Didn't see you had replied when I deleted (I thought my comment to be somewhat devoid of interesting content).

For context, I was implying that calling your teenager an inebriated sloth would surely not help the relationship.

I believe you when you say it's a term of endearment.

I guess I'm just finding some of my own teenage relationship with my father in the original post. My father didn't particularly approve or value how I spent my time and authority was a conflictual subject between us. Our relationship is still somewhat fifteen years later.

I of course don't call him that to his face, although I do tell him frequently that unless he changes his ways he'll be living under a bridge in a few years (proverbial, obviously), and getting out of the hole is much harder than never going into it in the first place. At times it even seems that he understands, but the moment I look away, he fires up the browser and fires up YouTube. Congratulations YouTube, I guess? Excellent "engagement", give that researcher a bonus! I'm sick and tired of this already, so I think I'll just let him attend the school of hard knocks instead.

It's sad though. In a way, being sheltered from adversity has severely undermined his future potential. For what it's worth my father made me do things, and always reminded me that unless I get proper education I'll be shoveling shit on a farm for the rest of my life. I grew up in rural Russia, so this was the default state, which several of my high school friends entered, permanently.

I, on the other hand, gave my kid everything and sheltered him from everything, and undermined his future by doing so.

You are not alone: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcdXczfIFl9pOHZRCKCss_g/vid... has a lot of rants about raising kids in the US. (so many that I can't find the one I originally watched)

But venting about it to sympathetic listeners probably would.

No problem re deletion - sometimes the uninteresting things are more interesting than the interesting ones!