divorcing academic offspring

[morn_69]

is it possible to divorce your academic kids... my daughter is being a pain in the ass and I want rid lol

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[Cain]

I divorced my mum because she was useless.

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I hold an element of surprise

[Frank]

St Andrews University Social Services, also advertised via:

"If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire an Assassin..."

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"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[god_hand]

As far as I'm aware, Telling her to F**k off to her face usually suffices.

Either that or text S**t about her to everyone in your address book.

[David Bean]

This is a tricky subject. If your question is whether it's possible for an academically parental relationship to be terminated, then yes, like all non-biological human relationships, that is entirely possible. If your question is how to go about formalising it, then it becomes a lot more difficult.

There are a number of people in St Andrews who used to be my academic children but now, by tacit consent, aren't. The thing is, if something happens between you that makes it apparent to both parties that the relationship can no longer continue (usually if one party feels that the other has crossed them), all you really need to do is to stop referring to them as your academic child - you might even refer to them as your 'former' child. However, this only works if that tacit consent exists, and it's a lot trickier if you're essentially forced into taking them aside and telling them that you no longer consider yourself their parent, and that's something I don't think anyone could really advise you on, because how you'd go about it is entirely dependent upon your individual circumstances.

For the record, though, I would say that in any breakdown of a relationship it's fairly futile to blame one party entirely. I know I was at least partly at fault for what happened whenever I lost children, even if to this day I can't fully understand why it's happened. But if you regard your parent as useless, the question is did you adequately let them know what you were seeking from the relationship, and did you give them the chance to give it to you? And if you think your child was useless, did you initially take the time to establish what their needs were, and did you choose children whose needs you'd convinced yourself you were best placed to fulfill? The two of my children whom I get on with best are people I know will be my friends for life, because in their cases, I got all of this right - to this day I do for them whatever I can, and I originally selected them to be my children because I knew that if I did my best, it would be genuinely helpful to them. But it took a lot of mistakes before I got to that point, and though the mistakes were painful, the learnings and what I gained from them were important enough to make it all worthwhile.

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Psalm 91:7

[Gubbins]

In my view, no matter what you do, you will still be their parent. You *can* disown them, they can become part of a foster family, or you can encourage them to go for a pier walk on a windy day.

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...but then again, that is only my opinion.