at bay.
Those in the post’s comment section pretty much held the same opinion: inform the police about the mother’s harassment and work out a plan. Some added that putting a restraining order on her might be a valid option. Not to mention, both of them could get into trouble if she kept doing unfounded welfare checks on her son, considering how purposely wasting police resources is illegal.
The root of the issue could be that his mother is mentally disabled and might need treatment or special care. “Call adult protective services on her. Tell them she is acting insane and needs to be checked on,” suggests one Redditor. In the end, if the Boston mother is not acting maliciously towards her son and is actually just struggling mentally with her excessive concerns, then it would be a unfortunate yet tough situation to handle. Even so, disrupting someone else’s livelihood over some pointless worries is still wrong.
